Over winter break, our Christmas season trip to Isla Mujeres continued, as Laura, McKenna, and I headed north from Punta Sur to the opposite end of the island at Playa Norte.
Playa Norte
Playa Norte and the area around it is the most popular part of the island, by far the most touristy. There are restaurants, beach “clubs”, and shops everywhere.
On Laura’s last trip to Isla Mujeres, on a vacation with her Dad, Diane, and her siblings to Cancun, it had rained unrelentingly, so much so that they returned from the island to find that the stairs in their rental had become a waterfall and the roof over one of the closets had given way to the downpour, like one of the terrible, no good, very bad disaster movies that Laura is drawn to. By chance, we walked right by the bar where they had spend their day on Isla Mujeres in order to take shelter from the rain.
We had much better luck on our trip. It had rained earlier the day we visited Playa Norte, but while it was a bit cloudy when we arrived at Playa Nore, the rain had ended and no ark was needed to save all of the island animals. The western side of Isla Mujeres (where Playa Norte is located) faces the protected Bay of Mujeres, making it exceptionally calm and sheltered from the wind compared to what we had seen earlier that day at Punta Sur. The white sands, calm seas, and shallow waters make Playa Norte one of the most popular beaches in the entire region. Boats come across from Cancun just for swimmers to spend the day there.
The beach is highly regarded, and has been named the best beach in Mexico and one of the top 50 in the world several times. I can see why, but I prefer beaches that are little less like an amusement park’s wave pool.
This is not to say the beach didn’t have some entertaining features. The fact that beach-goers can wander from one beach club to another and sample the excellent cocktails (the palomas below were from Zama Beach Club), and that the cocktails can be openly consumed as you walk around or wade in the surf is pretty amazing.
Another source of entertainment was the woman sitting in the surf and piling sand between her legs, obliviously erecting a giant sand penis, which kept growing as she stroked and smoothed the sand. Alas, I was not able to get photographic evidence of the towering sand phallus, as the woman destroyed it when she noticed how impressed onlookers were with the length and girth of her creation.
Snorkeling
Isla Mujeres is part of the Mesoamerican Reef System, which means there is excellent reef snorkeling as well as the famous Museum of Underwater Art. We scheduled a snorkeling trip that would have taken us to the MUSA and two reef locations, but the trip was canceled due to high winds, which was understandable. Then we want to the Garrafon Reef Park, another noteworthy snorkeling spot where snorkeling could be done from the beach, but they had shut down snorkeling as well (while still allowing ziplining through the high-speed winds), apparently not sharing my views on the entertainment value of an ocean having the potential to murder people. Finally, we located a place nearby the reef park where they were willing to let people risk their lives in the choppy sea in exchange for cash money at the Garrafon de Castilla.
The small cove was by no means the most impressive snorkeling area near the island, but it was relatively safe and available. When we had taken McKenna snorkeling off Key Largo a couple of years ago, we had forgotten to tell her basic things like how to breathe through a snorkel. So while the snorkeling was not super exciting, it did give us the opportunity to teach our only child how not to drown while snorkeling.
And there WERE fish and other sea life in the water to see.
In order to attract even more fish, Laura had bought fish food when we paid for access to the beach. She wanted to attract the fish to us in the deeper water rather than right by the shore, so she put the food in her pockets to swim out.
It turns out that fish have a REALLY strong sense of smell. And they weren’t willing for Laura to produce the food on her timetable.
Believe it or not, nearly being devoured by a swarm of tropical fish doesn’t even crack Laura’s top 5 worst ideas she has had while in Mexico. No, that list is dominated by this earlier trip to Mexico…
…A trip made by car, from Montana, without plans or a destination or contact information for people back home, during which the car’s windshield was smashed by a kamikaze buzzard, and where a scorpion was found in this outhouse.
Restaurants and Shopping
For as small an island as Isla Mujeres is, there is a fairly large population, with 13,000 people calling the island home. In peak season, that number can be supplemented by up to 10,000 visitors. This gives the island a cozy feeling, especially in comparison to the touristy side of the other part of Mexico we would visit, Puerto Morelos.
That also meant that there were plenty of places to eat. While eating out, we had some difficulty understanding tipping etiquette, and we apparently overtipped our breakfast waiter at the hotel restaurant to such a degree that when he saw us the next day, he pretty much did this to the other waiter coming to help us.
