Last month, I managed to fulfill a minor goal I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fulfill this year: to travel outside of the country.
Yes, it was only a brief trip. We left on a Tuesday morning and returned home on Thursday night, so we were there for only two days, which for some people usually isn’t enough to fully enjoy a trip abroad. Because of this, our trip wasn’t completely ideal, and we did less than we managed to do during our previous trips, but we still had some good experiences that made it worth it.
It all began when my stepdad found some good deals for flights to Cancun through Expedia. At first, we were looking into possibly going during October. However, because my stepdad was going to be accepting a job that would begin around the start of September, he thought it would be better to go during August. As a result, he decided to buy tickets for a flight that was just a week away. This didn’t seem very ideal for me because I now work full time and I wanted to avoid requesting too many days off when I’ve only had this job for a few months. I also didn’t think you could plan for a trip so easily in just a week. Because of my hesitation, my parents let me decide whether I wanted to come along with them or stay at home while only they went on the trip. I almost wanted to stay behind, but because I’ve been wanting to travel outside of the country for years now, I didn’t want to miss out on the chance to do so that easily, even it was just for a brief trip. As a result, I decided to come along with them, and we once again got to travel as a family.
As with most of our previous trips, we left for the O’Hare Airport early in the morning, leaving our car parked around the Mariott Hotel in Rosemount, and a bus took us to the airport. For this trip, we got to ride through Frontier Airlines, which we’d never used before. Our flight lasted about four hours, and I spent most of that time reading through my Kindle Paperwhite, a device I’m glad to finally own because of how much easier it makes it for me to get through e-books. Plus, you don’t need an internet connection to be able to read the e-books you already downloaded on your device, so it’s very ideal to use for flights in which you might not always have free access to wi-fi.
Upon our arrival, we had to go through immigration, which is the one obvious major difference from our previous flights. I’ve heard that it can sometimes be difficult for people to go through this process, but it turned out being quick and easy for us, in part because my stepdad was born in Mexico. After this, we tried to do a currency exchange. American dollars are accepted in many places in Cancun, but having pesos does make it more convenient for everyone. During this process, I found out that as of 2023, one dollar is the equivalent of fifteen pesos in Mexico. My mom said that it used to be eighteen or nineteen pesos back in 2018 when my parents had gone to Mexico on their own, so the value has gone down a bit since then.
We then went over to a car rental service to get the car we’d be using to drive around Cancun. One video I watched on traveling to Cancun advised visitors to not use taxis because they tend to easily scam customers, so it was very convenient that we were able to rent a car. When we got the car, we drove for a while until we got to Playa del Carmen, which was where our hotel was located. As has been the case in other trips, it took us a while to find our hotel. Our GPS was working well enough, but it wasn’t perfect either, so we had to keep an eye out for the hotel. At first, it appeared as if it’d be in a rundown section of the city, where the buildings that looked as if they could be hotels were not in great shape. This led me to feel a bit dismayed, wondering if we had been scammed to stay in a bad hotel. However, this turned out being the wrong location, and after some more driving around, we found the hotel, and although it was nowhere close to the expensive resorts you could find in other parts of the city, it wasn’t a low- rate place either.
Once we checked in and put away all our belongings, we immediately went out and started walking around Cancun. We were able to tell right away that we were in an area that clearly served tourists. Signs were often in both Spanish and English, American, Canadian, and other international flags were sometimes hung beside the Mexican flag, and you could find places like 7 Eleven, McDonalds, and Starbucks on many different corners. So in a way, it almost felt as if we were visiting a state like Florida instead of a foreign country. And yet there was a certain feel to the area that you couldn’t find back home, something I’d also felt when visiting other parts of Latin America such as Guatemala when I was a child and Puerto Rico two years ago. Perhaps it’s the look of the area you’re traveling in, the foods you can find, or some the people you interact with that make a difference, or simply the fact that most of what you find there is authentic and not the many imitations that you often find the US. Either way, experiencing this authenticity is probably one of the best parts of traveling, and something I liked being able to experience for the first time in years.
