Day trip to Playa del Carmen

We’ve seen the beaches in Cancun, ate at the popular restaurants, and we’ve been to the shopping centers here, so we decided to spend our day off this week in Playa del Carmen. Playa del Carmen is located 1 hour south of Cancun. It is referred to as simply “Playa”. Since a few margaritas were in our future we opted to take the ADO Bus instead of driving ourselves.

ADO bus depot in Cancun

The bus costs $48 pesos ($3.70 USD) per person each way. From the hotel zone you can take the R-1 Bus to the ADO bus depot. At the depot you can buy a ticket to almost anywhere. We only had to wait about 2 minutes for the next bus to depart Cancun. The bus was comfortable and quite. In 1 hour we were arriving to Playa del Carmen. The bus depot in Playa is right on the famous 5th Ave, very close to the ferry dock that goes to Cozumel. We did not need any other transportation while in Playa.
If you hover over the little blue square on the map you can see the ADO Bus Depot. From there we walked northeast on 5th Ave. Our first stop was 3 blocks away from the beach to this cool little area with a handful of food carts in a small park. For only 20 pesos we got lechon tortas (pulled pork & onion sandwiches) that were really tasty.

The shops on Playa’s 5th Ave. are super chic and you can buy almost anything you need. Silver, swimsuits, cigars, clothes, hammocks, jewelry, in addition to souvenirs of all kinds. While we do get some of the aggressive sales tactics of the vendors on the street yelling “Come into my shop, I have what you need!” it is less aggressive than the markets in Cancun.

After we walked the entire length of 5th Ave and we were done shopping, we cut back to the beach. The beach is Playa is wide and perfect white powdery sand. The waves roll in with less force than in Cancun’s ocean side hotel zone. Playa’s beaches are full of beach bars and restaurants with lounge chairs and umbrellas. There are relaxing cabanas where you can get a massage for about $18 USD for 30 minutes. By this time is was afternoon and we were ready for a cold beer on the beach. Beers are about 30 pesos each and that was just what we needed.

Beach at Playa del Carmen

Females have the freedom to go topless on the beaches of Playa del Carmen. This is not the case in Cancun. Playa has many European vacationers compared to Cancun.

After our beer on the beach we made our way south to a restaurant we wanted to try out called Wah Wah Bar. We ordered hummus with the best bread EVER. They have a brick pizza oven and the bread was like the most awesome pizza crust in the world. I would go back just for that. Next at our table we ordered the cheeseburger, grouper filet with mango sauce and a pizza. The pizza was good. The cheeseburger would have been better if they used real cheddar cheese as on the menu. Instead it was that weird processed nacho cheese. The fish filet was good, but the sauce was out of a can and not very good.

Then back onto the ADO bus for a comfortable and quite ride home to Cancun. There are lots of taxis at the bus depot in Cancun, so getting back to your hotel is a snap. We really enjoy our day trips to Playa del Carmen. If you are staying in Cancun, you might want to venture down to Playa for a day of shopping, drinking, eating and lounging on the awesome beaches.