4 Days In Playa Del Carmen

These images were originally published on a now-defunct Telegram channel and this blogpost has been backdated to be at the correct time in history. I've taken this opportunity to better select the images to share for telling the story and conveying the experience, and I've written much more explanation than I originally did when it was a late-night post to a Telegram channel after a long day.

In March of 2025, I travelled to Playa Del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico with my family for a short vacation. The trip lasted from March 6th to 10th, just before the Spring Break crowd took the world's vacation destinations by storm. Even though the trip was short, we managed to cram a whole lot into the long weekend. Being my first trip South of the border, this was a great opportunity to put my Spanish learning to the test.

Our group after landing in Cancún. I'm holding the camera.

Starting In Portland

Our journey didn't start out in Seattle, which would have made more sense for just myself and the girlfriend. Instead we started in Portland since my brother and his wife live down there and the logistics for them getting to Seattle were a nightmare. We stayed in Portland the night before the flight since our flight was at the buttcrack of dawn.

For dinner the night before the flight, we went to the Cartlandia location on 82nd Ave. The food that we got was stupendous. Look at the sheer length of that Bahn Mi. It was as tasty as it was long. And for a good price too (coming from the perspective of Washington prices). This seems like a good point to give a little bit of history on the Portland food scene. The basic flow of events, as best as I understand them, is along these lines:

As a result of the above series of events, Portland is notable for being one of the best cities for street food on planet Earth. Additionally, a much higher proportion of the food available in Portland is really good compared to other cities. You can find food trucks in nearly every empty space in the city, and you can be fairly confident that what you get will be good. This time, Portland did not disappoint (not a surprise).

PDX

We got to the airport at about 1:30am. Our flight left at 5-something. You might find yourself wondering "why did you get to the airport so incredibly early". If you're not early, you're late. Much to my shock when we arrived, they had remodelled the airport since the last time that I passed through.

The remodel looks amazing. There's these beautiful wood facades everywhere. There's art installations everywhere. It's a place that's actually nice to be instead of a purgatory of hell that airports usually wind up being. I had plenty of time to explore thanks to the fact that we got the airport so early, so I saw most of the airport.

While walking around the empty airport, I was able to take what I feel are some intriguing shots. These spaces are designed to hold and move a lot of people. But here they are empty. Like a giant just before waking up. My favorite picture here is the drinks fridge. It was at a convenience stand that didn't open for a few more hours.

In my wandering, I came across an installation of objects from Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. This film was shot in Portland, so the props didn't have far to go. I hadn't (and still haven't) seen the film, but it was intriguing to see how detailed and expressive the models actually are in real life. I normally expect things to be phoned in, with simple faces in real life that are "enhanced" in CGI.

I also found a statue of former Oregon governor Vic Atiyeh. Worth noting here is that the former governor's statue is holding a boarding pass from Portland to Tokyo, and this boarding pass is sporting a large SSSS on the front. This "quad" signifies that the holder has been "selected" for Secondary Security Screening Selection. Maybe this occasionally happens randomly, but it happens every time you fly if you're on the "Selectee List", one notch down from the No-Fly list. Actually they're the same list, it's just whether or not a box is ticked that determines if you are allowed on airplanes or not. Having this on your boarding pass makes your time at airports quite uncomfortable: everything takes longer, you are scrutinized under a microscope, and your freedom of movement is limited. Thousands of dollars in man-hours are wasted every time a selectee has a flight. I was at first astounded to see this on the boarding pass of a statue of a government official, but it could well be a nod to Vic's Middle Eastern heritage and the "random selection" of anyone profiled as a threat. Related reading.

Lodging

After getting on the airplane in Portland, we had a layover in Salt Lake City (really weird vibes at that airport), and then took off for Cancún. We made it through customs without any fuss and got into a rideshare that we had reserved online to take us the short road trip from the Cancún airport to Playa Del Carmen. We checked into our lodging and they gave us these wrist bands to "get discounts" (easily identify us as tourists) and told us that if we didn't return them we would be heavily fined. We were not in fact heavily fined when we didn't return them.

