As beautiful as Mexico can be, one of the biggest concerns before visiting is about ‘general safety’. Understandably so too as there’s also no uniformity on this.
Safety tends to be tied to certain specific pockets so you could find one area is quite fine but the surrounding areas aren’t.
Anyway, thanks to this, when we first decided to visit the city of Merida in Mexico our first thoughts were about how safe it is to visit.
Thankfully, official websites all across the world regard Merida as the safest city in Mexico so that eased off a lot of worries and we could just focus on the important things, like where to stay.
That part was easy though.
We found a place called Decu Downtown that was an instant yes. There was only one problem though.
We needed the place for 4 nights but they had availability on the first two nights and then for one day, no availability at all.
The calendar then opened up the day after that and was available again.
So with that in mind, we ended up having to book another place for the remaining two nights.
I’ll show you that place in another post though. For now though, let me show you more from Decu Downtown.
One of my favourite things about this place is that there are only 8 rooms which means you kinda feel like you have a whole villa, complete with staff to tend to your every needs, all to yourself.
The only time we really saw anyone else was at breakfast when we were due to check out.
Originally it only had like 4 rooms and the extra 4 rooms are now an extension to it and it’s just such a lovely place to stay in the city.
Plus, it’s pretty centrally located so after we’d checked in and changed out of our travel clothes, we headed out to the city partly to acclimatise but also to find ourselves a late lunch.
The thing about walking around though is that it’s so distracting (in a very good way) and Merida just immediately felt so comfortable.
The whole vibe of the place felt like you were getting to explore a much more real side to Mexico than Cancun or Tulum (which is very easily done) but at a pace that was just so lovely and relaxed.
Oh and by the way, if you have any Spanish language skills or perhaps even less likely, any Yucatec Maya language skills, you’ll find them very useful in Merida.
As I kinda hinted at earlier, it’s very much a place where Mexicans properly live (not just a resort town) so these languages are very much a lot of people’s first and second languages with not as many people speaking English here as you might find in Tulum and Cancun.
Still though, you won’t struggle at all if you only speak English.
You’ll find it still easy enough to navigate and figure things out.
Right, back to our walk through the city.
Lloyd had a place in Merida he wanted to check out called La Negrita which is great for drinks and so we made our way over there as the sun set.
When we showed up, we actually thought it was closed as it didn’t seem particularly busy from the outside.
We just decided to cross the road anyway and go check it out anyway.
On speaking to the host, he told us to head into the courtyard inside and that’s where we found everyone was.
The courtyard is deceptively huge inside and there’s a bar there (as well as the one at the entrance) and there’s a stage here too which explains why most people were out here.
There was going to be live music on in a little bit and seeing as we’d planned on staying for drinks anyway, we got a seat close to the stage and ordered a couple of beers and a flight of tequilas because we couldn’t quite decide which ones to have.
By the way, the tequila is not for doing ‘shots’ with.
They’re there to be savoured slowly and not rushed through.
I’d never liked tequila at University and for many years after that because I had a lot of it once for New Year’s Eve and got so sick from it with a hangover that dragged on for days after and ever since then just generally avoided it.
After that time though, there would be the odd occasion on a night out where someone in our friends group would order a round of tequila shots and it would be the same result the next day – the most horrendous hangover.
On recent trips to Mexico (and we’re talking probably in the last couple of years), I decided to stop rushing through tequila and to actually taste it slowly.
I also discovered Mezcal like 7 years ago and did the same thing with it too. Game changer!
You start to pick up certain notes, differences in fieriness and particularly in smoothness that you never would have before.
Suffice it to say, now I totally get the hype behind tequila but only with the caveat that it is enjoyed properly and not downed as quickly as possible.
Our tequilas also came with fried (or perhaps roasted) insects and chill powders to eat said insects with.
There were also other snacks brought with the drinks but understandably, they paled in comparison to the impression the insects left on us.
Oh and taste-wise, the insects were actually fine and we found ourselves absent-mindedly snacking away at them while sipping on our drinks and slowly seat-dancing to the live musicians on stage.
We had grand plans to go to another place for dinner.
The ‘another place’ however hadn’t been fully decided on and seeing as La Negrita did food too, we just figured we might as well just stay there for dinner.
That, by the way, was such a good call.
The food is actually really good there and we found ourselves ordering seconds (and promptly realising that we were probably already quite full with the first course that came around).
Right so there’s one thing I forgot to mention at the start of this and that’s how to get to Merida.
It’s actually really easy.
There’s an airport there so the easiest choice is to fly there but Merida is only a few hours drive away from the likes of Tulum and Cancun (for instance Chichen Itza is actually closer to Merida than it is to Cancun) so you could arrive in Tulum or Cancun and just drive from there (or arrange for transport from your hotel to Merida).
For flights, Miami airport has direct flights to Merida so the easiest for a lot of people is just to fly to Miami and connect there to Merida.
But yeah, that’s how our first day went.
Will catch you in the next post on what it’s like to explore Merida properly which we did the very next day.
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