Overwhelming BLUE

Many of you have already been in the Riviera Maya. Maybe Cancun, Cozumel or even Playa Del Carmen to see the amazing blue of the Caribbean ocean on these fine white sand beaches.

The touristic infrastructure is impressive and seriously if it wasn’t for the little Spanish spoken here and for the prices in pesos in some places, you swear you are in the US. Playa del Carmen 5th ave is a mall by the beach with Starbucks, Hagen Daas, Sunglass Hut and Burger King. With that said we did some suba diving in Playa Del Carmen to see a huge shark and a lot of wildlife. We also spent several hours on the beach just sunbathing. Doing nothing, really.

Ruinas Maias a beira-mar em Tulum

Before Playa del Carmen we went to Tulum taking a nice bus from Chichen Itza. And we fell in love withTulum. There are two main areas to stay there : zona Hotelera (by the beach) and downtown . We stayed in downtown in this really cute hostel called El Jardin de Frida and we had a full apt with kitchen, living room and 2 balconies for only US $ 38/night including breakfast.

Jason de cara com a cor da agua de Tulum

Tulum is probably what Playa del Carmen was 10-20 years ago. It’s charm is on the ruins by the beach that actually gave the name of the city, Tulum means walls and the ruins have walls 4-6 meters thick, it’s like a fortress. The water is so clear that I could see my piss in the water. Not kidding!!!!!

Cenote Dos Ojos

Another great attraction in the area are the cenotes. It’s quite impressive to see and even better when you explain it. There is an underground river in the whole peninsula and sometimes there are some openings on the ground that create caves where you can see the rivers. In the caves there are stalactites and stalagmites and beautiful formations all under crystal clear water. There are more than 2500 cenotes in the area where you can snorkel or scuba dive in it. We did snorkeling and tried the scuba, but both of us did not feel very safe in the caves underwater and aborted the dives in 2 cenotes. We chickened out badly, so embarassing! If one day you want to go there try first the Dos Ojos cenote, by far the best of all we’ve seen.

Pre-Chickening Out!!!!

We strongly recommend if you come to this area to go to a beach called Akumal, between Tulum and Playa del Carmen. Just gorgeous place and from the shore you can do some snorkeling . We saw about 5 turtles, rays, lot of fishes and corals.

One our last day in Mexico we decided to take the 1-hour ferry and spend the day in Cozumel. We rented a scooter and drove around the WHOLE island with a nice snorkeling stop at Palancar reef. This reef was famous when Jacques Cousteau “discovered” the amazing coral formations and wildlife in Cozumel. Apparently the Hurricane Wilma destroyed a lot of the reef and seriously we were not very impressed after what we saw in Utila.

Too see really nice underwater pics click here.