Welcome to Playa del Carmen!

If there was only one downside to all our travels, it was the handful of LONG travel days we had to do. But it was completely understandable given how much ground we were covering over the three weeks. Alas, today was another epic travel day, but our last (not counting the journey home) of the trip.

So with another early start, it was back on the water taxi to Belize City for our journey back into Mexico. What made this epic was not only the distance, but that we had boat, then bus, then border crossing, then public bus, all to get to our final destination of the tour, Playa del Carmen.

A minor delay slowed us down early on in Belize City, but after that it was relatively smooth sailing all the way. The border crossing was a bit of a pain, but nowhere near as bad as it could have been. In fact aside from some small delays from the number of people travelling, it all went super smooth, and next thing we knew we were back in Mexico and boarding another luxurious ADO public bus for our 5 hours to Playa.

This little mermaid greets us in our hotel room

All quite drained from the travel day (about 12 hours by this point), it was a quick freshen up and out for dinner.

Playa del Carmen was quite a different experience from our previous Mexican experiences. Located about an hour south of Cancun, we were staying in the heart, and it was definitely the most touristy experience we had to date. In fact downtown Playa del Carmen felt just like Surfers Paradise back at home, complete with the endless junky tourist souvenir stores, normal shopping stores, and bars offering cheap drinks.

Kate hangs out with the locals

Kate and I wandered the main strip for a bit, but felt that by the time we did one side we had seen all it had to offer. It was 11pm by this point, and we felt we needed some rest before another big day of exploring tomorrow.