As 2022 comes to a close and we welcome the New Year, it’s traditional to have a wee look back at the year that was.
Your favourite beach town fared pretty well in 2022. We got new stamped concrete roads and then closed them to traffic every night. We had a very quiet storm season. Hurricane Ian came by, but he just rolled on by us. Lucky for us, less lucky for our friends in Cuba and Florida. We unplugged the Covid traffic light and the Cancun airport set new records for visitors. The lighthouse continued to lean.
So, let me load up the slide show carousel here, get comfy and let’s look at our favourite photos of 2022. (click any photo for a full-screen view)
The town provided a large reminder that there was a new year and that everyone’s property taxes were now due.
Perhaps our favourite story of the year was that bon vivant & Chef Marco of “I Wanna Pizza” finally reopened in 2022 after a long break and renovation. We were delighted to discover that our favourite pizza has been renamed the “Don Roberto”
In addition to pizza, I Wanna Pizza also offers air conditioning and handsome waiters.
We have three supermarkets and lots of fruit markets in Puerto Morelos, but folks are still drawn to the siren song of the fruit truck rolling through town. “NAJRANJAS, NAJRANJAS, NAJRANJAS…”
The complete repaving of our main street, Rojo Gomez north of the square was a welcome addition to the town. The timing of the work, right in the middle of the high season was less welcome, but our creative restauranteurs met the challenge. Later they received permission to close the road in the late afternoon and evening each day, allowing them to take over the road, turning the street into a giant open-air restaurant and music venue. It’s great.
There are many folks in Puerto Morelos with hidden talents! Our friend Christian who you may know from El Campanario, can grill a steak with the best of them and keeps things humming at the restaurant. But, he’s also known as Signoz Torres, a part of the rap group Armada Callejera. They recently celebrated their 10th anniversary as a band at Don Mexkal with a big party and dropped a new video as well. Check out “Young Money.”
The path of Hurricane Ian was originally tracking right through Puerto Morelos. Luckily for us, the course shifted east and we had no ill effects.
This was the beach near Casa de los Viajeros the morning after Ian churned by. The surge rearranged the beach a bit, but the winds were calm.The square hosted a wide variety of events in 2022, including art markets every weekend featuring local artists and food.
The large clock in the square remains as accurate as it ever was, right two times a day. The kids love the playground, and it is swarmed with happy families every evening.
Ever seen a flying fridge? I have. It may not have been big news in town, but it was big for us. This is how we had to get a new fridge and stove delivered to our casa. Our staircase is too narrow for anything bigger than a toaster. This is our old stove making its final trip back to earth. After 14 years, she was rusted out and parts were impossible to find, even in Mexico City.
We got through the summer with a little help from our fans…
One of our favourite views of the town. Our dock is “the office” for a lot of our residents.
The very end of our dock is still showing the damage from the busy storm season of 2020. Tropical Storm Gamma started it, then Hurricane Delta hit it again and Hurricane Zeta left us with this. (Click any of those links for our pictures and video of the storms of 2020. Wild stuff!)
Independence Day on September 16 is a special day everywhere in Mexico. The town erected this giant sign in the square and staged celebrations at City Hall in the Colonia.
Mexico is soccer-crazy, so World Cup was a big deal in Puerto Morelos. Lots of restaurants and bars altered their hours and set up TVs to show the big games. Unfortunately, this is as close as Mexico got to a World Cup title, though our many Argentinian residents were very happy. (Pictured here at Don Mexkal with the lovely and talented Karla Romo, owner of El Pirata and Koox Ich Kool, who took a few minutes off to watch the big game between Mexico and Argentina.)
Early risers in Puerto Morelos are treated to stunning sunrises and empty beaches
As we celebrate our 20th Christmas season here in Puerto Morelos, we are reminded every day how fortunate we were to find this place and all the special people that love it as much as we do. Thanks for coming along with us! We’ll keep doing our best to keep you up to date with this amazing spot.
In 2022 our Beach Reads Blog grew by leaps and bounds, with over 800,000 post views. So we thought we would take a look back at your top 10 most popular blog posts of 2022.
Just a bit of history first… We started Beach Reads back in December 2002 as a newsletter. Back then there was no such thing as “blogs” so Beach Reads was a PDF that we used to e-mail to our subscribers. Our subscriber base came from people that signed up for our newsletter in a notebook on the desk at Alma Libre Bookstore.
7) Lights, Camera, Action In February, a movie called “At Midnight” was shot in Puerto Morelos. They blocked off the main road of Rojo Gomez to traffic, inspiring the city to later do the same, and we told you about here. The movie will be released in February of 2023. Watch for it.
