Episode 37 - Cancún
Iguanas, golf carts, and swimming!
Last weekend, I went on an amazing trip to Cancun, Mexico, to visit my sister for a few days. The startup she works for, Roboflow, was having their company on-site at the wonderful Club Med resort, and everyone got to invite a +1 for the weekend!
I was extremely lucky to be my sister’s +1, so on a normal UCLA Friday morning, I found myself on a flight to another country for a much-needed vacation.
I’ve been going on many weekend trips during my senior year at UCLA, but this one to Cancun was just so special that I wanted to write an entire blog post all about it.
Let’s go!
Friday, October 25th, 2024
I woke up at 4:30 am on Friday to head to the airport for my 6 am flight.
Usually, whenever I have to wake up super early to go to the airport, I’m deeply questioning how badly I actually want to go on that trip. Not today!
I was so excited to go to Cancun that this thought didn’t even cross my mind. I super excitedly got ready and before we knew it, Brooke and I were driving to LAX for me to get dropped off.
TSA check-in and boarding went smoothly, and I slept the entire first flight to Dallas. When we landed in Texas, I rushed across to the airport to grab lunch at the delicious Centurion Lounge, then made it back as boarding was ending for the connecting flight to Cancun. Stressful!
The entire flight to Cancun, I was absolutely locked in on writing my Interviewing 101 article for Interosity — those three hours flew by in a second, and I was in Cancun in no time at all!
Customs was super easy in Mexico, and I was outside in the humid air before I knew it.
The humidity was insane, and you felt the air become heavy as soon as you stepped out of the air-conditioned airport building. Crazy!
The resort that we were staying at had a shuttle service from the airport (so nice!), so someone met me at the waiting area outside of arrivals and drove me straight to the resort. So fancy!
Once I checked in, it was straight to the beach. My sister and her coworkers were there playing beach volleyball, and it was super fun to play there and meet them.
We were there for the next few hours until it was time for the fancy dinner. The resort had an all-you-can-eat buffet situation for all meals, and it blew my mind after surviving off the food in the UCLA coop I live in back in LA! There were so many different tables with so much DELICIOUS food, and even an ice cream section, too!!
After dinner, we went over to the bar to have a few beers and play a few games of Durak with Brad and his friend George. It was off to an early night, exciting things ahead!
Saturday, October 26th
We woke up on Saturday with a tremendous amount of excitement, because Saturday was the much-anticipated SAILING day for the trip!
We took a shuttle to the port and hopped onto the super nice catamaran boat to sail to the nearby island 9 miles away, Isla Mujeres. As soon as we got onto the boat, the drinks started flowing, even though it wasn’t even 10 am.
Jacob, my sister’s former manager, introduced us to this very exciting game —> the ideal range of drunkness is to be the top-5 most drunk on the boat, but not #1. That is the sweet spot! Over the course of the boating journey, we kept checking in on the status of this leaderboard.
On this very same boat ride there, we saw dolphins, went snorkeling (where I saw a ton of fish and some underwater hand statues!), chatted with a guy who networked his way into Roboflow by being super active on their forum, learned about Brad’s Facebook game that he built, and made it to the top-5 leaderboard of Jacob’s game (with Jacob definitely at #1)!
We eventually made it to the island, where we all disembarked and were led into a nearby jewelry store and all given a free tequila shot. I found this all tremendously hilarious, and I really had to respect the get-rich-tourists-drunk-to-buy-our-fake-jewelry hustle of these stores.
The others from our boating group went into the nearby shops or to a restaurant, but our group (my sister, Brad, his +1 George, and I) decided to rent a golf cart and zoom it around the island instead! We flew around some other (slow) golf cart drivers and made it halfway around the island before we had to turn back, stopping for some delicious coconut drinks along the way.
I also must say that the golf cart seems to be traveling MUCH faster when you’re sitting in the back and facing backward than when you’re driving. Crazy!
After the golf cart adventure, my sister and I swam on the beach for a bit before heading back on the boat and resuming our quest to make the top-5 leaderboard. Most of the way back, I talked with George, who was working at a startup himself in Zurich. He met Brad in a waterskiing lakehouse in Iowa when they were kids, and they’ve been friends ever since!
Back at the resort, it was another afternoon of great beach volleyball and swimming before another delicious dinner.
BUT THAT WAS NOT IT!
In the evening, we also went to a club!
The very kind of club that they warn you not to go to, lol. It was the most touristy trap of all the clubs you could ever imagine, but it was an absolutely amazing time nonetheless.