Much to the disappointment of our hotel waiter, we did try to sample some of the island’s other restaurants. After our first full day on the island, we went to Loretta’s, which was on the southern portion of the island overlooking the bay. This was our first trip to one of the bayside restaurants or stores on that part of the island, all of which were much lower than the road. Getting there involved going down a road so steep that it seemed to be more effective at channeling water runoff than cars or golf carts. That put our golf cart’s brakes to the test, leading to a rare instance of Laura yelling “BRAKES!” when she was driving and I wasn’t. Once we made it to the bottom of the hill, we found that the restaurant was in a beautiful area surrounded by a boutique hotel and rental houses, right above the beach.
Loretta’s was pricey, but the drinks were excellent and the food was great, with the kind of presentation that causes you to find yourself taking pictures of your food.
We also got to experience the island’s only supermarket, part of the Mexican grocery store chain called Chedraui. We knew from our earlier experience at the Outer Banks Food Lion on Hatteras Island that grocery stores located in popular vacation destinations can become crazy at peak vacation times. The Isla Mujeres Chedrai compounds the tourist insanity by having a layout similar to that of the “bad” Walmart in your area: the arrangement of the merchandise makes no sense, with mattresses beside islands of tequila beside electronics, which were by an endcap of pool toys.
Laura and I also made the mistake of sending me in the store on a solo mission while McKenna and Laura waited at the golf cart (or go cart) for what should have been a short grocery trip. I noticed that veteran Chedraui shoppers used a squad approach to shopping, dispatching one family member to wait in the insanely long lines while the rest of the unit divided and conquered the grocery list.
If you are looking for a more enjoyable shopping experience on Isla Mujeres, visit the shops and restaurants along Miguel Hidalgo Road, which is very close to Playa Norte. Part of the road is closed to traffic, allowing the restaurants to expand their seating onto the road and giving the road a European feel.
It is also along this road that we found an amazing ice cream place, Tropic Ice Cream. Not only did this place have a chocolate cake ice cream flavor that is one of the best ice cream flavors that I have ever had, they are so generous with samples that they actually won the war of attrition that Laura and McKenna wage with their sample requests.
Christmas on Isla
We were in Mexico for Christmas, and, with the warm weather and tropical scenery, it is hard for the brain to process that it is Christmas and not, say, July. Maybe it is because I am from a place that is far enough north that there are clear seasonal changes, but in spite of the Christmas decorations, I kept having to remind myself that it was the end of December.
This is not to say steps were not made before our departure to get us in the holiday spirit. Because we knew that we were taking this trip to Mexico, our family had bought fewer gifts to exchange since this trip WAS the main gift. To fill this void, Laura had begun wrapping empty shoe and Amazon boxes to put under two of the three full-size Christmas Trees that she put up back home. Then, while binge-watching Criminal Minds, she got lost in the therapeutic repetition of gift-wrapping, wrapping dozens of empty boxes, so many that when it came time to unwrap the gifts we WERE exchanging, it was a challenge to find the wrapped gifts that actually contained gifts.
Christmas in Mexico enabled us to discover that the song Feliz Navidad is to Mexico what Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is to the United States. It is in stores. It is in restaurants. It is blared from golf carts. It is everywhere. Fortunately, back at the resort, they had taken a break from playing Feliz Navidad on repeat to stage that staple of Christmas celebrations everywhere: fire twirling.
On Christmas Day, we were departing from Isla Mujeres and decided to take one last golf cart trip, taking care to avoid any more cliff-like hills. We ended up at the Lacondona Coffee Bus where we got lattes and banana bread.
Not only was this a great way enjoy a beautiful Christmas morning, but there may be no better symbol of the laid-back atmosphere on Isla Mujeres than an outdoor cafe that operates out of a VW van.
After drinking our morning lattes and returning our trusty golf cart to the rental company, we were off to the ferry to make the trip south to Puerto Morelos, starting phase two of our Mexican Odyssey.
Next up: Christmas in Puerto Morelos!
One response to “Playas and Palomas on Isla Mujeres”
[…] McKenna and I had arrived in Mexico a few days earlier, and we made our way back to the mainland from Isla Mujeres. Meanwhile, the rest of the family was converging on the Cancun area as well. Ultimately, 29 of us […]