{"id":44735,"date":"2025-12-13T14:24:47","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T20:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=44735"},"modified":"2025-12-13T14:24:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T20:24:47","slug":"driving-home-from-playa-del-carmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/driving-home-from-playa-del-carmen\/","title":{"rendered":"Driving Home From Playa del Carmen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday morning, I had to hit the road fairly early to be able to do some work when I got in. I got a coffee and tucked into some pan dulce from a paneder\u00eda by the Thai restaurant. What I thought was a plain croissant was actually stuff with chocolate!<\/p>\n

I did try to use Waze and Google Maps to get out of Playa, but gave up in disgust. I got this hilarious pop-up when I cancelled my Google Maps route!<\/p>\n

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Screenshot<\/p><\/div>\n

It wasn’t until I was about to get onto the carretera that I remembered to check the gas gauge. I definitely needed fuel and what was conveniently ahead of me? That cost me about $600, and the topup to return the car ended up being about $500, so not too bad at all for a week of having a car! I did lose track of how much I was paying for tolls, though. I just don’t fret about that sort of thing anymore.<\/p>\n

It was a super easy drive into M\u00e9rida. The Chevy Aveo I’d rented is the first car I’ve driven that has a six-speed transmission, so it was fun to get into that gear when I was passing folks! What a treat it was to get a manual transmission. It used to be the standard (pun kind of intended) in Mexico, but it’d been a long time since I’d found a rental place that offered one.<\/p>\n

Traffic coming into M\u00e9rida was, of course, terrible. I got stuck next to this beast for the longest time.<\/p>\n

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I landed at about 1:15 CST. My girls were happy to see me!<\/p>\n

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Here is my little bowl from Chich\u00e9n Itz\u00e1 next to a larger bowl that was a gift from Contessa<\/a> (no, my walls are not neon green — my iPhone camera is a menace!).<\/p>\n

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It was a bit brutal to have to go right back to work, and you know it’s been BUSY that it’s Saturday afternoon and I still haven’t fully unpacked, but I’m glad I got to spend a day with friends and discovered Playa del Carmen. I’ll likely be back in February or March next year!<\/p>\n

I kept the car to today, a full week, to be able to run errands with it, primarily Costco and Walmart. I find renting a car stressful, but the freedom of having wheels… A car is going to happen soon-ish. I just have a lot of moving parts!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday morning, I had to hit the road fairly early to be able to do some work when I got in. I got a coffee and tucked into some pan dulce from a paneder\u00eda by the Thai restaurant. What I thought was a plain croissant was actually stuff with chocolate! I did try to use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[895],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-merida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44735"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44744,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44735\/revisions\/44744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}