The heat is back in Mexico!

We had been lucky the past couple of weeks, weather was good but not that hot anymore. Instead of 30+ degrees, the daily temperatures settled around 25 degrees. But coming out of the mountains and driving towards Mérida, the weather was changing again and our car measured temperatures way above 30 degrees. Since there was so much dust under our car, the sensor measuring the AC temperature broke. So after a long drive the system completely froze up and stopped working. A little cleaning under the hood did the trick. The route towards Mérida, was a nice one. Driving along the Gulf of Mexico with its blue water was great. Sometimes you noticed an oil platform somewhere on the horizon, which made us realize where the money in this region is coming from.

I considered Mérida as a disappointment; our housing wasn’t great, and also the city itself wasn’t really special. We decided to stay here for two nights but one night would have been sufficient. Mérida is used by travelers that visit the Cancun area to experience a little more from Mexico. You find a lot of tourist traps in Mérida, like a German beer house for example. They say the beaches around Mérida are very nice but since we traveled so much the past week we gave ourselves and the car some rest.

Leaving Mérida “I would recommend you don’t go there”, we headed for Chichén Itzá. This historic Aztec or Maya (I’m a little lost on that part) place is located in the middle of the Yucatan jungle, but very easy to reach. I think this is the best developed tourist location that we have seen in Mexico. Prices for visiting are matching the quality level of the park. Though all the signs which suppose to explain the buildings are damaged or gone. I guess they don’t bother replacing those to keep the private tour guide business at the level it currently is. We spent about 3 hours there and were surprised by 2 jungle rain storms. They come and go so quickly that it’s impossible to predict them. We’re not really getting used to them yet, but locals just continue what they are doing since after the rain comes sunshine :-). We now have visited three of these types of locations so far, and what makes this one special is the jungle environment it’s built in. This is the picture I had in my mind when thinking about Maya or Aztec, or both…

We continued our way towards Playa del Carmen. A tourist hub just south of Cancun along the Atlantic ocean. We picked this spot since the city is close to the location where we signed up to get our PADI open water diving degree. The AirBnB we booked was decent, everything was new and the location was close to both the beach and the main street in Playa del Carmen. As well the beach and the main street in Playa del Carmen are a little disappointing though. There is only 2 meters of beach left and the rest of the beach is given to the major resorts you find along the coastline of the city. The tourist street is nice and some of the restaurants look amazing. But be aware that the rates here are two times as high as in the rest of Mexico. Also, if you walk the main street up and down you will be offered at least one kilo of whichever drug you might like :-s. In the beginning Hester didn't realize what the guys were whispering when we were not interested in their general merchandise, but at some point she stopped and the guy thought she was ready to buy from him what he just whispered, that's where it became clear :-D. “Did he just offer..?” Yes, he did.

The 2nd day in Playa del Carmen we decided to relax a little, the AirBnB also had a pool which offered us a nice place to cool off a little during the day. But around 1pm we received a message from the diving school. “Hi Timon, it would be great if you can finish the first three courses of the Padi E-learning module”. Ugh, well so much for our free afternoon. As written before traveling is hard work :-)! In the end we studied about 7 to 8 hours on the diving material, but we managed to pass the first three courses with a 10 as the average grade.

Early in the morning a van arrives at the AirBnB to pick us up. It brings us to a beautiful resort along the Atlantic Ocean. The dive school is located in the resort. It contains a pool and is also straight at the beach, very convenient. We start off in the pool and learn the basics in roughly 2 hours. After two hours, our Spanish teacher feels that we are well enough trained to join her on an open water dive. “Well if you say so!”. We travel for about 20 minutes with the boat to an easy location with not too much current. The descent isn't great, Hester is down in a couple minutes, but I had some trouble clearing my ears. Eventually I also make it down and we continue the training. After about 45 min we reach our security air level and start our ascent back to surface. I have to say despite the descent and my ears, it was an amazing experience. In the afternoon we spent a couple hours in the pool and finished the day with another open water dive. For me that one wasn't much better with the ears, but the good thing was that the visibility significantly improved and we were able to spot some sea turtles. Around 5 in the afternoon we were done for the day and both completely dead. Before jumping into the taxi back to the AirBnB the teacher mentioned, don't forget about finishing the last two courses of the E-Learning guys!

