Polanco

Heyaaaa! I agree with most what Alex said in the previous post. I really liked Cancun, because it was so random/ contradictory. On the one hand, you have the glitzy part, called Hotel Zone which is lined with enormous luxury resorts, carefully manicured lawns and 🌴 trees along the driveway. The hotels are built on a super narrow sand strip (from above, it resembles a long pier). The city of Cancun and the hotel zone are separated by a lagune/ swamp area with turqouse blue water and crocodiles. Many colorful fishing boats are parked inside the lagoon. The hotel zone has fancy fashion shops strip clubs, casinos and lobster restaurants! We obviously didn't stay in there, we just came for a day to gawk at the oppulence and see Playa Delfines🐬. The beaches are amazing and FREE 🎊🎊 ( they don't even charge you for umbrellas or benches) and it has a super relaxed vibe. I saw the most beautiful green and clear water ever! Jumping into the waves was lots of fun ❤️! There mostly locals enjoying the beach, it felt nice to experience something mundane. I spent many minutes just watching the birds in the sky while Alex was reading his new book 😌.

We opted to stay in the downtown area cause it was cheaper and that's where Mexicans live. Our house was nice and safe, but poirly maintained and quite dirty. But it qas ok for 4 days, Alex prefwrs these rustic type places anyway. 2 lovely cats were our hosts and 3 Mexican ladies lived full time in the air bnb, which was nice! This side of Cancun is pretty industrial looking - lots of construction sites, factories and endless roundabouts connect the city and its residents. The traffic is sometimes improvised, it's a bit challenging to cross the road but you can quickly get the hang of it. The downtown area is somewhat small, has a couple of colonial buildings and lots of cool graffiti, placed in the middle of residential areas or on abandoned restaurants. You see gated communities with beautiful gardens and well kept houses with cute dogs and kitties. Music is beaming from everywhere - from taco stands to supermarkets and petrol stations. We heard everything from Beegees to K-Pop and Mexican alternative rock.

We also noticed the ruins of former buildings, abandoned shops and lots of closed shutters. The reality is that the downtown area can't compete with the services in the hotel zone. Rich tourists stay in their resort and hardly ever venture downtown. Although the center is full of hostels and backpackers, these guys don't bring in enough money to support the local shops/ restaurants. Many have been hit bei COVID so hard that they couldn't reopen and the building is left locked up, cacti and other weeds taking over. It's quite dramatic and sad but then you see that the main square ia being renovated and people still gather to spend time with friends and families. That is hopeful ☺️.

we enjoyed the food - it was colorful and the market was also super ♥️. There is so much fruit for us to try! Today, we bought pineapple and melon- they tasted super nice and were not as sweet as at home.
Our Spanish is just as shit as it was 4 years ago but we are trying.

oh yeah, we did get scammed - on the beach a guy was selling coconut water - I made the mistake to take it into my hand without asking for the price first - and than he quoted 150 mexican pesos for it - which is like 7 EUR! We paid the rip-off and the coconut had like 3 sips of water in it. It was lukewarm on top of that😂. I paid double than for a litre back in Berlin 😂😂😂😂 lol. Not having a machete or a hammer at our air bnb, we could also not eat the rest of the coconut 😂. So we threw it out.

Today we were overcharged for guacamole but it was vwey good so we didn't mind. I will learn the numbers in the upcoming days.Read more