Playa del Carmen Warnings Or Dangers

From the moment you walk through customs at the airport your suseptible to the Timeshare attacks. Their approach is subtle. They'll first ask you if you know where your going or try to get your attention by handing you a brochure of the many things to do in and around Playa Del Carmen and Cancun. They will get you engaged in a helpful manner and before you know they will try to sign you up for a Timeshare tour and you have wasted 1/2 hour to an hour of your precious vacation time. A new scam has developed now, where in your hotel room there is a note stating that there is a gift basket waiting for you & to call this number to arrange a time to meet in the lobby in order to receive the gift. Bad idea calling this number. Yeah, they'll give you a nice bottle of wine and some fruit & cheese, then your stuck there for an hour while they run through their speel. Not something I want to do on my vacation!

A friend of mine warned me not to buy silver articles in Playa, as it's not the best place to buy them cause you can find best rates in other places such as Valladolid, and the material is not very trustworthy.

December 2005 update-5th Avenue was in much better shape than our previous visits, even after having 2 hurricanes hit in 2005

Perhaps they are gearing up for peak season but there was an awful lot of construction on 5th Avenue, the main street with the tourist restaurants and shops. Large sections of the road were unfinished and they were busy making starfish out of concrete and stones at the intersections.

Be sure to look for the stamp .925 or .950 on the silver. It is especially good if there is the stamp Mexico or Mex with the numbers. There are a lot of fake silver vendors (usually they are walking along the beach). It is better to buy silver in a store than from a person walking on the beach. Although I did find a shop in Playa del Carmen that was selling fake silver to tourists, but most of the time the silver in shops is safer.

Playa Del Carmen and Cozumel are especially notorious for fraud, copying, and the theft of credit cards. There are hundreds of credit card fraud stories on the Net about these two places.
Beware of waiters or hotel attendants "double swiping" cards, even at reputable places. Also be cautious of fake ATM machines, plain white machines that look innocent enough but don't actually dispense cash, they read "out of service" once you swipe your card. (I got taken in by one of these.)
Use cash for transactions whenever possible! In Playa, use the ScotiaBank across from the bus station, but cover your PIN number when you type it in and take a look around the machine for any hidden cameras that may have been added by thieves. If you must use your card, never let it out of your sight, go with the waiter or worker and watch everything they do. This is a huge problem in this area of Quintana Roo. When you get home, check your statement often (online or over the phone) to make sure nobody's currently using your numbers.

There is no point in bringing your mobile to Mexico any more because their service providers really take advantage on long distance calls. I checked my rates the 2nd day I was there and they were going to charge me $3.50/minute, which is completely ridiculous, especially considering the fact that we are on the same continent (eg. from Tunisia it costs $1.50 to call Canada).

The National company selling Phone cards in Mexico will charge $1.50 to $2.00 USD a minute.

You are much better off going on the 5th avenue and going into one of the many phone stations which will charge 0.20 to 0.30 cents to calls made to the US and Canada. Calls made to Australia will cost about $1.20 USD. There was one with a really nice owner on the 5th and 14th avenues.

Early one morning while searching the beach for shells, we were stopped dead in our tracks by this thing. What on earth was it? It was a very unique shape, purple, and had just washed up on the beach. We finally decided it must be a jellyfish - what else could it be? Finally, one of the beach maintenance folks came along, and he confirmed our suspicions. It was a jellyfish.

Take care when you buy phonecards, not all of them are useful. Be sure to check if your phonecard can be used at publicphones, many of them can not. We found out that the cards from TelCel where the best, as they have phoneboxes many places in the city.