Cancun Work Trip (with some potato photos)

[nickhasanexocet]

This Monday, I headed for Cancun. This was my first time in Mexico. It pretty much met and exceeded all the good and bad that people say it is.

First, some background: the company that I work for has grown from under 20 or over 40 in less than a couple years. We became a remote company in the pandemic and the overwhelming majority of people had never met more than a few others in person - ever. Our team is from all over the US and Canada (about 50/50 split). We decided on Mexico because we have some people in Canada on passports that make US travel difficult. We had 3 full days for activities. Two of those were presentations, team building, etc with fairly minimal time for other stuff. The third day, we rented a catamaran to go to Isla Mujeres (a 5 mile long island off the coast) to explore.

Resort

• The resort (Garza Blanca) was very nice. The rooms were spacious, had fancy toilets, and were brand new. The whole resort is brand new.
• The food looked great. Most food was pretty bland and lacked identity. Give me a street taco any day over some bland mousse.
• The resort experience was high end (butler service, friendly staff).

Day 3

Isla Mujeres was an experience...

Most of the team took a catamaran. I get super sea sick and was going to go anyways. Then I found out that a couple people were going to skip it for that reason. However, that meant skipping the island entirely and sitting around the resort. My team spirit kicked in and I found that the cargo ferry next to the hotel also took passengers. I got us tickets and we took the very stable journey over. Several people got pretty sea sick on the catamaran so we made a good call. The people who took the catamaran also got accosted by locals the moment they stepped foot on the island. Typical island "buy this! Try this!" aggressive stuff. The cargo ferry on the other hand landed like a local and had no issues.

Most people who went to the island rented a golf cart (pricey - 75 to 95 usd for 3 hours) but worth it. The views at the southern part of the island were amazing. That exceeded expectations.

Remember how I mentioned the good and bad were met? Well, our team also witnessed a tourist get fleeced by a taxi. The taxi reversed (intentionally) into a tourist on a golf cart, then demanded a payout. Several people (who are part of the scam) ran out to berate the cart driver into handing over cash to "cover the damage".

A member of my team had a shop owner try to sell her a candy bar for $250 USD as of she didn't know what dollars were worth (she's originally from Nigeria so she looks like she's not from north America). Classy, Mexico. Very classy - racism and defrauding tourists at the same time.

In general, things around the island were overpriced. The carts are horribly maintained with 60 degrees of steering play. The food was good but prices were approaching San Francisco level.

We still had a blast on the island. We came back to a full blown party - complete with dancing and fire dancers. We also hired "interactive dancers" who got the party started and got people dancing. That was neat.

All in all, it was a pretty amazing work trip. I saw lots of Nissan Tsurus. Before this trip, I would have never gone to Mexico if I had a choice. After this trip, well, that hasn't changed. The roads are garbage, there are lots of scammers, the resorts are not my jam, and while the hotel was safe, outside of it was dicey. Our Operations Lead did an amazing job arranging transportation that helped us avoid any issues.

[flatisflat]

@nickhasanexocet Yeah, Cancun is ...too popular. And thus suffers everything that goes along with that.

[PowderHound]

@nickhasanexocet said in Cancun Work Trip (with some potato photos):

had fancy toilets

Sold.

[Chariotoflove]

@nickhasanexocet
Neat! Lots of places are like that. Had a good time, glad I went, ready to do something else next time.

Cool that you got to actually spend time with the people that work together with you to make things happen.

[MUSASHI66]

@nickhasanexocet That more or less covers every tourist spot in the world. Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, Croatia, Montenegro, half a dozen Caribbean destination I’ve been to… hell, even Miami Beach was mostly like that.

At this point, we go to small resort called Solmar (not Grand Solmar next door), with a mile long beach without any vendors, and we skip shitty watered down drinks and buffet food in the “all inclusive” packages and make our own coin margs and eat at best street taco and tacos mariscos joints in town, without a gringo in sight.

[pip bip]

@nickhasanexocet yeah, that for me (the team meetings/dancing etc) is torture.

[Vondon302]

@nickhasanexocet Mexico was fun in the 90s. If I'm going to get mugged as a tourist Jamaica is a better bet. At least they do it with a smile.

[Vondon302]

@MUSASHI66 said in Cancun Work Trip (with some potato photos):

@nickhasanexocet That more or less covers every tourist spot in the world. Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, Croatia, Montenegro, half a dozen Caribbean destination I’ve been to… hell, even Miami Beach was mostly like that.

At this point, we go to small resort called Solmar (not Grand Solmar next door), with a mile long beach without any vendors, and we skip shitty watered down drinks and buffet food in the “all inclusive” packages and make our own coin margs and eat at best street taco and tacos mariscos joints in town, without a gringo in sight.

Hell yeah that's how you do it. One of the worst pushy hagglers experience I've ever had was in Italy at Pisa. Get out of the tourist areas and everything be fine. It's the same no matter where you go.

[nickhasanexocet]

@pip-bip I really enjoyed the meetings but I don't dance.