Play del Carmen

Cancun and Playa Del Carmen

We're back in the land of money.  After travelling across the interior and seeing the "real" Mexico, were back in the tourist zone and the kinds of things we see at home…

Wal Mart

Home Depot

Starbucks

7-11

The Police presence here is unbelievable.  There are so many patrols and checkpoints, you'd be a fool to try anything on the highway.  Coming into Playa Del Carmen, we passed through two checkpoints manned by at least 25 police/Military each, and they were within 1 km of each other.

There are Humvee's with .50 cal machines guns on them all over the place.  And they are ready to go.  The gun is manned at all times, and their fingers are on the trigger.

On one hand, it's reassuring to see this much security, and on the other, you wonder why there needs to be THIS MUCH SECURITY?

We had our first attempted fleece job by some "police" officers tonight when we first arrived at our hotel complex. 

The hotel we are staying in is part of a much larger gated complex, so we were driving around trying to find it.  We were stopped at a convenience store to grab some water and were talking with a local couple who had come over to look at the bikes.  

As we were talking, one, then two, and finally three "police" officers pulled up behind us on their 125cc Chinese motorcycles.   We continued talking to the couple for a few minutes, and didn't really pay these guys any attention.

We got directions to our hotel, jumped on our bikes and rode back 1/2 a block to the turn off.  As soon as we took off, the three "police" types filed in behind us.  

We pulled into the gated entrance to our hotel area, and as we started talking to the gate guard, these three guys started talking to Cory, saying "speeding… you speeding"".  Cory started laughing!  He wasn't speeding, we had only gone 1/2 block!!

It was such a pathetic attempt.  

I was giving my info to the gate guard during this, but Cory was wearing his helmet cam... I overheard the security guy ask Cory "Is that Camera on".    Cory said "yup". 

That was the last word they said.  They all got on their bikes and took off.

Guess they don't like being filmed trying to scam tourists. 

Our hotel turned out to be a 4 star, amazing resort.  We use Priceline to find a local hotel most nights, and you can use the website to have Hotels "bid" for your business.  You put in a price… say $50.00 and then the quality of hotel you are looking for.  After submitting your bid, you wait a few minutes, and if a local hotel, that meets your criteria bids, you get the hotel room at the price you specified.

So we ended up in a $180 per night hotel room for $55.00  :)

We've been using this method most nights in Mexico, and we've ended up at some pretty nice hotels.  It doesn't work as well if the hotel is full, but everything seems to be pretty quiet right now, and most of the hotels are quite empty.

As I was in the lobby tonight, eating supper, something caught my eye, and I originally thought it was a cat.  Except this cat had a tail that was 2 feet long.

It was a Coati, which is a relative of the racoon family.  :)  He was incredibly tame, and really liked bread.  So we spent about 15 minutes hanging out with him.

Read all about the Coati here