The condo that we had rented was pretty great. I don't have many pictures of the inside, but it was pretty swanky. Three floors, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a jacuzzi on the roof, and a patio on the second floor. Tropical foliage all over the place and a shared swimming pool for all the guests at the complex. The bottom floor shower was quite large and had some nice tile-work. The water was not potable.

The art hanging throughout the condo certainly had a theme. You can really tell that it was all painted by the same artist with a...taste. Everyone is caked up, even the child in the first painting. Even the dog. You just know that that bird is packing a dump truck beneath those feathers.

Artistry

It's not just inside the hotel. In fact, everywhere that you look in Playa Del Carmen, you will find artwork. Coming from a culture that takes itself too seriously to just have cool art on the walls, it was so refreshing to see a display of such talent everywhere that I went.

There was some low quality or gang-related grafitti, but the vast majority of it was actually well done. Sometimes it was related to a business, but quite often it was just art for its own sake. The purple stripes on the image with the woman aiming a rifle with a scope says "pinta o muere" (paint or die). I adore the pattern work in the parrot's feathers.

Not forced into just putting paint on walls for art, the local population hangs papel picado down entire avenues. I'm not sure why there was a Christmas installation in March, but I can't talk much since I leave stockings up and listen to Christmas music year-round. I'm a holly-jolly guy, and I loved the yuletide area that existed for no reason. We saw live performances of dance (I'm not sure which type) in the street for diners, plenty of statues and art installations using recycled materials.

Speaking of recycled materials, I found this chair made of old ties. Here we would "recycle" these tires: melt them down or shred them up, repurpose them as a new source material, and otherwise put a bunch of carbon into the atmosphere to reuse them. Instead of doing that, a box cutter and some rivets could turn the tires into a chair that can actually be used immediately. I wish that more recycled goods had the soul of their materials' past lives. This chair was quite comfortable.

There really was artwork every where that I looked in Mexico. Even little things like a gate had been done up with some flair. In all of the first-world countries that I've been to, there hasn't been nearly this level of art on display. Walking around America has no SOVL like this.

Food

There was a point in my life where I wanted to travel to see sights and have experiences. Now I want to travel for food. It is (now) the first thing that I consider when planning a trip. Everything else comes second. Playa Del Carmen is not particularly known for its culinary scene (unlike Portland, as discussed earlier), and rightly so. It wasn't that great. Most of the food was remarkable for how unremarkable it was. I do not recommend visiting PDC for with gastro-vations (gastronomic motivations, aka "hunger").

Our first dinner in the country was just me and my gf. We went to a location named Amate 38 because it is on 38th avenue. At the time I thought that "amate" meant "he/she loves you", but I've continued to improve my Spanish and I am now pretty sure that it either means "love yourself" or refers to a type of artwork made on traditional bark paper. The decor and artistry here was really nice, you can tell that they thought things through and executed their vision well. The best part of the meal were these handmade fresh tortillas. The rest of the food was pretty bland. We had gone here becasue Amate 38 is widely lauded as one of the best locations in Playa Del Carmen, so our expectations were pretty high and we left feeling a bit disappointed.

Birria is a staple Mexican food in Washington. You can get it at many Mexican restaurants and food trucks. Making it is pretty easy, it just takes a lot of time. Various meats are stewed together for many hours, the softened meat is popular as a filling (in addition to cheese) in quesadillas, which is usually dipped in the soup broth. Sometimes the stew is just consumed by itself. It's quite simple, and difficult to mess up. The birria at this little shack was okay. Most of the actual flavor came from the little cups of sauce that were on the table. It wasn't fantastic, but it wasn't bad. This will be a recurring trend with the meals that we had in PDC.

At the birrieria, it didn't seem like the employees spoke any English. I spoke just a tiny bit of Spanish at the time, enough to get by at restaurants. It was quite confidence-building to be able to navigate the interaction here. Admittedly, the types of conversations that you have at a restaurant that only serves birria are pretty limited. You could have a robot generate the whole conversation and it would be pretty accurate.

This was the first time that I got to have Sidral Mundet, a sparkling apple juice drink popular in Quintana Roo. It quickly became my favorite commonly-available drink in Mexico.

