It was my last week in Playa del Carmen. I had a really good time overall, and it was a fun experience with Hacker Paradise. It was really nice to go somewhere and have a built-in social circle to go explore with. On the other hand, I am glad to have parted ways with a big group for now and be back to exploring on my own. I can see myself doing a remote worker cohort like that again, but maybe not super frequently. I have lots more I could say about it, but I'll leave it there!
Jamming on the rooftop!A nice dinner I had this week - grilled salmon and vegetables. I really liked how this restaurant kept it simple - oil, salt, pepper and that was about it.Me getting coco loco, both figuratively and literally. I think this beverage was 50% coconut milk and 50% rum. I drank maybe six sips of it before calling it quits.Apologies for the terrible camera work! We went out to a Cuban restaurant for our final group dinner, and there were a couple really good live musicians playing.
March 29th, 2022
It's hard to believe my time at PDC is coming to an end soon! It's been a really crazy month, with so much going on in my professional and personal life. The last week was a ton of fun, I went on a road trip to see Chichen Itza, and also went down to Tulum for a beach day.
Someone snagged this picturesque photo of me playing guitar!This is a photo taken on 5th street, the popular drag in downtown Playa.Some lunch while I was out and about. Cheap and delicious tacos!A quick photo from my balcony, this is the street I'm living on.Bumped into this sunbathing iguana while exploring the Mayan ruins in Tulum.Me and a couple friends snagged a rental car and took a trip to Chichen Itza. It was really nice to escape from the large group of remote workers that I'm staying with and take a smaller group out. Much easier to split bills and make decisions!Another photo of us at Chichen Itza.A photo of the pok-a-tok stadium. Pok-a-tok was a game played by the ancient Mayans, as well as some other civilization. It was supposedly very violent.Despite all the cool sights and fun beach hangouts, I think my favorite part of the week was exploring the small town of Valladolid. It felt really nice to break away from the tourist activities and immerse myself more into local culture.Finally, here is a beautiful cenote that I went swimming in. There were tons of these little black fish swimming in there that are endemic and only found in cenotes. Really cool!
March 20th, 2022
It's been a long time since I've updated the blog! Apologies for the delay, it's been a really hectic month. I had a lot going on - moving to Mexico, then having to turn around after just a few days and go back to the United States for a week, before going back to Mexico again. I'm out here with a pretty large group of other remote workers, as well, so it's been basically nonstop activities. I have hundreds of photos, but tried to select just a few that make a good highlight reel.
Here's some photos of my housing in Playa del Carmen. It's a really nice studio apartment, and in a good area that's close to basically everything you could want in town.This is a panoramic photo of my neighborhood. I think there's a pretty good mix between tourist housing and local homes. I really like the balance of the town, where it's toursity but not completely gentrified.This is (most of) the group of people that I'm living here in Mexico with. For posterity, I'll try to name all of them. Rob and Ronnie are out of frame, and Joe is just barely in frame. Then there's Shawn, Maria, Alan, Dee, Lauren, Rami, Mary Lee, Eric, Mike, myself, Dvora and Sam. Believe it or not there's a few people missing! Big crowd :)One night, we went out to Alux, which is a restaurant that's entirely inside of a natural cave. It was pretty expensive, and definitely more of a "go for the experience" kind of place.Here's my dinner at Alux! Ribs, shrimp and some fancy wine. Despite looking very pretty, it was very mediocre. And very expensive! I'm glad that I went, but I would never go back :PKeeping the trend of boujie food, we also went out to Luma Taverna del Mar, which had better food, better service and surprisingly good prices. This was the seared tuna with pesto and ratatoullie. Everybody was really impressed with their meals here.I met a dog! He was a stray, and a total grandpa. But he was very excited to see me, and by that I mean he was very excited to see the food I was eating. He was clearly well fed, too. Living the doggie dream, sitting around on a beach in Mexico getting hand fed by tourists.Photo of the beach. Can't tell you exactly which one, because it's a closely guarded secret. Not really, I was actually just on a boat and unclear where we were. Oops!My friend Maria had a birthday! So some of us took a day long booze cruise out to Isla Mujeres to celebrate. From left to right: me, Maria, Shawn, Caroline, Mark, tourist lady, Alan and Sam.An amazingly fun photo of us at Isla Mujeres.This is me. And I am clearly having fun, on a beach.
