Woke up at my usual time 5:30am. The sounds of traffic outside my hotel window beginning to pick up. Taxis, early morning workers heading to work. I'm staying at the Hotel Riviera Caribe Maya (link below). I can never remember the name. Always have to look it up on my itinerary. Been here twice before. The wifi signal to the rooms is much stronger now. It was practically unusable the last few times I was here.
Decided to catch the Ultramar ferry to Cozumel this morning. The ride from Playa del Carmen wasn't very long. Maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes tops. Not much longer than the ferry ride from Cancun to Isla Mujeres.
You see the cruise ships before you see the actual island. Ten-story high floating shit holes. Disgorging masses of tourists. The place is designed for them, specifically, I gathered. I couldn't find any beaches to go swimming. Maybe on the other side of the island, but I didn't make it that far. I had rented a scooter to ride around, but it didn't feel very safe when I took it down a highway going fifty or sixty miles an hour. The wind was making my eyes watery and I couldn't see. I opened up the throttle and sped as fast as I could, head down into the wind, eyes watering.
There were not beaches on the cruise ship side of the island. Just tourist shops and tourist restaurants serving up generic touristy crap tailored for American tastes, the type of Americans who go on cruises, where they don't see anyone else but other cruise ship people, hobbling about, many of them not looking in very good shape. People unfit to ride bicycles or fly on airplanes. But let them come and see. The world is for all of us to enjoy and behold. It irks me, though, that so many of them seem perfectly satisfied with this dumbed down bullshit. You're not really experiencing Mexico if you only interact with other fat fucking Americans buying t-shirts in tourist shops. But that's exactly what I did, too. I bought a few t-shirts for my three-week-old grand-daughter. She's growing so fast, they might not even fit her by the time I return.
I want to venture into the jungle, but there's never enough time, and I don't feel like signing on with one of those tourist packages. Better to explore on my own. I came down here to see Dead & Company, what the remaining members of the Grateful Dead are calling themselves these days. I thought Riviera Maya was the venue near the beach a few blocks from Fifth Avenue in Playa del Carmen. There was a jazz festival a few years back when I was here last time, and it was billed as the Riviera Maya Jazz Festival. But I guess Riviera Maya applies to this entire stretch of the Yucatan peninsula. The Dead are actually playing at an all-inclusive resort near Tulum, an hour to the south. The three shows are sold out, anyway. I'm tempted to catch the ADO bus down there tomorrow just to see if there's anything interesting to check out.
It's about 10:15pm Yucatan time as I type these notes. It's been another long day. TIme to get some sleep.
Hotel Riviera Caribe Maya:
10 Avenida Nte. & Calle 30 Nte Gonzalo Guerrero, 77720 Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico
Dead & Company - Playing in the Sand 2019:
