A weekend in Cancún,
three days too late.
I bought a round-trip ticket for under $250 in the middle of my senior year, left home very early, and worked out shortly after arriving that I had just missed the one thing I had wanted to see in Mexico since I was a kid. This is the whole long weekend — the pools, the cactus, the calaveras I bought anyway, and what I would do differently.
Under $250. That was the whole reason.
I was not supposed to go anywhere. I already had a trip to Spain booked for the winter, I was deep into a semester I could not really walk away from, and I had never once left the country during term time. Then a round-trip fare to Cancún dropped under $250 and my resolve did not survive it.
What made it possible was not bravery, it was arithmetic. Before I clicked anything I went through every exam and every assignment for that month and checked them against the dates. Nothing overlapped. That is the entire trick, and it is the same trick whether you are a student or working remotely: the flight is never the hard part, the Monday after it is.
The other thing I had to talk myself into was the length. A weekend felt too short to count as travel. It counted.
“I also had to consider at what point a trip becomes so short that it is no longer worth going. I have never left the country for less than a week before.”Booking a Last Minute Weekend Getaway to Cancun, October 2016
EWR CUN
One round-trip fare, bought on impulse in October 2016 because it had dropped below two hundred and fifty dollars.
The morning I left and never wrote about
The post I published from Mexico opens with one line about leaving: that I had left home very early the previous morning and landed safely. That is all nine years of archive has to say about the day I travelled.
It leaves out the airport. There was an airport nightmare on this trip and I very nearly did not make the flight at all, and for whatever reason — probably because I was writing from a hotel room with the window open and had decided to be cheerful about it — I never wrote a word of it down.
I am not going to improvise the details here. I would rather tell it properly, once, than half-remember it into a paragraph.
“After leaving home very early yesterday morning, I have safely landed in Cancun, Mexico.”Landed In Mexico, Getting Ready to Go Out, November 2016
The one story I never told
I almost missed this flight. I have never written about it, it is not in any of the six posts below, and it is the only part of this trip that is still only in my head.
Consider this a placeholder with a pulse. If you want the version with the times, the queue and the running, tell me — it is the next thing I write.
Four sentences from the room in Cancún
I landed on 5 November 2016. The post I wrote the next morning is four sentences long, which is exactly the right length for a person who has just walked out of an airport into the heat and has no intention of sitting at a laptop.
I was not on my own, either — my sister Tiffany was with me, which is why every post from that weekend slips into “we” without ever explaining who the other half of it was. Consider that explained nine years late.
The first evening was the one where everything still feels like a rumour, right down to the fact that it was an ordinary Saturday in the middle of a semester.
I missed Día de Muertos
by three days
I worked it out shortly after arriving, and the noise I made about it in the original post is still my favourite thing I have ever typed.
“Shortly after arriving in Mexico on November 5th, I came to the realization that I had just missed Mexico’s famous Day of the Dead celebration. Ahhddhssdjkjhs! Nooooooo!”Can’t Believe I Missed Mexico’s Famous Day of the Dead Celebration
Here is the part that stings, and it was my own theory at the time too: the fare was probably cheap because of the holiday. Everyone who had come for it was going home. I bought a ticket at a price the celebration itself had created, on the first weekend it was over, and I did not make the connection until I was standing in Mexico.
My interest in it goes back much further than the trip. I first saw Día de Muertos on a Saturday morning as a kid, in an episode of Jackie Chan Adventures where Jackie and Jade end up in Mexico during the celebration. That was it. That was the hook, and it was still in me more than a decade later.
I had the two days the wrong way round
My 2016 post says All Souls’ Day falls on 1 November and All Saints’ Day on 2 November. It is the other way around: 1 November is All Saints’ Day (Día de Todos los Santos) and 2 November is All Souls’ Day (Día de los Fieles Difuntos). The observance as a whole runs from the evening of 31 October through 2 November, with the first day generally given to children who have died and the second to adults.
UNESCO, which added the Indigenous festivity dedicated to the dead to its Representative List in 2008 after proclaiming it in 2003, puts the festivities “each year at the end of October to the beginning of November”, and describes families laying “flower petals, candles and offerings along the path leading from the cemetery to their homes”. UNESCO listing
And in the Yucatán, where Cancún is, the celebration has its own name and its own shape: Hanal Pixán, Maya for “food for the souls”. What Hanal Pixán is
Build the ofrenda.
Every piece is there for a reason.
I did not get to see one in a house in 2016, so this is not my altar and it is not a re-enactment of anyone’s. It is the parts an ofrenda is built from, drawn, with what each one is for. Tap them in any order.
Traditions are not uniform — what goes on an altar changes from region to region and from family to family. The Yucatecan pieces here, including the mucbipollo, are specific to Hanal Pixán.
What I carried home instead
I could not have the holiday, so I bought two small pieces of it: a calavera keychain and a sculpted calavera, which is the blue one in the chapter above. They are not expensive and they are not rare. That was never the point.
Calaveras are not morbid objects, which is the thing most people outside Mexico get wrong about them. A sugar skull often carries a name piped across its forehead in icing, usually the person being remembered, and they began life as sweets made to be given away and eaten. Sweetness is the whole point of them.
“I purchased my own calavera keychain as well as a sculpted calavera to remember how close I was to partaking in the Day of the Dead… without actually being there for it.”Can’t Believe I Missed Mexico’s Famous Day of the Dead Celebration
A red flag every single day
I had pictured this trip as a beach trip. The Caribbean had other plans: the water was rougher than I expected and there was a red flag on the sand every day I was there. So I spent the weekend looking at one of the most photogenic seas on earth from the dry side of it.
“As nice as the water looked, the beaches were lined with red flags every single day. Guess it was not meant to be.”A Review of My Short Stay at the Westin Lagunamar
I did not resent it, and you should not either. The flags exist because the currents here are genuinely capable of taking a confident swimmer out. Nine years on, the part I would change is not the flag, it is that I did not know what the other colours meant.
The flags, in order of bad news
Flag meanings as published for Cancún. Source
Beds in the water, and a horizon with a seam
With the sea off limits, the pool became the trip. It was enormous, it was kept at exactly the temperature that makes you lose an afternoon, and it had a feature I had never encountered before: tiled beds built into the shallow end so you lie half in the water.
“The pool is huge and has sections with built-in tiled beds that you can lay out and tan on – something I have never seen before.”Enjoying This Resort’s Ocean-Blue Infinity Pool
The infinity edge is the reason the photographs work. Standing at the right height, the pool water and the Caribbean line up into one surface with a thin strip of sand holding them apart.
“Only a thin layer of sand divides your vision between where the pool water ends and the ocean water begins.”A Review of My Short Stay at the Westin Lagunamar
Accounting homework
on a beach lounger
This is the chapter the original posts never quite admitted to. I went to Mexico in the middle of a semester, which meant the semester came with me. There are photographs from that November of a printed assignment and an open laptop on a lounger, with the Caribbean doing its best to be ignored in the background.
I was taking accounting that term — a subject I had been avoiding since freshman year — and I wrote afterwards that I never missed a single lecture except one, when I was outside the country. That autumn there was only one place that could have meant.
“I never missed a single lecture (except for one when I was outside of the country)”Sorry, It Turns Out I Was Wrong About Accounting, December 2016
Looking back, this weekend was the first time I ran the experiment that the rest of this blog is about: can I take the obligations with me and still have the trip be a trip? The answer, nine years and a lot of countries later, is yes — but only if you do the work before you go, not while you are there wishing you were in the pool.
Cactus. Twice. And one very bad idea.
I had two nights of proper Mexican food before I did anything else, and I spent both of them eating cactus, which is genuinely one of my favourite foods in the world and a thing most people have decided about without trying.
“one of my favorite foods in the whole world is cactus – something most people are either unaware of or totally turned off by. Really, don’t knock it until you try it.”Cancun’s La Madonna Grill & Bar is a Classy Date Night Destination
Cactus salad the first night, steak served with cactus the second. Fresh guacamole. And then a chilli that I will be thinking about on my deathbed.
“I literally didn’t even fully bite into it before I could feel my throat closing and tongue swelling. Good times.”Cancun’s La Madonna Grill & Bar is a Classy Date Night Destination
The last night stopped me in the street
On my final evening I was walking past the shops with no plan at all and stopped dead outside an Italian–Swiss grill and martini bar called La Madonna. It was the music that got me first, then the light, then the fact that the entire place is built around Renaissance painting — a Mona Lisa the size of a wall, artwork in every direction, a balcony with four tables looking down over the room.
“The meditation music and chill vibes the restaurant gave off stopped me in my tracks.”Cancun’s La Madonna Grill & Bar is a Classy Date Night Destination
It was not what I had planned to eat in Mexico and I did not care. Half the meal was cooked beside the table, including the Caesar salad, and I finished the trip feeling like I had gatecrashed someone else’s much fancier holiday.
