Playa del Carmen, Mexico: 17 – 21 March 2011

…Spring Break!

Ah, the good old American “Spring Break” – a time when booze-guzzling university students terrorize various sunny parts of America and beyond, en masse and on holiday. In Mexico, they traditionally descend on Cancun. However, in recent times, they have started venturing further South to places like Playa del Carmen – and we were caught in the middle of it. Add to this St Patrick’s Day, and we were in a place like Schoolies Week, just without the 17-year-olds (but plenty of “Toolies”…).

It really wasn’t all that bad for us though. Playa del Carmen is actually quite a nice little town, easily navigable, and located in a great spot right in the middle of the Maya Riviera. The town itself is located about an hour South of Cancun and is right on the water. The beach is amazing, although not as good as Playa Norte on Isla Mujeres, and there are plenty of swimming, snorkelling, and diving opportunities available.

For our three full days here, we opted to spend one walking around the town itself, another out of town looking around the whole area, and one just relaxing. After braving the tourist strip of Fifth Avenue (the Cavill Avenue equivalent) that runs parallel to the water, we soon got out of this part of town and started seeing a bit more of the “real” Mexico. Quite run down, yet lovely old (Colonial) buildings, Collectivo mini-buses (as opposed to the stock standard city-buses), and crazily cheap restaurants (e.g. Burritos and Fajitas that we struggled to finish, and drinks, cost about AUD$7), filled the two of us with a bit more confidence that we’d decided to come to a nice place.

Temple at Coba

Day two saw us hire a car and drive South to the Coba Ruins, and the very small seaside town of Tulum. Coba is an old Mayan city about 2 hours South-West of Playa del Carmen, and is a very impressive city (considering it’s in ruins). I’ve never considered myself much of a ruins type of person, but because Coba looked like a scene out of an Indiana Jones film (lots of still fairly intact buildings in amongst some very heavy jungle), we were easily able to imagine what the city would have been like in its heyday. Building commenced around 300AD, and the city was home to thousands of people until about the 16^th or 17^th Century when the Spanish conquered the area, raped, pillaged, stole, tortured, looted, ransacked, and eventually eliminated the indigenous Maya population. The highlight of these ruins was definitely the main temple in the city which literally comes out of the jungle and raises 45 metres high. If you can imagine a jungle scene of any movie that is set in a Mayan ruin, you’ll be able to picture this building. It’s raised higher than the tops of all trees, and is made up of a number of large terraces built on top of each other until at the top, you can see a small one-roomed building – this is the temple itself. To get to the temple, picture a very steep staircase that dissects the terraces (the stairs effectively go up the outside of the structure). The Coba temple is the last Mayan structure that you are allowed to climb on. If you go to any other (such as Chichen Itza and El Bakam – both in Mexico – and Tikal in Guatemala), all ruins are effectively closed to the public in an effort to conserve them. Coba will surely go this way at some stage soon – and rightly so.

Following this excursion, we drove directly East to the seaside town of Tulum. Like Coba, Tulum was originally a Mayan city. And like Coba, it was sacked by the Spanish in 1518 AD on their first expedition West from Cuba. After taking Tulum, they headed North along the coast, and consequently “found” Mexico. The Tulum ruins themselves aren’t as impressive as the ruins at Coba, however their spectacular location makes them far more popular than Coba.

After having lunch in a Tulum restaurant, and spending the afternoon there, we jumped in the car and headed North to back to Playa del Carmen.

The following day we just relaxed around Playa del Carmen and put the feet up before heading to Cuba – one place we were looking forward to going to the most.