For our Spring Break this year, we decided to take the kids to Cancun
and the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. My wife and I had not been in close
to 20 years, well before kids, and we wanted to take them to see the
Mayan ruins and some nice tropical beaches (a far cry from the cold,
cold North Pacific of the Bay Area).
What we got instead was an adventure.
Initially, things got off well. We had booked a 2 bedroom condo and a
rental car (I get a GREAT corporate through Hertz, even on leisure
trips), and the flight down, while a touch bumpy, went well. Upon
landing and clearing customs we got whisked straight to the Hertz
counter, at which point we had to wait. And wait. And wait. Nothing
was wrong, it just...takes a while to get a car in Cancun. In the
meantime, we got some restaurant recommendation from the Hertz staff
(several of which worked out well). Finally, we left the airport.
And drove right into a trap.
The municipal (or maybe state) police had set up an unmarked
"checkpoint" as you entered the resort zone. No lights (it was after
dark), no signs. They stopped me by stepping into the road with a
flashlight, then informed me I was speeding through a "police station"
and it was a $MXP4000 fine, and they would be taking my driver's
license. After a short pause, the officer said perhaps I should step
outside with him. I leaned to my wife and said, "Here comes the
shakedown."
Had I been more fluent in Spanish or just less panicked, I might have
been able to negotiate a bit, but I was neither, and the officer's
partner (who was masked up to his eyeballs) was waiting. The mentioned
I could pay the fine right there, and motioned to put the money behind
a clipboard the masked one was holding. Transaction over, they let me
go, albeit with a somewhat lighter wallet.
From here, we drove to what we thought was our condo, but we realized
we hadn't gotten the precise complex or room number. I wasn't able to
make any calls, so for the next hour we bounced between a few
complexes while furiously texting and emailing the unit owner as well
as booking.com, where we had booked the unit. We finally gave up and
drove to the Westin, and were seconds away from renting a room when I
got a text message from the property manager and got our instructions.
Something had gone wrong with booking.com and none of his messages
would go through, and they had messed up my phone number. Finally, we
were in our room, where we found a badly needed bottle of wine and
sleep.
The next day was smooth. We bought a day pass to the resort our condo
was in, which gave us access to the restaurants, we hit the beach and
pool, and we went into Central Cancun to get some food and supplies.
My wife wanted to snorkel, but instead of the usual placid Caribbean
Sea, we had 2m waves and high wind. Still, a good day.
The following day we got into the car and headed inland to Chichen
Itza, ~200km of driving along a toll road that is utterly desolate,
with no exits and few services. Halfway there, we got a panicked text
message from the condo owner that booking.com had cancelled our stay!
Apparently in the flood of messages at check-in, they decided we had
not found the unit, and cancelled it without paying the owner. We
couldn't fix this from the car, we it gnawed at us the rest of the
day.
At Chichen Itza, we had to navigate a thicket of vendors trying to
sell us tours, maps, and parking long before we reached the gates, but
once inside we found parking steps from the door and headed inside.
Once in line, we snagged a private tour guide and had a fantastic trip
through the ruins with just the 4 of us. Afterward we went to a nearby
cenote (Ik Kil) for underground swimming, which gave us a badly needed
cooling off. Then it was the long drive back to Cancun to deal with
our booking. It took 2.5 hours, 5 agents, and a lot of heated yelling
to eventually find that booking.com admitted they screwed up in
cancelling the booking, but that they would not fix it. We ended up
texting the condo owner, who it turns out was happy to bill us
directly via Stripe, which we took care of the next morning.
That next day we decided to relax, and just hit the beach and pool
after breakfast at a fabulous restaurant in Central Cancun The waves
were still too rough for snorkeling or even swimming in the
ocean, but we all had a fine time on the beach. We tried to venture
into Central Cancun for dinner but the restaurant we were given was
either no longer open or had moved, and the neighborhood was not
somewhere I was comfortable as an Anglo, so we ended up back in the
tourist zone at a restaurant the Hertz guys had recommended.
The next day was our second-to-last day, so we piled in the car for
the long drive back out to Ek Balam, one of the last (maybe the last)
complex where you are allowed to climb the pyramids. My daughter and I
made it to the top, but the heat and humidity wore us out, so we
headed into Valladolid for lunch at a small place my wife found online
that was another top-notch meal. We checked out a few sites in
Valladolid (some 16th-century convents and churches) and headed back
to Cancun. We thought the drive would be boring, but about 10km from
the end of the toll road, I spotted a column of what was either smoke
or dust ahead.
It was smoke. And where's the smoke, there was FIRE.
A wildfire had broken out alongside the highway, and jumped to the
forest in the median, with flames right up to the edge of the
pavement. The car ahead of me hesitated, then we all threw on our
hazard lights and headlights and crept through several hundred meters
of zero-visibility smoke. Once we broke through, we all floored it out
of there, as there were no emergency services to be seen (and really,
there were probably none within 25km of that spot). From there it was
smooth driving back into town (past that damned police checkpoint
again!) and a nice dinner before bed.
Our last day in Cancun was a day of killing time, as our flight didn't
leave until 7PM. We lazed around the condo until 11AM checkout, then
made our way around the tourist zone to check out various shops, get
some food, and just wander. We made an attempt to find a market in
Central Cancun that a local suggested, but when we got there it was a
ramshackle collection of sheds in a fairly rough-looking area, so we
bailed and made our way to the airport. We breezed through outgoing
customs (I had remembered to pay our exit taxes ahead of time), and
enjoyed a relaxed meal before our flight. Our family was split for the
flight home (my wife and son in one row, my daughter and I in an exit
row), but the flight was smooth. Upon landing at SFO, we had to walk
what felt like forever (10 minutes?) to reach customs, but breezed
through, got our bags, caught our shuttle, and finally got our car
sometime after midnight. The drive home was fine, and were all more
than happy to be back in our own beds.