Next time
I book the dates, not the deal
Nothing about this trip was a mistake. A long weekend in the middle of a semester turned out to be a real trip, and it quietly set the pattern for everything I have done since.
But I would change one thing, and it is the obvious one. In 2016 I let a fare decide when I went. If I go back, I go for 31 October to 2 November, I go to be in a town rather than a hotel zone on those nights, and I accept that it will cost more, because what I actually wanted was never on sale.
“In my heart, I know that someday I will be there to see it. If not in my lifetime, then surely in spirit or in the next.”Can’t Believe I Missed Mexico’s Famous Day of the Dead Celebration
2016 versus the trip you would take
Plan it properly.
The 2026 version of this weekend.
VISITAX
Quintana Roo charges every foreign visitor a state tourist tax — 2.5 UMA, about MXN 283 (roughly US$15) in 2026, and infants are not exempt. Pay it any time before you leave, and pay it at the government portal, not a lookalike domain.
visitax.gob.mxTourist entry
Most US, Canadian and EU passports enter as tourists for up to 180 days, but the number of days is the officer’s call, not yours.
Rio Times, 2026There is no digital nomad visa
Mexico still has no dedicated remote-work visa in 2026. The route people mean is the Temporary Resident Visa: roughly US$4,400 a month of income or about US$74,000 in savings, applied for at a consulate before you fly, one year and renewable to four.
Rio Times, 2026Sargassum
Seaweed season runs April to October and peaks June to August. The clear-water window is November to March. My November water was clear; that was luck plus the calendar.
howisthesargassum.comIf you want the holiday
Día de Muertos is October 31 to November 2 — book to be there ON those dates, not after them. In the Yucatán the celebration is Hanal Pixán, “food for the souls”, and it is its own thing rather than a copy of the central-Mexican version.
Pixan TravelThe flags are not decoration
Red flags flew on the Cancun beaches every day of my stay. Check the flag before you plan a beach day, and read black as closed rather than as a challenge.
The Cancun SunThe Maya Train exists now
It did not in 2016. There is a Cancún Aeropuerto station on the line, with Chichén Itzá, Valladolid, Playa del Carmen and Tulum all on the same railway. Tickets are sold through the official site.
trenmaya.gob.mxThe R-1 bus
The hotel-zone bus down Boulevard Kukulcán costs about 12 pesos, runs all night, and takes cash. It is the single cheapest thing about Cancún.
transport guideAirport pickups
ADO from the airport into downtown is about 140 pesos. Rideshare is legal in the state but do not try an app pickup at the airport — the taxi dispute there is real. Use the official airport taxis or ADO, then use the apps in town.
transport guideA long weekend is a real trip
I had never left the country for less than a week before this and I nearly did not book it. It was enough. The arithmetic that matters is not how long the flight is, it is what you owe on Monday.
Do the work before you go
I checked every exam and assignment against the dates before I bought anything. That is the whole trick, and it is the same trick whether you are a student or working remotely.
A lounger is a workable desk for about ninety minutes
Glare, sand and battery all end the session eventually. Ninety minutes in the shade before the pool is worth more than a whole afternoon of pretending.
Six posts from one long weekend
Everything I wrote from and about this trip, in the order it went up.
01Booking a Last Minute Weekend Getaway to Cancun
A fare under $250, a semester I could not really leave, and an impulse I did not talk myself out of.
Read it
02Landed In Mexico, Getting Ready to Go Out
Four sentences written from the room, the day after leaving home very early.
Read it
03Enjoying This Resort’s Ocean-Blue Infinity Pool
A whole day at one pool, and a design idea I had never seen before: beds built into the water.
Read it
04A Review of My Short Stay at the Westin Lagunamar in Cancun
Ocean-view rooms, fountains that sound like surf, and a red flag on the sand every single day.
Read it
05Can’t Believe I Missed Mexico’s Famous “Day of the Dead” Celebration
I landed on November 5th and worked out, shortly after arriving, that I was three days late for the thing I had wanted to see since I was a kid.
Read it
06Cancun’s La Madonna Grill & Bar is a Classy Date Night Destination
Cactus salad, a chilli that nearly finished me, and then an Italian-Swiss restaurant on the last night that stopped me in the street.
Read itThese posts are from 2016. Hotel and restaurant details belong to that visit — see the 2026 notes above before you book anything off them.
A short trip
I still think about
One long weekend, six posts, a holiday missed by three days, and a blue ceramic skull that has been on a shelf ever since. If you are sitting on a cheap fare and a calendar that says no: check the calendar twice, then go.
Where else I have been