Welcome back Tangerineys!
We made the short drive from Bacalar to Mahahual where we are now in the state of Quintana Roo.
This is the last day, and now that we have some perspective on this trip and this town,
essentially what we want to preface this video with is that, if we were coming here off of
a cruise ship - which almost all tourists who visit here are.
Just about every single person who comes to this town is coming from the cruise ships,
we think this would be a dream destination, dream vacation, a dream city because essentially
you have people right off the cruise ship waiting to pick you up and take you to restaurants,
beach clubs, hotels, anywhere you want to go.
They're ready to accept your US Dollars, talk to you in English. And this water is
amazing, the views are incredible.
Yeah, there's tons of shopping and literally everything you could want for a one day trip
when your cruise drops you off in a city.
We didn't come here from a cruise ship and therefore, it's not exactly catered to our
experience or the experience that we prefer, expected, or that we generally enjoy when going
from town to town in Mexico.
It's going to be different if you're coming from a cruise perspective versus - ours - traveling
here.
Like potentially taking a five hour bus ride from Cancun after you spend a whole bunch
of money on a flight or something like that.
Right now we're driving from Bacalar to Mahahual and it's only just over an hour and we were
just saying that the roads were super nice, now, all of a sudden as we're getting close
to Mahahual, we're just fleeing potholes all over the place and we're having a bob [?] A
weave and swerve.
Why are your knuckles white?
Oh, I'm focused, so focused [Laughter].
Aye Cabrón
Laska, hold onto your tail.
I'll give you guys a little tour before we put all of our stuff in here. This is our Mahahual
rental on Airbnb, we got one with AC, we're really excited about that.
It came with this dog - just kidding, that's our dog.
Hi Laska.
A little fridge, kitchenette area, this gorgeous looking bathroom.
Oh, look at that shower, it's so nice.
Once again, we have a dog.
I'm really excited to stay here.
You're going to be mistaken for an employee here.
Wow, look at that view!
Beautiful.
Did you say it's viewtiful?
Veiwtiful.
We just got finished eating at this restaurant called...
Playa Maya?
Bar Maya?
Maya bar?
I have no idea [Laughter].
Pretty good food, good prices, and now we're going back to our Cantarito guy who we got
one from the other day. Yeah, we have a Cantarito guy. [Laughter]
He uses all fresh squeezed juice and lots of tequila, it was super delicious so we're
going to show you that.
It was 80 pesos the first time but if you bring it back, it's fifty pesos.
[Music]
We've got the Cantarito!
So, this guy said this drink is originally from Guadalajara or at least his version is
but without the toronja, the grapefruit soda like Squirt.
Mmm, Oh, all that fresh juice, amazing!
Okay, so we've been here like two or three days now but what was your first biggest shock
about Mahahual?
Number one is that it's unlike any other place we've been in Mexico in that, almost 100% of
the tourism here and the business comes from cruise ships. And almost every day we've been
here, there's either been two or three cruise ships docked.
So for a small town, that's just crazy number of visitors.
And then, we went to - Emphasis is on small town, like this is a very small town.
There's maybe a dozen streets in like the town part of it and then the malecon basically
is just the Main Street that goes along the ocean.
And then we went to our first restaurant and they gave us a menu in dollars and in English.
And we asked for a menu in Spanish and in pesos and then they brought that out and the
prices were half. Half of what they were on the other menu.
If you're just tuning into our Channel and you don't - haven’t heard anything else, typically
it's just going to be the conversion. So, if it's in US dollars, they might add a little bit more
but when they convert it, it's what they want in pesos.
Yeah, you might be charged like a 10% conversion fee or something but it's typically about
the same.
Here it was half in pesos. And then we learned from our Airbnb hosts that cab drivers here
charged 8 US dollars for tourists and 20 pesos which is about one dollar to locals.
And not only that, if there's a cruise ship in town which there pretty much seems to always
be, they won't you rides to locals because they know they can make eight times the amount
by going to the port...
Taking care of tourists.
Yeah, so what's my biggest shock?
It's the super interesting dynamic with all these tourists, all these cruise ships, and
everyone trying to make as much money as possible off of them.
Before we came here, people told us "oh wow, if you love Bacalar or like you love the ocean
or whatever, you're going to love Mahahual, it's way better".
So essentially, with everyone saying this is the best place they've ever been, it's
amazing, it's better than Bacalar... I freaking loved Bacalar, like perhaps my favorite place
we've ever been in Mexico.
So hard to say or hard to pick one favorite place.
But with our expectations that high, we were bound to be let down and I think when we got
here, I was pretty disappointed that it's very difficult to pay for things because everyone
wants US dollars, just like what the locals deal with, having the tourists
prioritized over them in the cabs, I think that's how it is across the board.
But it is gorgeous here and they have what we hear is excellent diving and snorkeling
and stuff like that.
It's so windy.
And now that the hot hot sun is going to bed, we are walking around - to dinner!
To dinner!
There there's a lot of stuff on the tourist beach side but almost everything closes the
second the cruise ships leave.
But we tried out this place yesterday, Fernando 100% Agave, food was amazing, so
that is where we are going now.
And they were the only restaurant to give us a menu on pesos without us having to ask.
