Has anyone spent time in the Riviera Maya / Playa del Carmen area? Is it safe to bring my road bike to cycle around that area? We have family vacation coming up for 8 days after Christmas and my brother and I are tempted to bring our bikes if there’s good cycling around.
Kathy or other locals around there, what do you think?
If you were in Coz I’d say go for it. I’ve only been thru PDC to go cavern diving, but from what I’ve seen I don’t think it would be wise. Kathy Caribe lives there though and I am sure she’ll give the 911.
Been there three times and would not recommend bringing a bike. The area near the beach is too crowded. Getting from the beach area and heading West toward the bigger roads is a little sketchy and the roads themselves are not good for cycling. You’ll see some locals using bikes for work functions (such as moving agriculture stuff around), but I don’t recall seeing any recreational cyclists out on those roads. There is great running on the beach (lots of folks doing that in the arm).
I’ve done IMCoz before and riding there was great, but don’t know how practical it would be to go on the ferry each morning for a ride. The time I spent in Cozumel didn’t make me feel comfortable riding though.
Been to that area three times in the last three years and I wouldn’t ride there. Even inside the gated multi-resort complex we stayed at most recently (right next to PDC town), the drivers were sketchy enough that I wouldn’t have felt safe riding around the limited roads there.
Some of the larger long, straight highways look like they’d be great for TT-type rides, but again, not with the quality of driving we saw and experienced. Regular highway checkpoints manned by police armed with semi-automatic weapons kind of make you wonder about the wisdom of venturing out into the less-populated areas too.
Stick to running/swimming.
Enough said. I won’t bring the bikes. Thanks for the tip
Has anyone spent time in the Riviera Maya / Playa del Carmen area? Is it safe to bring my road bike to cycle around that area? We have family vacation coming up for 8 days after Christmas and my brother and I are tempted to bring our bikes if there’s good cycling around.
Kathy or other locals around there, what do you think?
define “good”. we really have just 1 road and where i live there is only 1 paved road (i’m about 15km south of Playa). BUT what makes it great here is that the drivers are incredibly respoectful and will move way over to give you room. we also have a very wide shoulder (unheard of pretty much anywhere else in the country) but yeah, other than that road (and there really is No View) you need to go to Coz for pretty.
You’re saying drivers are courteous, others say drivers drive like maniacs and police man the roads with automatic weapons.
Thanks for getting back to me, but I’m going to leave the bike at home
You’re saying drivers are courteous, others say drivers drive like maniacs and police man the roads with automatic weapons.
Thanks for getting back to me, but I’m going to leave the bike at home
And never leave your compound. I had the cops shake me down for cash in Playa. I will never go to Mexico again. There are a lot of cheap beaches in the world.
Good point. I might not leave my room either