Our breakfast one morning was at a restaurant called Lara y Luca. The venue was lushly adorned with plants, and the food was plated with an artist's touch. It was okay. No major problems with the food, it just looked better than it tasted. The juices were astoundingly fresh, however. They were really nice. Non-potable tap water throughout most of Mexico leads to many restaurants serving aguas frescas (fresh waters). They don't disappoint. Finding juices like this in the US is a rare treat, but they seem to be commonplace (at least where we went) in Mexico.

When we swam in the cenotes (more on that later), we worked up quite an appetite. The buffet was about to close, but the men running it kept it open and gave us a discount from the posted price. Here you can see some plates of the various buffet food mixing together. Among the options was cochinita pibil, which I called "chibli pibli", prompting a laugh from our waiter. This is a traditional (pre-Hispanic) dish native to the Yucatán peninsula, and it was actually quite good. I'm not sure how much was the food's quality and how much was my extreme hunger from swimming for hours, but the meal here was my favorite on the entire trip.

At one point, we walked into a tucked-away restaurant with an exceedingly eclectic menu and astronomical prices. The waiter told us that he couldn't seat us without a reservation, since all open tables for the day had been spoken-for. I inquired about the menu and he said that it was because the it was a kosher restaurant catering to Jewish diners. I asked him where in the area he would recommend for food, and he pointed us toward Zublime, a short walk away.

The food here was actually pretty good. The plating was stupendous. I can still taste the creamy sauce that the shrimp is in. If you find yourself on the island of Cozumel, I would recommend this place. However, it isn't really Mexican food. In the last picture there, that small grey ball is actually ice cream. The schnitzel was really nicely breaded as well.

Speaking of eating non-Mexican food in Mexico, we went to a French bakery joint one morning for breakfast. The food was not remarkable. It tasted like Shari's (RIP Shari's).

There was a seafood restaurant next to our hotel where our wristbands got us a discount. I had been wary to check this place out since our hotel was right on 5th ave, the main drag through town. I reasoned that anywhere so close to a massive tourist area would certainly be low quality since they would have spent all their money on the location and they would be catering to drunks. I'm used to the US where the best restaurants are the sketchiest and the restaurants closest to the attractions are the worst. I was wrong, though. This place was fair. The soup was packed with flavor, the chips were fresh, and the tacos were really nice.

I do wish that we had more time. More time to explore the culinary scene. I didn't get to try tacos árabes or go to this literal hole-in-the-wall joint that smelled amazing.

Not all food is prepared meals in restaurants. Our actual first order of businesss after leaving the airport, before getting to our condo, was getting snacks. The watermelon salsaghetti skwinkles went hard. I wish I had some skwinkles right now to be completely honest.

Beat The Heat

Mexico was hot. It was 80+ degrees and humid. We had come from the cold PNW and wound up sweating our butts off. We needed to find ways to escape the sun, at least during the hottest parts of the day.

Cenotes are underground rivers and water systems that are all interconnected. The entire Yucatán peninsula is on top of one gigantic cenote network. We went swimming in it. Not only did this water-cool us (by swimming) but it got us out of the sun (by being underground). It was stupendous. I didn't bring my camera with during the guided tour because water is wet and my camera is dry and I prefer to keep it that way. There were humongous ledges that you could jump off of into the water, and I jumped off every single one of them (sometimes multiple times). I have no evidence to back this up.

Again, swimming in water water-cools you and so keeps you from succuming to the heat. I had never gone snorkeling before. It was a blast. I highly recommend going snorkeling if you get a chance. I again didn't bring my camera because water is wet and electronics don't like being wet, but the guide had an underwater Go Pro which got some cool shots. I got to swim deeper than I ever had before, down to a ship wreck. There was a point where I was swimming around on my stomach and a whole school of fish passed right under and around me. I got to see coral up close for the first time, and I even saw a barracuda as big as my arm. It was an awesome experience.

A word to the wise: if you're going to be swimming in direct sunlight for a long time, wear a long sleeve shirt. Three of the people in our party got badly sunburnt. For me it was the worst sunburn of my life, quite agonizing and really put a damper on the rest of the trip. In fact it put a damper on the next two weeks as sharp bolts of pain would snake across my upper back at random. A slight breeze left me writhing in agony. I wish I had worn a shirt. You can't put sunscreen on in a protected reef, and it washes off quickly anyway, and sunscreen gives you alzheimers.

