Mexico (Playa del Carmen)
Trip Summary
Mexico is known for so many wonderful things–beaches, culture, food, cenotes, and so much more–so my husband and I finally decided to visit as much as we could in a one-week trip over the summer. We started in Cozumel, then went to Playa del Carmen, then ended in Cancun, and what a trip! Playa del Carmen stands out as one of our favorites, and let me tell you why! The cenotes! There are so many of them here, and they are so varied that you have a wholly new experience at each one of them.
Before we visited them, though, we checked into our hotel, the Hotel Cielo. We booked this hotel because it was within walking distance from the ferry and was close to 5thAvenue (the main street where all the shopping, restaurants, and attractions are) and the ADO bus station (we would later catch a bus to Cancun). It also had excellent reviews, so we booked a standard room with a balcony.
The place was delightful from the check-in person who greeted us with bottled water and a cold towel to the neat architecture to the neighboring Carboncitos (with tasty food and great reviews).
Due to its excellent location, fair prices, beautiful architecture, and kind staff, Hotel Cielo gets high marks! It doesn’t include any sort of breakfast, though, and the hotel’s restaurant is a little expensive.
Hotel Cielo: A-
After checking in and with a full evening ahead of us, we set foot down 5thAvenue and explored all the sights.
5th Avenue is a long street with a lot of touristy spots and people try to flag you down to buy anything from hats to trinkets to food. There is also a very heavy police presence, and it wasn’t unusual to turn a corner and see a police truck with armed guards outside standing watch (but in all honesty, we did feel safe walking around at night). We also stopped at a few places to eat along the way—La Casota has great chips and guacamole and La Vagabunda has fantastic quesadillas!
We were floored by all the activity on the street and on our way back to the hotel, we actually walked along the beach, and this way was much quieter as we passed children making sand castles, people chatting and drinking, and late afternoon swimmers enjoying the waves. When we got back to our hotel, we commented about the busyness of 5th Avenue and asked our hotel check-in person if it was like that in Cancun (our next destination), and he gave us a hearty laugh, and said that Cancun was much busier. “This place? This is nothing.” We were shocked as it seemed like a massive touristy spot!
We still had a lot of Playa del Carmen to explore, so the next day, we got up early and walked over to the meeting spot where we would meet with “Captain Quickie” for the Signature Excursion. After meeting their van and picking up the rest of the passengers, we set off to Akumal Bay where we would swim with sea turtles. However, we ended up seeing so much more! The spot where you can snorkel is off a beach, but there are tons of turtles, stingrays, fish, and even barracuda swimming around for you to see. The tour guide also lets you swim wherever you want in that contained area, so if you want to see more of certain wildlife, you can stay in that area and take pictures rather than being rushed around.
After Akumal Bay, we went to the most beautiful cenote I have ever seen. Now on their website, they just say they would visit an “above-ground cenote,” but there are dozens of these in the area, so I had no idea what to expect. This one was called the Jardin del Eden cenote or The Garden of Eden cenote, so if you only have a chance to see one cenote in Mexico, see this one!
The water is crystal clear, and you can even see scuba divers below going in and out of the underwater caves near the cliff. The cliff was my husband’s favorite part as his inner adventurer could be fully unleashed (the tour let us go completely here and did not require people to wear lifejackets). There are stairs on both sides of the cenote where people could get in and out of the water and back up the cliff, so you know the entire time, he was playing Tarzan, jumping off the cliff, climbing back up, and jumping off again! It is a high jump, and I jumped myself a few times, but if you go, be reassured that the water is plenty deep, and there are several levels you can jump off of (or even just take the stairs down into the water).
You would think that the day would end there, but we still had so much to see! After we all got back into the van and stopped at a local taco place for lunch (an open-air place on the side of the road that served everything fresh), we traveled to the dock where the largest catamaran in the Caribbean and its crew awaited. For the next few hours, we sailed on the boat, listened to music, enjoyed drinks, and watched the shoreline go by. The boat was making good progress toward our last stop, so the crew decided to stop for an impromptu snorkel along on some reefs. The coral and fish were also beautiful there (though, you had to be careful as it was very shallow).
As you can imagine, the day was almost over by the time everyone got back in the boat and we sailed the rest of the way back, so you know we were exhausted by the time they drove us back to our hotel. But it was a fun day and worth the money for the trip. It was our most expensive excursion, but we did get a full day of activity, it had good reviews, and we will remember that Garden of Eden cenote forever!
The tour’s full day of activities, friendly staff, and excellent itinerary earn a high rating. However, I felt the tour was quite expensive and may be cost-prohibitive, especially if one has a bigger family. But all in all, a wonderful tour!
Local Quickies Signature Excursion: A-
Our last day was another cenote day, and this one I was a little worried about because it was with Xperiencias Xcaret, a larger tour company, and those tours can get pretty crowded. Some of the reviews (while mostly good) also had some complaints about the guides, customer service, and the photo pass (more on that later). But these tour companies own those particular cenotes, so the only way to see them would be to go on the tour, so I hoped for the best (and it still ended up being a great day). We went on the Xenotes Oasis Maya tour which was an all-day tour in which you would visit four cenotes.
