Cancun

The flight to Cancun was almost uneventful. The lady next to me, an African American woman declared before we even taxied that she was the world's worst flyer. My brain said 'oh God', my mouth said 'I'm sure we'll be fine'. From then on if the seatbelt signs were turned on she'd let a little whimper but if we hit a little bump, it became 'oh Lordy Lordy, we is gonna die!' and 'Mercy Jesus!'. Thankfully, if you're reading this, her prediction didn't come true.

Cancun Airport gets a lot of international flights and for the most part is quite organised. However baggage claim and customs was a whole other story. About 10 flights had deplaned at the same time and it was chaos getting bags then forming an orderly serpentine line around the baggage carousels into the customs hall. Human nature being what it is, some courageous travelers thought they could just 'slide' into the line without being noticed. That lasted all of 2 seconds when there's a chorus of 'hey, get the back of the line...which starts way over there!' It took about an hour to get through the regulatory stuff.

The heat hits you as soon as you leave the airport - and it's not even summer here yet! I must say the taxi system is well organised and certainly puts scam artists out of business as you have to pay for your taxi before you leave the airport. The price was $64USD for a taxi or $16USD for a shuttle. It took all of 0.2 seconds to make that choice (the shuttle). The airport is a 30 minute ride from the main tourist area.

Cancun is like Surfers on steroids. Cancun is actually an L-shaped island that the Mexican Government thought would make a great tourist attraction 42 years ago. So after a nifty bit of dredging and swamp reclamation, Cancun was born. The original name of the town here was Nizuc but that obviously wasn't sexy enough. At last count Cancun had over 38,000 rooms. As you drive along 10kms of giant hotels you wonder if it's not more than that...