One Year Anniversary - Playa Del Carmen

Since we kept our honeymoon simple, we decided we would do something special for our 1 year anniversary. We searched and searched for places to go, things to do, and experiences we wanted to check off our bucket list and stumbled upon a great deal on CheapCaribbean.com. The deal was limited and time sensitive so the night we found it, we booked it with the quickness.

In late May, we jumped on a plane bound for Cancun and began our 6 day journey. Upon landing and going through a long immigration line and an oddly short customs line, we found ourselves bombarded by your typical tourist-catering and annoying sales people. Luckily, we’re not your typical tourists so we sailed right through and headed to our shuttle bound for Playa Del Carmen. Our 40 minute trek ended with us arriving at our destination: Grand Riviera Princess Resort. We check in, head to the bar for a drink, setup our dinner reservations, then took a stroll down to our room.

Our stay included many interesting encounters. 4 of the 6 days it rained good enough to flood parts of the property, overflow some of the pools, close roads in PDC and Cancun and brought out many fascinating (and annoying) creatures. We found many friends on the property: Coaties, Iguanas, frogs, toads, mosquitos, clear fish that loved attacking Cara, sand crabs, and random cats roaming the property. I had a nightly ritual of killing mosquitos who called our room home and Cara and I their midnight snack. At the bars, we learned that a Pineapple Malibu consists of some sort of melon flavoring and house rum and that Chili’s makes a better margarita from a frozen drink machine.

We decided we should spend at least one one day outside the resort on an excursion so we spoke with our travel advisor and he suggested Adventuras Mayas, a local company that gives tours of ruin sites and adventure parks. Knowing that many parks offered zip lining, it was a no-brainer we had to do it at some point. Our package allowed us to do 3 things: Tour Tulum – an ancient mayan site, go zip lining, and go snorkeling in a cenote. We set out early in the morning as our shuttle driver picked us up and took us to their offices. Sitting in what appeared to be a break room waiting for our tour guide, we started worrying about what was going to happen, seeing as the people who greeted us were all preparing lunches using white bread, mystery meat, lettuce and mayo. Our tour guide arrives, huddles us into a shuttle van with a few other couples and we set some ground rules as he heads out. Lucky for us, we got a tour guide who spoke great English as he grew up in Chicago and moved down here to live a more easy going life and not be stuck in the stressful corporate world. We arrive at our first destination: Tulum. We get a private tour of the grounds from an actual Mayan descendent where he learns us on the details and history of the Mayan people. As the only cliff overlooking the ocean on the Yucatan Peninsula, we were provided with some of the best views available. Our tour ends with us arriving at the plaza just in time for the storm to dump rain all over us…at least it brought out the clouds to block the blazing sun.

We then head over to the adventure park, which by the way is in the middle of the jungle and just passed the little ghetto town that keeps a close eye on the vehicles that travel through the unpaved streets. The adventure begins with us getting fitted for our harness, helmet and gloves before we start our 4+ story climb up the first zip line tower. The zip line was in 3 parts, each one longer than the previous. The views of the jungle were great but the feeling of flying down the wire was exhilarating.

Next we headed over to a rappel tower where we got to rappel down approximately 4 stories. We weren’t expecting this as part of our adventure but quickly welcomed the opportunity as it looked exciting. Before anyone asks, yes, it is pretty easy but yes, it can be hard too. A quick tip: Don’t wear the glove, hold the glove around the rope…I practically burned my hand as the rope refused to slide easily through the harness.

After our high top adventures, we got into our bathing suits and headed into one of the many cenotes in the Yucatan Peninsula. If you’re wondering what a cenote is, they are underground caverns where rain water and river systems have collected and kept it in a pristine state for years. We entered the freezing water (which was welcomed after a day in the humid 92 degree heat) and navigated the pathways lined with stalagmites and stalactites. With the help of underwater lights, we were able to explore the many areas of this underground cavern. Our allotted time ends so we make our way to the exit and as we’re all collecting together, the lights that illuminate this pitch black cavern go out. Couldn’t have timed it better. We return to the main building where we were greeted with a nicely cooked meal that didn’t consist of mystery meat sandwiched between mayo slathered white bread and instead was some great chicken, rice, beans, tortillas and a salad.

Much of the rest of our trip was swimming in our swim-up room pool, relaxing, eating, drinking and just enjoying each other. We ended the trip with a game of bingo, which I won and received an excellent prize: A 1982 style yellow hat advertising the resort we were about to leave.

This was definitely a trip we’ll remember forever. Just a couple things if you’re interested in taking a similar trip:

• Don’t expect high quality liquors at these all-inclusive resorts
• Don’t expect anyone, and I do mean anyone, to know basic English.
• Expect to tip everyone, even if it is only a dollar or two. Remember: A $5 tip is almost full days worth of work for them.
• Don’t take a taxi or airport-ran shuttle from Cancun. We booked ours through CheapCaribbean and it ran cheaper than anyone else.
• Definitely do some sort of excursion, even if you’re not very adventurous. They have excursions that are just tours but i’d recommend stepping out of your comfort zone and at least explore a cenote or zip line.

The video below is a combination of many clips we took during our stay. I didn’t try to do anything special with the editing…I just wanted to show most of what we did while keeping the video [somewhat] short. All videos taken with our GoPro Hero 2 @ 720p/60fps.