Mexico – Day 11: Club Med Cancún

Back home it is Pride weekend; here it is the two-of-us-on-the-beach weekend.

Today the final leg of our trip really began. We drove from Tulum to the Club Med in Cancún.

Last night, as a farewell, we made homemade quesadillas with cheese from Oaxaca and ham. Genuinely tasty. Pictures of that added here.

Yesterday, on my last day in Tulum, I had a go at "The Book of Disquiet" by Fernando Pessoa, but found it a bit hard to get into. After consulting ChatGPT we settled on this: Pessoa can be read in small bites, or not at all.

So I left the book behind. In the fridge, with the rest of the food we no longer need. Maybe whoever cleans up will be interested in it.

Tulum left us a little puzzled. Somehow it isn't a proper tourist hub, and somehow it also isn't as charming as Bali. It is definitely not the Instagram spot we had expected.

Generally the town is quite US-leaning, both in its clientele and in how it is laid out. Big petrol stations, big supermarkets, even a Walmart subsidiary was here.

At the same time I think the town has a problem with all the seaweed. Or prices have simply risen too sharply in recent years. In any case, Tulum as a tourist spot is already on the downslope of the hype cycle.

None of which changes how great the cenotes there are for diving. But somehow you don't need to stay longer than that.

Anyway, in the morning we went back to the dive shop, because my partner wanted an expert to re-thread their backplate properly. Apparently the shop back home hadn't done it particularly expertly, and my partner didn't fancy relying on that again.

The shop owner didn't even want money for it, although we insisted. So we left our remaining small change for the coffee fund.

Sure, they also want you to come back and dive with them again. But I think we would genuinely like to come back.

My partner had also found out through their research that one of the best dive shops in the world is halfway to the Club Med.

So we bribed our driver a little into making a short stop there. My partner bought a keepsake: webbing, to build their own harness.

You could of course have ordered that at home. But then it wouldn't be a keepsake.

The driver went along with it. To do so he switched off his phone, because the drivers are apparently tracked. If they stop for too long, the tourists (or rather the passengers) have to pay 40 dollars extra.

That was a bit much for us. Besides, we wanted to cut out the middleman, so we offered the driver the equivalent of 25 dollars directly.

Worth mentioning at this point that it took my partner a lot of courage every single time to approach people like that. And every time, they could hardly believe how nice everyone was.

Generally a pattern in Mexico. Everyone super friendly, everyone doing their best to get tourism going. Nobody here has ripped us off. (Apart from the petrol station attendant, who once hadn't reset the meter from the scooter before me.)

After that he drove us to the Club Med, and at first we were overwhelmed. Me in particular by the heat. 33 degrees is simply properly hot. You don't feel like doing anything, and everything is exhausting, sticky and sweaty.

But then we had lunch and went swimming. Ah, how we had missed that Club Med feeling! At first we were completely overwhelmed when they kept offering us alcohol, and by not having to convert prices in your head to work out how expensive the food is.

The club is currently being renovated, which is why we got a huge upgrade to a family suite. No complaints from us there.

The location is quite good too, right next to a kind of overflow pool. You do get ferried around quite a lot in little golf-cart buses, but that isn't nearly as annoying as we had imagined. There is basically always one coming.

In the evening we had ourselves driven to the gym for a workout (of course we didn't walk). Converting pounds to kilos was a small mental workout in itself.

Amusingly, I was even the one who initiated the workout. (Last time we were away this long, in French Polynesia, I started having trouble with a disc in my neck again after almost exactly two weeks, which happens if I don't do my physio workouts or bigger workouts regularly.)

I had already improvised my physio exercises twice on this trip, but I also need proper workouts regularly.

My partner then joined in, definitely not grudgingly but positively motivated.

We didn't want to leave the workout until tomorrow, because, surprise, we are going diving again tomorrow.

The excursions host simply made us a good offer. Start straight from the hotel beach, a dive guide just for us, two dive spots, a toilet on the boat.

So we are diving here one more time. Because when else do you get the chance? Besides, my partner wants to try out the freshly repaired backplate.

And I am happy too, because that way I at least get more than one dive.

On the other hand, we don't want to fill our expensive days, which are actually meant for recovery, with too many external activities. But this one just felt right.

Otherwise I am currently waiting for my partner, who is finishing their workout and wants to eat at 20:00 like a "proper European", and not together with the whole rabble (and the families).

Oh, did I mention there is a trapeze as well? Purely by chance, at every Club Med we go to.