Category Archives: COVID-19

Playa del Carmen – Day 1

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My United flight arrived in Terminal 3 and besides a long line to get to immigration it went fairly smoothly. They ask you to fill out a COVID-19 screening form which nobody read or collected so maybe it was for my benefit? Maybe they ask for it when I leave? Who knows 🙂

Finding the ADO bus was easy – just push all the taxi drivers out of the way and the bus is behind them!

So taking the bus to Playa del Carmen is certainly the cheapest option, but it is not the quickest. Right now buses run every 45 minutes and I had just missed the 14:45 bus. Nevertheless there is some shade while you wait and a person selling overpriced water and beer.

The fastest way would be to arrange private transport which works well if you are a family (or even 2 people) but for 1 person it’s quite steep at about $60US for the 45 minute ride.

The bus has AC and they played some sort of movie dubbed over in Spanish while I looked out at the scenery.

The view of Playa del Carmen from one of the public beaches

The view from Playa del Carmen is lovely and there are lots of places to eat that face the water. There are, unfortunately, lots of touts trying to sell you everything form hats to sunglasses to drugs. I have been offered marijuana and cocaine so far on 5th Ave. I’d like to point out that Mexico has fairly strict drug laws so here is probably not the best place to experiment 🙂

Taco’s by the ocean – La Tarraya

There is quite a variety of food and also a variety of prices. Places closer to the beach tend to be a bit more expensive – but where I had lunch had an awesome view and was fairly affordable.

Mayan ruins in Playacar

Playacar is a gated community to the South of Playa del Carmen. It is where you will find most of the resorts in this area. Of interest however, there are some Mayan ruins in this area. As far as I know these are some of the only free Mayan ruins in the whole of Mexico. You can access these by walking along the public beach next to Señor Frog’s which I have not yet been to but which my partner tells me is obligatory once he gets here!

City Hall

Further inland if you walk just a couple block you will see the real city life. Once you leave the beach you will loose the touts trying to sell you things and you will see the people that live here. Above is City Hall with some Christmas decorations. They even created an igloo for the kids out of paper and you can actually go inside it. Yeah, I know it is for kids, but what the heck.

Spaceships

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Who thought that leaving Virginia would be such a challenge? The city was demolishing a tall building right beside the Metrorail station that had the bus to the airport. Conveniently the transit company decided to simply skip that stop and the new stop was pretty close to the darn airport, so I took an Uber.

Apparently Virginia is for lovers who do not use photo radar.

The flight to Cancun was fairly uneventful for the first half – especially the food. United serves a “snack box” in business class (which they like to call first) that is just full of junk food. Luckily I was warned in advance and procured a sandwich for the flight. The sandwich was good but it made by fellow passengers jealous.

As we were passing over the middle of Florida the captain came on to tell us that a rocket had been launched from Cape Canaveral. As I looked out of the window I can genuinely say that I have never seen such a thing while on board an aircraft before.

This is a SpaceX rocket just after being launched.

It was quite an incredible view from the aircraft as we watched the rocket continue it’s assent into space. The flight path for this aircraft goes quite close to the cape so I am curious how many other rockets United may have seen as they flew over.

Washington, DC

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Visiting Washington at the moment is somewhat interesting. COVID-19 means that a lot of things have changed, many things are closed, and almost everything has some restrictions. On top of this there are still a number of protest happening, especially close to the White House.

A view from Key Bridge

I stayed in Arlington so to get to DC I walked across the Key Bridge into Georgetown. The nice view above is from my walk over the bridge last night. Transit is running in DC but it is reduced at the moment due to low ridership numbers. Indeed, there have been several metro trains that I have taken with only myself and a handful of other people on them.

Walking remains a good way to get around and I have done a lot of that. I find Washington and Arlington to be very walkable and bike friendly places. Bike rentals are all over the place and so are those scooters from Lime, Lyft, Bird and others.

US Marine War Memorial

The US Marine War Memorial is right next to the Arlington Cemetery so if you are visiting the cemetery then make sure to make a stop to see the Marine Memorial as well. There is also a good view from here across the river to DC.

National Museum of Women in the Arts

The only place I went on the DC side was the National Museum of Women in the Arts which is a fantastic art gallery. It’s one of the few museums in DC that is open right now after the latest restrictions shut down all the Smithsonian museums.

This museum presents works from many women around the world and is a highlight since women are unfortunately often underrepresented in the art world.

It’s easy walking distance from the metro and is well worth checking out. There are numerous coffee places and restaurants in the area but at the moment most of them are closed.