Cancun – how to make the most of it when “forced” to stay there with your family

Cancun – a city that would probably have never made it to our destination wish list and we would have never visited it if we did not have to. Luckily or not, due to a conference there, we had the opportunity to discover it and check what it has to offer.

When you arrive at the Cancun airport, you are immediately approached in english by many private taxi drivers from various companies and they all assume you come from US and for people from US they have “special offers”. Since we speak spanish we thought it would be easy enough for us to find a cheap transportation to our accommodation. But in Cancun – things are slightly different from the rest of Mexico. Only special taxis are allowed to reach the airport and apart from them the ADO bus. When travelling with family and having stroller and 2 big suitcases, you would struggle a lot to fit into the ADO bus which would take you to the center and then from the center you could take the city bus (which has no space for big luggage) and in total spend around 2 euros. We decided to take a shuttle (cheapest option available at the airport itself) – colectivo – but it is not the same type of colectivo as you might have encountered in Chiapas or Oaxaca. It is a van – and the prices are european, so in order to reach your hotel (they stop at any hotel you need) you ll pay 140 mexican pesos  (around 6 euros) per person (older than 4 years).

This was our first time stay in all-inclusive hotel and honestly I was sceptical about the experience. We stayed in Crown Club Paradise hotel and even though at first sight I was terrified and I know we would have never opted to stay in such a resort on our own (especially if we would have to pay it ourselves) it was not a bad experience at all. It was in a way a relief  – since we suffered from a jet lag (not the kids, just the two of us) it was nice not to worry where to find some tasty food, get drinkable water, etc. They even had a small shop inside the hotel where you could get all kind of stuff – from food to diapers (but quite expensive (for mexican standards)). People working there were very nice, they had lots of activities for children, so it made a jet-lag recovery quite pleasant. I was afraid since it is so touristic that the food would be not really mexican – but adjusted to the foreigners. Most probably thanks to a lot of local tourist they had really amazing mexican food (pozole was extremely delicious) and what I liked a lot they had a special stand with food for kids:).

There were many pools and amazing white sandy beach where you could observe birds  in the early morning and have a nice swim.

But that is it – yes you do get to enjoy beautiful sandy beach – but it is artificial. I find the whole beach part is just made to resemble a fake paradise, nothing against, just not my kind of thing, I prefer wild nature.

In case you decide to take the city bus (it costs 12 mexican pesos) to reach the center of Cancun- there is really nothing special to see, few big markets, parks and that’s it. The only archeological site inside Cancun El Rey (actually it was across our hotel) is very tiny and compared to numerous other sites around Mexico, not impressive, but in case you plan to stay only in Cancun you should visit at least that one. There is also aquarium there – but very pricey and according to other families we met who went there – not really worth going – so we did not go there and can not tell you experience from the first hand. If you need to travel from one hotel to another on a daily basis the cheapest and fastest option is to take a city bus, it will stop where you want. Sometimes the ride with the city bus might resemble adventure park experience;)

Important tip – when travelling with kids you will probably after few days have clothes to wash – go to the Cancun city center, close to the ADO bus station you ll find Lavaderia Victoria (Avenida Yaxchilan, close to the crossing with Avenida Uxmal)  – you ll pay 11 mexican pesos (so around 50 cents) per kilo of clothes. Your clothes will be washed  (extremely well washed, all food stains from baby clothes were gone), dried and sorted. If I would have that kind of service at home I would never use a washing machine!:))

In case you want to stay very close to Cancun and meet local culture better head for Puerto Morelos – it is much more budget friendly with lots of nice restaurants just at the beach.

Kids will definitely enjoy the beach, collect numerous shells (really beautiful and big ones) which you can use for numerous craft projects, you can even take some sand home to make some nice memories out of it.

In conclusion if you want to experience real mexican culture, Cancun is not the best place to go, but can be a nice place to recover from a jet lag:)