Playacar web album

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¡Hola! Bienvenidos! We had a splendid stay in Playa del Carmen, a city on the Caribbean coast south of Cancun and right across from Isla Cozumel in the state of Quintana Roo. Here's a map. Playa del Carmen has some of the best diving spots like Cozumel, plus cenote diving, and it's a gorgeous, "off the beaten path" alternative to Cancun... plus it has a great night life. We stayed at the Reef Playacar, where "you are a name, not a number". It's a cute, cozy resort with kind staff, a lush, tropical canopy overhead, breathtaking landscape architecture, jungle-like privacy, and it's own little cenote. We kept running into this cute little animal that lived in there, too... an agouti. At first I didn't know what it was, so I did what I usually do in that case, I made up a name that made sense visually: squeak-a-poo. It just seemed right. Our resort had two big pools, a pool bar in one, a PADI dive center, a huge theater, several restaurants, a resident kitty, and a great view of the beach. You could even see a faint, far away glimpse of Isla Cozumel's skyline across the water. There weren't very many other Americans there, mostly Italians and other Europeans. I saw some speedos that made me cringe, but hey, it takes all kinds, right? We liked the resort overall but quite honestly, I prefer the adults-only resorts. They're alot quieter and and I'm not as afraid to get the pool water in my mouth.

We spent a couple days at the lovely, exotic, and expansive Xcaret, the Yucatan's most elaborate ecological park. On our way there we saw a spider monkey running across the highway. Xcaret has quite a few Mayan ruins, jaguars, monkeys, a Mayan village, a spectacular Mayan night show, snorkeling, reef snuba, underground river swims, beaches, and other water attractions including dolphin encounters. That was a great experience, petting the dolphins, being in the water with them, having them push you by your feet across the water. They are so powerful, athletic, and sweet, and their skin feels so soft, almost like wet velvet. Here's some of my dolphin footage. I'm always so amazed and intrigued by dolphins and how willing they are to interact with us. I can't wait to do more dolphin encounters. One of Xcaret's dolphins recently gave birth and we got to see her and her baby.We walked around in the hot sun looking at all the amazing trees, a bird conference, animals, and stopped off to drench ourselves in the beautiful stone shower coves when we could. It was a really cool feeling to just walk around in our swimsuits and sandals, showering off again and again, and feel so close to the environment. We saw the stingray pool, the baby sea turtle ponds, lots of iguanas, so many tropical plant species I couldn't possibly remember, the aquarium, and lots of underground caves

with very old trees and their huge root networks snaking through and around the rocks. When we reached the Mayan ball court, my sweetie pointed out a flock of scarlet macaws flying above the tree canopy. I loved every minute of it and didn't want to leave. Everything there, especially the landscape architecture, was so ingenious, perfect, charming, exotic, and original like it had occurred naturally... I've never seen anything close to it except Xel-ha, which isn't far from Xcaret. Xcaret is definitely the best park I've ever been to. The Yucatan Peninsula's geological structure is very unique in the world. Its sink holes or cenotes (pron. "say-no-tays") from the Mayan word dzonot (pron. "zo-note") of which there are about 3,000, were the only source of fresh water for the Mayan civilization and the tropical rainforest. They were sacred for that reason and also because they represented the entrance to the underworld. The Yucatan Peninsula is basically a porous limestone shelf with no visible rivers, just its underground river network or cenotes.

The beach at our resort was pretty but had suffered a bit of erosion from Hurricane Wilma that hadn't been fully repaired. But it was still lovely and warm to swim in. We let ourselves get tossed a bit in the turquoise water... kinda like this. The champagne colored sand was so soothing to the feet! Here's what it feels like. We also visited the Xaman-ha bird sanctuary which was a nice, sultry 10 minute walk down a road lined with hibiscus, huge birds of paradise, palms draped with vining plants, and brightly colored haciendas. They have a mini tropical rain forest at Xaman-ha that's home to green parrots, macaws, pink flamingos, brown pelicans, white pelicans, toucans, orioles, big spiders and some pretty pathways and water holes, too. I finished my Open Water Diving Certification while we were there, which was great. We went on four different dives, two at Cocoa Beach and two at Tortugas. My dive instructors were really cool, fun people with a real desire to preserve their environment. I was so glad I did my certification dives down in the Caribbean. We saw some huge sea turtles at Tortugas, one of the local dive sites... 'tortugas' is Spanish for 'turtle'. The visibility was alot better than we thought it'd be after a hurricane.The bottom current carried us right along, we barely had to make any effort, except when we were swimming against the current.

We swam into some lovely sea caves where there were large schools of cute, curious fish... here's more of dive 1 and dive 2. And hey, here's another dive video! We saw porkfish, squirrelfish, blue angelfish, huge tarpon (about as big as I am), yellowtail snappers, yellow striped goatfish, a skate (teeny stingray), bluestriped grunts, Spanish grunts, foureye butterflyfish, a couple of green moray eels, blue tang, trunkfish, sergeant majors, bluehead wrasse, trumpetfish, banded butterflyfish, blue chromis, Spanish hogfish, parrotfish, and there's always some fish I can't identify. I was hoping to see some reef sharks but there weren't any of them where we dove. We did, however, get to see something quite a bit bigger: whale sharks! We did a whale shark excursion, and the boat ride out to the whale shark hang-outs was absolutely spectacular. The water was so turquoise and we had some very interesting weather. We got hammered with some pretty torrential rain a couple of times but it was fun. You just have to plan on getting completely soaked and then you're good to go. My boyfriend got the best whale shark footage, here it is. The visibility wasn't very good in that part of the Caribbean, but we saw most of them, and we could definitely get a sense of their sheer size. Sometimes you don't find any, but fortunately we saw two that day. It was an amazing experience I'd love to have again.

It's not every day you get to snorkel with a polka-dotted fish the size of a reticulated bus. Whale sharks are definitely sharks but they're completely harmless... they're 'filter-feeders' that like to float near the surface and feed on microorganisms like plankton.

We also had the annoying but fascinating experience of Hurricane Dean, which didn't hit Playa del Carmen directly but we did get some big waves, strong winds, and one hell of a thunder and lightening show. I even got some of it on video for your viewing pleasure here. It was our very first hurricane together and it came with an added bonus: we got to sleep with about 200 people in one night. Not bad, huh? I guess now I know what it's like to be a politician. The resort staff were really great at handling the whole ordeal and there wasn't a time when I didn't have complete confidence that we were safe and nothing bad happened to us. I actually feel glad we got to experience it at least once but hopefully it'll be our last time. It was definitely something new and exciting. And I'm all about that. We really enjoyed going in to town to shop, eat dinner, and people watch. There are lots of adorable places to eat outside on the strip, and the food was always tastey. Some of the restaurants had the grass roof tiki style where there might be an old tree growing up through the restaurant and through the roof. There were street musicians that would come around and offer to play for a small donation. Overall, Playa del Carmen is really a perfect place to stay if you want to avoid huge crowds and the feeling of a big touristy city. I definitely hope to go visit Playa del Carmen again, and especially Xcaret!

Photos are below. Just click on any image to make it larger.