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!