Beats the Pants off Providence
Written: Mar 26 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Stunning land, Interesting locale, Lots to do, Chichén Itzá, If you are young, lots of other likeminded young people
Cons: Can be expensive, More and more touristy and commercial, the copper head snakes
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| eeks's Full Review: Cancun |
Time for you to sit back and have another Pina Colada, as I write another review of a past voyage to somewhere more sunny than non-sunny Providencia, in the language of our wonderful and only somewhat extremely corrupt mayor, Mr. Buddy Cianci. Did you know that “cianci” means “dirty rags” in Italian? No wonder he has it pronounced incorrectly as “see-on-see.”
Twice in my life I have been lucky enough to spend some time in Cancún. Now, you might recognize it as the MTV’s Spring Break destination of du jour, or as a popular destination for college boys (and creepy old men) and girls, but when I enjoyed the fine fruits of Cancún, my ages were respectively, 4 and 10, so I was there with the fam. Cancún is located on the tip of the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico, flush on the Gulf of Mexico and is one of the prime tourist spots of North America, second only to the exotic state of Delaware.
Remember: This is through the eyes of (mainly) a 10 year old (at the time) male from a suburb of Boston. Just keep that in mind. I am not going to comment on any sort of spring break specific activities, because back in that day, girls were still icky to me. But I have a feeling spring break in Cancún would be unreal, as well as surreal.
The Resort
We stayed in the fanfabultastic Club Med and I remember it was a blast. Essentially, if you choose the resort route, you get the following: paid for meals at designated times (all you can eat three times a day, we had to pay for drinks with special colored beads), a safe/sheltered environment full of other tourists, lots of activities/lessons available by sign-up (scuba diving, wind surfing, glass-bottomed boating, parasailing, et alia), friendly workers who are paid to make you happy and everything in general is facile and worry free. You do miss out on a lot though: reality and the true people who live in Cancún, more opportunities to explore and be adventuresome, cheaper, better lodging, and a vacation that deviates at all from the track. Due to my young age, I got to take part in the kid activity program, which included all sorts of stuff from swimming to games to plays with other kids. My favorite was snack time, as they gave me the Hershey’s chocolate which I desperately craved.
The Land, The Weather, The Sun
The Yucatán is stunning and Cancún is unreal. The water was clear and had all sorts of fish in it; at the time, fish scared me like no other earthly creature, as I had been subjected to Jaws (while we were ACTUALLY in Martha’s Vineyard) when I was 4. It was very hot, but in a good way; if you are on vacation, especially from the north, extrem heat and warmth are always a positive.
The People
When I was 4, from the minute we arrived, a band of three Mexican musicians learned my name, and became my best friends; I introduced them to my collection of Humpty Dumpties, and we all got along fantastically (sadly one of the Humpty Dumpties drowned in the hot tub T.T). They would say “William, William” and then play a song, often “La Cucaracha “(sp?). So I guess you could say the people were friendly. Like in St. Lucia, Cancún is geared towards tourism, so there is financial incentives for the Mexicans to be kind to gringos like me. Note that you will be subject to a constant barrage of vendors flirting with your money. The language in Cancún is obviously Spanish, but you can manage fine with English and common sense.
The Snake
I did not encounter the belligerent copperhead snake, but rest assured if I had, I would have slain it and eaten it for dinner.
What to do
I swam, glass-bottomed boated, snorkeled, hot-tubbed, shopped in the city, saw the sites, did the activity group with other kids and the first time, played my mom constantly in cards, usually “Kings in the Corner.” Keep in mind the fact that there was opportunity to do every and any sunny vacation type activity in Cancún.
The thing that I loved the most was probably during the time I was 10, when we traveled out to the old Mayan ruins at Chichén Itzá. These were so cool. Chichén Itzá was the ruins of a city built about a millennium ago, by the Mayans, a city which became overgrown with jungle years before the conquistadores ever arrived. Lots of mystery and hubbub surrounds the decline of the Mayans, and I am always a sucker for interesting history. Our tour guide was an insane and verbose Mexican man who talked non-stop about the reptile/man/bird Mayan god, Quetzalcoatl, for about the entire long bus trip. At Chichén Itzá there were a couple of really large temples that you can scale, there was a ball court for the game in which the losers would be sacrificed, and there was one temple which was aligned in such a solar fashion that a beam of light would run down its stairs on the day of the spring solstice; guess what day we happened to be there? =) Here is an informative site about the layout and buildings there:
http://xaac.com/playacar/chichen.htm
Caveats and Assorted Advice
You will probably need to use pesos (the Mexican currency) and be weary of getting into trouble with the law; the Mexican legal system is a nightmare and you are not protected by your US citizenship (keep that in mind in EVERY country to which you go). If you are going with a loved one or with the fam, be weary of the spring breakers. If you are on spring break just keep this in mind:
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!SPRING BREAK!!! WOOOOOOOOO!!!!”
Conclusion
I think the key to any vacation is determining up front what exactly you seek to extract from it. If you want a warm escapist retreat from reality at a high price with some excellent sites to see, then hit up Cancún. Cancún was one of my favorite vacations ever. If you are a spring breaker looking for cheap lodging and an extremely hedonistic environment, well, then Cancún would probably work for you too, and I can give an unconditional Eekian guarantee that it would work better for you than non-sunny Providence.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
eeks
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Willy Holt
Location: Boston, Mass
Reviews written: 58
Trusted by: 157 members
About Me:
Wow--looking back on this half my articles were atrocious and embarassingly titled--all for the bling-bling.
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