The Beach Resort:
Our tour finished with 4 days to relax and unwind at Mexico’s Caribbean beach resort of Playa del Carmen. This was a
very different side of Mexico to what we had already experienced and very Americanised - mainly because it was full of Americans!
We were surprised that English hadn’t been very widely spoken by the locals during the tour - even in the souvenir shops - but
at the beach everything was English. All of the prices were in US dollars too, although you still had to pay in Mexican
Pesos. This was probably because the Americans are notoriously bad at currency conversions.  The first thing we did as soon as we arrived was look into doing a bit of scuba diving.
This wasn’t hard as the resort was overflowing with dive centres. This was because the world’s second largest coral reef
(after the great barrier reef) was a short ferry ride away near the island resort of Cozumel.
We arranged two dives for the following afternoon and then went into a mad panic because it was about 18 months since we
had done our training and we were worried that we had forgotten what to do. The dives were very different to when we were training
because everything was done for us! There were 4 of us diving with a guide who helped us out with everything so there was no
problem getting the tank ready. In previous dives, we had spent the majority of our dives performing exercises underwater but this
time we were allowed to swim around freely under the watchful eye of our guide who would occasionally point things out to us. There
were plenty of tropical fish and large shellfish to see but unfortunately the coral reef was a big let down. It was almost
completely dead due to the excessive number of dive centres that were operating in the area.
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