We’re almost at the end of our Central American trip as a duo because this evening we will be joining up with a group of strangers and travelling together on a leader-led expedition into Belize and Guatemala, with Intrepid Travel. We’ve had such a brilliant three weeks exploring southern Mexico by ourselves, and would love to spend more time in Mérida especially, but new adventures await with our future amigos so it’s with a mixture of excitement and slight nervousness that we board our bus to Playa Del Carmen.

The journey takes us past turnings for the gorgeous colonial pueblos mágicos of Ixamal, with its huge yellow convent dominating the centre, and buzzy, colourful Valladolid, a town with a grand past of wealth and importance, both of which I stayed in whilst cycling through the Yucatán for charity in 2015. We also drive past possibly the most famous of all Mayan sites, the spectacular Chichen Itzá, which Coman and I visited ten years ago on our first trip together to this part of Mexico. 

We were very much on holiday then, based for two weeks in a very classy hotel in Playa Del Carmen with a suite overlooking the Caribbean, but this time around we’re bracing ourselves for a far more ‘basic’ experience. Laden with our rucksacks we walk the hot streets from the bus station to the SC Hotel Playa which is pleasant enough but a world away from the luxurious Playacar Palace hotel that we stayed in when we were here ten years ago.

However the changes to Playa Del Carmen itself are far more pronounced than our different style of accommodation. We attend our 6pm Intrepid welcome meeting and meet Aquilino, our jovial guide and the 14 fellow travellers in our group, some of whom have already been travelling through Mexico together following a similar itinerary to us but in half the time. 

After our welcome meeting they all go for dinner in the restaurant next door to the hotel but Coman and I fancy reacquainting ourselves with the main streets of Playa Del Carmen and seeing if it’s as we remembered it. However after the glorious few weeks of really immersing ourselves in Mexican culture the onslaught of package tourist craziness is a sensory overload and seems far tackier than when we were last here. 

Turning off the main pedestrianised strip, Avenida Quintada or Fifth Avenue, we find a little falafel restaurant and have some food, before deciding to walk to our former hotel and see if we can have a drink in its bar for old time’s sake. However to get there, instead of the relaxing stroll we remember, we now have to walk through a huge shopping mall full of ubiquitous international stores where hordes of holidaymakers are carrying shopping bags around as though they’re in the Boxing Day sales. 

We enter the grounds of the Playacar Palace but are soon challenged by firm but polite staff who insist that without a holidaymakers’ wristband we will not be permitted into the lobby and that we must leave immediately. So we exit back through the shopping mall and re-enter Fifth Avenue, pleased to see that the little church we remember is still there.  

But sadly, any charm that Playa Del Carmen once had has been destroyed in favour of rampant commercialism. Gone are the little alfresco restaurants, cool bars and interesting boutiques we remember in favour of vast brand emporiums, raucous mega-bars, vastly over-priced eating establishments and an utterly different kind of holidaymaker. 

It’s like the worst excesses of Magaluf, San Antonio or Maspalomas, combined with some obviously bling-crazy, super-rich Americans and sun-burnt and drunken Brits and Eastern Europeans, dressed head to toe in designer gear. There was admittedly a bit of an American frat boy spring break element to parts of Playa Del Carmen previously but this is off-the-scale crazy. 

We bought a beautiful artwork that graces our landing in 2013, and try and find the store we bought it in, but it’s now gone. So we find the last remaining art gallery, and speak to the lady running it, and she tells us that Playa Del Carmen started changing drastically in 2015, when lots of the independent stores and restaurants got bought up by huge American developers, pushing them out in favour of making it another Cancún. She says it’s brought more money to the area but none of it goes to ordinary Mexicans anymore, just to big corporations. 

We stop at a bar for a drink and to watch the never-ending streams of holidaymakers go past in all their Saturday night party outfits, looking for a party or a club, grateful to be having a different kind of trip ourselves. Admittedly we are ten years older than when we were last here, but we don’t recall being quite so disturbed by what we’re seeing. And one street in particular leaves us both in a state of shock, with its deafeningly loud night clubs presenting semi-pornographic cage dancers on stages on the street. The amount of fake tits and lips from the Insta-crazy girls in the clubs having the time of their lives drinking wildly expensive cocktails while muscled-up groups of lads chat them up is disturbing. 

Next morning I get up early for a run along a much quieter Avenida Quintada, before the hordes re-descend, and then have a swim in the little pool at our hotel before breakfast. We have a free day ahead so head to the beach, stopping on the way for Coman to get a haircut, and settle ourselves at a beach club called Inti. The sea is a beautiful colour but quite choppy and there’s lots of seaweed lining the shore with a big JCB digger making its way amongst sunbathers scooping it all up. 

Due to the changing climate, the entire Riviera Maya is now plagued with seaweed and algae, creating real problems, especially in Tulum a little further south, with some of its most beautiful beaches almost impossible to swim in now. But with tourism now so important to the region, they put industrial effort into clearing it all away, a ridiculous circle of cause, effect and temporary solution that continues round and round. 

As we lie on the sunbeds under the shade of the parasols, surrounded by frequently botox-and-filler enhanced tourists, we watch ferries journeying back and forth to Cozumel from the dock at the nearby jetty, and can even see the high rise hotels there on the horizon. Once a mecca for divers, and now a major port for Caribbean cruise ships, we spent a fun day driving around Cozumel in a beaten up VW Beetle with knackered brakes and a groaning gear box a decade ago. Today we just swim and relax, preparing ourselves for the next stage of our Central American adventure which starts first thing tomorrow. 

In the evening we go for dinner at a very chilled vegan pizza restaurant called Coral away from the tourist strip. It’s run by an ex-lawyer called Samantha who set it up with her girlfriend, who quit the rat-race to become a chef. They are both  divers and passionate about saving the coral reefs around Cozumel and Tulum which are suffering due to global sea temperature rises.

So in addition to serving the most incredible food they use the restaurant to raise funds and awareness amongst tourists of the natural wonders that are being destroyed. She tells us that she’s devastated by the changes happening to Playa Del Carmen but is delighted to hear we are hoping to snorkel around the coral reef in Belize as it’s stunning, and marine conservation is working wonders on bringing the eco-reserves there back to health. 

Samantha, her girlfriend and their eco-restaurant are a great reminder that while Playa Del Carmen has changed for the worse in many ways there are also amazing people here and wonderful places to find, once you step away from the tourist onslaught of Fifth Avenue.

We go to bed excited for our next adventures… to be continued in a new blog, coming soon entitled, ‘Belize And Guatemala - Encountering The Maya: Part Two of A Central American Trilogy’