From Rainforest Greens to Splurging in Caribbean Blues

Before settling on Mexico for the final tropical leg of our trip, we went back and forth between quite a few options. Mexico and Belize were both on the list, and at one point we also compared the Dominican Republic — especially Punta Cana — and even toyed with more complicated routes through Panama, Aruba and Miami.

After a lot of thought, we chose Mexico, partly because Cancún offered convenient onward connections to Europe. I can’t remember another time when choosing a destination felt this difficult. And deciding on the country was only the first step — choosing where to stay within Mexico turned out to be almost as challenging.

We bounced between island options like Isla Holbox and Cozumel, considered Isla Mujeres as both an overnight stop and a day trip, and kept revisiting Cancún’s different areas. Then came the hotels. I must have read reviews for at least ten or eleven different places, from airport hotels and downtown stays to beach resorts, all-inclusive packages and breakfast-only deals.

By the end, I had sent close to fifty messages to ChatGPT about destinations, hotels, all-inclusive options, airport shuttles, local transport, day trips and whether to book immediately or wait a little longer. The decision-making started in Costa Rica and continued even after we had already arrived in Cancún. At some point, the luxury of having so many good options became its own kind of travel fatigue.

Where should we stay? Isla Mujeres? Isla Holbox? Cozumel? Zona Hotelera? Downtown Cancún? Airport hotel? Budget option? All-inclusive? Breakfast only? Splurging?

This is what we finally ended up with:

We flew from Alajuela to Cancún via Panama with Copa Airlines. Booking the flights was not entirely smooth either: Copa’s own booking system managed to charge our Visa card, but the reservation itself never went through properly. After trying at least three times, we booked the same route through MyTrip instead, even though I normally prefer to avoid third-party bookings.

Problems aside, the journey itself went smoothly. We arrived in Mexico after 10 pm and had booked a room at the Courtyard by Marriott Cancún Airport. The hotel offered an airport shuttle, but it turned out to be a small adventure of its own. There were several pick-up lanes outside the terminal, and it was not immediately clear where we were supposed to wait. We asked a few locals for help and also messaged the WhatsApp number we had been given for the pick-up. After receiving slightly conflicting instructions, we eventually stood in a spot where we were maybe 60% sure we were in the right place.

Luckily, after just under half an hour, a van with the hotel’s name on it finally appeared. By the time we had checked in, we were hungry, but all the food options at the hotel were already closed. So we did what any well-prepared long-term travellers would do: we finally opened the overpriced tins of tuna we had been carrying with us all the way from Uruguay.

We found the pickup spot

At breakfast the buffet had Mexican dishes and properly spicy salsas, which felt like exactly the right way to begin our first morning in the country. Spicy foods are close to my heart and if I had to rank the world’s cuisines, Thailand would probably take the top spot, but Mexico is very high on the list as well. So sitting down with a plate of local food and starting the day with my mouth slightly on fire felt like a proper welcome to the country.

¡Ay ay ay, salsas picantes!

After the airport hotel, we moved to Presidente InterContinental Cancún Resort, which was our first proper beach hotel in Cancún. I had found a surprisingly good breakfast-included rate through Booking.com — around 335 euros for two nights — which felt almost suspiciously reasonable for a quality hotel compared to Cancún’s general price level. After all the overthinking around hotels, it was a relief that this booking simply worked and placed us right by the Caribbean Sea.

The welcome already felt very five-star. Our luggage was taken care of, and we were sipping complimentary coffee in the reception area while we waited our turn at the front desk. We arrived early, so our room was not ready yet. Instead of sitting around, we decided to head out on foot and get our first proper look at Zona Hotelera. Eventually we ended up having lunch at Señor Frog’s, where the party was already in full swing in the middle of the day. The music was loud, the atmosphere was completely over the top, and after a moment of initial confusion, Junior was excited about the craziness.

Hotel Presidente pool area

The hotel food options felt a bit boring, so for dinner we headed out to La Mestiza, a small local restaurant just a short walk away from Presidente.

