Hi everybody,
After passing a few months in Portugal, we returned to Spain to spend the summer months. Having Diego’s apartment in Valencia and seeing how everything gets on those dates, we decided to return with the idea of spending only July and August, to leave for a new destination at the beginning of September.
Right at the beginning of July we showed the apartment to a couple who were interested in buying it and they said yes, they wanted it.
In another post I will tell you how the sale process went, but the thing is that we thought that in a month we would sign the sale. But no, it was the end of September, and we still had no news from this couple.
We thought of going to some northern European country for a couple of months to give them time to manage the mortgage with the bank. We chose Romania, but then we saw that there were no good accommodations. So, we ruled out that country, then we said “thank goodness” because the covid cases just started to rise and everything was collapsed.
The funny thing is that this time it was Diego who was disgusted after a month of being in Spain and with a crazy desire to leave.
At the end of September, we decided to go to South America, which was our initial plan since we both worked remotely. In addition, Diego’s father already had a power of attorney to do any necessary legal procedures, so Diego would not have to return to Spain to sign the sale of the apartment.
I wanted to go to Argentina and then go up and through all the countries, but many countries in South America were still closed due to covid in September 2021.
So, we thought about going to Mexico for a few months until things were normalizing in South America.
We wanted a beach place and since I have seen Bachelor in Paradise, I have been wanting to visit Sayulita, but unfortunately there we did not find any accommodation that suited our needs: central because we do not want to rent a car, good internet, work area and well-equipped kitchen.
We had already ruled out Tulum since our first trip to Mexico because it is massive, all the beaches are closed by the resorts and because you could not sleep due to the noise of the discos.
We did not know Cancun, but it was also ruled out because tourism there is massive.
We investigated that Playa del Carmen was perhaps our type of place without too much tourism.
With destiny decided, it was time to see how to get there.
From Valencia there was no direct flight to Cancun and the cheapest we found was with Lufthansa making a 5-hour stopover in Frankfurt (Then we saw that it might have been better to fly from Madrid or Barcelona directly to Cancun).
From there we flew to Mexico City and decided to spend the night there because the only flight that went to Cancun at night did not leave us much room to grab our bags and check in again. Already on our first trip to Mexico we lost a flight, and we did not want the same to happen to us.
I must tell you that it was the first time I was flying in such a huge double-decker plane, and I had never seen so many people in first class either. In fact, it seemed that more people were in first class than in economy class.
Even though the plane was huge, the space you had to move in economy class was the smallest I have seen so far. So, the flight hours became much more stressful than normal.
We ordered vegan food and it wasn’t bad; but you can see that the portions are getting smaller and smaller.
What impressed me was the realization that people who hadn’t ordered special food had nothing to choose from. I remember that before being vegan, they gave you two menu options. In addition, the lasagna they gave people was two loaches of pasta in a sea of béchamel and the girl next to me didn’t even eat it.
It is incredible how the quality of the airlines has dropped dramatically. Hence, I made a mental note to try to avoid Lufthansa for future trips.
Another curious thing is that no one checked our carry-on luggage at the time of checking in our suitcases and when boarding in Valencia and then in Frankfurt, in both places they wanted to remove my backpack to check it in to Mexico City. As iou can imagine, they were not going to do it to me, but the funny thing is that there were many people with carry-on bags bigger than my backpack. Diego says it’s because the cover was fluorescent yellow, and it attracted a lot of attention.
The next day we went to the airport, and you can’t imagine the trashy people that was going to Cancun. The most marginal and rude that you can imagine. Luckily the flight was short because it was a nightmare: people slamming luggage compartments closed, everyone screaming, laughing out loud, people snoring, etc.
I always complained about the bad manners of the Spaniards and especially on the flights leaving from Valencia, but not even there I was on a flight with so many disgusting people. We felt lucky not to stay in Cancun.
As the final phase of the trip, we took a taxi that cost us 1100 pesos since there is no Uber in Playa del Carmen. It takes an hour to get from Cancun to Playa del Carmen.
We had the option of going with the ADO bus to Playa del Carmen station but carrying 3 suitcases and with the fatigue that we had, we decided to take a taxi and avoid further inconvenience.
Thus, after almost 48 hours of travel, we were finally in Playa del Carmen.
I will tell you about the experience and the places we visited in future posts.