The Riviera Maya refers to the coastal area of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, which is heavily developed for tourism, especially cruise ship tourism. We knew that Mexico would be busy with visitors due to it being August, and that prices would certainly be higher compared to our other travels in Central America. That said, we had visited Mexico before on holiday and had enjoyed what it had to offer, plus we needed to make our way north from Belize in order to catch a flight from Cancun to Havana Cuba.

We started out in the city of Chetumal in the south of the state of Quintana Roo where we had crossed the border from the Caribbean cayes in Belize. After a short trip to see the Maya archaeological site of Calakmul in the south of the Campeche region, we decided to visit 3 areas which would take us all the way to Cancun.

Bacalar is a town on the shores of a lake of the same name. It’s touted as looking as Caribbean as any beach, but we weren’t overly impressed! The colours of the lake did look nice, but it was muddy at the bottom and a bit windy when we had a swim. Also most of the lake frontage is developed so you have to pay to gain access to it.

We did have a swim in a very large cenote (collapsed limestone sinkhole) called Cenote Azul, and although it was pleasant, it was again far too developed for our liking with a massive restaurant and lots of visitors.

Our next stop was the beach town of Mahuahal which was again a very developed stretch of pretty but unremarkable beach. It’s becoming more developed as it is very close to one of the cruise ship ports. We swam in the free part of the beach because again you had to pay to access the best bits via beach bars. This seemed to be a very popular holiday destination with Mexicans and we didn’t encounter many other gringos. We must also say that we were a bit disappointed as we expected another Caribbean paradise similar to Caye Caulker but we found an overcrowded beach full of overweight Mexicans and cheap cocktail bars instead.

Before reaching Cancun we stopped in the Akumal area. If we thought that the other areas were developed then this was off the scale. Luckily we stayed in a very nice small jungle lodge with 2 pools and surrounded by the sights and sounds of nature, but most of this area is dominated by mega hotel resorts which bag the best beach areas.

We swam and snorkelled with some turtles at the free Akumal Beach and we were surprised to see any turtles at all as the sheer amount of tourists must surely scare them off. If we were turtles we’d stay the hell away from there and turn back to Costa Rica instead!

We would rather die than pay to visit all-inclusive big aqua parks or dolphin shows so instead we opted to try a Cenote called Dos Ojos (2 eyes) which had 2 sinkholes and a system of dark caves popular with scuba divers. It was interesting snorkelling around looking at the stalagmites, stalactites and little fish and seeing the lights of the divers deep in the distance. There were also bats and birds flying around in the caves. We are sorry to say that we didn’t last very long here as the water was so icy! It would have been a good idea to get a guide and be shown around the system properly.

Isla Mujeres – An alternative to Cancun

The word Cancun tends to illicit groans from travellers over the mental age of 18 as it is notorious for being the resort-heavy mega-party town of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico where Americans generally go to eat American food and drink American beers and do the things that they would generally do at home…but with less clothes on. Anyway, we needed to be in Cancun to catch a flight to Cuba and had a few days to spare, so we decided to pay a visit to Isla Mujeres instead.

Isla Mujeres is an island in the Caribbean Sea, less than 15km from Cancun. We took a catamaran from the main port called Puerto Juarez in Cancun, and there are also regular transfers to the hotel zone of Cancun.

As with most of the coast of the Yucatan, Isla Mujeres was very touristy, but because it is a small island it manages to muster up a little character. It is ram-packed with souvenir shops, bars and restaurants but we didn’t see any chains and it had a very chilled out ambiance despite the many tourists zooming around on golf carts. Besides, if you have been following us, by now you should know that we like islands!

Unfortunately for us we were there just as the edge of Tropical Storm Earl swept through, during which it was upgraded to a Hurricane before being downgraded again after it hit the coast. Honduras and Belize took most of the battering but it did also mean some stormy weather for us. That meant no beach (we managed 5 minutes before being rained off) no snorkelling trips to the reef or underwater sculpture park and no chance to swim with whale sharks! However, with our limited time and the little good weather available we did manage to do a few things.

Mexican souvenir shopping is just the best and we enjoyed strolling around looking at dead of the dead skulls, gigantic Mexican hats, classy tequila in bottles shaped like pistols and mounds upon mounds of colourful and macabre tat!

We rented a scooter and went to visit the Turtle Farm. Sadly sea turtles are still routinely killed for their meat, eggs and shells, but this small farm hatches eggs and releases them into the wild on protected beaches. The centre is a bit run down and the pens of the turtles are small and overcrowded but the effort is laudable. We particularly enjoyed seeing the baby turtles! Unfortunately, despite the gigantic sign saying “Do not touch the turtles” quite a lot of people ignored it in order to pick up a baby one for a selfie. Why don’t these people go to take a selfie with a great white shark instead? There are also some other exhibits of sea creatures like lobsters, sea cucumber, conch and seahorses. An over-zealous caretaker let us hold a few of them.

During Maya times, Isla Mujeres was a sanctuary for the goddess Ixchel, the Maya goddess of the moon, fertility, medicine and happiness. The remains of the temple still stand on the south point of the island and also served as a lighthouse. The island was renowned to only be occupied by women and various idols of the goddess were found on the island, giving rise to its name Island of Women. We visited the temple which also doubles as a modern sculpture park, but the gods were not with us and we had to weather out a storm using the scooter as a zodiac! Obviously the following day, just as we were leaving the weather was wonderful, just our luck!

As we mentioned at the beginning the Riviera Maya wasn’t exactly one of our travel priorities, and apart from Calakmul we had little interest in visiting the area; our flight from Cancun to Havana though dictated that we spend a few days working our way along the coast. Witnessing mass tourism and gigantic all-inclusive resorts is certainly at odds with the ethos of our journey and a huge contrast with the smaller communities we made a point to visit whenever possible. It was however a good reminder of the difference between holidaying and travelling, the latter intended to be the desire to discover, learn and understand cultures and people different from our own. Once again these experiences, although not completely negative, reinforced in us the need and desire to undertake a cultural experience and not to be merely entertained for a week or two.

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