I know this must have been asked a billion times and I swear I looked but couldn't find a post about it. Sorry if it's super repetitive.
A friend is turning 30 next May and we are planning a girl's trip to celebrate. Two of our friends have never been out of the country, so we decided on a Mexican all-inclusive as an international, but very laid back, vacay. I would love to hear your recommendations! We like the beach, good food, and of course - drinks. In addition to resort recommendations, if you have a TA rec I'd love it - since there will be a group of 6 of us traveling, we'll probably try going through a TA to help schedule everyone's flights etc. at the least.
TIA!
Re: Recs: Mexican All-Inclusive
Catalonia Yucatan Beach resort and spa on the Mayan Riviera side of Mexico. We've been there twice and loved it. Great beach (5 min max walk from any room on the resort), 7 bars (including swim up bars), lots of restaurant choices (2 buffets, mexican, italian, tapas, steakhouse, japanese and a creperie), a disco, sports bar, spa, amazing nightly entertainment, activities on the beach during the day, snorkling, catamaran rides, kayaking, and various sports activities (archery, volleyball, bike tours). The resort is located in Puerto Adventuras which is a gated community. There is a dreams resort there, as well as condos and other homes. There are a few restaurants, cafe's, a dolphin place (you can swim with dolphins or even just go get pictures of them), a manatee interactive area and many shops. It's a great resort as its only around 400 rooms, yet you arent limited in activites and food choices. Its great that you can leave the resort for a meal or shopping but still be within the gated community and feel safe. We've been to the Sirenis as well and would not recommend it (horrible service, food and had to walk half an hr from our room just to get to the beach).
Suggestions would be to bring water shoes (sometimes the beaches are a little rocky). We got a pair at walmart for $8 and they sold them at the resort for $30 and your own suntan lotion, tanning lotion, and meds such as pepto bismol tablets, bandaids, polysporin, reactin, motrin etc as these can be pricey on the resort and its better to have it and not need it them to have to pay top dollar for it. Our first trip we forgot solarcain and ended up buying a mexican version and all the directions were in spanish, lol. We never had any issues with the food or water at this resort, but we did take a couple pepto tablets the first 2 days there as a precautionary. Have any more questions feel free to msg me on the July 2010 board.
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Ditto.
We just went to the Valentin Imperial Maya with some friends at the end of May and had a good time. It's adults only - while there were honeymooners and just couples on vacation, there were also quite a few groups of friends. We loved the pool area and spent a couple of our days there just going from one swim up bar to the other
If you end up in the Riveria Maya area, I would highly recommend doing an excursion with EdVenture Tours (it was by far the highlight of the trip for all of us) and also would recommend USA Transfers to get from airport to resort and resort to airport.