never forget how wildly capable you are {Cancun, Mexico}
Mike and I were going to be celebrating our 6th wedding anniversary and since we were craving a bit of adventure, we decided to jet off for a quick few days in Cancun. Neither of us had been to Central or South America before, so a quick venture to Mexico seemed to be just the ticket, so let's just dive in!
When you travel cheap, you tend to travel early. We left around 4am to head to the airport, where we hung out in our airport lounge til it was time for our flight. With Frontier you get what you pay for, so after every single person it seemed swap seats on the airplane to sit next to their loved ones we set off on our smooth 1.5 hour flight.
After arriving, one of the biggest things we were warned about was making sure to book our airport transfer to our hotel ahead of time. Keep your head down and avoid the transportation hawkers outside the airport.
Our transport was booked through our hotel, but we used Seek and Go and they seemed pretty great. We even saw our first iguana leaving the airport. We were officially starting our vacation.
There are so many hotel options in Cancun, and after reading several blogger reviews and talking to others who had been, we ended on Sandos Resort, which was an all inclusive resort about 30 minutes away from the airport.
Overall, it was a good resort. The amenities were the best part. We stayed in a suite because it was only like $80 US dollars more to upgrade and all other 230 rooms were booked out. For it being a full hotel, it never felt crowded or busy and our one bedroom suite was really nice.
We also had a funny little story where we thought the hot water in the room wasn’t working, but it turns out the labels on all of their faucets saying which was hot and which was cold were backwards.
Since it was only about 9am it was too early to check into our room, but we were able to use all the hotel amenities anyways. We started off our day by having 3rd breakfast at the hotel buffet, Zango. A Mexican hot chocolate, breakfast quesadillas, and some Mexican cookies dipped in cajeta were the highlights. There was also a full mimosa bar every morning.
After breakfast we ventured outside to scope out the three infinity pools that lead to the beach.
We headed to find a little beachy bed to enjoy our first margarita in Mexico at.
The waves on the beach the whole time were a little harsh, but I have never seen water so clear before.
For lunch we visited the beachside cafe St Trop...
but we ended up at the buffet later in the day for some dessert.
Our room was suppose to be ready at 3pm, but it took a little longer than expected, so we hopped back and forth between the three infinity pools and beach area.
When our room finally was ready, we had a little rest time and decided to order room service snacks since it was all included. We had one of my favorite foods of the trip, the Pepito sandwich with beef, guacamole, lettuce and onion.
For dinner, there were 3 restaurants to make reservations at, it felt a bit like a cruise. We booked Gaijin,the hibachi place the first night, and it was super fun. It started off with a bang, lighting up the onion volcano, and ending with fried ice cream.
The evening turned into one of our best sea turtle watching nights. The people next to us on the beach had told us about a giant sea turtle that washed up on land right in front of resort the night before, so we went looking for her and didn't have to go far.
She was so beautiful and majestic to watch! This was definitely the highlight of our whole trip.
The next morning we had breakfast at the buffet before heading out on a little adventure.
One of the most popular activities in Cancun is visiting the ruins, and we had planned to stop by the San Miguelito and El Rey ruins area. We figured out how to take the public R8 bus, which was just $1 US dollar every trip per person, and was very continent and easy to use.
However, when we got to the ruins area, it was closed because the power had gone out 3 weeks ago and was still out. We were bummed to be missing out on the ruins, but saw some iguanas which made the trip a little more eventful.
We also had walked to Playa Delfines, or Dolphin Beach, where no dolphins were to be found. The morning felt like a bit of a bust, but we found the traditional Cancun sign and enjoyed the views of the beach anyway.
We were incredibly sweaty from our little morning adventure, so it was off to the pool for more swim time.
We had some delicious drinks, the frozen strawberry daiquiri and Maya Riveria were the hits of the day.
I also made an ankle bracelet with the recreation staff before we had some poolside Firestone pizza.
In the afternoon, we decided to give adventuring one more try, and rode the R8 bus the other direction to Mercado 28 market. This a is very popular tourist market with all kind of stalls for souvenir buying. Be prepared to haggle and sweat your face off in this stuffy market square.
While venturing out, we also walked to Parque de las Palapas, which is a very local park with some delicious looking street food.
