BAH Visits the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
Cozumel -- Playa del Carmen -- Tulum -- Cancun -- Chichen Itza
We spent our first two nights in Mexico on the island of Cozumel, in the town of San Miguel, at the Hotel Lopez, shown here. It was fairly clean, and the staff was pleasant enough, though they spoke little or no English. We had a window unit air conditioner, which kept the room nice and comfortable (and kept the wife happy). Not bad at all for 300 pesos a night (roughly $30 U.S.). We had a bit of a panic the first night we were there, as we stayed out rather late at a bar called Senor Frog's (where children were drinking and cavorting on the dance floor in a manner to have turned their parent's blood cold, had they been there to see them) and, upon returning to the hotel, found it completely dark and locked up tight. A quick knock on the door, however, brought someone to let us in. For a moment there, we thought we were going to have to sleep on the street. If you're not afraid to be adventurous, this is the sort of place you can stay for next to nothing. If you ask me, it beats the hell out of staying in one of the $100-150 per night tourist hotels.
A typical street shot of San Miguel. This one just happens to be right outside the Hotel Lopez. Merchants up and down the street would pester the crap out of you as you walked by. "Hey, Meester! Come see my shop!" You haggled for everything. Because Betty and I have a habit of holding hands, they called us honeymooners. They called Betty "Barbie" and "Blondie." They called me "Senor Whiskers," "Dude," and "Hippy." Maybe it was my tattoos or the hair, or maybe it happens to all white guys, but 3 out of 5 merchants would pull me aside and whisper, "Hey, Senor Whiskers, you wanna buy some weed? I got the good shit. Sell to you mucho cheap. Or how about some nose candy, senor?" Got to where I wanted to slam a few heads against the wall. Everyone wanted to braid Betty's hair (in typical Bo Derek style), but more on that later. You can see the sign for Happy Hour and two for one drinks. It was always Happy Hour and drinks were pretty much always two for one. Don't bother ordering cocktail type drinks, though. Every place in Mexico that we ordered daiquiris or pina coladas or whatever, they tasted like crap -- even at our expensive, 5-star hotel in Cancun. Not only did they taste awful, but as far as I could tell, the drink might have been shown a bottle of rum, but that bottle was surely never tipped over said drink. Sodas were always flat, even when we ordered them in a bottle (I think they reused the bottles, simply refilling them at their fountain machine). So, drink beer or drink bottled water (or drink straight tequila if that's your calling). As everyone says, don't drink the local tap water. This wasn't a problem, as we were able to find bottled water everywhere. You also have to be careful about what the local tap water might have been used for: washing the lettuce in a salad, the flour mix in a tortilla, etc. We didn't have any trouble until our last night in Cancun, though (where the hotel water was actually guaranteed safe).
The water was no more than 100 yards from the front of our hotel, but this is the "bay" side of Cozumel -- fit for partying and shopping, but not really nice for swimming, sunning, beachcombing, and what have you. This incredible sailboat was anchored just off shore, and I couldn't resist shooting a picture of it. This is the way I wish we had gotten to Cozumel (we flew into Cancun, took a bus to Playa del Carmen, then took the ferry over to the island).
And this is how Betty wishes we had arrived at Cozumel. There were always four or five of these huge cruise ships anchored at Cozumel. You definitely noticed when they dumped their 4 or 5 thousand touristas onto the docks and into the little town of San Miguel. I'm told that prices used to be a lot cheaper, that the town was once a lot more picturesque and authentic. Another decade of cruise ships and I imagine San Miguel will be like Cancun (which I didn't care for at all), just another Americanized town with McDonald's and Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken establishments sprinkled in among the high rise hotels.
Naturally, we had to visit the Caribbean side of the island. It was simply gorgeous: miles and miles of barren beach, broken only by little Mexican bars every five miles or so. The surf is peppered with limestone boulders (99% of the Yucatan Peninsula is limestone). Cliffs of limestone overlook much of the shoreline, riddled with surf-scoured holes that lend everything an "igneous" look, as if Cozumel had once been a volcano. These rocks help form the foundation for the reef that Cozumel is known for, of course: one of the top dive spots in the world.
Naturally, here, away from civilization, I had to do my share of exploration ... in the rocks ...
...on the beach ...
... and in the jungle. People have commented on that hat. Yeah, it's my traveling hat. My adventure hat. I originally bought it in Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida. It should have a few more years left in it.
Here's the couple we traveled with, Bryan and Donna (and didn't that make it interesting when we had to tell all those Mexicans that we were Bryan and Brian!). Bryan has been to this part of Mexico 40 or 50 times (he's actually traveled all over the world, one of the side benefits to being a bachelor) and made an excellent travel guide. Without him, we'd have done the tourist thing and stayed in expensive hotels. This shot is at one of those little bars on the beach on the Caribbean side of Cozumel. I'm not entirely sure now which bar this was, as we hit quite a few of them. There are the ever present bottles of Dos Equis; it's necessary to keep your fluids up, ya know. There's a bottle of water there, too. And here's a tip for you. Buy the Mexican brands of bottled water. We accidentally bought a bottle of imported French water (Evian). It was a small bottle, easily half the size of the one shown above. I drank from the bottle before the clerk rang it up, so there was no putting it back. 40 pesos (roughly $4 U.S.). That big bottle of Cristal Water (a Mexican brand) was 8 pesos (80 cents). Most places you could get a can of coke for 10 pesos (a dollar) and a Dos Equis (two for one, of course) for about 30 pesos ($3 U.S.).
Me and the missus. Same bar. Just a shot across the table from the other direction. I look wet, so this must have been after a nice frolic in the surf. I loved the barren side of Cozumel, as it remains relatively unspoiled, but getting there from San Miguel meant that we had to rent a car (400 pesos) and drive across the island (30 minutes or so).
