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Why you should gatecrash your child's gap year in Mexico
Merryn Somerset Webb embraces the carefree lifestyle in Playa del Carmen, on Mexico's Riviera Maya
Ask a luxury travel agent where you should go for a bit of winter sun with your family without having to change aeroplanes and they’ll offer up a lovely sounding list. It will include Mauritius, Cape Town and the Turks and Caicos.
The winner once you get into it will be Barbados. Gorgeous beaches, reliable sun, great food, lots of activities (see my review from March).
When you land, your kids’ Snap Maps on social media app Snapchat will light up, says one of my sisters, a luxury travel agent. Easiest teen parenting ever. She’s probably right. But I have a new one for your list – Mexico.
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You can fly direct to Cancún from London with Tui, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. It takes just over ten hours and you can do it for under £400 return if you time it right.
I know what you are thinking. Cancún? Spring break party hell central? Relax. You don’t actually need to go anywhere near the wrong kind of vibrant nightlife. Instead, head straight from the airport to Playa del Carmen or Tulum.
The cliffs of the latter are home to the remarkably well-preserved ruins of the last city built and inhabited by the Maya. You have to visit these at some point, wherever you stay on the Yucatán Peninsula, so it makes sense to stay there too.
The beach is gorgeous, there are some charming boutique hotels as well as the all-inclusives the Yucatán is known for, the food is great and, if you like yoga, you will find you have found yet another spiritual home.
"There is still something thrilling about an all-inclusive mini bar"
(Image credit: Hyatt)
Tagging along with the kids
I didn’t stay in Tulum. My trip, including flights, lasted five days all in – and I was doing something that my sister specialises in organising, but which most helicopter parents (wisely) keep to themselves. Yes, I was crashing a kid’s gap year.
The gap-year crash (to my mind at least) should not involve you sightseeing with the kids, travelling with them, meeting their new friends, or asking them to show you what they have been up to.
You should not get in the way at all. Instead, you should offer them the opportunity to meet you for four days at a luxury hotel somewhere roughly on their route.
You get to see them. They get to eat a lot, sleep somewhere that isn’t a long-distance bus ride away or a youth hostel with 16-bed mixed dorms – and (the best bit) leave with clean clothes. That’s it.
With this in mind we looked for a five-star all-inclusive in Playa del Carmen (40 minutes from the airport rather than the two hours to get to Tulum). There are quite a lot.
What’s the difference, I asked my sister. It’s all about how much Cancun spillover you want to see and how many hen nights you want to share, she said. The more you pay, the less you see and the less you share. So the pretty pricey Secrets Maroma Beach Riviera Cancun resort it was. I liked it.
The rooms were big and genuinely luxurious (there is still something thrilling about an all-inclusive mini bar), the gardens were suitably tropical and the views from our balconies the kind you get in all top resorts (in a good way).
It also made me worry less about the fertility crisis than I usually do. There were no hen nights. But there were an awful lot of weddings on the (utterly delightful) white-sand beach and no shortage of dreamy honeymooners.
One day we sunbathed between two weddings – one on the vow bit and the other on the photo bit. All very charming. We went big on the all-inclusive activities – kayaking (there’s a pretty reef just off the coast for snorkelling), pool volleyball, guacamole-making lessons and so on.
But it was on the yoga lawn (also known as the “Love Lawn” for the metal heart on to which young lovers can attach a padlock Pont des Arts-style) that I really began to grasp the point of the hotel – for at least some of its guests. For a place with 412 “deluxe suites” there were bemusingly few participants. The reason became clear.
Pool volleyball is among the many activities on offer
(Image credit: Hyatt)
The great cocktail dilemma
“Can we,” asked the full body suit lycra-clad lady next to me (brave choice, by the way – it is quite hot in Mexico), “do detox yoga?” Turns out she had a hangover. Turned out they all had. So many cocktails to try, they said. You don’t have to try them all, I said.
Well, she said, you kinda do. I mean you paid already right? Anyway she told us that the standard approach to the cocktail dilemma was to decide (“around 10.30am”) whether it was to be a vodka day or a tequila day and take it from there. How you remembered your choice by supper time I have no idea.
It didn’t matter – the only thing to keep in mind, as a slightly squiffy new wife told me early one evening, is that “Champagne and tequila don’t mix”. Early night for her. The rest of us went to the Mexican bracelet-making class and silent disco.
On our last morning, we sat on the hotel’s utterly idyllic terrace, me watching the birds swoop for crumbs, the gap-year girls seeing how many calories they could get in from the particularly good breakfast buffet before being chucked out.
The man at the table next to us ordered a Bellini with a tequila chaser. He’d made his choice earlier than the yoga ladies.
One final observation. Read the press and you will believe that Americans drink less than Brits, that almost all well-off Americans are on Ozempic and that all this makes Americans no fun. None of this appears to be true.
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