jamid

If you live in a suburb, drive an SUV, and shop at Wal*Mart, you might love Cancun.

The Hotel Zone is pure Vegas, catering to American frat kids and older people who hate their jobs and live to get rip-roaring drunk in public once a year in some bizarre fantasy that they, too, are still attractive like the frat kids and not really 26 or 51 and fifty pounds overweight. There’s a Hard Rock Cafe on every street corner in the Hotel Zone. At these establishments, it seems there are signed pictures (!!!) of heavy metal bands you heard of once in 1986. That’s pretty exciting, isn’t it?

I suppose for less angsty people, it is. Lucky them.

For me, the highlight of the time I spent in the Hotel Zone was a lagoon tour on some little speedboats. You get to drive your own boat through the lagoon and out into the ocean, where you can snorkel. The snorkeling is fenced in, crowded, and really awful. I saw like three gray fish, drank/breathed a gallon of icky sea water, and accidentally kicked someone in the head with my flipper. But the boat trip alone is genuinely worth $15-$20 USD, and the guides are competent and patient. I hope you’ll tip well.

For reasons beyond my control, I spent the rest of the day in the Hotel Zone of Cancun trying not to get drunk on $1 Coronitas and wishing I were experiencing Mexico, not Vegas-by-the-sea. I found big bottles of Kahlua for $8 at a Cancun liquor store, which meant we could drink back at the hotel—more my style than getting wasted far from where I plan to sleep in a country where I don’t speak the language very well.

Downtown Cancun is better than Cancun’s Hotel Zone. There’s a friendly, inexpensive restaurant down the northernmost pedestrian alley off Avenida Tulum, across from the city government headquarters. Hotel Colonial, down the next alley to the south, was absolutely awful, from the worrying leering front desk staff, to the shabby decor, to the pubic hair on the pillow (must have run out of mints), to the extremely loud dance club right next to the building that went until at least 3 a.m.

To escape from Cancun, grab a taxi or a combi to the ADO bus station, and you can get to some fun places like Cozumel, Chichen Itza, Xel Ha, and Tulum. There are undoubtedly many other places nicer than Cancun, but I didn’t have time to see them all. If you speak enough Spanish to get around on your own, steer clear of tours—they overcharge and don’t give you enough time to see what you’d like to.

It’s been about ten years since I was at Deane’s, but when I was there, it was a charmingly-maintained fifties-style motel, $30 a night, with a staircase straight to the beach.