6) Tourist Tax Scams In March we revealed to you a tourist tax scam that is sadly, still going on.
One of our most popular posts of 2022 was back in January and had to do with Covid. You wanted information on what to expect on your holiday, and we brought it to you. Hopefully, this is all behind us.
Thank you to all of you for visiting our page and for all the wonderful feedback we have had over the years. We wish you all a wonderful and safe 2023 and hope that you will keep following along with us.
This is Rose! One of our guests at Casa de los Viajeros with the Christmas Star Piñata in the town square. Photo courtesy of her Dad!
At Navidad, one of the main decorations you see in Mexico is the Christmas Star Piñata. Even after being here for 20 years, we didn’t realize there was a meaning behind this 7 spiked star until our friend and cafe owner Ivette of Lola y Moya mentioned it the other day.
The original Christmas piñata is shaped like a star with seven different points. Each of the points represents one of the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, anger, envy and pride. The piñata’s bright colours are meant to attract you to these sins.
In Puerto Morelos, Christmas Star Piñatas are usually found for sale at the fruit and vegetable markets.
The stick used to break open the piñata is a symbol of goodness or virtue to overcome the seven deadly sins. And the blindfold the person wears, while using the stick to break open the piñata, represents blind faith, guided by a higher power to destroy evil. The breaking of the piñata is a symbol of good triumphing over evil. The candies and toys inside the piñata represent the riches of the kingdom of heaven.
Traditionally, a piñata is filled with candy and small toys. It is strung high above a yard or street on a rope that can be pulled to raise or lower the colourful paper maché star. As the children swing a stick like a baseball bat, trying to hit and eventually break open the piñata, the adults playfully raise, lower and swing the piñata while onlookers sing “Dale, Dale, Dale,” the traditional piñata song. You can hear it here and sing along!
Spanish
Dale, dale dale No pierdas el tino Por que si lo pierdes, Pierdes el camino
Ya le diste uno Ya le diste dos Ya le diste tres Y tu tiempo se acabo
English
Hit it, hit it, hit it Don’t lose your aim Because if you lose it You will lose your way
You hit it once You hit it twice You hit it three times And your time is up
When the piñata finally splits open, candy and toys scatter over the ground. The kids clammer to grab the colourful prizes.
We here at InPuertoMorelos.com and Casa de los Viajeros, hope that you have a wonderful holiday season! Merry Christmas from our home in Puerto Morelos to yours!
Here are the cash exchange rates for December 15, 2022 at CI Banco on the highway in Puerto Morelos.
I post these rates occasionally so you can compare them with what your local bank or the ATM here may offer. To see where the rates have been in the last couple of years, search “exchange rates” on our page at InPuertoMorelos.com These rates are about the same as they were a month ago compared to the US and Canadian dollars. The Peso was showing some strength at the end of November but has since pulled back. The Euro and GBP have both climbed since their lows earlier this year.
Cash Exchange Rates
Buy
Sell
US Dollar $
18.80
19.90
Canadian Dollar $
13.50
15.00
Euro €
20.00
21.45
Pound Sterling £
23.40
24.75
Decline the ATM rate and Save Money! As a side note, we always advise folks who use the ATM here to get their pesos, to DECLINE the machine’s exchange rate. It is usually very much in the ATM’s favour. Here’s a recent example. We withdrew $7000 pesos from our Scotiabank account in Canada. (Scotiabank has no ATM fees for their Canadian customers, which is a great deal.) If we had accepted the exchange rate the machine offered us, it would have cost us $526.64 CAD for our pesos, an exchange rate of 1 MXN = 0.07523 CAD. Instead, we let our bank in Canada work out the exchange rate and the cost to us was $498.63. That is a $28 CAD difference! Huge! That rate worked out to 1 MXN = 0.07123) Always decline the machine’s rate! Also see our recent article about getting cash at your home bank or in Mexico. What’s the best deal?
Give yourself a Spring Fling! We have one and two bedroom suites available with great dates in March and April. Check them all out at www.CasaDeLosViajeros.com
Our first Christmas in Puerto Morelos 2002. Rob had not found a barber yet.
Hard to believe it, but it has been 20 years since we first moved to Puerto Morelos. Having purchased Alma Libre Bookstore in March of 2002, we went back home to Calgary, AB Canada and told our family and friends that we were quitting our media jobs, selling our house and most of our stuff and moving to Mexico! Our friends told us it was a great idea, but we’re sure they thought we were a little crazy. (Click any photo for a full screen view)
OMG! We just bought a bookstore in Mexico! Are we crazy?! Our first year owning Alma Libre Bookstore.
