2023 Mexico – Puerto Morelos
11th January 2022
As often happens, once we had accepted there was nothing we could do, we settled comfortably into our three-hour flight to Cancun airport. It occurred to me during the steward’s announcement that airline staff must be the most optimistic people in the world. They always announce, “I hope you have enjoyed your flight with us today.” Has anyone ever actually enjoyed a flight to anywhere? Flying is just something you have to do to get from one place to another. Surely most people would agree that a good flight is one that passes quickly and without incident. Nervous passengers are just happy to walk off the plane at the other end. But to actually enjoy a flight? You’ve got to be kidding.
What did make me happy on that flight was when they announced the magic words, “If there is anyone who needs a transfer to their hotel on arrival, please let a flight attendant know.” I hadn’t realised that the airline offered that service, and it turned out to be cheaper than the one that we had originally booked. There was no chaos at the airport, although there were three big buses that were full, so one mother and her daughter asked if they could come with us to their hotel rather than wait an hour for the next bus. Of course, we were happy to oblige, as it was a minibus rather than a car.
We arrived at the Corales Suites apartment building in Puerto Morelos, and as I struggled through the awkward metal doors with two big suitcases, the young, healthy-looking receptionist just stood there looking at me. He wore a silly hat and had some kind of nervous tic, but was friendly enough while he was checking us in. He showed us to the foot of the stairs that led to our apartment and asked, “Do you want help with your suitcases?” It was on the second floor, so of course I said yes, but I wondered if he was really prepared to just watch me as I struggled up the stairs with all our luggage when he could clearly see I was elderly and had a limp? To be fair, he also had a limp, but I don’t think wrists are included in the disability league tables.
The apartment was excellent, with a living room, a large kitchen and a side view of the sea, which was only a couple of minutes’ walk away. We were shocked when we saw that our bath towels were not only in shreds, but both had stains on them, as well as one of the pillows. We asked for them to be changed, but nothing was done about it, so we gave up. The staff didn’t seem very happy, and it had been my experience that unhappy staff was usually down to bad management. It was easier for us to accept the situation rather than spend the week fighting with them, and we didn’t even want them servicing our room, as unhappy staff should be avoided at all costs. On the plus side, it made it easy to tell our towels apart. Federika had the towel with the black stain, and I gallantly accepted the towel with the more odious yellow stain. I insisted on taking the stained pillow, an act of true love. We had a nice balcony, but it was impossible to sit there at night as we could hear two or three televisions playing at the same time from the adjacent apartments. There were many eccentricities in the design of the apartment, like the bedroom light switch being at the far end of the room, so we had to cross the dark room to turn the light on. None of this bothered us in the slightest as we knew we were going to enjoy our time there.
It was already early evening when we walked along the beach to town and looked for a restaurant. The sea wasn’t rough, so we were both looking forward to a swim the next day. We found a restaurant which played pleasant background music, making it the perfect evening. Afterwards, we walked through the lively town and stopped at a large supermarket to get some things for breakfast. Breakfast was always hit-and-miss wherever we travelled, so it would make a nice change to wake up in the morning and have whatever we wanted. In my case, (in the absence of a full English), it was always granola, yoghurt, fruit, and coffee. At the checkout, the girl told us they had no bags of any kind to pack our week’s worth of groceries. Their reason was that, being a responsible supermarket, they didn’t want to generate waste. All very clever, but the only way we could get our shopping home was to buy a pack of plastic rubbish sacks, which were twice the size of shopping bags, so twice the amount of plastic waste.
Next day we went to the beach and accepted we had to pay the high price for the sunbeds as neither of us was able to sit in the sun like we used to. Swimming was great with the sea being warm, and I was able to indulge in my favourite sport of lying on a sunbed, reading before and after lunch, with a siesta in between. There was a man near the edge of the sea who was making sand sculptures. Federika asked him if he was an artist, but it turned out he was an American geologist who had lived in Mexico for 30 years. When I was young, we went one year on holiday to Weymouth, where there was a man who did amazing sand sculptures on the beach, but it was with heavy sand, so they lasted a long time. In Puerto Morelos, the sand was very fine, and there was a strong wind, so the sculptures only lasted a day or two, and he had to rebuild them. It was purely a labour of love as he didn’t ask for money. 
Between our apartment and the town, there was a long road with restaurants on either side of the street. Traffic was blocked off, so it should have been an excellent place to walk along and decide on which restaurant to eat, but for one problem: live music. Some places had just a guitar vocalist playing at a reasonable volume, but right next to him would be a four-piece band playing Led Zeppelin so loud you couldn’t hear the solo performer. At one place there were four restaurants together, each with a loud band. Each band was trying to be heard over the others, so there was a terrible cacophony of sound. 
People eating seemed to be oblivious to it all, but if I asked any of them if they would go to a concert where four groups were performing different songs on the same stage at the same time, they would think I was crazy. In one restaurant, a solo live performer was singing a few metres away from a television that was showing a Nicholas Cage film with the volume on.
The next day we found a hotel beach club where we paid for a day pass, which entitled us to free use of sunbeds and an umbrella and a discount in the restaurant. It was a very good deal, so we ended up going there every day. Their music was pretty loud, but at least it was decent music with the bass drum under control, although some couples still came with a Bluetooth speaker and played their own music at full volume.
That day, we timed lunch well, as just as we sat down at a table, it started to pour with rain, and the restaurant quickly filled up. A young Italian couple asked if they could join us, and once I got over the initial horror of strangers at our table, we both enjoyed their company, as usually happens when we meet new people. He was a professional drummer who had lived in New York for seven years before returning to Italy. I had wondered for years how musicians managed to work in the centre of cities these days with congestion fees and sky-high parking charges, so I was surprised when he told me that he went to gigs carrying his drum kit on the train. All the musicians he knew went to gigs on public transport carrying their instruments, sometimes with a little trolley if necessary. In my day, a car was just as important as an instrument, but then it was easy to find a free parking space, even in the centre of London.