Yeah, this isn't even like a situation where like everyone's trying to scam you, all of
the tourists and like all the people going to these restaurants speak English, have dollars,
everyone is just trying to accommodate the people getting off the freaking cruise ship.
It's like they don't even want you to have pesos here because there's no freaking ATMs.
Like we had to drive all over town and walk all over asking one person, asking the next
person, trying to figure out where the heck there was an ATM.
One fall day in Mahahual, not even a freaking joke, one day here was spent trying to find
pesos.
And the day we were looking for pesos or any type of currency, the power was out in the
whole city.
Hotel Costa Maya.
They have an ATM - two, two ATMs. And those might be the only two ATMs in the whole city
as far as we could tell after looking around for a whole day.
But this is enough complaining for now, maybe we're just a little bit hungry.
Putting this away.
[Music]
If you're wanting to enjoy the restaurants and the beach clubs here, there's kind of
catch-22 because you would want to avoid the crowds, aka, avoid when the cruise ships are
here, but if there aren't ships here, they're all closed.
These chairs right over here, all day they're packed.
All day these beach clubs are bustling.
When the cruise ship leaves - now all the shops are closed up.
Almost all the restaurants are closed.
Yeah, pretty sparse as far as where we can eat which is also like Fernando's 100%
Agave is very very appealing.
[Spanish]
Queso fundido + chorizo. 90 pesos ($4.72 USD)
Fish fillet cooked in white wine with seafood. 150 pesos ($7.86 USD)
Chicken enchiladas. 80 pesos ($4.19 USD)
All righty, it is a few days later now, couldn’t record anything
after dinner the other night because Jordan started getting a reaction, a throat reaction
and we pretty much had to flee the premises and go home and make sure he was gonna be
able to breathe - Alive.
Yeah, stay alive.
But now we're gonna be enjoying a nice day at the beach, at this Beach Club. It's 300
pesos for each of us as a minimum and that can apply to food and drinks. And gratis is
this beautiful view of the ocean.
We had a really hard time finding a somewhat affordable Beach Club here though that was
not sold out and was actually open when we wanted to go.
But look at this freaking menu, how cool is this?
[Laughter] It's a fish.
It's called Pez Cuadro, pez = fish.
Pez carta (fish menu). You can walk out a long way into this water and still be able to touch.
One unique thing about my Mahahual.
[Music]
One question we get a lot is "what's the seaweed situation like?"
well, this big pile right here, this is all seaweed and there's a whole bunch on the shore
right here.
Becasue it's Sunday and people are taking the day off probably.
But, right over here, there's like a Rock Peninsula that's blocking a huge area of the
beach from the seaweed, so there's a significant part of the beach that hardly gets any.
So, if you come here, there's going to be a beach, in all likelihood, that's free of it.
So, this is our last day here, it is a Sunday, beautiful weather, it's not windy at all.
The first day without a cruise ship.
First day without a cruise ship, not one, not two, not three, zero! [Laughter]
And it's kind of crazy, it seems like it's like locals day or like Mexican day basically
because there's no foreigners here at all except for maybe us.
Yeah, just a handful [Laughter].
Just - just a...handful [Laughter].
She's a handful alone.
Wow!
But yeah, it's really nice.
What do you think about the whole time that we've been here in Mahahual, would you
come back?
Would you take a flight here?
I wouldn't - I wouldn't go out of my way to come here.
I would come here on a cruise.
And stop for a day, but I personally don't like the dynamic with the whole cruise
ships, US Dollars, English stuff going on.
I'm inclined to agree with you. I think if I came here... it's hard to even
describe it because we've literally never been to a place like this where I feel like
if I had taken a flight there, I would actually be disappointed.
And by no means am I talking about the gorgeous water over here or - I mean, basically the
water.
It's crystal clear, totally perfect temperature, amazing!
Not talking about that whatsoever.
The people here are incredibly nice, we haven't been scammed really, I mean, sure prices are
in US dollars but it's straight forward.
There's no deception about it.
It's either like here, you can pay in US dollars or here you can pay in pesos.
But just the cruise ship dynamic, it's like people are prioritizing cruise ship people
that are here which in a sense makes sense because they're only here for a day and so
everyone wants to make sure they have a great time.
But on the other hand, it's like, if you were coming here as like a traveler or a tourist
outside of a cruise ship, then you're kind of getting like the short end of a stick and
it would be a little bit of a trek to get here if you're taking a flight and then taking
a bus, or you know, something to get here.
I'd say if you're coming to the area, go to Bacalar.
Go to Bacalar, for sure! Oh!
Or even Tulum, I still love Tulum.
Well guys, I'm sorry if this isn't our most exciting video that we've ever made.
Honestly, we were considering not even posting this because we just really weren't that excited
about Mahahual except the water.
Please don't get me wrong, beautiful...
But if you like this video anyway, let us know in the comments, give this video a thumbs
up, subscribe to our channel to see our upcoming adventures that we're going to be having.
Going back to Puerto Morelos now, a bunch of you have been asking me about that.
And one last thing...
[Bell Rings]
GONG that bell! [Laughter] So that you get notified the next time we put on a new video.
We will see you in the next one.
[Music]