Trip to Isla Mujeres, Mexico – Part I: The Arrival -

After looking at various packages in Expedia, I’ve decided on Isla Mujeres. I actually didn’t know Isla Mujeres would have been an island. I didn’t recognize Isla which means Island. Oops. Also, I didn’t realize we had to take a ferry from Cancun to get to the island until the day before the trip. Taking the ferry was the biggest concern when we arrived at Cancun at around 10PM; we thought the ferry service would stop at around our time of arrival. Also, it took some time at the Cancun airport to report our luggage not arriving with our flight and to notify the airline of our hotel address to which the luggage will be delivered. We had 3 connecting flights from Seattle,WA to Ontario, CA; from Ontario, CA to Dallas,TX; and from Dallas,TX to Cancun, Mexico. On Ontario,CA, the flight was delayed for 2 hours. When we arrived in Dallas, TX, we had a special shuttle service on the runaway to make it to our Cancun flight which was, fortunately, delayed as well. The Cancun flight took off about 20 minutes after arriving in Dallas. The time in between our arrival and departure was not enough to have our luggage transfer from one flight to another.

It’s unfortunate that I completely forgot to take pictures of the airport.

At the airport we learned that the ferries to the island from Cancun operates every 30 minutes and the last ferry is at 12:00am.

Here’s the ticketing booth of the ferry on the Cancun side.

We were hungry and we were glad that there was a McDonalds just across the ticketing booth.

Here’s the ferry dock.

While waiting for our ferry to arrive, I realized that there was an event on which the winner gets both the car and the motorcycle. The car is a Nissan and I haven’t seen such a model in my life. I wasn’t actually motivated to enter in the contest as you can see.

The ferry was two stories high. The seatings in the first floor was indoors and the first floor was very well air conditioned. Inside, it felt as if we were in the fridge so we decided to go on the second floor which was out door. We also wanted to enjoy the night scene.

Here’s the photo from the ferry while leaving the port.

The night scene on the hotel district in Cancun seen from the ferry.

When we arrived at the hotel, we were booked for the wrong type of room. It seems like one side made the mistake during communicating which room we booked. Expedia says we booked for an ocean view for which I paid a premium but the Hotel says we booked for the same type of room with no ocean view. The hotel personnel was courteous enough to give us a free upgrade the next day when rooms became available. Apparently, there was a wedding event in the hotel and the hotel was fully booked.

The atmosphere was very humid making it unbearable not to take a shower before going to sleep.