Touchdown in Cancun: The Adventure Begins

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You’ve spent months preparing to leave your life; booked the first 23 days of accommodation in Mexico; held a job down whilst stressing about all the big and small things you need to remember; done Christmas for everyone and then on the morning of your departure when the alarm goes off at 5.30am for you to get to Gatwick, you get an email from Booking.com to say you have no accommodation when you land in Cancun. When you try to re-book, the dates are unavailable. It is New Year’s Eve – happy days! So stressful. I thought I’d done something wrong because of how it was worded but it turned out, after emailing, messaging and calling Booking, that the Casa themselves had cancelled it with no explanation. Luckily, we found another place (Hotel Luma by Kavia) which turned out to be perfect for what we needed – not that they could find our booking when we arrived either!

Getting into Cancun from the airport was really easy. Passport control was quick and we were straight out to gazillions of official airport tourist guides who wanted to see us into the right transport for our stay. We had already decided we were catching the public ADO bus into the centre and there was a ticket office to the left and a kiosk to the right as you left the main doors. Unlike Colombia, the taxi drivers were minimal. The bus cost us £11.20 for two and we were in the centre in about 35-40 minutes. Really nice bus. You can’t download the ADO app outside of the UK but you can book online up to 2 weeks in advance. We didn’t in case our flight was delayed.

We’d already bought eSIMS the night before we left as we’d read that the SIMs provision in the airport wasn’t great. We used www.airalo.com – Get £2.50 off with this code STEWAR5642.

Cancun was a place to rest our heads before we set off across Mexico. We were concerned that arriving on NYE which would mean that we wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else on New Year’s Day because everything would be shut down but actually nothing stopped. Buses seemed to be leaving all the time and shops and cafes were open. Not only that, we planned in a bit of buffer time because I am such a rubbish traveller. My body loves to scupper me with a migraine whenever we are doing something different. It is a favourite pastime to decide whether my migraine is a lack of water, too much light, stress, a new situ, hormones, too much caffeine, too little caffeine! The joys!

We made the most of our free day and took the R1 bus from Avenida Tulum to the beach. Loved that it was £1 for both of us. We chose Playa Chac Mool based on some internet research and it was lovely!

Leaving Cancun was as easy as arriving. We bought our tickets the day before which turned about to be a great call because the next day the queues were long. We dutifully turned up 20 minutes before as told. We went through Puerto 1 and waited to be shouted when our bus arrived. They’re very particular about how you access the platforms (and leave the bus) as they are mindful that you place your bag underneath and get on the bus, leaving it unattended; so, everyone on the platform needs to be a bona-fide customer. I tried to short-cut into the station and got the whistle blown at me – I wasn’t sure if I was in a PE lesson or if I should do ‘Hands down, Pens down, Eyes on Me!’