Staying active is easy in Playa Del Carmen

5th Ave toward 50th street

Daily decisions in Playa Del Carmen:

Where to walk to today? the beach in bare feet or the street with running shoes?

Not only, do we like to be active, we purposely go on vacation to be somewhere warm, so we can be active outside.  Our daily walk usually takes 1.5 to 2 hours, but sometimes we just keep going and don't get back to our condo for 3 hours.

This is Playacar beach, a 30 min walk in the sand, great workout for your legs,  sore feet and calf muscles make it hard to do everyday

Our condo is on 5th Ave and 32nd street.  5th is the pedestrian only road in Playa Del Carmen most of the restaurants and shops are toward the lower numbered streets.  The businesses are slowly expanding down 5th toward 46th street, but is still not as busy down there.  Last year they finished a beautiful pedestrian/ bike road all the way past Paradisus Playa Del Carmen resort to Grand Coral Resort entrance, @ 112 St.  The road has a few cars, joggers, bikes and walkers, but it is not well used.  A few weeks ago, there was a lot of garbage around and we wondered why the government would spend so much money to build this and not maintain it.  Last week there was some clean up done, so maybe they heard us??  Anyway even with all the abandoned looking buildings, and squatter shacks, it still feels safe, so we enjoy walking that way, away from the road noise and busy traffic.  We have walked through the gates to the Grand Coral Resort as well, this would be a good place to bike ride to, wide sidewalks and very few cars.  

We did rent bikes one day, quite inexpensive at 90pesos, but we did not feel safe in traffic (we road over to Playacar) and didn't really work up a sweat on the flat roads.  

view down 5th Ave

Nice new street, but many run down buildings

One side of the street has these shacks, hard to believe people live in them

Many half finished buildings, they look abandoned, but some have people living in them

There are also new buildings and resorts on the same road

We have also found a park 2 blocks away that has some stairs & monkey bars, for pull ups and benches for step ups.

It doesn't look as nice as this photo, very rusty now, but they are ugrading the whole stadium so maybe it will be restored to look like this again.

Then there is our large roof top deck that has a nice breeze (usually) I can use that my "swork it" workout.  (Check out the "swork it app" in the app store, pay the 99cents to make it more useable , totally worth it, a great random work out)  Our use a timer and make up your own workout.

After a variation of all of the above each day, we often walk to the grocery store as well, and carry our food back home, then we really deserve a rest under a Palapa on the beach, maybe a swim in the warm ocean. (more calories burned if you actually swim or jump over the waves for awhile)

It is tiring just reading all of that, but remember we are not just here for a relaxing week in the sun, we are trying to live like we do at home only in the sunshine.  We choose not to join the local gym, due to the cost, and the fact that we would rather be outside anyway.  We have learned al lot from our Personal Trainers at home over the years, hope we make them proud!