Isla Mujeres

We flew from Mexico City to Cancun. Mexico City Airport was buzzing with people, long snaking queues everywhere, people running to catch flights and us trying to figure out where to go. After joining the wrong snaking queue we were kindly jumped to a priority queue to check in our bag.

The flight, once again, was sold out. There's plenty of air travel happening in the vast México, on the CDMX to Cancun route alone there's up to 27 direct flights day.

We would briefly travel through Cancun to get to the boat to Isla Mujeres, but first we'd need to get ferry terminal. There's no 'official' taxis at the airport and uber is blocked, so you are forced to negotiate with private companies, all costing at least three times what we paid for similar taxis in Mexico City. Cancun already felt like a cartel run city.

And then our Taxi took us to a port that had no ferries, he would only take us to the next port if we paid an additional fee!

After a brief negotiation, and me, wrongly, believing maybe it was an honest mistake in our drivers part, we finally found out way to the boat to Isla Mujeres.

Isla is a small island about a half an hour boat trip from Cancun. Its 10km long and at the north tip, where we were staying, less than 1 km wide. The North beach has the most perfect fine white Caribbean sand and crystal clear blue/green waters. We dumped our baggage at the hotel and made our way to the beach to catch the last hour of sun on our arrival. It was a humid 29 degrees at 5pm and we jumped into the water just in time for a rain shower! Trust the Irish to bring the rain to the carribean!

We drank and danced at the fun beach club Green Demon, and made friends with our Argentinan waiter, who drank tequila with us to celebrate our honeymoon. They had a fantastic live band followed by dancers, fire poi, Isis winged dancers. Our waiter told us Sunday is the day for the locals to come party, and that they did, dancing on the sand till the early hours of the morning. It was bliss.

We spent a few days on Isla, and given its tiny size there's not a whole lot to do on the island other than lounging on the pristine North Beach, eating and drinking. But when your escaping an Irish winter, it's just perfect. It's pretty touristy, which is hardly a surprise given its proximity to Cancun. Walking through the main streets is like running a gauntlet with literally every shop assistant calling you and trying to get you into the shop. I found the approach a bit overly aggressive and it reminded me of walking the souks of marrakesh, right down to the same cat calling of 'Barbie' and 'Blondy' (which only happened when I went out without Jonny).

Other than the sellers, it was a very laid back affair on Isla and this applied to covid regulations to. To be honest I'm not sure there were any, other than wearing masks inside, sometimes, and there were plenty of live bands and entertainment. One restaurant owner told us the island had been closed to tourists for seven months and only opened in October. To date there had only been 219 cases on the island. The closure had devasted the island, who's only economy was tourism. Many businesses closed, never to reopen. I wondered if that was why the shop assistants were so keen.

We spent one day diving with a group from our hotel, visiting a pretty impressive underwater museum and then a coral reef site where we saw a turtle, lobsters and plenty of amazing colourful fish. The visibility under the sea is superb.

We rented a scooter to explore the length of the island, from tip to tip it only takes a half an hour to drive. It was a pleasant uneventful escurtion, until on our return we drove past a truck and police car pulled over the side of a road surrounded with police tape right outside a naval base. The next street we passed, small and narrow, we saw locals standing by some more tape, looking down the street where a car with an open door was abandoned and now had police in white overalls taking photos and examining the scene... We only got a glimpse but it was enough to know it was a crime scene.

Later that day we found articles, with graphic photos, of the murder scene we had witnessed! Seemingly it had happened just a half an hour before we drove by. A 'sicario' had come to the island that day by ferry for the hit, and for some reason, thought close by the naval base was a good place to kill his target. It was all caught on the cctv cameras belonging to the naval base and he was quickly caught by the island police attempting to make a get away back to the ferry terminal.

Alot of excitement for an island with a population of  12,600. The victim was a young male islander, we never found out the reason for the assassination but no doubt it was cartel/drug related.

With that, we were ready to leave Isla Mujeres and make our way to the cartel free city of Mérida!

Mexico City

We got into Mexico City at about 9.30pm and we were both shocked to see the city was full of police, on every street corner, driving around patrolling on trucks, all armed heavily, some with machine guns. I assumed it was due to covid, Jonny assumed it was due to Mexico Citys reputation for being dangerous, the jury is still out.

In Mexico, the Covid levels are colour coded, red being the worst, then orange, yellow and green meaning practically back to normal. While we were in Mexico City, it had just gone from red to orange, meaning all shops and services open, hotels, museums and restaurants were supposed to operate at 30% capacity, restaurants to close at 10pm, with alcohol to be stopped at 7pm, and no live music in bars and sadly no salsa or wrestling.

But there were still plenty to keep us entertained for our 5 nights here. Mexico city is enormous, with a sprawling population of 21 million. There were plenty of amazing museums, beautiful parks and streets to explore. After weeks of a lockdowned winter in Dublin it wouldn't be hard to keep us entertained. Even just being in a new place was a thrill. It's winter here, in Mexico City that meant a cool average of 25 degrees during our stay. The bustle and exoticness of a Latin American city with food vendors on every corner was almost overwhelmingly exciting, let alone the chance to make friends with strangers again. 

