Cancun – First Impressions

The difference between Mexico City and Cancun are stark. Flying into the Cancun airport, all you see is trees, trees and more trees. Once you land and jump in a cab, it’s miles more before you see anything else. Eventually, you reach civilisation or the Cancun version of it. In summary, it’s Las Vegas by the sea!

Cancun was purposely built as a resort town. Apparently, all empty places by the sea were entered into a computer program, which then selected Cancun as the best spot to build a new resort city. Fast forward a decade or so and you have one of the largest resort towns in the world.

The town is built on a long, thin strip of land. On one side, you have the Caribbean Sea. On the other side, is a lagoon. In between, are the massive hotel resorts. They are easily on the scale of the resorts in Las Vegas, if not bigger. They’re massively and there are lots of them!

The primary market for these resorts is Americans. That’s obvious from the design of the resorts, as well as the language. Everyone and I mean everyone, speaks English. Trying to speak Spanish just confuses everyone. Just to confirm you’re not in “real” Mexico, everyone takes US dollars. Apparently, most Americans come here and don’t bother changing money – they just bring their USD from home and never have to worry about pesos at all.

The net result of this convenience is that everything is built around the lowest common denominator. The tourist infrastructure is designed with morons in mind. Free thinking is not encouraged and everyone is treated as a big fat stupid mooing fool. That’s OK mind you, because from my limited sample, most people fit this mould.

As a holiday destination, Cancun has everything for the perfect beach holiday – sun, sand and a total lack of anything resembling local culture.