But we can tell you, after 20 years of being here, it was the best decision we have ever made.
Our last winter in Calgary 2002. Rob is smiling because he knew it was the last time he had to shovel snow.
Researching “how to move to Mexico” was a lot harder 20 years ago. There was little information online. We read everything book we could find and searched online. We tracked down anyone we could find that had moved to Mexico, and had a business. Can it be done? How did you do it?
We quickly realized that the only way to transport us, our stuff, and a good supply of books to restock the bookstore was to drive to Puerto Morelos. It’s no easy feat. It’s a minimum 6200 km (almost 4000 miles) journey. We used MapQuest and paper maps from CAA/AAA to make a general route and tweaked it with treasured advice we received from people who had done the drive before.
There was no way we were going to fit all that stuff in a car, and that many days on the road seemed quite daunting, so we bought a truck and a travel trailer to make the trip. We had never pulled a trailer before, so we spent a few hours practicing driving (and more importantly, backing up) in a parking lot near our house.
Saying a difficult “Good-Bye” to my Mom the morning we started our drive to Puerto Morelos for the first time.
Eventually, it came time to load up. And load up again. And load up yet again. We clearly had too much stuff for even a truck and trailer.
The inside of our trailer… We had just enough space to sleep and walk to the door. We carefully chose everything we brought, but we brought too much.
Just to give you an idea of what a different time it was 20 years ago, here are a few things that were our highest priority to pack:
-2 Pentium III Desktop Computers -A Flatbed Scanner -3 big boxes of VHS tapes & VCR -Telephones (not mobile. The kind that plugged into the wall) -Answering machine …and the list goes on. Now all those things basically fit in your pocket.
Using a hiker’s GPS to find our way. It helped a little.
Our first night in Mexico. We dry-camped at the Tampico Airport.
The drive down was most interesting. The object was to drive all 6200 kms without backing up. We did okay for a while. Crossing the Mexican border was easier than expected.
We shared the road with other travellers, big trucks and a lot of these. (This is one of many reasons that you don’t drive at night in Mexico)
Unfortunately, we ran into the tail end of a hurricane in the Yucatan Peninsula. Isidore was her name, and she flooded out several roads and villages. We spent a lot of time and gas trying to find a route around the floods. We drove through one village where the residents had lovingly restored the road with sandbags and guided us over them, one at a time, to get us to our new home. It was a humbling and moving experience.
Making our way through small flooded towns with a trailer in tow.
The highway at dusk while we tried to find a place to stop for the night.
We also got hopelessly stuck in the sand once. We would still be stuck there I think if it were not for an actual dump-truck load of guys who stopped, and with incredible manual pushing power, shoved us out of the sand and back onto the road. (They drove off before we could even thank them.)
We ran into lots of unpredictable traffic.
When we finally arrived in Puerto Morelos, we had doubts that the bookstore we had purchased would still be there. We also couldn’t get in touch with the woman we had rented a duplex from, so we weren’t sure we had a place to live… But all worked out just had we had planned. Whew. Final mileage was 6875 kms (4272 miles).
Our first sunrise in Puerto Morelos.
No time to rest. So many books to unpack!
Stocking the shelves in October heat. We shelved every book lovingly in alphabetical order by author. After a few hours, you would actually forget how the alphabet worked.
Puerto Morelos has grown and changed a lot since we arrived. At that time there were only a few restaurants, some of which are still here. (Trivia question: Which restaurants are still in the same place with the same owners 20 years later? I can only think of 3)
How small was Puerto Morelos when we arrived? When you asked someone for their phone number they would just tell you 3 digits because everyone in town had the same first 4 numbers. We were 713, which means we had the 713th phone line in town. Our landlord at the bookstore was 002. That is how small the town was and how few phone lines there were. Cell phones hadn’t caught on yet and there was only dial-up internet. Puerto Morelos did have its own “cable tv” company, which used to be housed in a palapa on Ninos Heroes.
Niños Heroes in 2002.
Some of the streets were dirt. Some were not as good as that. There was no bank, no real grocery store and the post office was the living room of a resident’s house.
The dock 2002.
The Colonia at that time was just a few blocks of houses around the main town square, the Pemex station and of course, Shanghai Pizza. It wasn’t until about 2007 when Villas Morelos Uno was built that the town really started to grow.
The Lighthouse 2002.
