Fairmont Mayakoba Golf Resort

January 7-13 2007

Johnson and I visited this wonderful 5 star resort at the beginning of this year. Luckily Johnson gets a discount so that we got a very good deal to stay there. Normally guests pay a minimum of $500 per night and that can go up to $1700 per night if one takes the beach side individual units with personal swimming pool. Luxury is very nice.

Since this was not a package tour we had to arrange everything ourselves. The first problem was to get to Mexico and then the resort near Playa del Carmen. Thank goodness for the Internet. One can take "air only" packages from tour operators who have some plane seats left over. These tend to be expensive and, due to Johnson's work schedule, we could only be in Mexico for six days so could not use that. Air Canada also flies directly to Cancun but they charge an arm and a leg. The least expensive alternative was to use expedia.ca to look for flights out of Buffalo, New York. Indeed, we found that US Air would fly to Cancun for less than CAN$500 return each.

That would have worked out all right if we got the original flight time that we wanted as we could have driven the same day to Buffalo and parked at the airport. However, there was a cancellation of a flight so we had to take the 07:30 flight out of Buffalo. So we stayed over at the Days Inn, which is right across the road from the airport; they offer a deal to park the car. That costs about CAN$150.

The US Air system uses a hub concept so that you have to fly to the center of the hub and then off again so there is no direct flight from Buffalo to Cancun. We had to fly to Philadelphia and then to Cancun. Because our original flight to Philly was gone we took 8 hours to get to Cancun.

The fairmont.com site gave us an idea how to get to the Mayakoba resort from the Cancun Airport using viator.com. We booked a van online and they were quite professional. The Cancun airport is a zoo so we were happy to have an easy out instead of dealing with taxi drivers and so on. The resort is about 40 minutes south of the airport; Cancun is just north of the airport. On the way we passed the infamous Barcelo resort where the Italian-Canadian couple were killed in 2006.

The Mayakoba resort has a number of different properties. There are the deluxe ones I mentioned above. The most popular ones seemed to be apartments in house like units; you can see pictures in the album with this blog. There are other units that are housed in a building much like a hotel. We stayed in that kind of place. The rooms are spacious with a large HD Samsung TV, Bose radio, balcony and bathroom. The bathroom has two sinks; a bathtub and a glass enclosed shower. There is a little room also for luggage and a safe.

The resort also supports conventions and has a big place for that. There is a spa and a beautiful golf course. There are three restaurants: one is a buffet by the canal, another is a seafood restaurant in the main building, and there is a "fine" dining by the ocean. There is a small shop where you can buy sandwiches and Coronas!

We liked the buffet the best. They would have lots of shrimp and a special each night like tender roast beef, Mexican fahitas and so on. The breakfast was equally good. The fine dining was a bit of a disappointment but was a pleasant enough time. The problem was that the servings were a bit dainty and the wine was awful. There was good live music.

There are a number of swimming pools that are very imaginative. The main pool is in the middle of the property and is very complex with fountains, kiddy pool and a swim up bar. The pool by the buffet restaurant is simple and square but its edge is right on the canal and raised up quite a bit. The beach has a similar pool but is rounded in many ways.

The beach is nice sand and faces east so the sunrises are directly in front. The beach goes for miles in either direction. Although it is not wide, there is plenty of room.

The other blog relates our trip to Chichen-Itza. That was a major tour for us and is really wonderful to see all the old remnants of an extinct civilization. There are ruins in many places like Tulum but we didn't go down there.

One day we walked from the resort south to Playa del Carmen. The map we had, which was obviously not to scale, looked like we were pretty close but it turned out to be about 20 km or a 3.5-hour walk. We asked a staff member at our hotel that seemed to know the distance correctly. We didn't mind as we had lots of picture taking opportunities along the way. There were hotels, defunct buildings, public beaches, new hotels being built, packed hotels and even a four-man swat team patrolling the beach.

In Playa del Carmen we walked around a bit. There are shops and restaurants everywhere. We ended up in a Taco restaurant and had a number of them and Coronas. We were hungry so had some nachos as well, which had lots and lots of cheese on them. It was a plain place where you could look outside and see everyone walk by and store owners trying to snag him or her - mostly to no avail.

We took a taxi back to the hotel (about US$15). Unfortunately Johnson had stomach flu that night. Luckily I didn't get it so it wasn’t the tacos. I believe that it is maybe because I had the flu shot. Anyway he was all right the next day.

We had fun touring the resort. The place is huge and the main part is pretty far from the sea so you have to take a golf cart there and back or take a boat. We liked the boat the best as it wound around the place. We met a worker there called Gilbert who stayed and worked some time in Canada's west. He was funny and would do special tours so that Johnson could take some of his patented pictures. One can also walk or take a bike to the sea.

I was, of course, interested in the golf. This is a Greg Norman design and just opened in 2006. There was the first PGA golf tournament outside of the US or Canada last week; Fred Funk won at age 51. The course is a few hundred meters away from the hotel so we walked up there. The course is beautiful and has lots of water and goes through a number of different forests such as mangrove swamps full of alligators and so on.

We got an individual cart tour of the course by Freddy who works there. It is part of their job I guess. We toured the whole course; we didn't bother too many people because the course was pretty deserted. That will change when all the new luxury hotels in the area get finished.

The course is quite expensive to play US$249 in the morning, $60 for club rental and $17 for shoes. There is an afternoon rate of $149. Johnson doesn't play golf but his discount doesn't apply to me for the course. It would have been tempting to do the old switcheroo but I am not real keen on golf in the winter. My golf would be probably being bad for a high price.

One of the features of the course is the cenote (pronounced: sen-o-tee) on the first hole - right in the middle of the fairway. You can see a picture in the album. There is also another one on the second hole. The limestone giving way and creating a sinkhole causes them. The ground has lots of fresh water.

The weather is quite nice. The temperature is warm but it is often partly cloudy with a fair wind off of the sea. We experienced some rain, the worst of which was on the Mayan Temple tour. The weather in Buffalo was good as well so we had no problems driving.