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With about a week left in Central America we were slowly making our way towards Cancun to catch our flight out. We decided a few days beaching and working on our tans was the way forward and headed towards Playa Del Carmen, where some of the best diving in the world is to be had. Score!
We arrived off a rather long 7 hour bus ride (with several changes in destination throughout the journey due to my changes in heart… hey, its half the fun of travelling!), into Playa. Having been warned from other travellers that its very touristy and even skippable, we figured we were strong enough to ignore the call of the 'one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor' t-shirts and various american-oriented bars for long enough to get a few dives in. We walked into the town to find the hostel we had selected for its central location and found ourselves on the main strip. It stopped us in our tracks. It looked like what I expect a street in Vegas to look like, only with less casinos. If anyone has been to the 'USA' part of Epcot in Disneyworld, you can imagine what we were looking at. It was packed full of Americans on holiday, and not the good kind (if there is one…!)
We found our hostel and went for an explore. After a left turn at the Starbucks followed by a right turn at the Haagen Daaz & arriving at another Starbucks we were suitably confused. Turns out somebody either dumped America in Mexico or we were back on Queen Street in Cardiff. We had a couple of beers in the bar & a 1 dollar taco, & grabbed an early night!
The following morning it turned out that it wasn't all a Fear & Loathing style hallucination & everything was still there & still fairly garish! We decided to do the only sensible thing, book some more scuba & spend the day in the sun! The beach was fairly beautiful, white sands stretching for miles & all banked by the luxury hotels & bars. We had a few hours of chilling & then the obligatory splish splash before the heat got too much & we retired.
Having been deprived of diving for over a month (the horror!) we had heard that some of the world's best spots were in Mexico... & conveniently just where we were headed! After the carnage that was festival we had made our way to the coast to Playa, which apart from being a bit of a car crash, is also the ferry port to Cozumel, a very touristy island where cruise ships docking seem to be the main activity... with the exception of its first class diving!
Having been warned that we probably wouldn't enjoy a stay on the island (thanks Baz & Wendy - you were right!), we organised a day trip over to dive the north side of the island with a local dive master/ reef expert. We arrived at the dive centre and got kitted out with all the necessaties, before heading to the harbor where his boat was waiting to get out onto the water. The dives were pretty impressive, the area is known for reef walls and large underwater canyons. We were joined by sting rays, barracudas and a friendly sea turtle which swam with us during the second dive. We were spoilt on this trip as the crew set up all our gear for us and took it all apart at the end - we're used to doing it ourselves so was a pleasant change to relax in the sun at the end of the day!
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