The food in the first pic above was actually used on the tour boat to make guacamole lunch for the whole party. The guac was fantastic. Everything was fresh and (presumably) local.

The coral reef snorkeling tour actually departed from Cozumel, a small island across the water from Playa Del Carmen. In order to get there, we had to take a ferry. The views from the water were great. I was struck by how nice the ferries looked. Coming from Washington state, where the ferries are government-operated and they look government operated (run-down, dilapidated, kept running out of reluctance), the ferries from PDC to Cozumel looked like they were from a Sci-Fi movie or a tech startup. Admittedly these ferries are much smaller, only carrying people and not cars, but they looked really nice.

On the ferry ride back, we hit some extremely rough water and everyone had to deboard the boat one at a time, jumping from boat to land, from a ramp extending out of the top deck. That was fun but I don't have any pictures of it.

One of the things that we could see on Cozumel from the water was a giant pyramid-like structure. It's immense and you feel like you're on your way to Giza as the boat draws nearer. Could it be made of stone or glass and steel? What architectural and culture treasures lie in store here? When you get up close, you find out that it's a hotel with a gigantic thatched roof.

One day we were walking around aimlessly and some members of our party were not coping with the heat very well. So we found a nearby art gallery that had A/C and popped on in. I must admit that most of the art went over my head. I don't really understand the message conveyed by wood growing out of gravel in plastic pipes. The plane in sand rocks, I really liked that. The jaguar was cool but I couldn't take a proper picture of it. The jaguar's installation was massive, taking up a whole corner of the place. The animal was laying on the ground, killed as you can see, and on every nearby wall were CCTV cameras pointed directly at it. I couldn't take one picture that fully captured it. The tile work on the car near the entrance was really nice, it was done so meticulously with such great attention to detail.

Guayabera Journey

Close your eyes and a "Mexican Shirt". Not a polo. Okay try imagining a "Cuban shirt". Great now open your eyes. The shirt that you were just picturing in your head is called a guayabera. It wasn't invented in Cuba, it's just that Castro liked them so they're heavily associated with him. I wanted to find some of these shirts for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they look awesome. In fact people in third-world countries frequently have unmatchable swag. From Mongolian Deels to West African Dashiki to the Arabian Bisht, the world's poor have impeccable fashion sense. I own a deel, but I can never wear it because people whine that I'm doing "cultural appropriation" by wearing clothes that don't belong to my heritage. All the Mongols I've met think it's badass, but the white Seattleites just complain. Since I have Mexican heritage, I get a free pass to wear guayaberas, which are incredibly stylish. Secondly, they have lots of pockets (sometimes as many as 4).

We wandered around and I saw a few for sale (among other torso clothing) for exhorbinant prices (~$100 USD per shirt). I spoke (in Spanish, to practice) with a man who wasn't working at any of the tourist traps about where I could find a reasonably priced one, and he pointed me to a store on Google Maps named GUAYABERAS ADELA. The next day, instead of trying to stay out of the heat, I decided to go directly into the heat and walk 1.5 miles in 85 degree weather and 85 percent humidity, straight to Guayaberas Adela. When I got there, I could find no such business. Instead I found a garage with a little old lady sitting on a plastic chair.

Her English was broken, and my Spanish was way worse. I inquired to her if she knew where I could find the store, and she informed me that it was her store, but that she had retired several years ago after selling Guayaberas all her life because it grew tiresome in her old age. I asked if she could point me towards somewhere and she looked up the map on my phone to point out the correct location. Despite the langauge barrier, this elderly woman went out of her way to make sure that I knew exactly which door of my destination building to go into. It was heartwarming.

Along this long walk outside of the immediate tourist vicinity, we certainly got some strange looks. At no point did I feel threatened, I could just tell that the locals though that the gringos were lost. It didn't help that I was constantly taking pictures of things that most people probably don't care about.

