Playa del Carmen, Mexico

For our 3 year anniversary, Matt and I decided to explore a part of Mexico that we had never been to before.  Costco had some great travel specials to Playa del Carmen, Mexico, which is about 30 miles south of Cancun.  After some great reviews from our friends and co-workers, we decided to give it a try for our yearly tropical vacation.  We settled on a hotel called the Royal Hideaway in a resort area of the city called Playacar.  The reviews we read online were promising, since we prefer the smaller hotels with nice, big beaches over the crowded high rises.  To make it more fun, this was our first time ever staying in an all-inclusive hotel!  The planning was a little different since we didn't have to research local restaurants or activities, but we were excited to drink (Matt) and eat (Me) all we wanted all week.

View of Hotel from Water

On the first day, our travel day, we arrived at the airport bright and early.  I decided to try to make the best of my 5-months-pregnant belly to get us through security without the backscatter x-ray and then get us upgraded to better exit row seats without having to pay the $50 per person fee.  It totally worked - thanks baby :)  We flew in to Cancun, and when we landed there was already a shuttle arranged to pick us up and take us to our hotel about 40 minutes away.  The drive was a fun way to get a feel for the city and how different it is from the very desert-like parts of Mexico we are used to on the west coast.  Definitely more of a Caribbean feel and even sort of rain forest-like in some areas.  We drove up to our hotel and were very impressed - the grounds were beautiful and the beach was huge and stunning.  Since it was already pretty late, we decided to just hit the hot tub before heading over to dinner at the hotel's Italian restaurant, Palazzo. This was probably my favorite food of the whole trip.  We had been so nervous that the quality of the food wouldn't be stellar and we would regret have wasted money on an all-inclusive.  But that was not the case at all!  It was outstanding 5-course meals at each dinner, complete with crazy good desserts.  We had to get used to the idea of eating whatever we wanted without considering the cost and it was a bit of an adjustment at first.  But I got over it pretty fast when I realized I could sample all of the desserts at the end of my meal instead of just picking one.  It was like a dream come true :)

Welcome Drinks

Fancy Desserts

Our Room

After getting some rest, we decided to spend day 2 bumming around the beach and the pool all day.  The weather was phenomenal - warm with a very light breeze that made laying out very comfortable.  Add that to the powdered sand and the warm water and we knew we would be spending a lot of the week just lounging around and recharging.  At one point during the day we felt adventurous enough to walk south down the beach to see the other hotels in the area.  All very nice and Caribbean-feeling, but the huge crowds made us thankful for our pretty private beach back at our hotel.  That night, my fun week of strange animal sightings started when we found what looked like a squirrel without a tail or a cabybara hanging around the grounds of the hotel.  We excitedly described the little guy to our concierge and asked him what the weird animal was, and he said it was called a tzereque - very common in the area.  We saw about 20 more of them over the course of the week, so I guess he wasn't kidding!  But they weren't very social and I couldn't get any of them to come up to me, even with food bribes.  On our way to dinner that night, we also found some adorable little kittens playing in the grass.  I know kittens aren't an exotic animal, but I always miss Jordan when we're on trips so I like to love on all of the wildlife we see to make up for it :)  Dinner that night was at Azia, which was a fun tepanuaki restaurant (think a fancier Benihana or Sapporo).  We stuffed our faces with sushi and fried rice/veggies/steak before heading to bed early in anticipation of our big day the next day.

Pool Lounging

Enrique the Tzereque

Azia Restaurant

 

Day 3 we ventured away from the hotel to explore a great snorkel site called Akumal we had read a lot about.  Playa has a lot of all-day activity areas where you can snorkel in "adventure coves," but we preferred to venture out on our own since we had come prepared with our snorkel gear from home.  And we had been told that Akumal was the "home of the turtles" and the best place to go to guarantee giant sea turtle sightings.  Once we got to the beach, we slipped on our gear and swam out a few hundred yards to the coral areas.  A lot of the coral in the region had been destroyed by a hurricane a few years ago, so it wasn't as colorful and beautiful as maybe Hawaii.  But we still saw a lot of cool fish, including cuttlefish a barracuda and a sweet neon-colored fish that looked like he would have been pretty in-style in the 1990's :)  And the turtles did not disappoint either!  We saw maybe a dozen different turtles hanging out on the ocean floor munching on sea grass.  They are such calm and beautiful animals, and they even let us swim alongside them a few times.  My favorite part was watching them pop their little heads out of the water for a quick breath before swimming back down for more grass.  After we had enough of snorkeling for the day, we headed back to our hotel to grab a quick nap on beach.  Then off to dinner at Las Ventanas, the modern American-style restaurant at the hotel - another delicious night!  Before dinner, however, we stopped at the hotel bar so Matt could grab a drink to fill his quota for the day.  He had decided to work his way through the entire list of hotel drink specials, and had made a good dent already by this third day.  But he needed a change from the fruit-based cocktails they specialized in, so he asked the waitress for a White Russian.  The only thing we can figure is that the language barrier made her think he asked for a "white wine with a rush on it" because she hurried out with a glass of white and proceeded to spill it all over us in her haste.  No harm done, but we did have to go in to our dinner smelling like we were all boozed up :)