We purchased Casa de los Viajeros in the spring of 2003. It was a 3 bedroom/3 bath house which we converted into a duplex, and later into a 4-plex in 2009.
Casa de los Viajeros when we first purchased it in 2003. Take note of the dirt road in front.
After 15 years of owning and operating Alma Libre Bookstore, we decided to sell it in 2017. You can read more about that here. We ended up doing the big round-trip drive to and from Puerto Morelos 13 more times. By varying our route each year, we saw an incredible amount of the US and Mexico. There is a lot more to Mexico than beautiful beaches!
Today we drive a lot less and focus on our vacation rentals and we travel as much as possible, now mostly using airplanes. (Driving to Europe would be tough.) We are happy to have so many great memories of our last 20 years in Puerto Morelos and we look forward to many more.
Two crazy kids in 2003 (This photo was part of our profile in Coastal Living magazine)
This is our Lady of Guadalupe who guards the front door to our home.
December 12th is the Dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe or the Day of Guadalupe. Derived from the Catholic religion, Our Lady of Guadalupe or the Virgin of Guadalupe is seen everywhere in Mexico from candles in people’s windows to statues on cabbie’s dashboards to full altars in front of homes. Many Mexicans have adopted this darker skinned version of the Madonna or the Virgin Mary, who was first introduced to the culture by Cortez, as their own. It is believed that she first appeared as a vision in 1531 to Juan Diego, a native Mexican peasant, on was on his way to mass.
Since then the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, has become one of the most visited Catholic pilgrimage destinations in the world, especially during the anniversary of the apparition.
Leading up to December 12th the “Guadalupeans” show their devotions to the virgin by praying, biking, running, walking and illuminating their home altars. On a trip to Valladolid we saw dozens of groups of young men and women biking through the city, showing their dedication to the Virgin.
Puerto Morelos has several small parades on the 12th of December ending at the church on the main town square. This ritual happens at churches all around the country. Mexicans flock to their local churches and homemade memorials in their homes to worship Guadalupe. The prayers will be followed by a celebration and as always in Mexico, a large meal. For a more detailed account of the tale, check out Wikipedia or Smart History.
Such a lovely morning in Puerto Morelos, we couldn’t resist sharing it with you!
Click the photo above to get to the video, or click the direct link below. For best results, see it in 4K. You’ll almost think you are in Puerto Morelos.
To enjoy more Puerto Morelos videos, check out our new YouTube channel. We upload new videos regularly.
Stay with us! We have fully-equipped, private suites in Puerto Morelos. We’re steps from the beach and close to the town square, restaurants and shopping.
It’s a breezy Saturday morning today in Puerto Morelos. So breezy, that the snorkel and fishing boats are not allowed to go out!
Here’s a quick video we made this morning. (It was windy enough to blow both my camera and my bike over!)
In spite of the wind, it’s a lovely day here. The sun is shining, and if you do go to the beach, you will find it uncrowded.
We took a ride around town and took in a few sights.
The leaning lighthouse is getting a new coat of paint, just in time for the season. Don’t worry, they are not “fixing” the lean.
This big fish has appeared on the beach by the dock. He loves to eat plastic! Hopefully someone will empty him when he’s full!
Up in the Colonia, workers have been putting the finishing touches on the Christmas tree.
We don’t need snow to get the Christmas spirit here in Puerto Morelos! The beach side square and Malecon have been similarly decorated.
The town will be lively celebrations of Guadalupe soon as well.
These future World Cup athletes are brushing up their skills in Pescadores.
After months of zero progress, work has commenced on the baseball stadium at the entrance to town. It’s looking good, though there is still a lot of work to do.
We’ve been told that this will be the Puerto Morelos Firehall when it’s completed in Pescadores.
Some clever fishers saw all this wind coming, so they pulled their boats out of the water. We watched them pull a boat out by the lighthouse, and we rolled video of the big event. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t take long. See it below:
Stay with us! We have fully-equipped, private suites in Puerto Morelos. We’re steps from the beach and close to the town square, restaurants and shopping.
Stay with us! We have fully-equipped, private suites in Puerto Morelos. We’re steps from the beach and close to the town square, restaurants and shopping.
A lovely and breezy start to December in Puerto Morelos. Spend a minute with us down on the dock today.
It was the kind of breeze that allowed the birds to relax and not even flap their wings. They just float along in the air. See the video below…
Now is a great time to be in Puerto Morelos! Traditionally these weeks before Christmas have fewer visitors, and the town is a little more laid back and relaxed, getting ready for the season to come. Check out our places on our Casa de los Viajeros website.
