Playa del Carmen - Like a Drugstore Cowboy

Oh hi! A short air-con bus trip down the coast to Playa del Carmen, a fishing village it still may be in practice, but in reality its a beach playground for the cashed up. It is also the fastest growing city in Mexico and the world, apparently! Who works these things out?!

What can I say? American Mexico? It was a bit like stepping into someone else's holiday, we could have Thomas Cook'ed this...its a package deal...its a resort. We could have done it in two days and happily waved goodbye, but we had to kill some time before getting the pegar shell removed. So, like everyone else, we had a bit of an indulgent beach holiday, but spent as much of our time in the more chilled areas and tried to spend our money locally with the mexicans.

Playa del Carmen knew its target audience. Anyone want owt?


Drugs and deli? That is novel! Anabolics and Estrogens on rye, maybe?


Vallium, por favor?


The land of plenty.


When the time finally came to remove the cast, we went off to the local hospital. Like our previous experience it was chaos. The area that we were sent to was the emergency one. There was a huge crowd of people in a tiny space, waiting very patiently, for ages, with ID cards to pay for treatment that they had elsewhere in the hospital. We got all mixed up in this, but everyone was very cheerful and calm. The emergency room was small, with few staff and full, from what we could get a glimps of through the hotly guarded door! They assured us we were in the right place, and a doctor would be able to remove the cast quite soon. So we waited some more. It finally emerged that the doctor had gone to surgery, so we were given dubious directions to a private clinic, and with the help of some motorcycle police who phoned their friends, we got to the clinic and were seen within half an hour, for a price.

Here is the cheerful doctor with the angle grinder style thingy. He had to nip home first to get it...mad.


Set me free!!! Prise it off then, technical like. And so he did. He gave Wij some common sense advise that involved using the crutches for a few more days to build back some muscle and gain some flexibility. He waved us of with a genuine chicken nugget of wisdom: 'Don't run before you can walk'.


So naturally we celebrated this long awaited event and popped off to what was becoming our choice beach bar 'Fusion'. For a bar restaurant on the beach it was chilled, had great service and food and was in hobbling distance. We hoped it was owned by some local bona fide Mexicans, it seemed to be.


What can you get your boy with a newly free pegar? A tiny sombrero!! Wij does seem to have a bit of a thing for small hats, and loves wearing them (what harm can it do? I asked myself.) He was very pleased with this one!


Over our time here, we returned a few times to Fusion. The cocktail menu was quite impressive, and in the name of recuperation we tried a few. Heres's Wiji with a frozen margarita, it even has a glace cherry on top! All our cares drifted away in an alcoholic haze...aaaah.


Excuse me.


One cocktail always leads to another and here we are still on the beach, just having one more for the umpteenth time.


On our way home, seeing the sights in the busy streets one block up from the beach. Playa del Carmen has a lot of designer clothes shops, duty free shops, diamond shops and massive resaurants. Pure indulgence and often quite horrific.

Making cigars with all the equipment, it was genuinly interesting to watch.


In our hotel, finishing the drunken day, evening and night off nicely with an ice lolly. Look what they do to the towels! LMAO. When can we leave, please?


Genius.


Oooh a bit fragile the next day, at breakfast in our genuine mexican comida 'Jerrys' family run place. Having huevo mexicana with rice and black beans, freshly squeezed toronga, jamaica tea and guacamoli for brekki forward slash lunch. We patronised this establishment so frequently that we managed to see them start and complete their sun terrace!


We managed to see some real sights here, through choice and otherwise, but we were always looking forward to leaving! Bye then.