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 🙂
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 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 🙂
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.
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!
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.