Mexico: Playa del Carmen

Playa del Carmen is a typical holiday resort like Cancun: beach life, partying, and plenty of alcohol. Plus countless tourists. We wouldn't have gone there at all if it weren't for 2 colleagues of mine who live there and whom we wanted to say hello to. Nicole got stuck there on a trip 2.5 years ago, and Tabea is doing a six-month internship in a hotel there. Although we planned to spend only 2 nights there, we ended up staying 2 more nights.

The tourist mile of Playa is full of (international) restaurants and souvenir shops, although everything is naturally a bit more expensive than elsewhere. Nonetheless, it was also quite nice to have a good pizza for a change.
In Mexico, the beaches are public by law, meaning that hotel resorts cannot claim private beaches for themselves but must grant public access to the beach in front of their property. So you have a choice: either sit on the narrow strip of sand between the rows of sun loungers of the hotel and the sea in the blazing sun, or go to a beach club. You can't just rent a sun lounger and a parasol. In the beach club, there is a required minimum consumption. The lower you choose this, the further away you sit from the sea. So you pay a fee for the day, get assigned a numbered sun lounger in the hustle and bustle of sun loungers, and can then consume snacks and drinks up to the value of the paid fee. Of course, you are still allowed to spend more money than the minimum amount, of course. 😊 The prices are sometimes really astronomic, we passed by a beach club where the minimum amount would have been 100 USD per day and person! That was a bit too much for us to stay there and indulge in the barely present alcohol in cocktails, while observing the American-German meat parade. We meticulously studied and calculated the cocktail menu to the point where we exactly "drank away" the minimum fee to the last peso, no more and no less. 😊 That was almost like a sporting competition.

We took a snorkeling trip to Cozumel Island. The island apparently ranks as one of the absolute highlights among holiday destinations in Mexico. We took the ferry over, met the tour operator there, and boarded the little boat that would take us to the reef. In our group, there were 2 Canadians and the rest were all Mexicans, some of whom now lived in the States. I found it interesting to see the rush for life jackets (Europeans tend to be a little reluctant to put on the bulky, bright orange thing) and the realization that some people probably couldn't swim properly or even at all. I was very surprised about that and have to say that I probably wouldn't dare to snorkel in the open sea without being able to swim. Life jacket or not. But apparently, that's quite common here. At least the guide still had a flotation ring with him that you could hold on to.
We went to a total of 3 snorkeling sites. The first one had the reef about 15 meters below us, but thanks to the very clear water, we could see it very well. As soon as we got in the water, a stingray flew right past us! Very majestic.
At the second location, we were about 5 meters above the reef. There were also some smaller stingrays, some small jellyfish, and a lot of fish.
The third location was very shallow, maybe 1-1.5 meters deep. There were hardly any fish, but plenty of starfish. We stayed there for quite a while, which was actually a pity because you had already seen the starfish at some point. I would have preferred to stay a little longer at the reef, which was more varied.
At the end of the tour, we went to a beach to rest a bit, where free margaritas (with hardly any noticeable alcohol content) were being served. The water there was turquoise blue and only about hip-deep. Interestingly, the Mexicans immediately threw their life jackets overboard (in a figurative sense) and jumped into the cool water. The Canadians and we stayed in the boat and sipped on the watery margaritas.
The snorkeling tour was quite nice overall, at least much better than our snorkeling adventure on Isla Mujeres, although somewhat expensive (60 USD per person). The stingray alone was definitely worth the investment. What we didn't like was that our guide held on to the reef and posed for photos and also lifted things up to show them to the participants. Naturally, other tour participants were expected to do the same and hold on to the reef for photos. Not cool at all...

After four days of sweet idleness, we said goodbye to Tabea and Nicole and moved on. We didn't want to get stuck in Playa either. 😊