Matt made a pretty good dent in this drink menu by Day 2

On the fourth day, we took a walk down the beach to downtown Playa del Carmen.  As we were walking, we were discussing what kind of Christmas tree ornament we should buy to commemorate our trip here.  Suddenly Matt says "how about one with a moon on it?"  I was really confused until he chuckled and motioned up the beach a few dozen yards.  There was a man standing on the beach with his shorts around his ankles and his white, white butt mooning the island across the way (Cozumel).  Just standing there, not doing anything obscene, but it was very bizarre and made us laugh.  Once we got into town we looked around the shops and finally settled on a brightly colored ornament with fruit all over it that felt very Mexico to us.  Plus, we had been gorging on fresh fruit for breakfast every morning since we arrived and most of the drinks were mango or berry laden, so it felt like a good representation of the city.  Next we stopped for a massage at a place we found on TripAdvisor called Magic Hands.  Those ladies were pretty magical - it was a great, relaxing hour away from the busy city.  To continue the relaxation, we headed back to our beach and finally grabbed one of the canopy beds that were strewn around the pool area.  Once we were there, we couldn't bring ourselves to leave the bed.  And since the waiters will bring you food and beverages from there, we didn't have to, so we stayed there all afternoon.  That night we had dinner at the Grill, which had great steaks and chicken.  When we got back to our room, there were adorable Halloween treats included with our turn down service.  We had almost forgotten that it was Halloween back in the states!

Canopy Bed

5th Ave - Downtown Playa del Carmen

On our fifth day there, Matt decided to see how well he remembered his sailing days back in Oregon.  We checked out a boat from the hotel's activity center and cast off into the water.  All of his skills he had learned as a kid came right back to him and he expertly guided us out to sea.  We had a great time gliding around in the water for an hour or so, and then my motion sickness started to set in and we headed back in.  We dragged a few canopy seats onto beach and just snacked and drank for a few hours with our toes in the sand.  Later that afternoon, as we were walking around the hotel grounds, Matt suddenly said "grab your camera and get excited!"  He pointed over to some bushes where a large, bushy, ringed tail was popping out.  The cute little guy attached to that tail turned out to be a coati, which are related to raccoons.  He was brave enough to grab an orange slice out of my hand, but then he apparently didn't love the taste of it.  I told Matt to watch him while I ran back to one of the hotel restaurants to grab him some better fruit.  But when I got back, he was heading away and no amount of my crazy calling for him to come back would work.  Each time we walked around for the rest of the trip, I carried a banana with me just in case, but unfortunately that was our only coati sighting of the trip.  That night, when we got back to our room, it had been decorated with balloons to celebrate our anniversary.  And then at dinner (Palazzo again), they presented us with a nice bottle of champagne as well.  Matt did his best to enjoy the bottle for both of us :)  Late that night, we took a stroll on the beach and enjoyed watching the lights from Cozumel in the distance.

Scotty the Coati

On our last full day in Mexico, I unfortunately had some issues with my head from a surgical site a few weeks back that we thought had healed.  Matt flexed his Spanish skills by walking down to the local farmacia and finding me some peroxide, iodine and gauze to patch me up.  I was feeling fine and didn't think it warranted a trip to a Mexican hospital on our last day, so we decided to just relax around the pool for the day and take it easy.  That meant we weren't able to rent kayaks like we had planned, but we made use of the canopy beds once again and lounged in the hot tub to pass the day.  The funniest part of the head issue were the looks that other guests and employees were giving us.  I think half of them were worried and thought I had hurt myself on an excursion, and the other half probably thought I had gotten some cheap Mexican plastic surgery while I was out there.  Ha!  That night for our final dinner, we once again ate at The Grill so Matt could get a good steak fix before heading back to the states.  We hung out on the beach and enjoyed the sound of the ocean before turning in for the night.

The final day in Playa was a quick whirlwind of packing, eating, and getting one last dip in the ocean before heading to the airport.  It was such a great trip and I am so glad that we were able to get away to celebrate another wonderful year together.  Looking forward to the next one already!!