![]() ![]() Use the bathroom at the bus station (cost: $5 MXN) before you leave.Ĥ. There are no bathrooms on the buses and no bathroom breaks along the way. The bus stopped several times when we passed through the smaller towns, and a couple times people came on board to sell food (which I welcomed – turns out I was the kind of pregnant woman who needed to eat every 3 hours). Our bus ride from Cancun to Chiquila was uneventful. We had to stand on line for a solid 20 minutes to get tickets, so alllll3. Once at the station, we bought bus tickets to Chiquila – the port city that will get you to Holbox. The bus ride was easy and there’s no reason to take a super expensive taxi.Ģ. ![]() This was about 40 minutes (more or less, depending on traffic). From the hotel strip in Cancun, we took a bus to the downtown Cancun bus station. Isla Holbox is about 3.5 – 5.5 hours from downtown Cancun, depending on how lucky you are with traffic and bus/ferry schedules. Rainy season will bring a lot more heat, way more mosquitoes, and very muddy “roads.” I would personally avoid the Island during hurricane season (if the storms get very bad, even most of the residents will evacuate) and I’d also avoid it during rainy reason. Perfect white sand beaches and kite flying. Go to Holbox if you want the anti-Cancun atmosphere. So, that’s the story of why we chose Holbox, and we chose very, very wisely. Enrique had never been to Holbox and didn’t really know anything about it. The Lonely Planet description pretty much nailed what I was looking for. ![]() Popular activities seemed to include swimming with whale sharks, looking at birds, doing nothing, and chilling out. A tiny island with about 1,500 residents. After a ton of research on places all over Yucatán and Quintana Roo, I found Holbox. I also knew that we were not the only two people in Mexico to come up with the idea of “be on a beach for New Years Eve,” so we started planning this out WAY ahead of time. I knew we would be in Cancun until the 30th of December, and I knew we wanted to spend New Years Eve on a beach somewhere, and that somewhere should be within a 5-6 hour bus ride of Cancun. It could be Florida, California, Texas, or any other random place in the world.Īnyway, this is just a bit of backstory to how we ended up in Holbox. To put it simply, other than hearing Mexican-accented english, I would have no idea that Cancun is even in Mexico. The landscape was ruined, the beaches were tiny and receding. I detested how tall the hotels were, and how they blocked out the sun after 3pm when I was on the beach. The kind of kitchy Mexican restaurant you would except to find in any American mall. A mall restaurant where some guy was walking around with giant sombreros offering to take pictures with people. I’ll make another tragic statement: the best meal quality and service-wise I had the entire time was at a mall. There was no fresh juice on offer anywhere (another unheard-in-Mexico thing for me), only bottled. The service in restaurants was also awful, which is another not-typical thing – I’m used to having friendly, quick, delightful service in Mexico (hey, tip culture, that’s what happens). I was anticipating the “expensive” part, but was not prepared for eating the same type of “Mexican” food that I could find in the Netherlands. It is a tragedy to ask for an “agua de sabor” and be told there are no flavored waters – not even j amaica – but they can give me a limonada (sparkling water with lime juice and sugar) for roughly 4 euros. It is a tragedy to be in Mexico and eat awful food. The food was awful and expensive pretty much everywhere, and this is a tragedy. It turns out that Cancun is actually even worse than I imagined and had exactly two redeeming qualities: I was with excellent company (Enrique’s family are wonderful people), and the showers had plenty of hot water and great water pressure. I thought for sure I’d find something redeeming, right? I mean, it’s not as if I am immune to the powers of a nice hotel and clean beaches. It’s not my “type” of place to begin with, which is fine – everyone has their style – but I was surprised at exactly how much I hated most things about the place. But to be perfect honest: I really dislike Cancun itself in almost every way. I had a wonderful time with his family and the ocean was great. We stayed right in the middle of the hotel strip at a nice hotel with a great view. Right after Christmas, Enrique and I were spending some time with his family – brothers, sisters, parents, nephews, nieces, in Cancun for four days. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |