General: Mexico > Reviews > Magical Mystical Mexico

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Value for Money
Shopping
Nightlife
Ease of getting around
Family Friendly

Advantages:	Nice weather, beautiful scenery, Just Brilliant
Disadvantages:	Long haul flight required, fairly expensive (but worth it ! )

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

We wanted to go somewhere special for our honeymoon. Mexico certainly lived up to that ideal and much, much more besides. What a fantastic holiday, and what a wonderful place to visit. My husband and I got married on 19th August 2000 but had to wait until the 25th before we could go on our honeymoon. We went with Thompson Holidays and the main drawback was the Friday departure. We were informed that Mexico is a popular location for honeymooners and people getting married abroad. So it seems a little strange that flights are all on Fridays, considering the most popular day for a wedding is a Saturday!

But hey, all that aside, at least it gave us a chance to recover from our fantastic wedding day and sort out packing etc. The outward flight was at a fairly sensible time in the morning and seeing as we live slightly more than an hour from Gatwick, this was not a problem. If you live too much further you may prefer to book into a hotel near the airport overnight so that you don’t have to get up so early. I don’t appreciate travelling very much when I’m tired and grumpy! The flight took around 11 hours. As most long-haul travellers will confirm, planes seems infinitely more cramped than usual when confined for this length of time, but if you want to holiday in far off places, this is something you just have to grin and bear! The homeward journey is worse. It’s over night and I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell can’t sleep in the cramped confines of standard class. I always feel so cold with the air-conditioning and the blankets are thin and pretty useless, (if you’re lucky enough to get one!) Some unscrupulous passengers had swiped blankets from some of the seats on their way to their own seats. Amazingly, Britannia don’t carry anywhere near enough spares to cater for the poor people ending up without blankets or pillows. Fortunately, we’d bought a genuine Mexican blanket as a present for my father-in-law so we used that. It was warmer than plane blankets anyway!

Enough about the plane, I’m sure you know what I’m saying and have most likely been there and done that! Suffice it to say, next time I take a long-haul holiday (most likely a long way off financially!) I will definitely upgrade to first class. It costs an extra £160 per person but the trade off is a total of 22 hours of uncomfortable hell. My mind is made up!

So. Mexico. We booked a double resort type of holiday. The first week we’d be staying on Cozumel Island. The second week was spent in the popular Cancun hotel district. I will begin at the beginning, which is usually such a great place to begin! From the airport we had to take our luggage the short walking distance to the internal departure lounge. The small plane meant to take us to the island had been cancelled. For no apart reason either. We were informed that we’d have to wait for 4.5 hours for the next one!!! Not the best of starts. But it wasn’t that bad actually. There were 3 couples, including us, and a family with a child of about 10 years old. One couple had married the same day as us and were also on a two-week honeymoon. The other couple were on a weeks break. The six of us would be staying at the same resort for the first week. The family were to be staying at a different resort. We ate some food at the airport and the Thompson rep told us that the expenses would be reimbursed, as we should have arrived at the resort in time for food. This happened as stated later that week so no problems there. Although a little annoyed at the wait, it gave us a chance to get to know the others, which was great later in the holiday as we shared expenses on hiring a jeep etc.

When it was finally time to leave the airport we got onto a small plane, which looked pretty old. A few people made a few jokes about the dilapidated appearance, but we made it across safely! It only took 15 minutes after all those hours of waiting! We also discovered that a ferry regularly runs across from the mainland to the island. This took about 40 minutes to do the crossing. The port was only a short way down the road from the airports on both sides. We were amazed that this wasn’t offered as an option when our original plane was cancelled. But in hindsight….

At the hotel, we signed in at the reception and we were led to our rooms. The complex was very pretty. Two or three storeys high was the maximum height. There was well-tended greenery everywhere and there was a maze of wooden walkways to all the apartments. Ours was fairly secluded and had a balcony looking onto the beach through the patch of trees. It was ground floor but raised on platforms much like the walkways, hence the balcony!

