My Caribbean nightmare: a week in the Mexican Riviera Maya

Anete could probably live by the sea for the rest of her life, but I’ve never been much of a beach bum. Yet, when we booked a flight home from Cancún, I still wanted to see the Riviera Maya. If only for anthropological reasons. After a week spent in all those Mexican tourist hell-holes, I’m quickly reconsidering. Mass tourism is ugly.

Playa del Carmen: a glorification of capitalism

On Quinta Avenida, a young gringo, dazed, confused, potentially drunk, definitely groggy from the overwhelming Mexican answer to Times Square, shuffled towards an ATM with a bank card in his hand. It was our first evening in Playa del Carmen and that image captured the Riviera Maya perfectly. Playa is all about consumption. The more, the better. And there’s no limit other than the one imposed by the credit card company.

A celebration of capitalism, the street seemed to never end. Shop after restaurant after bar on both sides of it. Quinta Avenida – Fifth Avenue for tourists who don’t bother to try the local language – is very American in its ambition to be big. Souvenir shops are not the cute little shacks that you’ll find elsewhere. No, they’re huge enough to play football in. We’ve started calling them ‘cow stations’. No disregard to our four-legged friends, who provide us milk and meat, but that’s how we call the gigantic enterprises that seem to be only concerned with how many customers they can serve in any given time. To borrow Eels’ words: Look at all the people like cows in the herd. Cheap-looking souvenirs fill the cow stations. They come from the same factory as the ones in Guatemala, only they’re more expensive.

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One could easily live for years on 5 Avenida without ever leaving it. You can eat, drink, sleep, go to the pharmacy for viagra, go to the dentist or the doctor, have your picture taken with Spider-Man or Captain Jack Sparrow, listen to live music, and buy all the drugs your heart longs for, without ever having to step away from this manifestation of aimless consumption. Heck, you could probably do that without ever uttering a word of Spanish. Without having any encounters with Mexicans except for the ones working for the tourist industry. Without ever paying in pesos. Even Mayan ladies speak Spanglish here and all the ATMs happily distribute American dollars. All businesses accept them as readily. At criminal exchange rates, that speaks for itself. Most shops advertise their exchange rate in their window.

As if that’s not enough reason to declare Playa the official Hell on Earth, David Guetta recently moved here. Playa del Carmen is what I expect Las Vegas to look like. A place for people who lack the imagination to do anything more interesting with their holiday. It’s all rather fascinating, if a bit soul-crushing, to see.

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Not even the weather could tame the commerce of Playa del Carmen. One day, we went out for a meal on 30 Avenida when out of nowhere the weather took a turn. The rain was predicted, sure, but I hadn’t expected the wind to pick up in such a dramatic manner, creating mini-tornadoes with trash. The water gushed from the sky. We found shelter in a food shack. Shelter might not be the best word, shack unfortunately was. We scooped up our fried eggs and the sudden cold made us shiver, as the rain blew onto our table. The shack shook with every gust and we wondered if the building would hold out.

“When the rain lessens, let’s run home”, I said. “We’re anyway already wet, and at least we can put on some dry clothes.”

“I don’t know — I’m afraid of hurricanes”, said Anete.

As soon as she had uttered those words, the wind tore loose an iron sign with instructions in case of hurricanes and other natural disasters, and slung it over our heads. It was probably a better idea to stay put.

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After the short but fierce storm, we walked into town to investigate the damage. There were huge puddles on every street, filled with debris and trash that had been picked up elsewhere. People waded ankle-deep through the water, past huge branches from trees. On 5 Avenida, we saw colossal uprooted trees, which offered some sense of proportion to the might of the weather.

A couple of blocks had no electricity. This gave them a much more romantic vibe. One restaurant served dinner by candlelight. Those blocks seemed part of a ghost town. Not many people walked around and most restaurants had cut their losses and closed for the night. But as soon as we were past those dark streets, life continued as before. Two Spider-Men lifted a tourist upside down for a photo op, music blasted from restaurants, people got saused. Like I said, not even the weather could suppress the true soul of Playa del Carmen.

Staying in Playa del Carmen

We stayed in an Airbnb a long walk outside of the core of Playa del Carmen. The beach was five minutes away, completely undeveloped and relatively quiet. The same couldn’t be said about the more famous beaches downtown. We explored them one evening. Shortly after sundown, the beaches were still completely full of people. Mostly local tourists.

It felt like we had stumbled upon the end of a festival. Carton and styrofoam ice boxes, full of empty beer cans, were strewn all over the sand. Everybody was in a drunk state of revelry, arm in arm, singing and stumbling over one another. Various people were in the process of making love in the sand. One mixed couple kissed wildly, the Mexican boy working his hand up the girl’s underwear.

We walked further and saw big resorts doom up. Gigantic beacons of light rose from the sand. I wondered how much it would cost to stay there. It can’t be too much that the big crowds couldn’t afford it, as the places are huge like palaces. But still enough to keep the two-week-holiday crowd satisfied.