One lunchtime we returned to the restaurant where we had eaten on the first day. At last, we found a place that served whole fish rather than fillets, and they confirmed that they would grill it for us. The waitress showed us the fish, which she said was called a Robalo, which of course, meant nothing to us. It was looking a bit sorry for itself, so I took a look at the gills and saw they had been removed. However, it was a reputable restaurant, so it never occurred to me that their fish wouldn’t be fresh. When the time came to eat it, it didn’t taste off, there was not even a hint of fishy taste, so we assumed that the robalo was just a crap fish that we would avoid in future. I was surprised to read on the internet later that the English name for robalo was a variety of sea bass, which was usually one of my favourite fish. At that point, I didn’t know what to think.
That night we ate at the best restaurant in town, and to my relief, a live keyboard player was performing. He was a reasonable singer and musician, and despite being quite young, was playing old jazz standards. Everyone was enjoying his music, and some couples even started dancing. Federika wasn’t crazy about him because he didn’t play any up-tempo songs, but she had to admit it was much more acceptable than the boom, boom, boom music. The food was excellent and a little bizarre, which we both liked. We chose a starter which had beetroot, pears, pumpkin seeds and “goat’s cheese ice cream.” Being a starter, we assumed it wouldn’t be actual ice cream, but it was. It was very tasty, but it belonged firmly in the dessert department. For the main course, I had no trouble deciding on a giant pork rib, but when Federika asked what fresh fish they had, she was told they had robalo. After our last experience with the dreaded robalo, Federika was very nervous about ordering it again, but knowing now that it was a kind of sea bass, she decided to take a chance. It turned out to be so good that I regretted not ordering it, even if it was only a fillet instead of a whole fish. So now we knew for sure that the other restaurant had given us fish that was off and tasted more like sewer bass than sea bass.
Each night we walk into town to eat and have a general stroll around. One night, we ate at the Mem al Mar restaurant, which was highly recommended by TripAdvisor. The music was a bit irritating, but it was bearable, so we ordered the seafood platter, which I always enjoy. Not only was the food not very good, but halfway through the meal, they turned the music up and started playing the worst techno music I had ever heard. There was only us and one other table who were about the same age, so I asked the manager if he would change the music. He agreed, but it only got worse after that.
The only music I had heard in Mexico so far was either boom, boom, boom dance music or 80s heavy rock. Not a Mariachi band in sight. Was I really the only tourist in Mexico who wanted to hear Mexican music while I was in Mexico?
When deciding where to go on a holiday, we have a certain list of requirements. It must be hot, must have beaches where I am allowed to wear Speedos, and some sightseeing. Very low down on our list of requirements was war zones. Mexico seemed the logical place to go this year, as we were going to be in Seattle for Christmas, but I was a little concerned when Federika first suggested it because, as far as I was aware, there was an ongoing war between the government and the drug cartels. Federika pointed out that the government was very careful to protect its tourist industry, so none of the violence was in the tourist areas. There were many websites and posts that said the same thing, so I agreed to go. That was why I was surprised to see every day on our walk along the beach, three National Guards armed to the teeth sitting under a shade. If the purpose of this was to reassure tourists, it didn’t work with me. If drug gangs were stupid enough to cause trouble in front of highly trained soldiers, we would have been caught in the crossfire. As far as I was aware, the most effective security was that which you can’t see.
I wasn’t worried about it as we had been to plenty of countries where they had heavily armed police, but one morning at breakfast, I searched for “gang violence in Mexico” and was surprised to see that innocent tourists had been killed in the most popular tourist areas of Tulum and Puerto del Carmen. Where there were tourists, there were drugs and gangs that were fighting over turf. With that in mind, on the way to the beach that morning, we saw a police van at the side of our path with two Marines and two National Guardsmen looking like they had stepped out of a Rambo film. I knew the chance of getting caught up in any serious violence was very slim, but I doubt if I would have gone to Mexico if I had read about all this in advance. I still wasn’t worried about our safety, and it certainly didn’t affect my enjoyment of the holiday. Che Sera Sera, was always my favourite song, but I preferred to hear it in a country that was not at war.
It was very windy most days, and there were periods when it was cloudy, so it got quite chilly, but most of the time it was hot and extremely pleasant. At night, we enjoyed watching the street dancers who went from restaurant to restaurant, performing with the most extraordinary acrobatics, which included spinning on their heads.
On our last night, I got lucky while I was waiting for Federika outside a shop. A nearby restaurant had a large family celebrating a child’s birthday when a Mariachi band appeared, and the whole family joined in the singing. Unfortunately, they finished after a couple of songs and went on to their next gig, so I never saw them again.
Towards the end of our stay in Puerto Morelos, we had to think about how to get to our next stop, Valladolid. In all our travels, it was always easy getting from place to place, and the only problem was choosing what mode of transport to use. Most of the time, we hired a taxi for the day at a very reasonable cost, but in Mexico, the cost was extortionate. Because of the stranglehold taxi drivers had on the market, it was said that they earned more than doctors. The only practical option was to hire a car, which we hadn’t done for years. I wasn’t keen on the idea as there was a minefield of extras, which included a gamble that nothing happened to the car. Even with full insurance, there were extras that were not covered, like tyres and windscreens. We got to the point where we just didn’t care any more and knew that with a car, we would be able to do the smaller day trips without worrying about how to get there. It was such a relief when we picked up the car, and we felt the freedom of going wherever and whenever we wanted.
2023 Mexico