The funniest part of that entire club was that there were two barely-clothed Mexican women dancing at the entrance on a raised pedestal for every in the club and on the street to see (great marketing), and there was a crowd of ~15 men just standing outside the club and watching (and recording) for a long while. It was hilarious to watch!
Another rather unexpected highlight was when Jacob and I were invited up to that very same raised pedestal and proceeded to dance in front of everyone at the club for a few minutes ourselves.
Sunday, October 27th
We were surprisingly not hungover in the morning, just sleep-deprived!
This was great, as there was an entire day of adventure awaiting us. Emily and I had signed up for a tourist travel package to go visit some Mayan ruins on Sunday, and we had to meet the tour guide at the front lobby at the nice and early time of 7:20 am.
After we got back at around 1ish am the night before. Nice!
The tour guide was absolutely amazing and was entertaining everyone on the bus in both English and French the entire way. The ruins we visited were called Tulum, and were an ancient Mayan city right along the water! We had another great tour guide show us around, and it was really cool seeing the huge stone temples and houses right along the beautiful cliffs. Plus, there were tourist-trap folks trying to get tourists to take pictures with their pet monkeys, and those monkeys were SO CUTE!
AND there were iguanas tanning EVERYWHERE in the sun! One of my favorite parts about Cancun was that there were iguanas everywhere (like squirrels in America) and I loved seeing them all just lying on the rocks.
Honestly, living there as a Mayan didn’t seem too bad at all.
After Tulum, our group went back on the bus for the final part of the tour — an underground river exploration! We basically arrived at this nice forested area, put on helmets, life jackets, and boots, then headed down into a hole in an underground river system. I learned that much of the Yucatan Peninsula is made of this porous limestone, so there are actually very few aboveground rivers in the region. Instead, the rivers all flow underground, and when the rooves collapse, they make the cenote swimming pools!
The underground caving was awesome, and it was so cool to be swimming in the tunnels. :)
After the swimming, it was back to the resort for us (which I was liking more and more each day!), and I spent most of the ride back talking to the main tour guide of the day. His backstory was extremely interesting, growing up in Rwanda before moving to Colombia, then Mexico. We talked about his life, corruption, and the challenges facing developing countries. Made me very happy to be an American, I have to say.
Back at the resort, it was more volleyball, more swimming, and more reading by the ocean. Another great dinner, and then we played poker!
I had heard so much lore around poker and was very excited to be taking part in it (and ACDC, another gambling game) finally! After putting in $40, I only lost about $10, which I thought wasn’t a bad loss at all.
Monday, October 28th
The last morning in Cancun was definitely a bittersweet one. I was excited to go back to UCLA, but would miss the amazing beach vacation so much!
A great part of the trip was that as soon as I landed in Cancun, I deleted all the communication apps (iMessage, GroupMe, Slack, Gmail) from my phone and tried to enjoy the moment as much as I could. I didn’t realize how much the messaging notifications were distracting me until I got rid of them completely and felt so relaxed without my phone the entire trip.
In the morning, I had a great career advice chat with Jacob (especially around consulting vs startups), then went swimming with my sister before she left for the airport.
I spent my last morning reading by the ocean, swimming some more, and then having lunch with Brad and George. We played some more cards while their airport shuttle arrived, and then it was off to the airport for me, too!
Everything at the airport went smoothly except for the very major fact that I left my wallet in my sister’s backpack, who was already on a plane to America. Inside that wallet was the immigration form I got when I first landed in Cancun and needed to legally fly out of Mexico.
Oops!
I had to go to the immigration office to get a new form, for which they charged a lovely 750 Mexican pesos (~$35). Great
I then asked if they took Apple Pay, which they didn’t.
Well, this was an extremely pickly pickle, since my physical credit cards were in that same wallet as the immigration form I needed to buy, and I was effectively stuck in Mexico with no way to buy a new immigration form.
It was at this point that the universe summoned a hero, and a random Australian man who overheard this conversation offered unprompted to pay the recovery 750 pesos. I actually couldn’t believe it. He simply swiped his card, told me, “I’ve forgotten my wallet before and know the situation you’re in”, and left out the immigration office, never to be seen again!
That random act of kindness made me so grateful, and with my new immigration form in hand, I made it through customs and airport security without a problem. Waiting for the plane, I wrote this funny email, got on the plane, and spent the next 5 hours reading the book All the Light We Cannot See, one of my favorite books ever.
I can’t remember the last time I spent I sat and read a book for 5 hours straight, but it was THAT amazing. Wow
And so, we make it to the end of the great Cancun trip! Thanks for reading, and see y’all soon :)
Best,
Dennis