Puerto Morelos - In Praise of the Road Less Traveled
A couple of weeks ago Margaret and I went on vacation at a beautiful resort about mid-way between two of the world’s best known vacation hot spots: Playa del Carmen and Cancun, Mexico. We had a great time and as I go through the pictures from the trip, some lessons-learned come to mind that I consider good advice for all future vacations. I know it’s a little presumptuous for me to assume you like what I like, but in the spirit of blogging, I’ll ask your indulgence and share them with you.
1. Flee from the hotel-arranged tours in the same way that the Apostle Paul tells us to flee from sin. In addition to being much more expensive, you’re going to spend a lot of time just waiting around for transportation. See, what they don’t tell you when you sign up is that the same bus that takes you to Chichen Itza, or wherever, also passes by about 20 other resorts and picks their people up, too. When you get there you’ll be herded around with all the other gringos, which you could stay in the U.S. and do for free. Instead of going to the standard tourist snorkel-centric theme park we went by ourselves about 10 miles up the highway to a neat little fishing village called Puerto Morelos. We did a tremendous snorkeling trip for a very affordable price (less than 1/4 of what the theme park would have charged us) and had a great time. Puerto Morelos is and has traditionally been a fishing village, not a tourist attraction, which makes it my kind of place. The water was beautiful, the food was excellent, and people were nice and not trying to hustle us everywhere we went.
2. Take public transportation where practical. We found out about a “Beach Express” bus that runs up and down the coast between Cancun and Playa del Carmen for a fraction of the cost of a taxi or the resort-arranged shuttle. The local folks use them. Let me tell you, the buses were new or nearly new, clean, people were well behaved and the drivers were helpful. You may think you’re more at risk as a tourist out there separated from the herd out in the countryside, but you’re not. See point number 3 below.
3. Minimize your time in the tourist “shopping” areas. We steered away from the shopping part of Cancun on this trip because we remembered how it was from a trip about 12 years ago. We did go down to Playa del Carmen and walk up and down Avenida Quinta for a while. Places like these are magnets for the pickpockets, the thieves, the hustlers and the drug dealers. I didn’t take any photos on Avenida Quinta because I’m pretty sure it would be impossible to take a picture without a t-shirt in the background featuring a marijuana leaf or a penis. Someone has convinced the vendors on that street that all the gringos came to Playa del Carmen directly from a Metallica concert, and this phenomenon is less flattering for us than it is for them. The worst and lowest life forms gravitate toward these little tourist gift shops which are instantly recognizable by the guy who looks like a recent parolee running his best spiel to try to get you to come in and buy something. I had a spirited discussion with one of these guys about who gets to call my wife “Honey”. In fairness, though, they’re only selling what we’ve demonstrated to them that we want to buy. Maybe we shouldn’t let just anybody get a passport because they know where the post office is.
4. Do some grocery store picnic dinners. One of the most fun, rewarding, instructive, and affordable things you can do on vacation outside the U.S. is to go to the grocery store where the locals shop (hint: not the Super Wal-Mart). Buy some fresh bread for dinner and some pan dulce for breakfast the following morning. Go to the deli and get some ham or turkey and some cheese you’ve never heard of and make sandwiches. Get the dinner beverage of your choice. Head home with your goodies and eat on the balcony of your room or out on the beach - somewhere nice where you can relax and watch people at your resort heading out to drop $50 a head on dinner. The pleasure you experience will be directly proportional to how frugal/cheap you are.
5. Try to eat where the locals eat. It will be nowhere near where the tourists eat and there won’t be any golden arches out front. The restaurants for the tourists are interspersed with the tourist shopping areas and they’ll have a desperate greeter out front who will say something clever like, “Your table is waiting, madam”. The tourist restaurants will be over-priced and will consist of what they think we like to eat. We found two good places to eat in Puerto Morelos - the first had really good ceviche, which is the ultimate hot weather beach restaurant dish. The second consisted of a tent over the sand where we sat on lawn furniture. We knew we were on the right track when the people in the restaurant looked at us like, “How’d they find this place?” We started asking questions about what kind of fish we could get when our waiter just said, “Here, I’ll show you” and went and got our fish right out of a Styrofoam cooler. They had been caught that afternoon. You don’t get that at Red Lobster.
I think much of the value of going on a trip outside the U.S. is to get a decent idea of what other cultures and countries are like. When you get an accurate view - not the Potemkin Village tourist view - of another country you have a chance to better understand your own. My favorite place to go on a trip is still Chile, though. They don’t do tourism. At all. For Chileans, “tourism” is what they do when they travel to south Florida or Cancun. Hey, maybe they’re the ones buying all the trashy stuff on Avenida Quinta. It can't be us, right?
