Cancún and pals!

Ahhh Cancún. Somewhere we were originally planning to skip as it's really just resort after resort along the beach with people on all-inclusive holidays and therefore more expensive and not an authentic experience of Mexico. We made the exception for one day however, as we had pals to meet! They've all come off a two month sailing trip around the British Virgin Islands and a week or so in Cuba but now have decided to delve into some of Central America with us and put our tans to shame. Scott and Rich were friends we made from our time in Auckland and Rich's girlfriend Cat has joined us too, so now we have a little gang of sorts to travel with for the next few weeks. A gang which I clearly missed the memo about needing to be at least 5"11...cue many photos highlighting my midgetness for the next few weeks.

Mike and I arrived a little earlier than expected to Cancún after a somewhat express ferry-bus combo from Isla Holbox got us here before 10am. We were staying in the downtown area of Cancún in a rather shady hostel to avoid the extortionate prices of the hotel zone (it's actually called this) so jumped on one of the hail-from-anywhere-you-want buses to get us to the beach, as we knew the others wouldn't arrive until mid afternoon. We headed to Playa Delfines, which actually turned out to be a really nice stretch of beach with a break in the hotels behind and white sand that sticks to absolutely everything, especially with sunblock on! The water was super turquoise in the shallows but semi dangerous for swimming as there was lots of strong currents and rips so we passed the time reading and listening to podcasts instead.

Back at the hostel we reunited with the pals late afternoon and had a couple of years of catching up to do over a few beersies on the rooftop. The lack of options and the quality of Cuban food had really broken these guys so they were excited to see what the Mexican food had to offer. Thankfully we stumbled across a open-air local food market not far from where we staying and tucked in to some super cheap and tasty Mexican food, so I think they were much happier after that!

The following morning we trooped out to the beach again, this time to a slightly closer beach called Playa Marlin. It was quite similar to the beach from the previous day but with hotels behind. Again this beach wasn't great for swimming due to rips and currents but it was really hot by mid morning already and the water was warm so we couldn't resist. Other stretches of beach are better for swimming but they get crammed with people or taken over by water sports areas. Catch 22 really.

Cancún was much bigger than I expected, it's a proper city with highways, malls, supermarkets and general Americanisation as well as all those multi-storey hotels. Safe to say we were happy to keep this stop short. For now the gang is continuing south!Read more