Delicious local food place near our hotel

The next day we spent our time mostly at the hotel and nearby area. The pool was nice, but the weather was surprisingly chilly for Cancún — not exactly what we had imagined. Even the locals we talked to were saying that it was exceptionally cold. The temperature lingered around 20 °C, which is still decent, but combined with the wind, it wasn't the best day for a swim.

The next morning it was time to pack again and move from breakfast-included comfort to full all-inclusive mode. As I wrote earlier, it had been a struggle to find the best stay. Considering the price level, almost every all-inclusive option seemed to come with very mixed reviews.. After a lot of thought, we had ended up with Emporio Cancún a little farther along Zona Hotelera. We had booked a Deluxe Ocean Front room, which cost around four times our original nightly budget.. Well, such is life sometimes and in the end we did enjoy our stay.

Emporio had exactly the kind of things we were starting to appreciate at this point of the trip: pools, beach access, buffet meals, snacks, drinks and the simple magic of not having to decide where to eat next. After weeks of comparing restaurants, booking transfers, finding grocery stores and figuring out logistics in new places, the all-inclusive wristband suddenly made a lot of sense.

The hotel had a large main pool area, easy access to the beach and several food options. Most meals were easiest at the buffet restaurant, which worked well for breakfast and those moments when everyone was hungry and decision-making capacity was low. Besides the buffet, there were also a few à la carte restaurants that had to be booked in advance. We tried at least the Argentinian-style grill and the Italian restaurant — because apparently even after Argentina we were still not completely done with steak, and Italian food is always a safe bet when travelling with a kid. 

In the end, Emporio worked much better for us than I had expected. Before arriving, I had been slightly nervous because some of the online reviews made the food and service sound almost catastrophically bad — which they weren’t. I had also fallen into the classic all-inclusive trap of trying to calculate how many sugary cocktails and buffet plates it would take to “get our money’s worth”, which is probably the least relaxing way to start a resort stay. But once we stopped thinking like that and just enjoyed what was included, the whole experience became much nicer. The food was genuinely good both at the buffets and in the reservation-only restaurants, the oceanfront room was lovely, and the easy resort rhythm suited us surprisingly well. By the end, we felt like we could have stayed a little longer.

Arriving at Emporio

The view from the balcony

Plenty of sand to play with

Cocktails included

It was the right move to book the oceanfront room

Breakfast with an ocean breeze

Our final stop in Cancún was Renaissance Cancún. Compared with the other hotels we had tried, this one felt more like a business or conference hotel than a proper holiday resort. That does not mean it was bad — the hotel was clean, comfortable and perfectly fine — but it was probably the least memorable of our Cancún stays. The area around it also did not offer that much to do, at least compared with Zona Hotelera, so it felt more like a practical final stop than a grand finale. There was a small shopping mall next to the hotel and the area was good for jogging, but that's about it. And oh yeah, the hotel's restaurant had good pizza, which was approved by Junior.

Luckily, Uber worked well in Cancún, so we were not stuck in the immediate surroundings of the hotel. We used it to get around a bit, including a visit to downtown Cancún,
Parque Ecológico Kabah and a shopping mission to a Maui Jim store. We also went to check out La Isla, an upscale outdoor shopping area in Zona Hotelera where everything looked polished, shiny and expensive, but it was fun to wander around for a while. The best part of the visit was dinner at Mochomos, which was surprisingly quiet considering how good the food and service were, luckily for us.

Near La Isla there was also a cigar lounge called La Casa del Habano, so after dinner I headed there on my own while the rest of the crew continued back to the hotel by Uber. For me cigars are more about rare little moments of slow enjoyment than any kind of regular habit. And this was exactly that kind of moment. Sitting there, watching the sun go down with a good cigar in hand, felt like one of those rare little indulgent travel moments. Especially now that the trip was slowly starting to drift towards its end.

The view

Local wildlife

Mochomos Restaurant

Enjoying the evening at La Casa del Habano