"Playa del Carmen-my Mexican paradise " a Playa del Carmen Travel Page by Dabs

Mexico is the perfect place for us to escape for a few days when Chicago starts to get cold, 3 1/2 hours on a plane and we are feeling the balmy tropical breezes, another hour and we are ordering our first tropical drink and donning our bathing suits. "Ahhhhhhh" is the only sound you hear escaping my lips. Well, that's not entirely true, I've been known to utter strawberry daquiri, por favor ;-)

We've only visited the Pacific side of Mexico once with a visit to Puerto Vallarta, the warm turquoise water of the Caribbean appealed to me so much more that we never bothered with Cabo San Lucas or Acapulco. We've headed to Playa del Carmen every December between 2003 and 2006. We headed here after Cancun got overbuilt and jammed with spring breakers and party animals, Playa del Carmen is much more relaxed than Cancun, visitors tend to be more European than American, most of the hotels inside PDC are small non all inclusives and there are plenty of places to find good, cheap Mexican food if you are willing to stray a bit off 5th Avenue.

We took a break in 2007 and headed to Aruba instead but returned in December 2008 on a last minute trip to an all inclusive in Playacar, the Riu Tequila. We liked this resort the best of the five places we've stayed in the area, terrific food, nice room, great beach even if we had to walk a few minutes to get there.

Still I would highly encourage visitors to Playa del Carmen to think about bypassing the all inclusive resorts if the price is right, there are lots of great restaurants to try on and off 5th Avenue, I always end up eating at both the resort and the restaurants and having twice the vacation weight to take off!

Alas, Playa del Carmen is no longer the small fishing village it was on our 1st visit back in the early 1990s, there are new all inclusives on either end of town, a section of all inclusives in Playacar just to the south, a new shopping mall that caters to cruise passengers was installed at the south end of 5th Avenue and *gasp* Wal Mart has extended it's ugly tentacles into Mexico with a recently opened store at the north end of town adding to the existing corporate presence of McDonald's and Sam's Club along the main highway. Although some shudder at the changes in PDC, I find just a block off the tourist mecca of 5th Avenue that Playa is the same as it always was, a few visitors mixed in with the locals having dinner at taquerias, shopping and going about their business. Hopefully big business will continue to coexist with the small businesses that make it such a delightful place to visit.