Another half mile down the road, I came upon my target, Mercado Público Municipal. This is a large building with many different vendor stalls where sellers hawk various wares. Most of it was clothing, but there was some home goods as well. This is where I found a guayabera seller. There was again a language barrier. My Spanish skills were just enough to squeak by, but the clerk went out of his way to make sure that we understood each other. From him I purchased 4 plain white guayaberas with 4 pockets each, 1 long sleeve dark blue guayabera with 4 pockets, and 1 short sleeve teal guayabera with red embroidery and 0 pockets. The total bill came out to about $120 USD, much more agreeable than the $100 per each that I would have paid on the main tourist drag.

I love these shirts, and you can even see me wearing one in my FOSSY 2025 talk. I wear them often and nobody can talk crap about cultural appropriation because they're my culture.

It was about food time and on the way out of the mercado we stopped to chat with some small elderly women about dining suggestions. After a bit of (deserved) giggling at my poor Spanish skills and my inability to roll my R's, they realized how far we would have to walk in the heat to get where we were going. Instead of just telling us to be careful out there, these women hailed the next bus, got us on board, told us how much to pay, and told the bus driver where we were going so that he could stop at the correct place. Their kindness and generosity touched my heart.

What's PDC Like?

I haven't directly touched much on the actual experience of being in Playa Del Carmen. It's a huge tourist destination. The main drag through town, 5th avenue, is a 24/7 party. The 2014 dance music playlist never stops playing, the lights never stop flashing, and the sellers never stop selling. It has the same kind of "party for drunks" vibe that you get in places like Vegas, except even more-so. I've never seen so many sex references in public signage. I've never seen so many sex shops. The number of pharmacies selling things like ozempic, steroids, antibiotics, and viagra openly blew my mind. There's copyright infringing (hey Nintendo, C&Deez nuts) shirts being sold at discount prices (for American standards), and the kind of egregiously "funny" graphic tees that derive most of their humor from capitalization and kerning choices.

There were sketchy massage parlors with scantily-clad "masseuses" aggressively coming after any single male passersby. There were all manner of injection-molded trinkets and nonsense things and stuff that just said the words "Playa Del Carmen" on the side. There were random dudes running around going up to groups asking "hey do you wanna get high?" and then sprinting away to the next group upon rejection.

I've never been so accosted by sellers. I told one man that I didn't have time to stop at his store. He said that that's okay and that I could have some of his time. You expect to see SpiderMan harassing you for pocket change in exchange for a photo at Time's Square in New York City, but here we experienced it in Mexico. These people have developed a sixth sense for detecting a "mark". They can spot who they can effectively encourage to go into their store and spend some money, and they are quite good at this. They repeatedly marked my step-dad. It repeatedly worked.

I was saddened that the main drag of Playa Del Carmen (a city in Mexico) didn't seem to have much Mexican identity. It gave up most of whatever it had to absorb the party identity. But unlike other tourist locations around the world, which have some unique spin or draw to their attractions, PDC's party identity is based solely on party. Like a ball of meat with no skeleton to give it structure or a bowl of fake plastic fruit at the dinner table. Everybody in the tourist center spoke English, there was little opportunity for a language barrier to be noticed. The closest that I got inside the tourist center was in an ice cream shop. I was trying to order vanilla ice cream and the guy at the counter could not understand what I was saying until I pronounced it "bye-knee-juh" the way that a Comprehensible Input video on YouTube did.

Infra & Structure

I like to take pictures of the world around me. Infrastructure is one of my favorite subjects.

I wasn't consciously aware of how well-hidden and minimized the electrical infrastructure in the USA (or other first-world countries I've been to) is. Many places in PDC display this kind of rats-nest approach to high voltage wiring and metering. It's a bit difficult to see due to the fact that water is invisible, but in the 5th picture above there is a steady stream of water running onto the electrical meter box. There were areas where the electrical wiring was sagging so low that you had to duck to walk down the sidewalk. There were (I think, I didn't have my multimeter) exposed lines at human-level. Perhaps on a long enough timescale this area will give birth to a new type of human who has evolved electrical immunity. Or just caution.

