A Pool Holiday Without the Pool

It was the last full day of our supposedly relaxing pool holiday, and once again we managed to spend almost no time anywhere near the pool.

After another early breakfast we were back in the car, this time heading north to Puerto Morelos. It was about a 50-minute drive, almost entirely along the main coastal road, which makes driving here relatively straightforward. There is basically one road and, provided you stay on it, even I can manage.

The slightly more interesting bit is everyone joining and leaving it. Indicators appear to be optional, while hazard lights seem to have an altogether broader meaning than they do at home. Quite a few drivers put them on before slowing down or manoeuvring, which initially makes you think something is wrong. I’m gradually coming to the conclusion that hazards here can roughly translate as, “I am about to do something, although I’m not going to tell you precisely what.”

You do get used to the driving, although there are a few things that still feel slightly unnerving. Armed state security forces regularly patrol the road in pickup trucks, complete with very large guns, and there are checkpoints dotted along the route which you simply drive through. Nothing has happened at any of them, but they are a fairly constant reminder that we are definitely not driving along the A38.

Puerto Morelos itself was immediately much more relaxed.

Parking was easy and we found the coffee shop we had been recommended without any trouble. Unfortunately, the coffee was probably the least successful part of the morning. It wasn’t particularly good and the place was stiflingly warm, so rather than linger we decided to head down towards the sea.

That turned out to be a much better idea.

Puerto Morelos has a very different feel to Playa del Carmen and Tulum. It is smaller, quieter and much less polished. There are tourist restaurants and shops around the main square, but the waterfront still feels very much like a working fishing town.

The famous leaning lighthouse sits just beside the beach, looking as though someone really ought to straighten it, although of course its rather drunken angle is now part of the charm. Nearby, fishing boats sit in the shallow water in various states of readiness, while others come and go from the pier.

We walked out along the wooden jetty, where the water was beautifully clear. From there you can look back towards the little town in one direction and straight out across the Caribbean in the other. A fisherman was working on one of the boats immediately below us, adding nicely to the feeling that this wasn’t simply a beach dressed up for tourists.

There is something I really like about places like this. They haven’t been tidied to the point where they could be anywhere.

After the pier we simply wandered along the waterfront and beach. The boats became increasingly photogenic, which meant progress inevitably slowed as we stopped every few yards for another photograph. Brightly painted hulls, impossibly blue water, white sand and huge Caribbean skies make it rather difficult not to.

We also found another of the local birds hopping around amongst the seaweed on the beach. Great Kiskadees seem to have become one of the regular characters of this holiday, their black-and-white heads and bright yellow bodies making them rather easier to spot than some of the other wildlife we have been trying to identify.

By now the heat was becoming fairly fierce. There wasn’t much shade and the sun had that intensity where you start unconsciously plotting your route from one small patch of shadow to the next.

From Puerto Morelos we decided to carry on another 15 minutes or so towards Cancún to visit the Grand Outlet Riviera Maya.

This had originally been pencilled in for our departure day, on the way to the airport, but as we were already so close it seemed silly not to go.

The place was enormous.

Everything about it looked very premium and very expensive, from the scale of the buildings to the immaculate landscaping and the vast car park designed for hundreds and hundreds of cars.

The only problem was that almost nobody appeared to be there.

Out of all those parking spaces, there were perhaps 50 cars clustered near the escalators. Once we got inside, the whole thing became slightly surreal.

Walking around was eerie. Huge glossy walkways, expensive-looking shops, perfectly maintained surroundings and music drifting out over the tannoys, but hardly another person in sight. It felt a little like one of those dystopian films where the world has ended but somebody forgot to switch off the background music.

The food court was probably the strangest bit.

As we walked past, servers waved at us, called out and pushed food samples towards our eyeline with an enthusiasm that suggested our custom might genuinely make or break their lunch time. With so few people around, I suppose every passing customer suddenly becomes a major event.

We did look in a few shops, but the prices brought the experiment to a fairly swift conclusion. For an outlet centre, very little seemed particularly cheap and quite a few things were actually more expensive than their UK equivalents.

So much for a bargain.

We did at least stop for an ice cream at Aldo’s, a brand we had noticed in several places during the holiday. It was very nice, although predictably expensive, and after that we decided we had probably seen enough of Mexico’s answer to a luxury ghost town.

Back in the car, we headed south towards the hotel.

At this point, after another morning spent driving, walking, photographing, exploring and being mildly baffled by local shopping habits, we finally returned to the resort for what might technically qualify as some downtime.

Although even that didn’t quite go to plan.

We found somewhere to sit, only to discover that the latest arrivals for the Labor Day weekend had brought with them another curious feature of holiday life: phones and podcasts on loudspeaker.

At the restaurant terrace earlier, one couple had been on speakerphone to their housesitter, loudly explaining where everything was and how to use the television. Later, down on the beach, another couple settled in with a podcast playing out for everybody around them to enjoy.

Which, strangely enough, nobody around them had actually requested.

EarPods turned out to be the most effective solution.

So our relaxing pool holiday continues in much the same way it began: very little pool, rather a lot of driving, some beautiful places, a deserted luxury shopping centre, an expensive ice cream and an unexpected study in public loudspeaker etiquette.