Mexico, vacation... Playa del Carmen, town for tourists, part 12

To read the previous part click here - Mexico, vacation... Sandos Playacar resort, part 11

We already looked at resorts, ruins, small towns and beaches... Let's take a look at the big town of Playa del Carmen, the nearest city to our resort and kinda center of resort life in the area.

 

I guess we can call Playa del Carmen the second important city in this area after Cancun. There are dozens of resorts and hotels located in Playa del Carmen and around the town. So you you can expect the life is boiling here day and night... but, probably, more during the day time... or at night? :)

City is relatively close to the Cancun airport, it takes just about an hour to get here after your plane lands. But... one can get stuck in the traffic once he hits the city limit in the rush hours. But anyway this is the closest and most developed spot after Cancun.

It was a small fishing village just a few decades ago (but Cancun also wasn't that big this time). But... nowadays this is a big, bright and highly attractive destination for all kinds of people and all of them are browsing along Fifth Ave, moving somewhere, looking for something and making this place very alive. You can find tons of small and big hotels, condos you can rent from Airbnb, many restaurants and gift shops around downtown. Journey to Cozumel island takes just about an hour from the pier just between downtown and Playcar, the luxury zone filled with resorts, villas and golf clubs. Everything is close here...

But let's just walk along the main street and around... let's just look at the people, who are browsing around. By the way, we met a lot of police there, and more surprising, we found three different police departments taking care of the security there - Tourist Police (and my guess is these guys are mainly about to help and protect tourists), Municipal Police and Federal Police. And all of them were heavily armed, patrolling the streets and... pretty friendly... Wow, so much protection :) but we didn't complain...

But if you walk just a few steps away, you are immediately leaving this busy place and can see how the people are living there. But... we are going to look at it in the next part.

To be continued...

Pictures were taken in March 2018.