Buddy, want weed or blow?

After a week in Playa del Carmen I’ve been trying to think how to describe the place.

You’ve got this stunning stretch of Caribbean Sea all bluey-green and lined with white sand. Behind the sand, and edging out onto it, are bars and condominiums. Then two blocks back you have Avenida Quinta which is really the defining thing.

The Avenue runs for miles paralleling, but out of sight of, the beach. It is packed with sun-burned tourists. Every third shop is a pharmacy selling drugs that require prescriptions in the USA. Between them there are shops selling tequila or souvenirs and people selling massages. And then there are endless bars and restaurants all thumping out bass music. And that’s during the day.

At night the basics remain the same but the perpendicular streets open up their nightclubs with dancing women in cages and industrial-deafness levels of competing music. And everywhere you go someone will quietly say, without looking you in the eye, ‘Hey buddy, you want weed or blow?’

Las Vegas? Phuket? I actually don’t know because this is the sort of place I usually avoid. So I’m treating this as an experience in the sort of place I usually avoid.

To be fair to Playa del Carmen if you walk two block further from the beach you find yourself in a much more local area where the defining characteristic is the number of trip-hazards on the pavement. And if you follow Avenida Quinta for a few kilometers north, as I did this morning, you find yourself in a more hippy area where you get the sense people are visiting for the beach more than the bars. But those parts are really not the definition of the place – that’s the Sun-reddened tourist from Alabama claiming her free tequila on the street because she has big boobs (it’s not sexist, the next shop offers a free tequila if you’re fat and bald).

I realize this all sounds negative but I am, thanks to the school, enjoying my time here. I just won’t be rushing back if for no other reason than the one thing missing from all of this is… Spanish.