As much as I like relaxing, I’m a bigger fan of doing things on vacation. By our third day there, I was itching to get off the resort so we took a collectivo (a random van that stops on the side of the highway and takes people down the road for $2 each. Sorta sketch but it worked.) to the actual town of Akumal and explored. The food on the resort wasn’t too great so I was happy to find a restaurant in Akumal called Turtle Bay that had a lot of vegetarian options.
If you know me, you know that I love hummus, so obviously we had to try the Mexican variety. Umm, not so great. Nor was my vegetarian sandwich. The bread was sort of stale and there were too many beets in it. Oh well, just the fact that you could actually get food like this in this sleepy little village made me happy. After lunch, we walked to the beach and then took a taxi back to the resort.
The following day, we took a trip to the nearest city: Playa Del Carmen. Playa is famous (maybe, or maybe I made that up) for it’s 5th Avenue, a street with tons of shops.
It was cool but every single shop had guys saying, “Hey Lady, come look at my silver.” or, “Hey Man, you want to buy a Cuban cigar?” and even, “No cigar, how about some weed?” It was very annoying. I probably would have bought something if the sales people weren’t breathing down our necks so badly. Although, some things were not authentic. Want proof? Amidst the rows of Mexican agave nectar, look what I found:
Still, it was good to walk around and we spent some time on the beach before finding a good dinner spot.
Jason spotted a restaurant called 100% Natural which was 100% up my alley. Obviously, we had to try it out. We started out with some ceviche. I did eat a bit of seafood on this trip.
I ordered some sort of tofu taco for my entree. Like Turtle Bay, this was just okay. Jason liked his chicken fajitas (apparently Mexico signaled the end of his vegetarianism), but my tofu was seasoned weirdly.
Still, it was better than the food on the resort so I was happy. Our shuttle came to take us back around 9, so we bid adieu (why did I just randomly say something in French? I don’t speak a word of it and I’m talking about Mexico) to Playa and got ready to go to sleep for our rappelling and zip-lining excursion the next morning.
boo – i’m sorry you weren’t happier with the food.
no fun! BUT, i’m glad you liked it better than the resort!
Sorry about the food. That stinks! When Tony and I went to Mexico years ago (I won’t tell you how long ago…long), the food was so bad that we bought Tang and oreos from the store at the resort and ate that most of the time. Embarrassing, but the food was horrible!
I wish you had better food there! Too funny about the TJ agave, haha.
That beach is gorgeous. Can’t wait to hear about zip-lining, I’ve always wanted to do that.
i love that you went all the way to mexico and found TJ agave.
I never really think that food at resorts is all that great but maybe I just haven’t been around enough! haha! I was also wondering about Jason’s vegetarianism funny that you mentioned it!
I’ll get him to write another post about it. He kept it up for a month.
Hehe bid adieu, that was funny
The food looks relatively good where you went, but what a bummer that the resort food was a letdown. that’s the worst.
You did rappelling and ziplining??? Lucky!!!! I’ve always wanted to go rappelling and zipping through Mexico!!!
I laughed out loud when I read the part about “adieu” and talking about being in Mexico.
The only foreign countries I’ve been to are Canada and New Zealand, and I have always had a car with me, which made it much easier to get food that was edible. I’m not sure how I’d do being trapped at a resort without many good veg options!
ok, i randomly kept saying “sans” instead of “sin” in spain, which makes NO sense since I speak spanish but not a lick of french.
anyway, sorry about the random veg disappointments – hummus, tofu tacos, stale bread. the avo looks amazing at least!
i dont remember much about playa del carmen aside from it being a pretty slow town with super white sand on the beaches.
I remember those pesky vendors in Mexico. My sister and I would speak French and pretend we didn’t understand English especially when it came to haggle over the prices.
I’m sorry the food wasn’t great. Do you have any idea what they put in Mexican hummus? Cilantro and black bean?
I think it was like regular hummus. It just had a weird consistency. But I think it was still chickpea.