Day 1: It’s Another Tequila Sunrise

Well what else would you drink while sitting in the pool, at the bar, in an all-inclusive hotel in Cancun? This won’t be typical accommodation for us over the next year, but we thought it might be a way of easing ourselves into our trip. Actually, I’d go further than that and say that this is not the experience that we want.

Overall, Cancun seems to be like a US version of Blackpool. The ‘Zona Hotelera’ is a 20km strip of back to back hotels. The Riu Caribe, where we are staying, looks to be fairly typical – massive whitewashed concrete building, rooms that are spacious and clean but that have no soul or style. It is also the first hotel I have ever stayed in where the mini-bar consists of full size bottle of spirits complete with optics! (We did ask ourselves, “what would Jerry do?”)

With the 10 hour flight, it has been quite a long day and a day of contrasts. Many thanks to Tim and Vanessa for looking after us in our last couple of days in the UK. We left our suitcases behind with Eileen and Peter in Bedwyn (see previous post) and so our days of living out of our backpacks started.

At Gatwick, the woman on the BA check-in desk nearly fell off her chair when she saw our itinerary. She then had to introduce us to her colleague and both were making suggestions that we should take their jobs, while they took our place on this trip. One of the very first decisions that we made when planning the trip was that the main RTW flights were going to be in business class and so we were able to get in the BA lounge and were well looked after on the flight. (The only disappointment was that they weren’t doing bacon rolls in the BA lounge.)

So, one day in and so far so good. Everything has pretty much gone to plan (though we are currently in discussion with the hotel about a refund for our unused 2nd night here – which we thought that we had changed when our flight to Cuba moved forward by a day). We haven’t needed much Spanish yet, but the little we know has helped.

Next up is our transfer to Cuba and then we will feel really underway.  If you have any recommendations as to what we should do and where we should go in Cuba, please let us know through the comments section below.