Playa Del Carmen Week 1

Yes, 2013 starts the year of real retirement living, so of course it must start on a beach.  We arrived in Playa Del Carmen 9 days ago, we are still surprised at the crowds of young people, the heat, and the difficulty finding a good seafood restaurant.

Last February I went online and found a great condo to rent here in Playa and we love it, great location, clean, small complex, quiet neighbors, nice pool, short walk to the beach or busy 5th Ave with it's many restaurants.  Very happy with the choice we made to rent this place at Arena Blanca.  It is at the quiet end of town, but we still find the road noise and some boom boom music from an unknown surrounding restaurant can keep us awake at night, windows just are not that soundproof in this building(that's my only complaint so far).

When I was doing my research last year I checked the weather history on weatherunderground.com, it showed January to be about 23C on average, so we brought a couple of sweaters thinking it might not be that warm at night......well I guess the weather is just different this year, it is currently 26C, with a few nice clouds, and a breeze(thankfully)...yesterday was 28C but felt like 37C and really there has not been a day that has cooled down to prevent me from breaking out in a sweat eating dinner at an outdoor restaurant after dark!  (Yeah, yeah... we know I am menopausal women but really no one is gonna need a sweater, never mind sleeves!)

No where in my research did I find a mention of "BPM", apparently it stands for Beats Per Minute and is a huge thing with the 20 something crowd, DJ's from all over the world are in Playa Del Carmen for the next week or so (well it started before we got here, but officially Jan 4th to 13th) to play their BOOM BOOM beat at many locations throughout town.  I understand that this technobeat stuff can be quite good but I can't tell where one song ends and the next begins and all we can hear on the beach is BOOM BOOM BOOM....it is too annoying!  

Here is the link to learn more ifhttp://www.thebpmfestival.com/ you so desire http://www.thebpmfestival.com/

The beach in Playa is really quite lovely, (and it goes on for miles so you can avoid the BOOM BOOM crowd), the white sand is made of ground seashells so it never gets hot, it is like walking on powder all the way out into the water too!  The water is just as warm as the air,  turquoise blue and heavenly to float in.  The wind can create some big waves, but mostly this part of the coast is sheltered by the island of Cozumel, so it can be quite calm.  You can't help wanting to take a dip everyday!

What I find quite amusing is this photo below that many condo owners have posted on their ads to rent their places close to Mamitas beach......................

Quite beautiful isn't it?

But this is what it really looks like.....................I took this photo yesterday, the crowd gets bigger, much bigger when you get to Mamita's as it is a beach bar hosting the "BPM"   

Everyday this beach is crowded (even before the BPM) there are many beach bars, resorts and very little actual sand to sit on, storms have eroded a lot of the beach away, so that nice deserted beach pictured above, must be very very old!

Still I prefer the beaches here on the atlantic side to the ones on the Pacific coast of Mexico, the water is warmer, clearer and there are no dead puffer fish or sea snakes like in Puerto Vallarta.
On the other hand, we liked the restaurants and seafood better on the Pacific side.
It's early in the trip yet, and about 360 restaurants here, so much more research to be done.......to be continued.......