Summer Vacation to Isla Mujeres and CDMX
 

Past TRs
In and Around Tokyo in January
Trip to Sri Lanka (and Singapore & Hong Kong)
Nine Months Ago: Dubai, Samui & Tokyo with AS/EK/PG/XJ/SQ

For our family's summer vacation this year, we decided to head back to Mexico again. Even though we enjoyed our trip last year to some various cities and towns of the state of Guanajuato, one thing that was missing was some beach time. We initially toyed with the idea of going to Oaxaca (Puerto Escondido in particular), but the travel wasn't as straightforward as we would've liked. Upon doing more research, we decided on going to Isla Mujeres for the first part of our trip for some beach time without going to a place dominated by large resorts, followed by Mexico City for some city time.

In booking the trip, the fares for a PDX-CUN-MEX-PDX routing were quite high as we had booked the trip late. In comparison, F only cost a little bit more than an expensive fare in Y on AA, so we ended up with the following which was all in F besides the short hop from CUN-MEX.

DL 1824 PDX-SLC
DL 933 SLC-CUN
AM 592 CUN-MEX
AM 646 MEX-LAX
DL 1454 LAX-PDX

Portland - Salt Lake City - Cancún
The first leg of our trip was the six in the morning flight out to Salt Lake City, which has been my most travelled flight of the year, mainly due to business travel. While it wasn't fun to wake up around three-forty in the morning, at least we were heading out on vacation. The airport experience along with the flight were completely uneventful, except for the fact that we were denied entry to the Delta SkyClub at PDX since we were merely in F and not DeltaOne. I had known that to be the case but a friend of mine had tried to persuade me that we should have access. Oh well, at least I got to prove him wrong.

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Quiet PDX gate area early on a Saturday

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DL Boeing 737-900ER N809DN on arrival in Salt Lake City

Even though SLC is in dire need of updating (and yes, I know they are indeed updating the airport), its compactness allows for connecting times of less than hour. In this case, it allowed us time to use the restroom, walk over to the D concourse, ponder what the Jazz Room is, fiddle around on our phones for a bit and then board our flight to Cancún.

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Disembarked at Concourse C

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And walked over to Concourse D

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DL Airbus A321-200 N333DX, operating as DL 933 to CUN. Looking at DL's schedules, it seems they upgauge to a A321 on weekends

The only thing of note was that DL was trialing facial recognition as a way to board. I opted out and boarded using my phone, as per usual.

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Neighbouring plane heading out to ATL

I watched one film on the four and half hour flight, fell asleep during the second film and basically relaxed as I started to enjoy my first vacation of the year.

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First class cabin

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Bloody Mary

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I preordered the healthier option of steel cut oatmeal with quinoa and fruit since I knew I would be indulging while on vacation. I had this nine days prior and it was good, so I was happy to have it again.

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Tang Wei in Bi Gan's "Long Day's Journey Into Night". The film is supposed to be excellent but in my tired state, I found it hard to follow the story and ended up falling asleep since I had been up since three forty-five.

We arrived into Terminal Three at Cancún International Airport. The lines at immigration weren't bad at all, only involving about a ten minute wait. By the time we got to baggae claim, our bags were all there but unfortunately, we got the dreaded red light and customs went through all of our stuff. After that, it was through the gauntlet of touts to our prebooked transfer service to the ferry pier at Puerto Juárez. I will confess that due to this being our first time in Cancún, we did stop and talk to one of the touts for a bit as it was a bit difficult to tell who "official" or not. Thankfully all this consisted of was being handed a map of Isla Mujeres along with some spiels about interesting places to see on the island. Once we got out of the terminal, we were able to find our van, which was booked through USA Transfers for a cost of US$116 roundtrip. This amount also included the ferry tickets between Puerto Juárez and Isla Mujeres.

The ride itself was about a half hour and we had a friendly driver who told us a little bit about the area. Once there, the driver headed into the ticketing office and handed us our roundtrip tickets. We had just missed a ferry so we had a half hour wait at the open air terminal.

The ferries between the mainland and Isla Mujeres are operated by Ultramar, who run very modern ships for the short journey. The lower deck consists of an enclosed climate controlled cabin, along with a restroom, while the upper deck is open air. After a day of travelling inside airplanes, we opted for the fresh air.

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Puerto Juárez

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Open air deck, along with a live musician who did covers of mainly English songs, eg Santana or The Eagles

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Looking back at the mainland. The structure that looks like a lighthouse is the ferry terminal

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Lower deck

Upon arrival, I walked over to pick up the golf cart that I rented from Golf Cart Indios, which seemed to have good reviews online. Since we were staying on the southern part of the island away from the commercial hub, it seemed like a good idea to have a golf cart to allow us to get around easily. However, when I got to the location that they indicated on their website, the storefront was gone and there were certainly no golf carts. Not wanting to deal with any of this stuff at this moment, I walked back towards the ferry terminal and met up with the family for a meal before we caught a taxi to our hotel.

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View from the restaurant, Muelle Azul. The dock to the left is the ferry terminal's dock

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First ceviche on Isla Mujeres

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Fish tacos

The food was alright and like all the food we had on the island, it was geared towards tourists like us. It turned out to be a wise choice to eat in town before heading to our hotel as there wasn't much near the hotel.

For the hotel, we booked a stay via hotels.com for Casa Azul Maya, a small boutique hotel on the much quieter south side of the island. Our room was marketed as a suite but it was just one long room with a kitchenette, along with a hallway where the closet, sink and bathroom was located. At the time of booking, their website didn't offer a lot of information but it has been greatly improved since then.

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Twin King Bed Suite

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Dining area and kitchenette

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Shower

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Sink

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Hallway

I really liked the hotel and would definitely stay there on a future visit. The only downside was that during our last night, thunderstorms in the area caused the wifi to go out for long stretches in our room. It was not the biggest deal but it seems worth mentioning.

