First Impressions of Cancun - Remote Work in Mexico

Good morning and welcome back to Mexico. I'm in Cancun right now staying at the Salina here in the hotel zone and in this video I want to try and figure out if Cancun could be a good place to live and work from for a while. I'm going to give you my thoughts in a minute. Okay so I've been here for about five days so far mainly staying around this area and just getting on with some work and sort of using it as a base. Working during the day which for me is editing, video editing, creating videos and doing some other stuff on the side that I'm going to get into in another video and then either going out for the afternoon checking out the beach or going out in the evening and meeting some people and honestly it hasn't been my favorite. I feel like there's a lot better places in Quintana Roo to live and work from. I think if you're coming to Cancun just for a quick holiday like if you're going to one of the all-inclusive resorts which is what it's famous for then that's that's why you should come here but coming here as a base to kind of work from, I don't think it's that. But what I will say is that I've stayed at the Salina here which I'm just walking through and that has been a good base. It's been a bit of a respite from the craziness that is the rest of Cancun and in later parts of this video I'm going to show you some of that. I will say the Salina is nice though. This is my room with my stuff spread out everywhere and a good little desk to work from. So I've been here as part of the CoLiv package which you pay monthly and then it means you can move up to three times across any Salina. So if you did want to come to Cancun even as your first stop when you arrive to the airport because the airport is in Cancun or you just like you've always wanted to check it out because it is that kind of famous place then you could do that as part of the package and just come here for a few days, see what it's like, check out the beach and do the whole Cancun thing which I'm going to do right now. I've been working all morning in the co-working space and now I'm going to go out and show you a little bit of the beach and what there is to do in Cancun. Oh yeah by the way this place is surrounded by crocodiles. Whoa that scared me as I said that there's an iguana. Hey mate you could have been a crocodile. It's the association thing. But no I did see a big one here yesterday just like going past the river which I got on my phone. It's the first one I've seen but yeah there are some huge crocodiles here. Okay a lady just told me there's a crocodile this side. Crocodile apparently. I'm just gonna go have a look. Oh there we go. Whoa just there. That's a little bit terrifying. There's also one just here as well waiting in the water. Much bigger one. Yeah literally I could just like, he's right there, just walk over and stroke him. Look at that guy waiting in the water. Looks menacing. Okay first things first. I was just watching back some of this footage and I need a haircut. Just gonna go do that and then head to the beach on this very overcast day. All right done. Finished. That was actually pretty quick and when I went in there they said $30. I was like no way. So I went to leave straight away and in the end I got it for 200 pesos which is like $10 and then I gave him an extra 50 because he was nice and it was good. But yeah $30 no way. $10 reasonable. Beach time. All right so most beaches here are accessed via the hotels but there are a few ways that apparently you can access publicly. So I'm just walking along now. So I think it's Playa Caracol. All right so most of the beach is with the private all-inclusives. Perfect. But there are a few ways you can access it publicly. So I just walked along this public entrance now and it should open up onto the beach. This is actually a very nice looking beach. Like the way the bay comes around and beautiful water. Obviously it's a bit overcast so I'm not getting the full experience. If I show you a few clips of how it does look in the sun then you can see why this is so beautiful. Now I'm gonna walk around. I'm gonna try and... it's like this whole bay is full of beaches so this is one of them. I'm gonna walk down to the next one. And look at that cloud rolling in. I gotta be honest that all of the hotels here look kind of the same. Like communist blocks. Like that's that's the Hyatt and it's just a big block. None of them have like any individual architecture. They're just big white squares. Honestly I don't know if this is like this because of Covid or if it normally is. But so many places just look run down and decrepit. Like bits falling off the building or shut down. And I understand that obviously a lot more places are shut down this year. There's been less occupancy, less tourists here. It feels like this has been the case for a while. I don't know. Maybe you guys tell me in the comments. Honestly a lot of these like beachfront buildings just look very dated. Went for a quick lunch with this beautiful ambience. Soothing. No but actually now that I've stopped this is really nice. It's a place called Natura on the main road just up the beach. And I actually heard about it before. I was just walking back and I saw it. So I figured I'd try it. Good food. All right went for a quick run. About 8k. Gotta say it's not a good place to run here. Oh it is windy. Just next to traffic. Just finished my run and I'm going to finish the video here. I'm actually probably going to go out for a couple drinks tonight. I've been like working for the last few days and maybe I'll go out and see what the night life's like here. Because I think that's one of the main draws of Cancun. So I need to go out and see that before I make up my mind. But obviously as you can tell in this video I haven't been massively positive about Cancun as a place to remote work and be a digital nomad from. I can't comment on what the hotels are like on the main beach. Like the all-inclusive ones because I didn't try that myself. And maybe if you want to or if you're on a bigger budget and then you're working from there. I don't know it doesn't feel like that is what I would want to do. I like living in a place that has more of a kind of digital nomad community. Like remote worker community like kind of Tulum does. And also Playa del Carmen which is going to be my next stop. So for me I would say Cancun is not a great option for that. It's more a good option for coming on vacation holiday and doing the all-inclusive thing. But with that I'm going to finish it there. I'll say thank you again to Celina for putting me up here and for letting me use their co-living package. Which means I can move up to three times to any destination that is a Celina. Good words. So if you're interested go and have a look it's the top line in the description below. And yeah I'm going to finish it there. See you in the next video in Playa del Carmen. Thank you for watching and this is my life.