Visiting Mexico was a good adventure, and I welcomed the humid weather that reminded me a lot about Nigeria, coupled with the carefree driving and incessant use of vehicle horns. The first observation was the airport taxi primarily charging in US dollars as opposed to their Pesos, I find that weird but acceptable since some tourists only have US dollars (and they share a border with the US), not me though.
Secondly, everyone spoke Spanish regardless of whom they spoke to. That’s absolutely fine as well, I just assumed since I was on a tour bus the guide would be considerate and speak a little English, but that didn’t quite happen. I even got my google translate working nonstop but I couldn’t keep up.
I eventually found myself in Mayan, they had an atmosphere that reminded me of my village in the East of Nigeria, lots of local dogs in the street, food wasn’t the best for me, clothes hanging off rooftops, and the young boy that sold me a drink in a village without tarred roads, cheated me to earn some extra change (I didn’t mind this since I was exploring his local restaurant).
And then I visited Tulum! which is a fun word to pronounce, Tulum! Here, we visited a conservative area that had a body of water (beach) and few semi-demolished structures, sadly I couldn’t read the history of the structures since it was written in Spanish and our guide didn’t explain either.
I visited a casino later that evening, and do you know what’s worse than being a first-time gambler, well I do, it’s being a first-time gambler at a casino where the dealer doesn’t speak English (of course no fault of his), and just like you imagined, the house won after dealing me just 2 cards. The house always wins though, so I wasn’t mad. Visiting the local market was super fun.
Isla Mujeres was a beautiful Island and they referred to it as ‘the island of women’, have I mentioned that people don’t wear tops around here? it was hotter than Nigeria, so we all had to take off our shirts and roam the streets freely. We took a ferry to the island with live music performance from some amazing Mexican entertainers, it was like something out of a movie, I loved it.
It’s easy to stay in the zona hotelera area and miss out on seeing other beautiful parts of the country. Almost everyone was nice and welcoming, and unlike in the colder regions of the world like North America, where a lot of people walk, in Cancun people did not walk a lot, they waited at bus-stops for buses. I’m thinking this had something to do with the hot weather. Who knows.
