First stop, Mexico: Cozumel island

Our first stop on this 5 month adventure through central and south America is Mexico, thanks in part to the direct and super cheap flights with TUI from Manchester to Cancun (£314 one way, £320 return!). I’ve done this trip before and the flight, although long at over 10 hours, is quite painless as it’s direct with no transits.

The plan was to leave Cancun right away and visit one of the beach towns in the region for some sun and snorkelling to ease us back into backpacking.

We decided on Cozumel as it’s relatively easy to get to from Cancun, with good connections to Playa del Carmen and frequent boats. Plus, it’s supposed to have the best snorkelling in the region.

We landed at 3pm, and eased through immigration, getting a permit to allow us to stay in Mexico until August haha, not bad! But then we had to wait about 2 hours for my bag to come off the flight! Not cool… And the baggage hall was crowded full of frustrated tourists with the same issue. Apparently there were some customs inspections which were delaying all the bags… But, by 5:20pm, we were on the ADO bus heading South to Playa del Carmen, and feeling a lot more relaxed!

We got to Playa del Carmen by about 6:20 and walked over to the ferry terminal, which is only 10 min away. We bought our ticket for the 6:30pm boat at 6:29pm haha and had to run through the terminal, but the boat waited for us haha!

We checked into our place for next 3 nights; Hostel Tropico, which was alright for a hostel, but we had the SMALLEST space ever which barely fit us in, never mind our bags! In our heads it was about midnight and after a super long day of travel we just went straight to sleep.

The next day, up early with the jetlag, we headed out into the town, exploring the streets and found a lovely little place for breakfast.

Then we headed back to book onto a half day snorkelling tour to some of the best sights, since we read that the best snorkelling is only accessible by boat. We booked with Pink Tours, which cost us M$750 (about £30) and had a great day all in all, apart from the fact that they made us wear these mini life jacket floating devices ALL DAY, they were compulsory and made diving down really difficult!!

We stopped at Palancar, which had some coral, then El Cielo which was sandy had had lots of starfish and rays. Then at the end of the trip we chilled at the beach with beers in the stunning turquoise water.

All in all the day was good, but the group was big and every time we tried to find some space, we were shouted at for not “staying with the group”, but in the group we got kicked and swum into all the time, so it was a bit annoying, it felt like a ‘beginner’ snorkel tour.

That evening we walked across town to a little food court which had a vegan place called ‘Vegan Barrio’ and was delicious and reasonably priced. We went there the next night too!

The next day we took a taxi south to one of the beach clubs on the coast here. Most of the beaches on the island are private, and basically you choose which bar you want to camp at for the day. As long as you reach the ‘minimum spend’ it’s free to stay. We picked Playa Corona as we read that the Snorkelling here is supposed to be the best and it’s also a lot quieter than some of the other beach bars.

That was definitely accurate, and when we arrived we were basically the only ones here, but it did fill up as the day continued. The snorkeling here was good, probably better than the previous day in reality, especially as we had the freedom to come and go in the water when we wanted and not be forced to stay with a. Huge group. But we didn’t see any rays or starfish. Just some MONSTER fish, some where really big. There were lots of soft corals here too which was cool.

We really enjoyed the day chilling at the beach club, but the drinks racked up, and after a few diet cokes, a couple of beers, a margarita and some chips and guacamole, the total was $65!! Slightly over budget for today haha 😬 it seems so far, the food and drink in Mexico is more than we thought it would be, and looks like we might be a bit over budget for these next couple of weeks, but let’s see. It might just be Cozumel as the island is quite touristy.

It was a nice place to start the trip as the snorkeling was good, but it was not very Mexican really, and very much geared towards Cruise ships. We saw about 7 HUGE ships docked up whilst we were here, some of them practically cities on the waves, one had a rollercoaster on the roof! So a lot of the island seemed geared to that.

Still, we had a nice time, even if it was in a tiny tiny room and WAYYYYY over budget on food/drink!

Next stop, Valladolid!