Cancun
Friday December 5, 2025
I’m a few hours from leaving Cancun and returning to the refrigerator known as Toronto. We’ll be going from 30C to -3C over four hours. While I’m glad to get out of the capsule hotel and return to my comfortable, spacious bed, I will miss the weather, which has been absolutely gorgeous the entire time.
On the first day, we were up early at 4.30am to catch a tour to Chichen Itza, the world famous Mayan Pyramid. In fact, it’s a double pyramid, with a smaller one within the confines of the outer, visible structure. There’s so many mysteries and such a rich history to the area, and our tour guide Rodrigo who is part Mayan, had plenty to teach us about their way of life and the knowledge of his ancestors. Of particular interest to me was the numerical symbolism in the pyramids and how they used it to calculate astronomical phenomena. As a memento of the place, I bought a personalised Mayan Calendar with my birthdate converted to the Mayan format, as well as some zodiac-type symbols that I’ll have to read up on later.
In the afternoon, we went to a cenote called Chichikan, which is a watering hole formed from rainwater collecting in the limestone caverns. We had AYCE tacos, which were fine, and then went for a quick dip in the cavern. It was an incredible place, with the roots of the trees at ground level growing a hundred or so meters underground to reach the water. Then, after some tequila tastings, we were off to the town of Valladolid for a quick pit stop and then back to Cancun, a total of 14 hours on the road.
The next day, we caught the ferry to Isla Mujeres. Off in the distance, some dark storm clouds were brewing, but it wasn’t quite raining on the island yet so we walked around Playa Norte and some markets, and settled on some tacos for lunch. As we were walking to the south past the main ferry area, it started bucketing down so we sought refuge in one of the hotels for about 15 minutes. When the rain subsided, we continued down the eastern side of the island to reach Punta Sud, the southern end of the island. There wasn’t really much to see on the way, but the beaches were beautiful and the storm had passed so the sun was out. We took the bus back, having researched the route and the cost as well as how to hail the bus and ask for a stop. We caught the ferry back to the mainland around 5.30pm and walked back to the hotel from Playa Tortuga.
To be honest, that walk was pretty boring. Cancun’s Hotel Zone is mostly just resort after resort with really not much in between. It’s much larger than you think as well, so not particularly walkable. The food is very touristy and not cheap at all, catering very much to the American market. We’ve refused to tip while being here, and that almost got us into trouble at one place.
Yesterday, we were up early again for a day tour to Tulum, another Mayan city to the south. Though less impressive and less busy than Chichen Itza, the backdrop of the ocean made the area incredibly scenic. We left the ruins and began our snorkeling adventure. The water was a perfect temperature, and it felt great to be exploring the Mesoamerican Coral Reef, second in size to only to the Great Barrier Reef. We quickly saw some finger corals and fish, and very briefly a sting ray who swam harmlessly two meters below us. Then a giant turtle appeared, surfacing to breathe some air right in front of me! It was literally inches from my face, I couldn’t contain my excitement. We swam on, through a school of around 50 fish, and another turtle appeared, surfacing to breathe right in front of the group. It was incredible.
After snorkeling, we went to another cenote, this time it was more enclosed instead of being an open cavern. We swam through the interconnected tunnels, seeing an impressive array of limestone stalactites and stalagmites, as well as several small furry bats. The water was much colder than the ocean, but still pleasant to wade through. We exited and dried off for lunch, which was pretty decent, then we began our journey back to Cancun. On the way, we stopped by a convenience store for a coffee and saw the local spider monkeys swinging in the trees! We got the driver to drop us in downtown so we could explore a bit - we ended up going to Chinatown, which was quite small, and Costco, which was almost exactly the same as in Canada, but perhaps slightly more expensive, and then we went to the Las Americas mall before heading back to the Hotel Zone for dinner.
On our last day, we headed south to Playa Delfines - Dolphins Beach. We took some photos at the Cancun sign, then to El Rey archeological area to see some more ruins. We ended up getting chewed out by the mosquitos, so we took the bus back to downtown to wander around the central markets and more of the shopping malls. For lunch, we ended up in an industrial area and visited a small restaurant that I had found from Reddit, with no sign of English anywhere, which was probably the most authentic food we had the entire trip.
We had checked out earlier in the day, and we wanted to leave our luggage with the front desk while we were out, but the staff didn’t fully understand English so we weren’t completely sure they knew to take care of our bag. It was a little anxious coming back to the hotel to see if our luggage was there or not, but luckily the same receptionist recognized us and wheeled out our bag. We chilled for a few hours, grabbed some dinner para llevar and some snacks with our leftover pesos, and headed to the airport.
I had purchased 10kgs of luggage to check in, both ways, but what I failed to realize was that there is a size restriction and the bag must be cabin bag sized which makes no sense because it’s going into the hold anyway. There was no issue flying into Mexico, but they tried to enforce the limit as we were checking in for departure. Thankfully we managed to remove enough to squeeze most of the suitcase into their size checker, and the person at the counter decided that was good enough, so we went on our merry way, happy to not have to pay an extra $180.
Posted by Jeremy at 3:41pm on Friday December 5, 2025 :: 0 comments :: 