Welcome to Cancún!

Cancún in July? 90 degrees and 80% humidity? Are you crazy?!?


No, I'm here for dental tourism.  More on that later.


Although I did a search on IAD (Dulles), somehow I ended up with a flight from National, so that was a $60 Uber. The flight to Atlanta was delayed by an hour, so I missed the flight to Cancún and had to stay overnight in a hotel. 

May I mention Uber prices? Other than going to an airport, I don't think I ever paid more than $5-6 for an Uber in South America, and sometimes the journeys lasted 45 minutes in traffic.  In Virginia, for five miles, I paid $15!!!


Cancún is divided into two parts: downtown, where the normal people live; and the Zona Hotelera (hotel zone), a thin inverted L where all the rich tourists vacation in their all-inclusive hotels so they don't have to interact with the real México.  Guess where I am :)

It's a relatively young city (pop. about a million).  Until the 1970's, it was a sleepy village, then the government started to promote it as a tourist destination, and built the first few hotels on the Strip.  All this to say there's no Historical Center or Colonial architecture like in most of the cities I've visited.



I'm staying at the Nomads Hotel and Hostel.  At $50 a night, I overpaid.  I found lodgings for half that price for my second week here.


The room, however, is pretty spacious:


It even has a separate seating area:



On the fourth floor are the bar and pool, neither of which I've indulged in:




There's a kitchen so I made scrambled eggs, one of the few things I can eat:



I'm so glad I bought this heating coil! (Instant) coffee with sugar but I forgot to buy milk.  Still, better than no coffee!




The street is nothing special:



Cool street art:


This is the "Monumento a la Historia de México" (Monument to Mexican History), pretty cool!


Typical street stand:








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