A bit confusing, but the next morning no pick-up with the van. I guess low season makes it difficult for them to organize a shuttle. Not a major issue for us since we also have our own car and the location is easy to reach. This morning we go straight for the sea and start with two open water dives. The resort has a morning gym in the pool and actually plays Dutch and German music during the gymnastic sessions. The first dive is by far the most successful and we see turtles and stingrays. The fourth dive is also the last one of the course and on the way back to shore they congratulate us on earning our PADI by overthrowing us with cold water. Funny enough when back on shore we are asked whether we can please complete the swim and floating test. This is needed to actually pass all stages of the PADI certification. You would expect they start with this at the beginning of the course :-). Ofcourse I look like a complete fool during the swim test, since I can hardly float and Hester is like a semi-professional in the water. So 30 minutes after her I finish the obligated swim test. And then the E-learning course, for sure we didn’t finish that anymore last night, since we were way too tired. So after the swim test we had to finish the course. The owner of the dive school kindly asked us to finish it today otherwise it would look a little strange on the certification documentation. Us finishing the E-learning after doing the actual dives isn't really how it’s supposed to be going I guess. That night we celebrated in one of the fancy restaurants in Playa del Carmen that we passed our PADI course and were now certified divers.

After the final dive I unfortunately had a lot of problems with my ears and the days after the diving it’s not much better. The only good thing was that I’m not hearing Hester anymore :-D! Anyway it’s not really painful so we take my approach, which is lets just see what happens!

The day after finishing the diving course we take it easy, and around noon we set way to Cancun. Cancun was such a disappointment and has absolutely nothing to do with the Mexican culture. It’s just a bunch of mega hotels and everything in the city is drifting on tourists. The local Mercado 28 has nothing to do with the function it was originally built for. It’s now not more than a tourist trap with small souvenir stores and some restaurants.

I notice that I’m not really positive about this region, but don't get me wrong we had a very pleasant stay in Playa del Carmen. But we also have experienced the real Mexico and this area has grown far apart from the actual Mexico you will experience when you are in the north, south or around Mexico City. Our last day in Playa del Carmen was also one of the last nights in Mexico. Having eaten so much Mexican food we decided to cook ourselves a nice indian curry, not realizing that Belize where we go next was actually a British colony and serves many types of curries.

The next morning we started travelling to Chetumal, not that far from Playa del Carmen and since there isn't much to do in Chetumal we decided to first visit a cenote in Tulum. It’s a cave that contains an underwater river. The water is cool and very clear. Not bad at all to start the day. I still struggled with my ears and I started to get annoyed by it. This resulted in a nice discussion with the lady guarding the entrance of the cenote. The thing was that you were only allowed to enter once per ticket, but I forgot half of my stuff so I needed to go back to the car. The girl was really stubborn and she told me that I had to pay another 20 USD if I wanted to come back in. Well I don't think so :-). I guess for future Dutch visitors of this cenote you might be treated a little differently. After spending about an hour and a half in the cenote, we continued our way to the border with Belize. In Tulum we needed to get gas. You would say well why bother telling us this, I guess you had to refill you tank 20 times already on this trip. So nothing special right? Well this time was slightly different. After the guy had topped off the tank, he mentioned “oh, did you guys know that the international money transaction system is down?”. Uh, well what do you think, of course we didn't know! So close to the border we typically try to spent all our local money, so we had no cash to pay for the petrol. Trying multiple banks in the area we decided to wait it out and since the guy from the gas station had blocked our car, there wasn't much else we could do. After roughly an hour Hester her card was reactivated and the transaction went through successfully. So we were able to continue our trip. That night in Chetumal we had our last Mexican meal. It was a nice one, and we summarized our experience of the past 50 days we spent in Mexico.

Thank you mexico, slightly touching the border in El Paso (US) and Del Rio (US) we already started to become curious what this country would bring us. Overall it has been amazing, meeting old friends in Mexico City and making new friends during our travel that we did from the north to the south, and from the west to the east. In total we drove 7000 kilometers, and most of the Mexicans told us that we have seen more of their country than they had done themselves. Both a fan of the mexican kitchen, we have experienced so many new dishes; Sopas, Tortas, Tostadas, Carne Asada de Res, Fajita, Frijoles, Arrachera, Bebidas, Tacos Bistec, Tacos El Pastor, Queso Fundido con Chorizo or Champinon, Quesadillas, Pozole, Barbacoa, Gorditas, Gringas, Churros, Flautas, Chocolate Caliente, Chili en Nogades and ofcourse Tequila and Mezcal! Oh right, and Mexicans love a good Hamburguesa or some Chinese food :-). The country is so easy to travel through and sticking to the rule of not traveling during the night and listen to your host will keep you safe for sure. People will welcome you wherever you travel in this country. One strange thing about this country is the amount of Sex Stores. It doesn't really matter how big the town, but they typically have a Sex store :-).

Something we have learned from our previous border crossing, where we stayed to far from the border we were now almost sleeping on the border. Since the gas price in Belize is very high we filled up our jerrycan for the first time as well as the gas tank. 15 km further we arrived in Belize a completely different world compared to Mexico. Hasta luego Mexico see you next time.

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