I’m currently sitting in the Cancun airport, roughly 5 hours before my flight takes off, listing to a screaming newborn in Starbucks, trying to kill time with no internet and no cell service. The ticket counter doesn’t even open for another hour, so here I am. It’s about 85 degrees outside with a humidity level so high, my hair is still wet (as are the clothes that I washed in the sink last night with softsoap and hung out on the balcony overnight) even though I showered 3 hours ago. At home, it’s about 35 and blizzarding - we are expecting up to 8” of snow in Sedona today alone, and Brian is on his way to his parents house to get off of the highway in case they close it before he can pick me up from the airport at 1 am. What better time to go on a tropical vacation! I certainly couldn’t have predicted the crazy weather that we’d been getting, but the cheapest flights worked out pretty perfectly.
I was aimlessly perusing Google flights on a particularly uneventful day at work a couple of months ago and found a flight to Cancun for about 1/3 of what I’d seen before. Not one to miss out on a traveling opportunity like that, I immediately booked my flight and started the planning process.
I decided that it would be a good opportunity to try out Airbnb…something I’d been interested in for quite some time now. I found a 3rd story apartment with a rooftop pool right in the heart of the city, 3 blocks from the bus terminal and within walking distance to lots of restaurants. I started studying up on the public transportation situation and concluded that I could pretty much get wherever I wanted to go by bus, ferry, or taxi, and staying right downtown would make that super easy.
The night before I left, I got maybe 3 hours of sleep and then worked the next day before driving down to Phoenix and catching my flight at 1 am. I nodded off on my first flight to Dallas, but that was pretty much it. I landed in Cancun to find that my cell phone wouldn’t work (even though I’d called my provider the day before and added the International plan). And who knew that the Cancun airport doesn’t have Wi-Fi? I thought that was kind of a thing? At that point, I realized that I didn’t know exactly where I was staying or how to get there from the bus terminal. I borrowed a phone on the bus and was able to contact my host who gave me basic directions. Luckily, I didn’t have any problem finding it :)
Soundtrack:
By the time I got to the apartment, I was drenched in sweat and just wanted a cold shower and a nap. I started filling the pool and headed down into town to pick up some things that I couldn’t pack, and came back to a full pool. I ended up dozing off in the sun for a few minutes which was much needed. I woke up, took a shower, unpacked, and decided to head to the coast and see if I couldn’t find a spot in the sand to watch the sun go down. A $1 bus ride took me right down to the hotel zone where I managed to find a space between the massive hotels to sneak onto the beach. I relaxed for a couple of hours, and then explored the coast until I ran out of sand.
I’d walked a few miles and was out of the hotels and in front of massive homes and then the beach ended and the water was just smashing into a rock wall. By this time, it was pretty dark and I really didn’t feel like walking all the way back down to where I’d started so I looked up and saw a couple of boys playing on an iron fence above the rock wall. I yelled up at them to find out where I could get back to the road and they told me that I could climb up the wall, over the iron fence, through the jungle, across a golf course, through more of the jungle, into a hold in a chain-link fence, and the road would be just on the other side. They assured me that I wouldn’t be arrested for attempting such a feat as we were in quite an exclusive area, so I took the plunge. They helped me up and over the wall, and then I bushwhacked through the lush vegetation until it opened up to the golf course. I tried to be discreet and shimmied along the edge until I reached the other side and then bushwhacked some more until I managed to find the hole in the chain-link fence. I crawled through on my hands and knees, begging for it to not snag a piece of me and give me some terrible disease and found myself right in the middle of a major bus stop with about 8 people standing over me with disapproving looks on their faces. I brushed off my dress and waited for the bus.
Once on the bus, it was pitch dark out and traffic was unbelievable. I wasn’t sure that I was on the right bus, but I was able to pull up Google Maps on my phone and trace our location. I knew where I was staying so I figured that I would just hop off when we got close and use the little dot to find my way back to the apartment. The ride itself was really nice, there was a guy with a guitar that serenaded us for several blocks and he was quite good. After about an hour stuck in traffic, I decided that we were close enough, so I got off and started walking. I couldn’t help but notice that there were police everywhere and military vehicles equipped with several men with machine guns. It was a little frantic and chaotic and stressful navigating, but eventually I got home safe and sound. Once I was all settled in, I saw the news stories about a shooting at the Attorney General’s office right there and concluded that that’s what all of the mayhem was about. There’s no rush quite like that of walking around a foreign city at night in the midst of a mass shooting. I also learned that the downside to staying in a room with screens for windows in the middle of a city is that you can hear every single horn honk, child scream, and dog bark. All. Night. Long. Even with earplugs. Needless to say, I didn’t get any sleep that night.
The next morning, I got up early to get back to the beach. I stopped off for coffee (I could only find hot coffee everywhere which was kind of miserable considering how stinking hot it was). I could a bus back to the same stretch of sand that I’d spend the previous evening on and settled in for the day.
After several hours, I caught the bus back and while walking home was propositioned by a young man who used a translator app on his iPhone to spell out exactly what his plans were...certainly a first for me. That night I started feeling super sick…probably just a cold, but I couldn’t breath and I had a fever and the shivers and felt like I had an orange in my throat. Once again, no sleep that night.
I was pretty convinced that I would be staying in my room the entire next day because, frankly, I couldn’t hardly move my body ached so much, but Brian convinced me that I’d get more rest on the beach, so I drug myself out of bed, and popped some Excedrin for the insane headache that I had pounding. By the time I got to the beach, I was already feeling so much better…I think the heat and humidity worked like a sauna and I sweat out my ailments. Plus, I managed to get some rest because the only thing I could hear was the sound of the waves and what’s more relaxing than that? I even managed to sleep through the night and it was so very needed:)
The next couple of days were spent basically in the same fashion - wake up, walk, bus, beach, bus, walk, (try to) sleep.
The Yucatan Peninsula is a pretty amazing place from what I've researched and there is so much to see and do that I could have hit the ground running and not slept the entire time booking excursions and activities and exploring. The point of this trip was just to relax in the sun. If and when I ever return, I'd love to be able to check out some different areas, the jungle, ruins, various beaches and even Isla Mujeres...like a week's worth. I'll just tack that on to the end of my list :)
UPDATE: I almost missed my flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Dallas. We were cutting it awfully close anyway and by the time I got through Immigration, Customs and Security (soooo chaotic, by the way), the plane had already boarded. I literally ran to the gate only to find that they'd changed the gate to one on the other side of the airport. I ended up taking a wrong turn and had to go through security all over again. At this point, I was certain that I'd missed my flight...it was over half an hour after it was supposed to depart. I gathered my shoes, laptop, and backpack after it's screening and bolted to the correct gate and they'd held the plane for me...such a relief. I felt horrible rushing up the isle to my seat barefoot with my arms full of all of my belongings and all of the dirty looks from the other passengers, but at least I made it.