Ideas for Cancun activities?

December 15, 2007 3:21 PM

Anything unique/fun to do in Cancun outside the normal stuff?

My family and I are spending Christmas in Cancun (Friday-Tuesday). My mom has been planning all the activities and I'm inclined to just tag along, enjoy the weather, the food and an excuse to read on the beach. But it looks like my brother is going to refuse to go snorkeling, so I'd like to have a backup idea if we end up canning the snorkeling plans.

We're already planning to spend one of the days on a chartered fishing boat. We're staying at this Iberostar resort. It's the four of us: mom, dad, my adult younger brother and me. We're physically able (my parents probably more so than my bro and me, embarrassingly). Basically, I'm just hoping for an interesting idea that the resort concierge wouldn't come up with. We're not very imaginative, but we're unafraid. The one caveat is that none of us speak more than a few words of Spanish.

posted by mullacc to Destinations: What to Do (4 comments total)

Alltournative tours! Guides are English-speaking, folks who run the business are really great. I did the one that they call "Maya Encounter" -- zip-lined across a lake, rappelled into a cenote (an underground lake in a cavern, basically) for a swim, visited the phenomenal ruins at Coba and climbed to the top of the main pyramid, other stuff. Level of activity is exhilarating but not uncomfortably intense (and I'm a skinny but out-of-shape girl.)
posted by desuetude at 7:57 AM on December 17

Well, we didn't do the zip-line tour (though that does sound like fun), but we did have a good time. Our resort was actually outside Cancun, closer to Playa Del Carmen. It was a touristy, all inclusive deal, but it was fine for a family trip. We did some fun tourist things like renting waverunners, taking an ATV tour, visiting the ruins at Tulum and chartering a fishing boat (not a wildly successful venture, but we caught a nice wahoo). And we had plenty of time just to hang out on the beach and read. But the best part of the trip was poking around Playa Del Carmen off of 5th Avenue in an attempt to find an interesting restaurant. It left me with an urge to make a return trip to explore some of the less touristy towns in Mexico.
posted by mullacc at 10:41 PM on December 27

Check out the forums at playainfo. Nice thing about PDC is that it's pretty central for visiting other places, though it's gotten a lot more developed since I was last there four years ago. I loved staying at the north end of fifth and exploring the off-the-tourist-path food out past ave 20 or so. Mmmm, pollo asado and tacos al pastor.
posted by desuetude at 4:29 PM on January 10

It is standard tourist stuff, but I really enjoyed the Jungle ATV rides as an alternative to water stuff. You ride really fast through the jungle. It's not rocket science, but it does feel incredibly with the jungle whipping by a few inches away. Also incredibly unsafe, but hey, that's Mexico.

The cave snorkeling in the cenotes is also brilliant, but it is snorkeling.
posted by smackfu at 9:17 AM on January 27