We spent the last five days on Isla Mujeres, an island near Cancun off the Yucatan peninsula. The whole island is about 7 km long and is very thin in the middle. The largest town is at the North end of the island where our hotel was located. We stayed at Na Balaam which is on the north shore. The hotel's rooms are simple but clean and nicely designed. The deck had a hammock and Adirondack style chairs to lounge in. On the beach they have platforms with mattresses during the day and beach chairs. There's also a restaurant that will bring food and drinks to you, so you could just stay on the beach all day. The waters on that side are calm and shallow a long ways out.
The first day we were recruited to visit the Avalon, a resort on it's own little rock island connected to Isla Mujeres by a wooden bridge. This was an attempt to get us to join the Avalon Vacation Club. I'd never been to one of these sales pitches and Jake wanted to see the resort so we decided to try it. Plus the day was a little cold and grey and not so great for sitting on the beach. The sales person assigned to us was very pleasant and we were shown around the resort and got a free buffet lunch. The sales pitch at the end though was tough to sit through, and after Jake explained the concept of compound interest to the salesperson things got rough. (Jake calculated the actual cost of buying into the beach club versus investing money in something else. Since Mexico has a 17% interest rate, the money you could make after 25 years was astronomical although he did use 6% as a more "realistic" example. The cost for the vacation club was $29,000 for 25 years plus a $680/year maintenance fee!). Having overstayed our alloted 90 minutes by another 60 minutes they pulled out the manager who finally signed off on our form after we refused to try the resort for a week at some future date. We got our baseball caps and beach bag and went back to our vacation.
One day we rented a golf cart and toured the island. The southern end has rocky cliffs with a sculpture garden and small Mayan ruin at the point. Another day we went to Parque Garrafon, a national park, for the day. This park has zip lines, a pool, snorkeling, restaurants and snack bars and a path to the Mayan ruin. You pay a set fee that includes snorkeling equipment, lunch buffet and all the drinks you want (yes, full bar). We staked out our beach chairs and spent the day alternating between activity and reading in our beach chairs. If you just want to snorkel, our taxi driver recommended Garrafon Castillo just up the beach which is much less expensive.
There were many dining options in our neighborhood. We tended to have a drink and ceviche or guacamole at one of the beach bars and then pick out a restaurant on "restaurant row", a pedestrian street in the middle of town. We tried an Argentine place (great beef, 2 for 1 drinks, and complimentary shots of mescal at the end of the meal - as Jake was being good I had to down most of the drinks!). One of our best meals was at Bamboo, an Asian inspired restaurant where I had tempura battered grouper and Jake had a tuna steak. The best soup was at a stand at the Mercado Central where I had Sopa de Lima, a traditional Yucatecan soup. Other dishes we had were shrimp grilled with garlic, fish tacos and fish fillets with Yucatecan spices. For breakfast we had a hard time finding places that opened before 8 am, but once we finally settled into the island rythym my favorite place was Cafe Cita with its decent coffee and banana, pineapple, coconut jam that could be spread on pancakes or sweet rolls. There was also a coffee shop that served Illy coffee and had good quick breads. There were several gelato stores and another good dessert were marquesitas - crisp crepes spread with your choice of fillings. These were made at little carts on the street.
There were many dining options in our neighborhood. We tended to have a drink and ceviche or guacamole at one of the beach bars and then pick out a restaurant on "restaurant row", a pedestrian street in the middle of town. We tried an Argentine place (great beef, 2 for 1 drinks, and complimentary shots of mescal at the end of the meal - as Jake was being good I had to down most of the drinks!). One of our best meals was at Bamboo, an Asian inspired restaurant where I had tempura battered grouper and Jake had a tuna steak. The best soup was at a stand at the Mercado Central where I had Sopa de Lima, a traditional Yucatecan soup. Other dishes we had were shrimp grilled with garlic, fish tacos and fish fillets with Yucatecan spices. For breakfast we had a hard time finding places that opened before 8 am, but once we finally settled into the island rythym my favorite place was Cafe Cita with its decent coffee and banana, pineapple, coconut jam that could be spread on pancakes or sweet rolls. There was also a coffee shop that served Illy coffee and had good quick breads. There were several gelato stores and another good dessert were marquesitas - crisp crepes spread with your choice of fillings. These were made at little carts on the street.
On Friday night the Mayan Caribbean Cultural Festival started. Bands and dancers performed on the main plaza the first night that were pretty good. On Saturday we caught some children dancing traditional dances from Veracruz at a stage on the beach with the sun setting behind them. Saturday night's entertainment started with a play about skulls (I think it was titled 40 Heads). Unfortunately no one could hear the actors and the play continued on with many short scenes for the next hour and a half. After a while it stopped and taped music started playing so we all thought it was over, but then they started up again! They were a little better about microphone use, but not enough, so we abandoned it. We felt bad for the actors who had obviously worked hard on this somewhat surrealistic series of plays. Scenes included a soliloquy to Urich's skull of Shakespearean fame, a giant spider, a beheading, cave women one of whom's face became a skull, a clown who kept stopping because he rattled, a flautist whose teacher only wanted him to play classical music, ghosts that meandered through the audience, . . . (I swear I did not dream all this nor was it the effect of too many margaritas!). People in the audience would occassionally yell out that they wanted music and dancing, but no one ever stopped the actors to effectively fix the audio problems.
Overall we had a wonderful vacation and I would highly recommend Isla Mujeres for a low-key vacation spot that still has some culture to it.
1 comment:
OMG!! I can just picture the scene between Jake and the sales person! I was laughing so hard at the thought of it!
Glad you had a good time.
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