Eating in Playa del Carmen

Five blocks from 5 Avenida, on 30 Avenida (streets jump by five), you’d encounter only local life. We walked the entire length of this street, at least 25 blocks in a row, without seeing any white faces. Zero. On 30 Avenida, we ate amazing quesadillas with black mushrooms and strips of spicy peppers, breakfast eggs, tortas with cactus and mushrooms. We drank liquados and beers. You could also buy shoes or clothes, shop in local businesses or lick ice cream. All for a fraction of the price of 5 Avenida.

An ice cream, for example, would cost three or four times less, a pack of Mexican candies ditto. The price the American tourists pay for their ignorance and for their lack of courage. It made me happy that many Mexicans get a good buck out of those happy spenders. Especially because they were not getting any money from us. We’d happily take upon an invitation for a short history lesson and a tasting in a tequila shop. But don’t expect us to buy those 100 dollar bottles you can probably find for a fraction of the price anywhere else in Mexico.

Tulum: a hipster version of Cancún

Tulum is a weird place. Sure, the beaches are pretty. Kilometres long, sandy and giving out on the most turquoise sea you’ll ever see. And yes, its ruins are wonderful in that they’re looking out over the sea. This is a place where you can combine culture and beaches. Although it has to be said that the structures are nothing special compared to other sites in the region. Which makes me think the Maya here didn’t bother much and preferred bumming on the beach. After nine, tourists from resorts all over Riviera Maya flock in masses into Tulum ruins. Think of the typical idiots abroad with their shirts off in a holy site.

And still, the culture is weird. Tulum seemed all about showing off. Showing off your body on the beach, your healthy diet and your work-out, your tattoos and your fashion sense. By doing your yoga routine and breathing exercises ostentatiously on the beach. Showing off your money, by splashing in up-scale restaurants. In beachside boutique hotels that claim to be ecological but that run entirely on gasoline. You claim to be an environmentalist – bravo, you did a beach clean up! – but you eat your imported quinoa in generator-powered restaurants. And, most of all, showing off your class and taste by choosing Tulum over Cancún, where the brainless masses go, the herds. Not realising you’re part of an altogether but in many ways similar herd. It’s all facade. Tulum, all in all, is the hipster version of Cancún.

Isla Mujeres: sagging bellies and party boats

American retirees arrived at a cliché of a beach, folding chairs strapped around the shoulders like a backpack. Sagging bellies, unshaven chins, thermos cups that could hold more than one and a half litres of coffee. This is rock ‘n roll, 60+ style. A couple drank half litres of beer in the water. Instagram braggers like to show pictures of themselves on white beaches in front of an empty, turquoise sea. The reality is different. It’s just a bunch of ugly people standing in a warm watery soup.

Behind the buoys, a convoy of party boats gathered. They blasted a cacophony of music, a sonic battle between the same twenty crappy hit songs, over and over again. On one of the boats, a boy in speedo swimming trunks swung his hips lewdly, as if humping an invisible girl. On these party boats, participants of a tour could drink as much as they wanted. Who would be the first to hang over the railing? Who would feed the coral his stomach contents? Some boats were so packed that they looked more like refugee ships in the Mediterranean, on their way to Lampedusa. The “tour operators” of both excursions are similar money-grubbers.

Time flew – without obligation.

Environmental concerns at the Riviera Maya: the ugly face of mass tourism

When I see these places, I can’t help but feel sad.

Playa del Carmen has grown in no time from a sleepy fishermen’s village to a bustling commercial city, with no space or time for the facilities to grow along with it. According to a documentary called The Dark Side of Tulum, Playa del Carmen is expected to keep growing until it’s the home of two million people, in less than ten years. It’s like Sint-Idesbald, a sleepy Belgian coastal village, would be bigger than Brussels by 2030. Completely bonkers. The environmental concerns are high, but that’s obviously of no interest to the project developers. Developers of what, I wonder. Of a bad environment? A divided society? Climate change? All of the above.

According to the documentary, the development of the Riviera Maya happens blindly, without much concern for the environment. The clearest example? There are barely solutions for wastewater in Playa del Carmen and Tulum. 80 per cent of it ends up in the unique underground water complex, the Swiss cheese limestone system under the Yucatan peninsula. Eventually, it floats to the ocean. It’s only a matter of time before tourism has killed its main attraction, the beautiful sea, like a beast that devours itself. The sargassum crisis in the Caribbean Sea, recurring accumulation of algae on the shores, was likely caused by agricultural fertilisers and wastewater. In other words: tourists have created the situation by shitting.

What can you do to limit your impact as a tourist?

I know we’re tourists too, and thus adding to the problem, but we try to limit our impact as much as possible. An air-conditioned room is not as essential as it sounds, you’ll get used to the heat (or, you know, stay out of the kitchen). You don’t need a private shuttle service, let alone a flight, a public bus suffices. Spend your money in the local economy. Branch out, visit other places. I implore you, don’t be a cow in the herd.