Our first ever international trip was to Playa del Carmen, Mexico! It was the perfect vacation for a number of reasons:
We didn’t have a lot of vacation time
We didn’t have a lot of money
It was simple to plan and book
When we went on this trip we were living in Kelowna, British Columbia at the time and it was cheaper to fly from a bigger international airport so we travelled down to Vancouver, British Columbia to catch our flight.
Our flight left on May 17th at 11:20 PM and we arrived in Cancun on May 18th around 11:00 AM. It was then an hour drive to our resort in Playa del Carmen.
The resort we stayed at was called Sandos Caracol Eco Resort. The nice part about the resort was that it was an eco-friendly resort so all around it were natural cenotes that you can swim in (as long as you were following the guidelines set by the resort). For example, you couldn’t wear sunscreen if you were going to swim in them.
Every morning I would wake up at 7:00 AM no matter how tired and dragged myself to the beach so I can relax in peace with the sun and waves. Sometimes I would fall asleep while out there but the couple hours in the morning before the rest woke was nice.
A few times a week they would have performances at the resort and the music and atmosphere would be amazing! These performances were one of my highlights of the trip.
One of the trips we took outside the resort was to Xel-Ha Park. We snorkelled down the river, zip lined, and walked around the park.
My favourite restaurant at the resort was this Mediterranean restaurant and of course we didn’t try it until the second last day so we had to eat there twice in two days.
Some of my general Mexico vacation tips
Seriously sunscreen up! We applied sunscreen every couple of hours (which we thought it was enough) and it was not. I burned bad and I don’t normally burn.
Bring large drink containers - we brought these huge drink containers so we didn’t have to constantly travel back to get refills and it kept our drinks cool.
Pack a small first-aid kit - it came in handy a few times!
Pack at least one nice set of clothes to wear to a restaurant - we experienced one issue with wearing “shorts and a tank top” to a restaurant and had to go back and get into different clothes before we were allowed in
Happy travels!!