Playa del Carmen

Our plane out of Fresno left at 1:00 am. We planned on sleeping on the plane but had difficulty. Our second leg was from Dallas. We only had 30 minutes to get from our gate to the next, but we easily made it.

We ended up sitting in the Dallas plane for 3 ½ hours before we finally took off. There was an air conditioning problem. They had no meals and so by the time we got to Cancun we had not eaten in about 18 hours. Once we were past customs, we were bombarded with natives trying to give us a ride. The air was humid, and it made my jeans stick to my skin. Our driver was at the very end of the outside parking lot so we had to walk past all of the cat-calling before reaching him. The drive to Playa was an hour but our driver dropped two loads of passengers off first, making the ride even longer. It was interesting seeing big beautiful hotel complexes with large gates and guards at the entrances sprinkled along side jungle, junk yards and dilapidated structures where people were still living. The driver took us down a side street. He said the government had abandoned a section of a small town and gave its citizens the parcels. He wanted us to see his parcel, which had a two-story structure on it that apparently was unsafe, but occupied.

I noticed signs along the way that indicated to beware of wild jaguars crossing the roads. The Maya people considered them to be deities and their statues…