Similar levels of polish and OSHA-compliance were to be seen in some of the construction. This crane(?) was hobbled together with sticks that were presumably sourced from the worksite. This kind of carbon efficiency makes American construction companies shiver. You may notice that the man painting the beam of the market, standing on a scaffolding, only has one leg. I have never seen a construction worker with a prosthetic limb before. I always assumed that if construciton workers lost a limb they just retired and lived off of worker's comp. Perhaps no such system exists in Mexico.

I similarly like taking pictures of buildings and open spaces. I've been told that I have a particular style when it comes to buildings. I tend to show the sky. I just try to take pictures that I think look cool. It was easy to get shots of empty spaces in the wee hours of the morning. I was waking up at about 5am every day since my body was on West coast time and PDC is 3 hours ahead. At this point in my photography hobby, I hadn't figured out that you can turn the exposure dial, so the dark shots don't look as good as they could have if I were to retake them again now.

That Abarrotes La Reforma building is apparently a convenience store, though I don't think that it was open for business when we were passing by. I think that building looks particularly distinguished.

Vehicles

Vehicles are similarly fun to take pictures of. Certainly one of the classic photography subject matters.

Being a poor country, Mexico utilizes vehicles for people's primary transport that we don't or can't in the US. I hadn't seen a tuktuk on this continent before, and it was refreshing to be greeted by these cute little three wheeled vehicles once again. Mopeds are also widely used as people's main transportation device. You can't get away with that in the USA, insurance companies won't allow you to daily a moped. You have to have a car if you want to also have a bike.

Speaking of economical, I need to talk about the colectivos. In America we call these "shuttles" and they usually take us to and from airports and hotels. Quite often they are free. In Mexico, these same types of vans are used as mainstream public transport (in addition to actual busses). The doors don't latch, so as they drive around the doors swing open and shut (unless someone holds it shut). Don't fall out or get your fingers crushed. If you do, that's on you. We didn't know about these when we first arrived, so when we were walking down the street (on the guayaberas mission) and a white van pulled up and the door slid open to let someone out, we were a little concerned for our safety. No need to fear though, this is just regular public transport. The price was agreeable as well, $20 MXN (about $1) per ride. The only issue was that the maps were not published anywhere online or in print. The local population just figures out the bus routes given enough time.

The artistry that I mention earlier also extended to people's vehicles. It feels like you can't go a furlong without finding someone's art project or painting on a functional surface in this place. That's refreshing, especially when compared to the boring corporate surfaces in the PNW.

The opposite of an economical ride, I'm used to seeing Garda armored trucks up here. They have a distinct silhouette and style. This was not that. This gives much more "killdozer" vibes. I imagine that the armoring and precautions on a Mexican armored vehicle are much higher than on an American one, given cartel violence.

Lastly, a parking mechanism that we saw quite a lot of. I believe it is a form of anti-theft. A strange little buggy on the island of Cozumel. And a VW bus that simply won't quit.

Words In The World

I have a folder on my computer named "Words In The World" where I save all the pictures of words that I have seen written in public that make me go "hmmm". Here are the additions to that folder from PDC. I love that Kentucky Fried Chicken becomes Pollo Kentoky in Mexico. This is especially entertaining because Kentucky is re-spelled to be pronounced correctly, but it keeps the K's, a letter only used in loan-words. I had heard of "bistec" being an mishearing of the English "beef steak", but I hadn't actually witnessed it until this point. I got a new term for buttcheeks. I have no idea what a "Color Change" is, and I refuse to look it up because that would spoil the fun.

Closing Remarks

Everyone that I interacted with directly was friendly and kind. Coming from an area renowned for its unfriendly and cold people, this was a very welcome change of pace. Not just the sales people in the tourist-heavy areas, either. I was riding a bus and a woman recognized that I was not from around there, so she (being bilingual) offered to communicate with the driver on my behalf. Everyone helped me through my questionable Spanish skills. At 3am a convenience store worker dragged out extra crates from the back to let me look at cigarette flavors (it's for a friend). When I'm in America (specifically Washington) and I ask for help finding something, I get a "google it", a shrug, a silent finger pointing in a direction, or simply ignored.

I enjoyed Mexico, and I will be returning. I won't be going back to the party city of Playa Del Carmen.