The first one we visited was the K’aaK’ (Fire) Cenote, and this was an above ground longer cenote that had a zip line you could use to get into it. They had a slide you could use, too, if you preferred not to use the zip line, but you know we both took the zip line! It was a good long one that descended all the way into the water, and we swam to the other end of the cenote.
At the other end was actually a cliff that you could jump off and land in the water. This cliff wasn’t as high as the one in the Garden of Eden cenote and was a lot more heavily regimented with lifeguards and mandatory lifejackets, but it was still fun, and my husband and I jumped as much as the tour guides would allow before we had to head to the next cenote.
The next one, the Lu’um (Earth) cenote, was an underground cave one, and you used a zip line for this one, too, but it was a controlled descent. This one had a much lower temperature, so the cool air and water was a nice escape from the hot weather of the day. In this one was also a “diving board” that people could jump off into the water below. The diving board wasn’t any higher than the previous cliff, but not a lot of people jumped off of it, so my husband enjoyed the freedom to jump and dive to his heart’s content!
Third was what the tour guides called a “bonus cenote.” It wasn’t advertised on the tour, so I don’t know the name of it. We all kayaked through this one, but this one was warmer and a lot more stagnant than the others, so was probably our least favorite.
Better was the next one which was the Ha’ (Water) cenote. This one was more like an open hole in the ground and had lots of room where you could swim around in the water.
Last was one of the better cenotes, the Lik’ (Wind) cenote. This was the largest of all of them and resembled more of a large quarry and had a large zip line that went out over the water. You could also jump off the zip line starting point (a large cliff), but most people chose to zip line (and this one went very fast—there were lots of face plants in the water…by me! Ha!).
This tour earned points for having a variety of cenotes to visit. It was also well-organized and the equipment was in good condition. However, it lost points for what I felt were very large tour groups, and the lacking customer service when we tried to buy a photo pass (normally, we wouldn’t buy it as it is outrageously expensive, but our camera did not take any good pictures that day as the lens kept fogging up in the humidity). We bought the pass, and it came with a code, but the code didn’t work, and when we spoke with customer service, they said they couldn’t find our pictures and we could not get a refund. It was only after several calls and emails that we finally got the pictures we paid for, but the tour which would have been about a B+ falls to a B- because of the photo pass experience.
Xenotes Oasis Maya Tour by Experiencias Xcaret: B-
As you can imagine, this was a long day, so when the bus took us back to our drop-off point, we were tired. This is where the balcony in our room came in handy, because after we settled in for the night, we could still people watch and see the excitement of 5thAvenue from our room.
However, there was no time to rest, because early the next morning, we were heading to our last stop…Cancun! Now, Cancun is more than an hour’s drive from Playa del Carmen, so we walked to the ADO bus station and got tickets for the next bus there. It wasn’t too long of a wait, the busses were air-conditioned, and before we knew it, we were Cancun-bound! The most luxurious part of the trip was ahead!
Favorite Experiences
Hands down, the Garden of Eden cenote was my favorite. I liked the tour in that it was a smaller group and would let you be independent whether you wanted to jump off the cliff or relax and swim. The place also wasn’t too crowded and didn’t seem to be company-owned like the other cenotes we visited. If you only have time to visit one cenote in Mexico, be sure to visit this one.
What I Wish I Knew
I wish I knew a lot of things for this place. First, I wish I hadn’t underestimated the humidity of coastal Mexico in August and thought ahead about how that would affect picture-taking. Taking a camera in and out of a bag or cover is a big change in temperature/humidity and makes the lens immediately fog up so that you can’t see anything. We didn’t think we would need the photo pass, so we didn’t pose for a lot of pictures, so if you are on an excursion like that, smile and pose anyway! You never know if your own camera will work well or not.
Also, the Mexican government requires you to wear biodegradable sunscreen only in the cenotes (to better protect the water), so we bought some before the trip. However, this is not your normal sunscreen. It is extremely thick, and you only need a tiny bit of it. Before going in the water, we put some on and attempted to put a “normal” amount on our skin but then no matter how hard we rubbed, it just would not sink in! It led to a laugh as we had to start swimming, still covered in white from the sunscreen, but if you go, just use a tiny amount and go from there.
Also, we were so glad that we brought a large self-filtering water bottle, because we used it a lot (and saved money). Many hotels have a filtered water tank near the check-in desk, and we always filled up between walks, before tours, and when going back to our room. You want to use filtered water for everything (drinking, brushing teeth, so on), so having a container was helpful in the hot weather, and we didn’t need to buy any at overpriced stores.
Lastly, bring some hydrogen peroxide with you to kill any bacteria in your ears after swimming. This will help prevent swimmer’s ear, and we didn’t think to pack it, so we ended up getting a small bottle at a pharmacy, but this is an item we take with us all the time now.
If you need a good forum to follow before you go, check out TripAdvisor. It is one of my most checked sites when I am planning travel, and I found it to be useful for this trip, too!
To follow our next adventure in Cancun, click here!
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Happy travels!
