Into the Nest of Snakes (Cancun, Mexico)

Well, that's the meaning of Cancún - nest of snakes.  Located on the northeast coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, Cancun feels like what Bali or Phuket is to Asia - a well-known beach resort area and a tourist destination.  And I really didn't feel there was anything special to write home about...except for a sea turtle experience and a visit to Mayan ruins - I'll talk about these later.

If we weren't based in the US, we probably wouldn't pay Cancun a visit.  Mexico doesn't exactly have a great reputation when it comes to security, or for good food.  However, we've been living so far away from the sea for so long that even though we didn't use to go to the sea side much, somehow, we felt drawn to the idea of visiting a seaside resort, and grew increasingly excited as the 4th of July trip drew near.  

Even though Cancun is easier to get to from US than from Singapore, remember that we're in Midland, Michigan, not exactly a big city.  The most economical way to get to Cancun was to catch a flight from Detroit, transit in Atlanta, then onwards to Cancun.  This meant that we had to park our car somewhere in Detroit. 

One option was to use the airport hotels' park-sleep-fly packages which gives you 7 to 10 days of free parking in a secure lot with the purchase of 1 nights' accommodation.  I learned about this from my pottery classmates.  That came up to about $80, and was a great option. 

We drove to the hotel on the day of the flight, registered and got our voucher, drove across the street, parked the car in this gated parking area, a shuttle bus pulled up next to our car to pick us with with our luggage, and took us to the airport.  The whole process from registration to arrival at the airport took about 30 minutes.

We stayed in a studio apartment at the Westin Lagunamar resort in Cancun in the Kukulcan hotel zone. Too good a deal to miss - but it was the monsoon season afterall and we did get sporadic showers. It was a very nice resort and clearly a time-share property.  However, the service was not good.  We were assigned a personal concierge who was more interested in selling timeshare, and when we approached the normal concierge instead, they were less than helpful.  Restaurant recommendations were touristy and expensive.  They were pushing only particular day trips, and 4 out of 5 times, we didn't even get smiles when we approached them.  I've to wonder if it's because we're not time-share owners.  The time-share owners are easy to tell apart - different registration counters, large families, even larger luggages.



This is the view from our studio apartment, taken on my iPhone 5.

Well, we decided not to let that bother us, and had a great time taking buses to Walmart (folks raved about it online, but it's worse than the Walmart we have here...), local supermarkets, food courts, and to another restaurant that a Turkish couple we met on our day trip to Chichen Itza (AWESOME!) recommended.

The resort has a hammock area, which was a very nice place to hang out after dinner.

Mexican food in the food court.  YUMMY!

Two Highlights of our Trip

1. Sea Turtles: So we vegetated by at the pool quite a lot, even attempting to read in the water.  Leon had his Kindle in a zip lock bag, and I didn't care if my HBR dropped into the water, which it did.  One day, Leon overheard this conversation about sea turtles laying eggs on the beach and upon chatting with the lifeguards, found out that this is egg laying season for the sea turtles off the Carribbean Sea!  That evening, we went to the beach at about 10pm and sure enough, saw at least 5 crawling onto the shore.  We met a few other hotel guests - some from Westin, others from the neighbouring property - who were doing the same and it was a magical feeling witnessing this event of nature, strangers coming together to stop each other from using flashes, and working together to help one of these turtles, who chose to lay its eggs next to a fence, to move the fence away from her flippers.

Some government ministry had designated an area where the eggs were to be relocated out of the way of beach volleyball areas etc and thousands of eggs buried there.  Each sea turtle laid over 150 eggs each time.  The first baby turtles would have hatched by now and crawled back to the sea.  This process would continue until sometime in September.

Turtle nursery.

2. Day Trip to Chichen Itza:  We booked a day trip through the hotel and this was so worth the money (full fare because we refused to go to a time-share talk).  We learned about the Mayans, learned their counting system, visited the ruins, and experienced the awe inspiring intelligence of their architecture.  The pyramids are built and positioned such that as the sun rises and sets, it casts shadows that look like snakes crawling up and down the edges of the pyramids.  If you stand in front of them and clap your hands loudly, you will hear an echo that sound like the call of the kukulcan bird.  And they devised a way to communicate across a ball field WITHOUT megaphones using just walls to bounce voices. 

You would need to listen carefully to hear the echo from his clapping...

So we had a great time just relaxing in Cancun.  I'm not sure we would go again.  There are other beaches to check-out, and we've checked this off the list.