Puerto Morelos is a nice quaint town and is way less of a tourist nightmare than Cancun, it’s an easy bus ride south of town, we were able to rent a car down there for $44 for a day and then return it to the Cancun airport the next day.
Our place in Puerto Morelos was a little south of town. They had free cruiser bikes available for use, which were very helpful for getting to town, since there was no great way to walk to town and back, especially in the dark.
The best meal we had in Puerto Morelos was at Al Chimichurri, an Argentinean restaurant. It’s not very cheap, but it was worth it for the best steak I’ve had in a long time. And it’s highly rated on Yelp (even if they don’t know where it is).
We found restaurants that had “Natural” in their name should be avoided and likewise, if they have a 6 page bound, laminated menu in English, you probably aren’t getting a very authentic experience.
Big white sand beaches on the Caribbean side are much better for playing in the water than the Baja peninsula.
Cancun is a shithole (but at least the bus rides are entertaining).
Mexican Parking Tickets
We got a parking ticket outside of Tulum, this wasn’t terribly unpredictable since there were no parking signs everywhere. When you get a parking ticket in a rental car in Mexico, the police take the rear license plate off, this way when you return to the rental car company, they have to deal with it and you have to give them $100 to deal with it.
Depending on how much time you have on your hands, you could try to find the officer who gave you the ticket or find the local police station to try to deal with it there. The ticket had no dollar amount for the fine so you could be paying a bribe or negotiating the fine.