Thursday, January 15, 2009

South along the Mayan Riviera

We did some serious stocking up at the new Sam’s Club in Cancun. We then went to take a look at a beach camping spot just North of Playa Del Carmen at a location called Punta Beta. There was supposed to be camping at Los Pinos restaurant on the beach. As we drove in next to the big Coca Cola distributer we saw that the road was in much better shape then we had read. We then saw about a hundred new condos as we neared the ocean. We spotted a sign for the Los Pinos at the entrance to the condo parking lot, the guards said yes there was a restaurant but the road was down their wide sidewalk and it wasn’t good for our RV but a new construction road could get us there but was presently blocked by a big dump truck. I decided to walk down to Los Pinos and take a look. It is jammed between the new construction and the beach and they really had no room for even a small RV. The nice wide beach there looked great however, but this is what has been happening all over Mexico. You find a great spot and someone builds a new hotel or condo and eliminates the camping.

So we turned around and headed about 10 miles North to Puerto Morelos to Acamaya Reef where we stayed last month. There were three RV’s there and all the construction noise from the new hotel was still going on. I negotiated a little lower camping price of $25 instead of $30. I found out that the guy next to me was paying $35 but had a big fifth wheel camper. I guess they charge by camper size. We paid for two nights to see if we could take the noise and had a nice beach walk. Just as we returned it started to rain and it really came down, raining all night long and all the next day, which wasn’t a whole lot of fun.

The French speaking campground owner and his wife invited the other three campers who also happened to speak French to an early pot-luck dinner. Since we had made friends with two of the couples, they invited us to join them. Peggy quickly whipped up a nice cake in our microwave convection oven. We had a nice time, the other campers brought some vegetable and cheese  appetizers and the owners furnished the main course of pot roast and potatoes along with beverages. We had a good time but the rain dampened our spirits and we decided that we had enough of this campground.

We puzzled over where to go next,; head to the big city of Merida or stay on the coast. We decided we didn’t want to leave the beautiful turquoise water of the Caribbean yet. So we left early Wed morning to go back to Xpu-Ha another place that we stayed last month. It was full when we left but we held out hope that maybe we could find a way to fit back in. We got there early all and the other campers greeted us and showed us that the same place we had camped was available since someone had just left a few days ago. The big surprise was that they had totally rewired the electric power, installing 2 nice 30 amp grounded receptacles for each camp site. Of course the power was not working so we just plugged into our neighbors extra outlet. Maybe we can find out why they don’t work, they sure look good. I hung up my hammock and signed up for their slow Wi-Fi.


Map & Plans

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