Playa del Carmen, day 3: cenotes and more tacos!

On Wednesday, we had a few things to accomplish. We needed to get some breakfast, get the plumber to fix the toilet, and then go to a cenotes we found online. It’s amazing to me how much time is spent on vacation thinking about where the next meal is going to come from, and how much time is spent walking to get it.

For the morning bakery pickup, I took Than with me. We both got coffee and pastries, and then walked back to the house. The kids were happy to have a second breakfast (more than eggs). We detoured by the famous arch at Playa del Carmen on the way back, and Than was happy to pose for a picture.

The plumber showed up to fix the toilet, and we were back to 3 toilets! Phil’s Macbook shocked him a couple times when plugged into outlets downstairs, later he discovered that with no-ground outlets, Macbooks are angry–sad news for his computer, but no problem for my laptop.

We packed up the 4 kids and walked into town to hit the ATM again and find a taxi to a cenotes we found online. We looked up reasonable taxi fare to get there and landed at around $400-500 MEX ($23-28 USD). Armed with that, Becca negotiated $500 MEX for all 6 of us after their opening offer of $1000 ($57 USD) to take us to a different cenotes (ours was not on their long list of acceptable tourist locations). After we walked away from the tourist prices, one of them offered to meet us at $500. We piled into his SUV and drove to the cenotes 30min away. Our driver offered to take us back for $500 MEX with $200 MEX more if we stayed over an hour–which we didn’t expect to do.

A tourist destination it was not, but it was family run and there was only one other family there–and they were from the area. We paid $1000 MEX for entry for the six of us ($200 MEX/adult and older kids $100 MEX for the two younger ones). There were loose cats and chickens wandering, and the cenotes was amazing. The clear water was cold with little fish darting here and there, the stalactites were mesmerizing, and the glow of the water from the sky shimmered like magic through the cave. The kids had a blast jumping, swimming, and exploring. If we had a headlamp, we would have followed the other family into the more claustrophobic dark passage, but we were not so adventurous.

We were dropped off (at our request) at a pork-only place. Jack nearly fell apart (he’s our picky eater) so we offered to pick him up some fried chicken and fries on the way home. Super friendly staff and great pork tacos to go (20 of them). When we hit the main strip, we ran into Phil & Carolyn with their wagon of kids–they went for ice cream and we stopped at Carl’s Jr on the walk back (in the main Playacar mall) to get fries and chicken strips before walking back to our AirBnB.

After lunch and showers, the 3 older kids headed down to the beach to play in the sand. Everyone else contemplated naps and logistics. Once they were beached out for the day, we hung out and watched more anime!