We then went on a ferry ride. We were seated around the upper deck of the boat, so we got a great view of the Caribbean Sea. We’d been on ferry rides before, but there would usually be a guide or host there who would talk to passengers about their surroundings or the activities they were able to do while they were on the ferry. Here, however, passengers were left on their own to just sit around and do as they please. Music was played throughout the ride, which consisted of mostly English language music from the 80s, which I do like, but I think listening to Spanish language music would have probably made the experience better. Either way, it was still an amazing and relaxing experience.
The ferry landed on the Cozumel islands, which are located to the side of the Playa del Carmen. This area had almost as much places meant to attract tourists, but it also felt a little more local than Playa del Carmen. While there, we briefly stopped by at a church shrine and then finally went to a small local restaurant to get dinner. Since we hadn’t had much to eat besides snacks all day, I was glad to have some actual food, even though it wasn’t exactly an ideal meal for traveling. I had some tacos that only came with meat and cilantro due to my request for no onions (I would add tomatoes and lettuce that came with another family member’s orders), and I also had some nachos that my family ordered. Afterwards, we bought churros and fried bananas that came with chocolate. So we ate decently, but I probably would have preferred much more. We then took a ferry back to Playa del Carmen and returned to our hotel to sleep for the night.
The next day, we got up around dawn to drive over to Yucatan, where the Mayan pyramids are located in a place called Chichen Itza. We stopped at a village that reminded me a lot of the ones I’d seen in Guatemala and Puerto Rico, where you’re much more likely to find locals and less areas dedicated to serving tourists. We had bread with meat and refried beans and Coca-Cola from one of the local stores, which served as our break fast for the day. After waiting a while and getting some help with directions from locals, we drove away again and arrived at Chichen Itza. While there, we noticed people that spoke several different languages, along with guides that were available to give tours of the area in the languages which these tourists spoke. For instance I took notice of several French individuals who were accompanying other travelers who spoke English, which I liked on account of how I’ve studied French before and I don’t always find native speakers close to home. It serves as a reminder that you can find people from all over the world when you travel.
We went along with a man that gave guided tours in Spanish. Remaining within a small group, we got to see the pyramids and other ancient Mayan Ruins, the former including what’s considered to be one of the seven wonders of the universe. As far as I’m aware of, I hadn’t seen any of these prior to this trip, so it was a cool experience to be able to see this. During this tour, our guide gave us a lot of stories and information about the pyramid, the Mayans and their way of life, and how visiting these areas has changed over time. For instance, people used to be able to step inside the pyramids, but since 2006 this has been forbidden because people would do things they weren’t supposed to do. Also, although the Mayans would perform human sacrifices, there were often regulations behind them, such as not being permitted to sacrifice women or girls. And one of the ruins was the site of ball games which were played to determine who would be sacrificed next, a sentence which was given to the winners of the game. Some of this information included things I remember hearing about before (which includes the ball games), but which I’d somehow forgotten over the years, and being able to recall this while learning about many other things certainly made this a memorable part of our trip.
After this, we tried going to another ancient ruins cite. However, due to construction that was going on around certain parts of that area, the directions given to us via GPS were not accurate, so we ended up getting lost, even struggling to find gas stations. We drove around for hours, and by the time we made to the cite of the ruins, they were about to close for the day. We gave up on our plans for this and instead went to Costco to eat pizza and returned to Playa del Carmen, where we walked around the streets, tried some ice cream, bought certain things we needed, and went to a small casino before returning to our hotel for the night.
The next day, we went to the airport early to leave Cancun. Because there was no McDonalds or more affordable options at this airport, we bought coffee and ham and cheese sandwiches from Starbucks. We waited for a couple hours before we took off for our four-hour flight back home. I spent that time reading from my Kindle and eating some snacks, and we arrived in Chicago around four or five o’clock, but it took a long time for us to leave the airport due to a longer wait for immigration and having to be shuffled over to the Marriott where we left our car, so we didn’t make it home until around 8:00 PM.
And that was how my trip to Cancun went. Although our trip was short and we were held back on some of our planned activities, we still got to enjoy the activities we were able to do and I got to not only visit Mexico for the first time, but also to travel outside of the country for the first time in twenty years. This all made this brief trip worth it.