Mexico for Dummies

by Uli Probst

Our initial plan was to visit Mexico, because our daughter Andrea lives in Mexico City and because we wanted to visit Cuba which is close by. I found a one way flight to Cancun in summer and booked it thinking it would be easy to enter Cuba from Mexico for an US citizen. It all turned out different (as so often). We did not go to Cuba and also not to Central America giving us more time to explore Mexico.

Michelle, coming from California, was already an expert in Mexico. But since I had never been, Cancun was a perfect start, because it is definitely Mexico for dummies. 

What is the difference between Miami and Cancun?

Not much, but in Cancun people speak English.

Yes, we flew in with the charter airline Condor from Munich. No, we did not stay at the beach in a hotel like this one.

We found a nice small hotel in Cancun town with a little bit of a jungle feeling. It fitted perfectly to the climate, since it was really humid and hot.

Michelle loves Mexican food and we went to a cantina for food. Since it was Dia de Muertes all the waiters and many guests were dressed in skeleton style. After dinner and listening to Mariachi music we did the standard picture for tourists. In my opinion, we look scarier in that picture than all the other scary figures. I post it any anyway to scare the readers.

The beaches are great. White coral sand, blue water, sun and clouds. Of course, we spent one afternoon swimming.

After a day at the beach we were ready for some museums. Michelle found a nice art museum in Cancun. The museum was just a little hard to get to. First we took a bus out to the hotel zone. BTW do you know that Mexican buses leak when it rains? On our way home it poured like crazy and I got really wet sitting in the bus next to the window.

We wanted to check out the beach at a big hotel.  Unfortunately, we could not go to the beach, because the hotel was guarded like Fort Knox. We tried at different places, but the guards were strict. Maybe it would have helped, if we bought a time share at their place right away, but since we wanted to go to the museum anyway, we decided against buying the time share.

Let us not get distracted. We are on our way to the museum. Across the street was the lagoon, where we took a boat to our destination. 

The captain was texting on his phone the whole time, but he still managed to bring us safely thru the lagoon, the mangroves and open water during rough seas to the museum.

“Estan listo?“, how the Mexican says. Are you ready for modern art?

We put on our snorkel gear and snorkeled with 20 other people to the exposition which were composed of very interesting under water sculptures. Despite the VW scandal they had a VW Beetle and many interesting sculptures.

Snorkeling with 20 people behind a guide felt a little bit like visiting the Louvre in Paris during the tourist season. Well, a little different, since you do not get fins in your face in the Louvre. Overall it was very fascinating to see all the underwater art surrounded by tropical fish.

It was a great last day in the “Mexico for Dummies” and we were prepared for a trip a little deeper into the real Mexico. On the next morning we went to the ADO bus station and took a bus to the capital of Yucatan.

See you soon in Merida