Cancun Corona Comfort Zone

Halfway to Cancun and the clouds start turning very dark and before too long we are in the middle of a big storm with the proverbial cats and dogs landing on the roof of the bus. We decided to spend the first three days in Cancun in the downtown area before moving to the swanky all inclusive hotel with my parents in the area known as Zona Hotelera.

Cancun didn't exist before it's creation in the early 1970's and has two distinct areas, Zona Hotelera which is built on a slither of land with the Caribbean on one side and a large lagoon on the other. The downtown area (Ciudad Cancun) was also created at the same time to cater for all the staff who would work in the hotels and resturants servicing the tourists from around the world.

Monday morning we decide to go for a walk and to have a look at the hotel we would be moving into on Wednesday and maybe leave a note for my parents who where due in that afternoon. Well we manged to walk for about 6km before the skys's opened up again but this time with a huge wind behind it, so it looked if the rain was coming up the way. Within minutes we where soaked and decided to jump on the bus for the remainder of the way. The bus's have a flat fee of 0.75 pesos (under a pound) which will take you to any part of the hotel strip which is about 28km long. Once at the hotel (Oasis Playa) we were very impressed with the plush reception, the lovely pool and great beach. So after trying and failing to leave a message for my parents we decided to head to one of the large shopping centres that pepper the hotel zone, once we got there we soon remembered how rubbish most of these places are. The centre contained a massive Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood and various other chains with a few other tacky gift shops selling cheap t-shirts with the word Cancun gratuitously placed somewhere or other.

That night it was back down to the Oasis Playa to meet my parents for the first time, it was really brilliant seeing my mum and dad after our four months away. We stayed for a few hours and managed to sneak a few free drinks before arranging to meet up the next day and head to some of the other shops (weather permitting), it was if we had seen each other just the week before.



We never did too much apart from shop and use the internet before moving into the Hotel Oasis Playa on the Wednesday lunchtime and readjust to the luxurious surroundings after our 4 months of cheap hotels and food. Our room had a great view over the Lagoon, Golf Course and the hotel’s tennis courts and at night we got to see the sun set over the Lagoon from our balcony. The bed was actually bigger than the room we stayed in Buenos Aires and we both could do star shapes in the bed without touching each other. When we arrived in our room there were some towels wrapped together in the shape of a dog with two eye stickers on it and a little note welcoming us to the hotel. Everyday we had some weird towel origami present left in our room from the maids: dinosaurs, swans and a scorpion which nearly had Joanne running out the room.

The hotel had quite a few different restaurants and bars, we mainly had lunch and dinner in the large buffet dinning room. The food was always of a really high standard with a great selection to choose from, with each night having a different theme. Mostly after dinner we just sat with my mum and dad and caught up with all the news back home and bored them with our stories from the past few months. The hotel usually had entertainment which mainly meant 8 or so dancers jumping about a stage to backing tapes with some contrived Caribbean theme linking them together. This was all made a lot easier to ignore with the beautiful surroundings and the availability of as much draft corona’s or margaritas you could wish for.


We also had a little taste of Scotland courtesy of our friend Audrey who had sent over some tablet and fudge for us and my mum bringing over some Irn Bru to wash all the sugary goodness down. I’m not sure if I’ve said this before but if you ever go to Peru, you can get a drink there called Inca Kola that tastes just like Irn Bru.

Most mornings after breakfast we would head down to the beach or pool before admitting defeat and retire to our room’s to escape the intensity of the sun. The beach looked amazing with it’s brilliant white sand merging into the bright blue warm Caribbean sea, which even having quite strong waves was great fun to jump about in. The pools in the hotel where also really good, with one for playing sports (Water Basketball and Volleyball) and another with a bar where you could sit and sip your pina coladas while floating about the pool.


Everyday the news channels were warning us that Hurricane Dennis was going to hit the Yucatan and probably Cancun and the weather forecast was always for thunder and lightning but apart from our first two days the weather was always great. This wasn’t the case for my parents who were in Cancun for another week after we left, they were to witness the full force of Hurricane Emily. After spending the night in the underground bar when Emily rolled over Cancun my mother described the hotel as looking like final scenes of the titanic with water everywhere, windows blown out and all the large ornamental planters blown over in the large reception area. Luckily no one was hurt and I don’t think it put a dampener on my parents holiday.

Well it was another sad farewell on the Thursday morning as we left my parents and the luxury behind and headed onto the next part of our adventure. Next stop was Houston, Texas but we nearly ended up missing our flight due to a mix of our general stupidity, rumours and lack of signposting at Cancun airport. Immigration in the other countries meant having our passport stamped as we checked out through immigration but after checking our bags in we wandered to the departure lounge and still hadn’t passed through immigration. My dad had also told us that there was a departure tax so seeing a sign for immigration we headed straight there, the room was mobbed and it took about 50 minutes to get to the front. At the desk we got some really strange looks from the guy behind it as we passed over our passports and our leaving forms. We soon found out that this was immigration for people arriving in Cancun and not leaving. We had 15 minutes before our flight left and made a quick dash to our gate and boarded the plane without having our passports stamped out or paying any departure tax. We’re still not sure if we were supposed to…….so if anybody knows drop us a note.