Mexico, December 2019

For our 10th anniversary Danny and I went to Playa del Carmen & Tulum.

We stayed in Playa because there are 5 kosher restaurants just in Playa! My favorite was the Green Eco village (dairy) restaurant for its trendy and hippy vibes. It is inside a hotel, the food and service are great and you can play pool while you wait for your food :) Danny’s favorite was Moshe Cube (meat). The food is delicious, the design is also new and hip and service is great too. They also take credit card, which most of the other restaurants don’t!

Day 1:

We landed in Cancun on Monday afternoon. We were planning on taking a bus to Playa del Carmen, but ended up making friends on the plane who graciously gave us a ride to Playa, where they were also going. After leaving our things at our AirBNB ($35 a night) we went to Moshe Cube for dinner. Most of the kosher restaurants are near 5th Avenue, which is a pedestrian street with lots of souvenir shops, entertainment and American stores as well. After dinner we walked on 5th, and checked out the beach which is also close by.

Day 2:

Tulum is about an hour away from Playa. You can take a bus or collectivo, but because we knew we wanted to see various things along the way we rented a car for $30 a day. Next door to the kosher restaurant Yala is a car rental place owned by a nice Israeli man named Kobi — would definitely recommend looking into them! After renting the car, we headed towards the Ruins of Tulum. At the Ruins, they offer a package for $30 a person that includes the ruins, a ride up a tower to see a view of the ruins, as well as a snorkeling tour. I highly recommend getting this deal! Everywhere I looked online for snorkeling tours, they started at $80 a person. I’ll get back to the snorkeling details because we ended up going the next day because the waters looked super choppy.

After the ruins we went to check out Hotel Azulik. This strip of hotels has many trendy and Insta worthy hotels! We also went to Casa Malca which was Pablo Escobar’s home many years ago, but they wouldn’t let us in until 6:00 p.m. without paying $1000 pesos each! :( Hotel Azulik has an art gallery and store open to the public, and the architecture is really amazing. The rest of the hotel is closed off to the public. We then drove home to eat dinner at Yala.

Day 3:

There are many cenotes (natural water holes) in the Yucatán area. Some are in caves and some are more open. We actually have open natural swimming holes in Austin, so I specifically wanted to see the ones inside of a cave. We went to Cenote Dos Ojos ($17 entrance fee) and it was beautiful. You can rent snorkels (70 pesos) and we saw many groups of scuba divers, swimming underneath us from cenote to cenote (they’re all connected, apparently!) It was an amazing experience to watch the scuba divers from above with their flashlights and gear.

After the cenote we headed to a nearby used bookstore/cafe because Danny has to check out every book store wherever we go ;) We then headed to Kaan Luum Lagoon. This lagoon has a giant cenote in the center. They don’t allow swimming inside of the cenote because it is too deep (85 meters) but you can swim in the lagoon around it and they have swings and hammocks to lay in in the water. We ate some fresh coconut there and tried it with Tajin and lemon for the first time! Little did I know Tijan was so popular and can be bought at the Mexican supermarket, Fiesta, right near my house.

After the lagoon, we saved the best for last. We headed back to the beach for our snorkel tour that we had purchased the day before at the ruins. The snorkel tour comes with four free beverages — two at the ruins, and two at the beach. The boat leaves every 15 minutes regardless of how many people show up, so we had the tour to ourselves! The boat took us to the middle of the ocean to see the coral reef. It was really difficult to snorkel in the middle of the ocean with big waves, but underwater the fish and coral reef were spectacular! We also saw sea turtles and a sting ray. We had our own personal guide who lead the way the entire time! After this we headed back to Playa for dinner at Yummy and bought some souvenirs! Not only does 5th street have souvenir shops but it also has international stores like H&M, Zara home and my new favorite from Japan, Miniso!

The next morning we got a taxi for 700 pesos back to the airport in Cancun.

There is so much to do near Cancun and Playa for all different kinds of budgets. There are many kosher restaurants which is super convenient! We had a great vacation together for our anniversary!