Some of you know my journey with E.Coli back in HK in 2022, and having the extremely sensitive stomach that I have, I had promised myself I wouldn’t eat or drink anything out of the hotel. As difficult of a decision it was, because food discovery is such a big part of our adventuring, it was the only way my brain could handle the anxiety. So while a lot of things looked tasty, we didn’t actually try anything out. Speaking of Hong Kong, we passed this plaza called Hong Kong, which cracked me up.
We did pop by a Burger King and McDonald’s in Mexico just to see if they sold anything crazy different but nothing too outrageous. The hotel also provided us reusable glass bottles of water every day, and we are water guzzlers so we'd often finish all of them and get new ones every day.
We also ended up walking to a Walmart, and found inside was like a weird alternative reality where everything was not that different. The bakery sold pastries just floating out in the air for anyone or anything to touch them, which blew my mind a bit.
There was also a tortilleria inside, which made me feel like we truly were in Mexico.
It was dinner time by the time we got back to the hotel, and our reservation was at Frattinis, the Italian spot. Dinner was a chicken Parmesan and some basil pesto gnocchi, and both were some of the best dishes we had during our time here, however, for some reason, dinner took about 2 hours.
We also ended up ordering all 3 of the dessert options to try. Most of the food at this resort looked incredible, but we were sort of disappointed by the taste every time. Most things were pretty bland, and I’m not sure if this is a tactic of all inclusive to have you want to eat less or something, but I don’t know. Everything was good and edible but not too many things were great.
After dinner we wanted to use the “hot tub” for a late swim since the pool was open til 11pm. The “hot tub” is part of the 3 infinity pools, so it was not actually hot, just where the pool heaters were located. A little disappointing for a man who absolutely loves a spa, but it was still a relaxing evening swim.
During our turtle session this evening, the sky was gracing us with a gorgeous lightning storm.
We still saw some turtles washing up on to the beach, but not quite as close to us as they did the last time. I also got stuck speaking to a very sweet hotel employee about the turtles, but he was speaking in Spanish and I unfortunately did not super understand.
Our last full day, Mike got up early and went for a beach walk where he was caught in a freak sudden downpour.
After a small buffet breakfast, we both made our way down to the beach, where we seemed to have the place to ourselves for a while.
With this all inclusive, there were not a lot of snack options around, so we’d end up at the restaurants a lot. We went for a 2nd breakfast at St Trop.
We got a little too much sun sitting pool and beach side before lunch.
At lunch we headed back to St Trop for some tacos, when the Bongo Coco parade went by.
After a little indoors time, where I napped so incredibly hard, we took a little beach walk and happened upon a sea turtle conservation nest rehabilitation area. There was a hurricane about 2.5 weeks ago that flew through, and before the hurricane, the sea turtle nests were moved to this safer beach location for the ultimate chance of survival. While we didn’t get to see any babies, this was a really cool thing to stumble upon right down the beach from Sandos.
For our final dinner, we had the Seasons Steakhouse, where we had an amazing chocolate soup dessert after our meal.
We were actually really lucky we had not eaten that much for dinner because the hotel threw a big fiesta this night, and this was 100% worth staying in this hotel for alone. It was a beautiful night with a million different types of traditional Mexican foods and desserts.
There was wonderful entertainment from the dancers and the 3 Maria’s Cancun singers, playing some music we actually recognized. This was absolutely one of the highlights of our whole trip.
Our last night of sea turtle visits we just saw one big guy, who was much quicker than the other ones we had seen. We popped on to the beach to say hello and thank us for visiting.
We had such a beautiful time on our short adventure, but the hotel told us it was Mexican law to arrive to the airport 3 hours early. I don’t think there was total truth to this, but we were in our airport lounge about 10 minutes after arriving, so we took a nice 2 hour nap before boarding our flight and ultimately heading home.
Adios Cancun!
On our actual anniversary, we wanted to keep the Mexico vibes going, so we went to Disney's Coronado Springs Resort and had brunch at Rix. We got the chicken and Mickey waffle lollipops we had been wanting to try. It came with a side of fruit and we ordered the fiesta potatoes to share. I also got a churro iced latte, and for not being a coffee drinker, it was all amazing, highly recommend.
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