Day 1
Leave house at 5:15am, standing at the gate in Kansas City at 7:30am. Flight leaves at 8:45. Smooth as can be so far. Picked up a new backpack this year, and I love it, although it stores a lot of stuff, so it's quite heavy. Problem is I don't know if it's going to fit in the overhead compartment. I'm pretending that if I'm forced to check my baggage, that we'll fall too far behind in the race. Can't face Phil in last place.
22 degrees when we left Glenwood. Made for a chilly wait at the economy parking stop. It'll be upper 80s when we arrive in Cancun, so we welcome a little chill right now.
Uneventful flight to Houston, short layover, then an uneventful flight to Cancun. Every time I travel on business, I register a little jealousy as I make my way to my flight to Detroit of the folks waiting at the terminal leaving for someplace tropical. It's a neat feeling when I'm part of the other group.
20 minute wait to get through immigration, where they don't even look at our passport and papers. Quick jaunt through customs where they make you push a button attached to a stoplight – green means go, red means they search your bags. We get the green light, and are officially inside of Mexico. We walk to the bus counter and purchase 2 first class tickets to Playa Del Carmen, about 40 miles south of Cancun. Price has gone up to 8 dollars a ticket, up from $7.50 last year. Still a decent price for by far the best mode of transportation in Mexico.
85 degrees when we walk outside to the throngs of Mexicans trying to win our transportation business. We hang a right and make our way to the bus station, which is at the far end of the terminal. After a short wait, we load into our very nice bus and are on our way to Playa. Heading south on highway 307, we watch a subtitled version of Coach Carter on the small TVs in the bus. Looking out the window, it's easy to still see the effects Hurricane Wilma had when it slammed this area last October – lots of trees had their leaves stripped off.
After a nice 1 hour bus ride, we arrive in Playa. The bus station is at the intersection of Avenida Cinco and Calle Jaurez. We grab out packs and walk north on 5th Avenue in search of accommodations for the next few days. 5th Ave is comprised of small shops, restaurants, and hotels, and runs north/south parallel to the beach only 1 block to the east. We stop at a little hotel about 5 blocks from the bus station, between 5th and the beach, called Tropical Casablanca. They have a room for 600 pesos a night (10 to 1 to the dollar), so we take it for 3 nights.
The hotel, by our standards, is perfect. Clean, as air conditioning, is nice and small and quaint. We unload our packs, and due to the early start we had and the nice cold A/C, we fall into a nap. After we wake up, the sun has started to dip pretty low. We walk up 5th and stop at a little place to eat. I enjoy ordering stuff I've never had, or even better, don't know what it is. Tonight I get beef arracha, which turns out to be some great seasoned beef that you roll in a tortilla.
After dinner, we stop at Haagan Daas, which goes against my very nature (7 dollar ice cream cones at a European chain, of which I can buy at my local grocery store in Iowa), but Heather loves them, and she goes on these adventures with me, so we indulge. It does make for great people watching, as 5th Ave at night is like a Mexican bourbon street. After word, we head to a pharmacia to buy some bottled watter, then call it a night.
posted by Bob @ 1:16 PM
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