Playa del Carmen is the ‘smaller’ sister town of Cancun which is just a bit further north. It’s one of the fastest growing towns in Latin America.

Known locally as just ‘Playa’, the town is a tourist haven on the Caribbean coast of Mexico. Perhaps more of a tourist than traveller destination, as it lacks the enchanting beauty of Mexico’s traditional or colonial cities. But everyone needs some downtime 😉

Through the statue above you can see Isla Cozumel in the distance. We took a day trip there, the ferry only takes 30mins.

It’s a nice day trip, we hired a jeep to drive around the island. Our jeep was certainly at end of life, none of the instruments worked at all and the steering seemed a little loose.

As we were heading to drop it off another driver pointed out that one part of the steering assembly had become unattached leaving me steering with one wheel only.

Luckily we were fine and we left the vehicle for the hire company to take away!

The island has some lovely beaches and there are beach clubs you to spend the day at.

We did some snorkelling by swimming from the shore but there are better areas for snorkelling and diving although you need a boat to take you there.

Our next trip was to Chichen Itza, this was our third Mayan city visit but this is the most well known.

It’s a large site and walking around in the sun was hard work but the structures are very impressive. It is one of the larger Mayan sites still remaining.

Unlike Tikal in Guatemala, the area has been mostly excavated and the trees cleared to leave these large buildings in the open, and more impressive for it.

The core elements of the site are thought to have been built around 600-750AD by the Maya people. In around 900AD the city was flourishing just around the time that other Mayan sites seem to fall away.

Then around the 1200AD the city started to decline and by 1400AD it became abandoned to the jungle, the reasons for this remain unknown.

It’s fascinating to imagine how these ancient cities functioned and of course what led to their downfall after so many centuries.

Much of the Mayan’s written cultural history and artefacts were destroyed by the Spanish invaders in the 16th century.

Their intent was to eliminate the influence of this ancient culture and convert them to Catholic ways.

In doing so much of the historical information about Mayan society has been forever lost.

We had a quick stop in the more traditional colonial town of Valladolid on the way home.

So we went back to Playa for our last few days and my wife decides to do a tandem skydive!

I decided it wasn’t for me although wish I had guts to do it, maybe one day (or not)!

We had managed to get some of the family to meet up with us in Playa and two of Jacqui’s sons stepped up to do the skydive too.

We left them to get into the airplane as we headed to the beach landing point to meet them after their descent from 13,000ft.

Three smooth landings and some very smiley faces greeted us on the beach.

I’m so proud of my wife, Jacqui, for having done this, although hopefully that’s off the bucket list now!

And the feeling for them once down is described below!

So that’s the end of our four weeks travelling around the Quintana Roo costal region.

Next we fly from Cancun to Oaxaca to take a taste of central Mexico.