When we had checked into Casa Azul Maya the previous day, we were asked where we wanted our breakfast to be served. We selected the pool as our breakfast location and enjoyed our breakfast by the pool on our first morning on the island. The food itself was very simple but it was certainly filling enough.

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Breakfast consisting of fruits, toast with jam or butter, corn flakes, yogurt and granola

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Rooftop swimming pool. Really meant more for lounging than actual swimming

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View of the surrounding area, which was not the nicest

Casa Azul Maya is located across the street from the Kin Há Beach Club, which used to be known as Casa de Los Sueños. I certainly don't know any of the history and didn't know it at the time but there are people on the internet claiming that the business was stolen from the previous owners and renamed Kin Há Beach Club. The beach club featured two pools, a water slide and a restaurant, along with a kiosk where one could rent some watersports equipment such as kayaks and snorkels. As guests of Casa Azul Maya, we were exempt from the cover charge to enter but deposits are taken if one wants to utilise the aforementioned watersports equipment or borrow towels.

We spent our time mainly in the water, both in the sea and in the pools as it was too hot to lie in the sun for too long. We did some snorkeling, swam and also had fun playing and jumping around on the inflatable island. Of course, we ended up having lunch while there and consumed a few adult beverages too. I don't know if I would go out of my way to go here but since it was across the street from our hotel, visiting was a no brainer.

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The beautiful sea along with Kin Há's dock

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Michelada in the morning

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Taking photos

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More ceviche

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Shrimp and lobster tacos

After heading back to the hotel to shower and change, we decided to head back into the town on the northern end of the island to explore a little bit, along with trying to grab our golf cart. We took a taxi into town and explored a little while.

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Not our golf cart

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Center court

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Protected scoreboard

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Parroquia Inmaculada Concepción

We then walked along the eastern side of the island, which is on the Caribbean.

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Promenade with the Mia Reef Isla Mujeres hotel in the distance

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I took this for the incorrect Chinese translation in which they used the characters for "electric current" instead of the type of current one would encounter at the beach. I assume they just ran it through Google Translate instead of having an actual Chinese speaker do the translation

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Playa Media Luna, where the currents were too strong to allow swimming

It turned out that Golf Cart Indios had moved a couple of blocks away but I was able to find it regardless. Picking up the golf cart involved a quick tutorial along with leaving my driver's license as a deposit, which seems to be the standard at all of the golf cart rental places on the island. We then drove towards Casa Azul Maya but seemingly at a very pedestrian pace, even for a golf cart. Halfway down the island, we stopped at the Chedraui supermarket for some snacks and other supplies. We tried to buy alcohol but while in line for a cashier, one of our fellow shoppers explained that alcohol sales are banned on Sundays.

Since we didn't feel like taking the golf cart out after dark, we walked across the street to dine at the restaurant belonging to Maria's Kan-Kin, a small hotel. When we walked in, there were no other guests and in fact, the kitchen was closing soon. The waiter there insisted it was okay to dine with them, so we ended up having a mediocre meal. For some reason, we made the calculation to have raw oysters in the Caribbean in a restaurant with no customers but hey, we lived to tell the tale.

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Oysters in the dark

We started off another morning with breakfast by the pool and then drove the golf cart along the eastern side of the island into town in order to spend the day there.

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We only saw other people here once, which was during our first morning at breakfast

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Still fascinated by the fact that this trip was the first time I had seen the Caribbean

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I'm sure shortly after this photo, we were passed by the scooter behind us

We parked the golf cart a bit outside of the central area of the town and then walked to the Mercado Municipal for some lunch at the restaurants located in front of the market. We chose the busiest one we saw, Lonchería Alexia y Geovanny.

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Walking towards the mercado

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Mercado parking lot

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Lonchería

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Jugo de sandía

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Queso con chorizo

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Pescado a la Veracruzana. Basically with a thin tomato based sauce along with olives, onions, capers and bell peppers

Lonchería Alexia y Geovanny was the best food we had on the island. I would happily return if we ever went back to Isla Mujeres. We then made our way to Playa Norte and spent a few hours on the beach. Of course, if you want to use the lounge chairs and umbrellas, you have to pay. In addition, there was a small restaurant and bar that you could order food and drinks from but we only had a Piña Colada each.

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Correos de México

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Playa Norte. The water was warm and shallow, allowing us to almost walk all the way out to where the boats in the photo are.

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The things in the water seemed like sunken oil tanks

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Relaxing

After a really fun few hours here, we had an early dinner at Qubano since we knew that there weren't a lot of options by the hotel.

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Calamari with vegetables, plantains and rice

Then, the fun started. We got back to our golf cart and noticed that it seemed awfully underpowered. We had to wait for the whole street to be clear before backing out of our parking space and after coming to a stop at a stop sign, it would take seemingly forever for the cart to move again. We proceeded down one of the small streets in the town and just before we were due to make a left onto the main road on the western side of the island, the cart never started back up. I switched places with the GF and had her put the cart in neutral as I got out and pushed us into a nearby parking spot, which hilariously was in front of a different golf cart vendor. I called Golf Cart Indios and explained the situation and while they responded and said they'd bring us a different golf cart, I was just over the hassle of having one. Since it would take them about twenty minutes to get to me, I sent the GF and our daughter back to the hotel in a taxi and waited for them to show up. True to their word, they did bring a new golf cart but I refused it, in part because we wouldn't really need it tomorrow, and asked for my money back. They said they were unable to process a refund and get me back my driver's license at this hour so I handed them the key and told them I'd be by in the afternoon to process the refund.

I ended the night by getting a taxi back to the hotel after that unfortunate episode.