The room was fairly basic but comfortable. It had a lovely wooden unit for putting clothes into and the cupboard on top turned out to be where the TV was hiding! There was a separate bathroom with a bath and shower. The air-conditioning was pretty good too. You could have it on a quiet setting during the night but it still kept the room cool enough but not freezing.

The hotel provided a buffet-style breakfast and there was a large variety of hot and cold to choose from. Or both if you wanted! It was all-inclusive so you could eat what you wanted! There was a bar by the pool, which did lunch. This had fries and burgers and things like that but it also gave you a taste of Mexican food by supplying guacamole and nachos and the like too. Alcoholic and soft drinks, including cocktails were also served here and this was the case until about midnight too. I had a bit of a stomach ache for two days but couldn’t believe that I’d eaten anything dodgy. Then someone told me that it’s a common ailment when in a hot country if you drink lots of drinks with ice. I was drinking lots of soft-drink cocktails during the day. And it made sense. I had no further problems once I was aware of this, so BE WARNED!!! Now you know how to avoid stomach problems in a hot place! (Unless of course you’re unlucky enough to be somewhere that actually does have dodgy food!)

Just beyond the bar you literally stepped onto the beach through the trees. Here you could laze the day away on a sun-lounger, or swim in the sea or participate in volley-ball, or football arranged by the entertainment team. There was also a variety of water-sports to choose from, which were included in the price of your holiday. Wind surfing, pedal boats, canoes and snorkelling. We tried them all! There was also a PADI certified scuba school a short stroll up the beach. This you had to pay extra to do this but was fairly reasonable. We did this too (You can see my opinion on Scuba diving at Cozumel Mexico). The snorkelling was pretty amazing though and one of the hotel workers told us to take a banana into the sea with us and feed it to the fish. We were a little dubious but gave it a go. We were amazed with the results. Hundreds of fish swimming round us in bright flashes of colour, jostling each other to get the tiny bits of banana we were breaking into the water. What a wonderful opportunity to try out my underwater camera I’d had for the last three years. First time I’d actually used it underwater. Feeding bananas to the fish is definitely a memory I will think of fondly for many years to come!

The food was excellent the hotel was beautiful and the island was wonderful. We swum with the dolphins at Chankenab, 10 minutes drive from the hotel. This cost about 150 dollars per person. That was an amazing experience although very expensive. They even charged extortionate prices for photos and the video of your experience. It worked out to be about £12 per photo. And it ran into hundreds if you wanted the full package, which included the video and a number of photos.

By the time it was time to leave for our second destination, we didn’t want to leave. What if the next hotel was horrible? We decided that wouldn’t happen as we’d just spent a week in a three star hotel and now we were going to spend a week in a five star hotel. Unfortunately that was not the case. Not because there was anything wrong with the hotel in Cancun. It was just that the resort on the island had only been a third full as it was near the end of the season. It was also a lot smaller than the one in Cancun. It had been a relaxed, peaceful, enjoyable first week. Then the silence was shattered. We found ourselves at a huge sky-riser of a hotel with thousands of rooms. There were two sections, joined by a walk-way. All Brits on a Thompson hotel are put into rooms in the smaller section. This was more of a Mexican style building but still had 8 or 9 floors. There were a number of swimming pools and Jacuzzis outside the hotel. One thing I didn’t like was that the pools and sea were east facing so the towering hotels blocked out the late afternoon sun from the pool area etc. Maybe it’s me being fussy but on the island we’d been on a west-facing beach and had enjoyed catching the last rays of sun and watching the beautiful sunsets. The front of the hotel overlooked the road which ran for 25 KM in a loop round the Cancun hotel zone. Beyond the road was a lagoon.

