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Hello my dreamers, I hope you are well! 😀
Following my advice when traveling to Mexico after going there in 2018, I am now taking you to the sun.
My sister and I visited quite a few places in Mexico for 16 days, 4 years ago. So I will publish several articles on several destinations, starting here with Cancún, where the sea is exceptionally blue.
Here is the summary:
- General description of Cancún
- Useful information
- Our Airbnb *o*
- Beaches
- Eating in Cancún
- Beach clubs
- Malls
General description of Cancún
Cancún is touristy and festive. In the center, you will find plenty of restaurants and nightclubs (including the Coco Bongo lol, does that remind you of a movie? XD). This is why at night it is very lively and very noisy. If you are like my sister and me, i.e you are not a very party person, you will still like Cancún because the beaches are superb, the people are friendly and there is plenty to do around. In short, it is a destination that we really liked. Also, during our entire week there (beginning of January) we had nothing but good weather and only a 10-minute downpour!
Useful information
The price of a taxi for a journey of a little less than 30 minutes from the airport was at that time, around 30€ (That’s not cheap! And as tourists abroad, we were surely ripped off -_-). A bus ticket only cost 12 pesos (about 0.50€).
Cancún is served by many bus lines, which pass very regularly. You won’t wait more than 5 minutes. One thing to know: most bus drivers drive very fast so if you want to get on or off a bus, let them know as soon as possible! Besides, bus shelters can be confusing because sometimes there is no sign indicating that buses stop there.
In the hotel zone, we can say that there is only one big boulevard (Kukulcan Boulevard) so it is almost impossible to get lost. We go in one direction or in the other, it’s simple. Moreover, many addresses indicate Boulevard Kukulcan and the corresponding kilometer number, which you can read in the middle of the road (example: Blvd Kukulcan Km. 7.5). It’s not super precise because it indicates more of an area than a specific address but you can still find your way around, just search lol.
Our Airbnb *o*
For our stay there, we rented a fantastic Airbnb. It was very well located, not far from the airport (less than 30 minutes), near the hotel zone but still isolated to be quiet. This villa was great, just look at the pictures 😍 There was a small swimming pool and a very large terrace by the Nichupte lagoon! We loved this villa, we felt at home there. The owners were not there but there were 3 house staff who open the gate and help us if needed. None of them spoke English, so it immediately put me in the mood to re-practice Spanish ˆˆ
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to find this accommodation, I believe it is no longer rented 🙁 but I am sure that if you are looking for accommodation there, you will find something good because many of them are beautiful!
Beaches
The first beach we went to was Playa Delfines and it was amazing! I had never seen such a beautiful beach. The sand was white and fine, the sea was a blue that I had never seen in real life. It was a perfect blue. I wanted to call it the Cancún blue 😍 But there were quite a few waves, sometimes even a little violent. We also went to Playa Marlin, which was much less crowded.
On the beach, you may be approached by people selling everything…clothes, handicrafts, cigars, but also fruit. For about 30 pesos (less than 2€), we could have had a large bag filled with pieces of fruit (coconut, orange, mango, watermelon…). I can tell you that it was really good to eat a little sweet because, at the restaurant, we almost never found dessert!
Eating in Cancún
To be completely honest, it’s weird but we ate better in the beach clubs than in the restaurants. We liked all of our food at the beach clubs. On the other hand, in the restaurants, our dishes were certainly not the same as those in the beach clubs, but they were far from being as good.
Among these restaurants, we ate at Capes Cadillas (which I believe is now called Las Pescadillas Tacos & Chelas), where I especially loved my pineapple to sip. It was our first restaurant and we were not yet familiar with the prices in pesos displayed in $. But this time, the prices were in USD (we didn’t know) so I paid for this pineapple for about 13€ (ouch)!
Then we also ate at Mr. Papa’s restaurant at La Isla Mall. It was a restaurant that offered a wide choice of uniquely Mexican dishes (like most restaurants in fact…) and was part of the restaurants with a terrace by the lagoon. It was a nice restaurant but there, I especially liked my virgin peach mojito ^^”
Beach clubs
As our first beach club, we went to Mandala Beach, located next to Coco Bongo, but not to party at all. We had to pay 1,000 pesos (about 43€) to have a mattress and thanks to the ticket we were given, we could also order food and drink up to that amount. 1000 pesos is sufficient I think but if your food and drink consumption goes beyond that, you just have to add the difference. Everything we drank and ate was very good: virgin mojito, virgin piña colada, octopus fajitas, and fried prawns with coconut.
When I look at today’s prices, 4 years later, it has increased to 60 USD!
We also went to the Melody Maker, which was the beach club of the very beautiful ME Cancún hotel, near the mall called La Isla. Nowadays, this beach club is called The Beach Club and this hotel is called Armar House All-Inclusive. Four years later, I don’t know if it’s still the same but in my opinion, prices must have risen a lot here too! Anyway, in 2018, it was the same principle as at Mandala Beach except that it was only 500 pesos (about 20€). We loved the mixed ceviche made up of shrimp, octopus, avocados, and tomatoes, among other things. It was fresh and super good, we ate it almost every day! There too we liked all the dishes we had eaten: hamburger with fries, fried calamari, salmon sashimi, fish sandwich, etc.
Besides, as I said above, I really missed desserts in Mexico. The only ones I have seen in a few restaurants are the same as in France. I mean milkshakes (but there was no really exotic flavor) or ice cream. To really eat sweets, we had to go to restaurants where they only sold pancakes or ice cream for example :/
Malls
If you are looking for malls, there are:
It’s big and open. There are a lot of shops and restaurants by the water.
It’s big, semi-covered, with a cinema, stores like H&M or Sephora, and a food court upstairs. Parking is not free (in 2018, you had to pay a few dozen pesos for the first few hours).
That’s all for my little review of Cancún!
Have you been there before? Or is it on your bucket list?
See you in the next article where I will tell you about Isla Mujeres!
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What do you think ?