Our first day brought us to Palacio de Bellas Artes, one of the most beautiful museums I've ever seen, the art deco building in some ways outshining the art pieces it holds. Anywhere we went in Mexico City before entering, you have to walk on a disinfectant mat, have your temperature taken, hand sanitiser is squirted into your hand and in some places, you are also sprayed with a misting, of what I assume is disinfectant spray, around your body. This happened for all museums, shops, restaurants, our hotel, basically anywhere that involved going indoors.

Though the city is busy and buzzing with people, there were very few tourists while we were there, meaning we had usually very busy places virtually to ourselves. The stunning Antropology Museum, which is full of pre-Columbian artifacts including Mayan and Aztecs. The museum usually sees about 2.6 million visitors a year, had about 60 the day we visited. But still the walk through the park to the museum is lined with stands of people trying to sell there wears despite nobody being around to buy them.

I was concerned before coming to Mexico that we wouldn't be welcomed by the locals. In Ireland there is a strong wariness for air travel and foreign tourism with arguments for closing airports. But this attitude seems to be totally absent here, we've felt very welcomed, there's no animosity for our obvious foreign presence, an enthusiastic 'Beinvenido a México' meets us everywhere, even a gardener in a park welcomed us to his city as we walked past. 

Despite the wearing of masks (inside and outside) in Mexico City it very much felt like business as (almost) usual on the streets and in the markets. Of course, like everywhere, there are restrictions that don't make sense. In the historical center some areas are fenced off or have one way entry systems, but in reality people are just forced to go through narrow entries, with no apparent counting of how many people are entering. While the markets are insanely busy, no restrictions on numbers and narrow passage ways full of colour, flavour and Latino Christmas cheer. 

And of course the drink curfew of 7pm, but there's alot to be said for lunch time drinking. We also figured out after a couple of days where we could drink until 10pm (when the restaurants closed) and we really didn't have to search very hard. And even though parties and gatherings weren't supposed to be happening, there was a definite sense that they were, walking past shuttered doorways we could hear Reggaetón blaring from inside, and even were given a flyer for a secret party the night before we left... We didn't go. No doubt the fact that it was the beginning of Las Posada, a nine day Christmas celebration, wasn't helping people's desire to gather. In our hotel a large 'private' family party took place, with gift exchanging, eating, music and salsa! 

While in Mexico City we also took a day trip to Teotihuacan, the amazing Teotihuacan os pyramids. We were joined on the trip by Haviar from Panamá (originally from Venezuela) and José from Guatemala, both who were staying in our hotel. Most residents while we were there were from Latin American countries, on a working holiday, but there were some Europeans and we met just one American.

Our fantastic tour guide showed us just a small section of the 83 sq km site, showing us the Pirámide del luna and Pirámide del Sol which were incredibly impressive. The pyramids only reopened to the public in October, however you still can't climb the piráminde del sol, to prevent over crowding due to covid, although given how few people were there the day we visited, I can't imagine they would have been a problem. After the pyramids we had lunch, and our tour guide gave us cocktails to celebrate our honeymoon, which was very sweet. 

After our five days of the crazy metropolitan of Mexico city, we were ready for the first of many beach stops. 

Traveling in a Pandemic

'Are you allowed to go?' The lady threading my overgrown, lockdown eyebrows asked the weekend before we left.

Plenty of people asked me this when I told them of our 5 week honeymoon plan (yep, I'm now a wife!). There has been a huge amount of talk of air travel, or the lack thereof in Ireland during the pandemic, but the advice of non essential air travel is just that, advice. Of course there is more complicated question of 'should' you travel. We're in the fortunate position of being able to pay for a PCR test on return and restrict our movements for adviced 5 days on our return. 

Mexico has plenty of covid cases but has more or less been open to tourist most of the year. In a country to little, to no social welfare system and regions with high reliance on tourism, they don't have the privilege of extended lockdown. Covid entry requirements are limited-- no test required, no quarantine and no travel insurance. The last one being most important, as we can't get cover given the governments non essential travel advice.

So Mexico it would be for 5 weeks of adventure, sunshine, and mine and Jonnys first Christmas together!

Finding flights was difficult, not just because there are so few flights out of Ireland at them moment but also, thanks to Trump, Europeans are not permitted entry into the US, even just to transit through an airport. We found flights with KLM through Amsterdam to Mexico city.

We said goodbye to a freezing dark Dublin at 4am and made our way to a very empty Dublin Airport. 

No queues, ours seemed to be the only flight that morning, but the flight was completely sold out, every seat taken. Because there are so few flights from Ireland the ones that happen tend to fill up fast. It did feel a little strange to be crammed into a plane of strangers close by but by the second flight we were already accustomed to it. Masks are manditory, of course, but they are removed for eating meals and drinking.

After a 6 hour layover in a much busier Schipol airport we boarded our second sold out flight to Mexico city. Other than the masks, flying is just the same as it always has been. The day we flew, the European Center of Disease Control announced air travel to be low risk, based on research into planes filtration systems and very very few global documented cases. 

Before entering Mexico we spent 45 mins queuing to get through immigration, first having our temperature checked and then given hand sanditisor (more than what happens in Dublin Airport). We'd filled out a health check form and tourist visa application which we presented to the officer, in our terrible Spanish. He stamped our passports with no hesitation and off we went. 

We were jetlagged but excited for our first adventure in Mexico City!