During our second week we went on a ‘jungle tour’. Just a minor exaggeration in respect of the name of this particular trip. You went in pairs into small two man speed-boats. Four boats followed each ‘tour guide’. He led you through a mangrove ‘jungle’, which was only about 8 feet high. Not my classification of a jungle but maybe it is to the Mexicans! It was still good fun although the only specimen of wildlife we saw (we were told we’d see an abundance of!), was a white bird sitting in a tree. At least there was snorkelling in the nature reserve area we were heading for. We stopped and did some snorkelling, took more photos of the most amazingly coloured fish, before heading back. At the beginning we’d been told that it was likely to rain, did anyone want to re-arrange for a different day. Everyone chose to continue as planned. However, on the way back having negotiated the mangroves, our guide turned around and started dishing out the snorkelling masks, which he’d kept in his boat before and after the snorkelling. We couldn’t work out why. He made us put them on. We were soon on our way again, about half an hour back to base! Then we knew why. It started raining. But not just raining. It was absolutely torrential and it was freezing compared to the temperature of the lagoon water. More than that, it stung like mad and soon our arms were numb (they were bare). That was why we needed to wear the masks, and boy did we need them! But it was very good fun and we were all soaking anyway!

The Thompson reps had arranged a ‘pub crawl’! We went along, paying our 30 dollars. We got about 4 different wrist-bands and a pile of drinks tokens! Good fun. Tales of crocs in the lagoon and tour reps insisting that they had been there when one croc had been spotted in the early hours of a similar pub crawl event a few months earlier. Not sure whether to believe it or not but there you go!

We hired a jeep with the other couple who married the same day as us. We were off to see the famous Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza. What a fantastic day that was. It only cost about £50 to hire and between 4 of us, that was very worth while doing. The proper coach trips cost about £60 per person. It cost 10 dollars to get into the site but that’s only a few quid so it was very good value for money. I won’t say too much about the site other than it’s a breathtakingly interesting site approximately 10 miles square. It takes a good 4-5 hours to cover all the buildings and monument on the site. The main one being a huge four sided pyramid with 365 steps each side. They are very steep and not very deep. A rope has been secured down the middle of the steps for people to use. They advise people with vertigo, pregnant women and anyone with a few other symptoms not to attempt the climb. We had none of the ailments etc so we climbed and what a fantastic view. You could see the whole site laid out amongst the trees, stretching almost as far as the eye could see. Like I said – breathtaking!

At this hotel we had to change rooms during our stay due to window replacement work being done. I wasn’t impressed with that as we ended up seeing 3 different rooms before being given one that was suitable for our requirements. We’d asked for ground floor accommodation with a bath not just a shower. The first room we were sent to was on the 9th floor. The next one had a kitchen and only a shower. Another was also not suitable. We didn’t bother unpacking our clothes etc after we’d moved as there were only a few days to go. The best thing about the hotel was the food. Being a five star, this was to be expected. We could eat 5 course meals for lunch as well as dinner! Great for a food lover like me! The main drawback for me about the hotel zone in Cancun was the huge number of people. I prefer somewhere a little quieter. There were shops and bars dotted around the hotel zone, all of which could be easily reached by regular buses, which serviced the hotel zone. They were very cheap so it was convenient for pubbing at night and shopping during the day. Cancun appeared to be the Americans equivalent of what Ibiza is to us Brits. So if you generally wouldn’t have a ‘clubbing’ holiday, then the Cancun hotel zone is probably not the best part of Mexico to visit. The place was full of large same sex groups of loud Americans having a party. Cozumel island was more suited to my holiday requirements! One nice touch was the morning we found some of the hotel staff digging baby turtles out of the beach to move them to a safer area. That kept a number of holiday-makers, including some kids engrossed for ages.

I guess I’ve said more than enough as this op is pretty long (my apologies), but there is so much more that I could say. What I will say is that if you ever go to Mexico, you have to experience Chichen Itza. Driving over there was easy. The roads were pretty much empty apart from the tarantulas crossing the roads!!! And yes there were jokes about them climbing into the open top jeep, but of course this most likely would never happen considering we were travelling at 70 mph! All the people we met were very friendly and there were nowhere near as many hasslers (beach sellers) as there were in the Dominican Republic for example. They also accepted no as an answer! I don’t mind being asked if they accept that I mean no when I say no! You have got to go to Mexico!