Walking About Playa … A Picture Tour of Playa del Carmen

After a much too long hiatus (or was it a writer’s strike?), Walking About Playa is back baby! When I last left off, I was walking 5th Avenue north and had reached Calle 34. Today, I go further north to an area that many of you have probably not seen yet. This part of 5th Avenue has the same cobblestone paving but is still open to car traffic. With all the new restaurants, condos, hotels & stores opening up, it won’t be long before it too becomes pedestrian only.

A new sushi place, Tsuba, just opened up in the last few weeks.

Coffee Cafe is a great spot to chill out. They have terrific coffees as well as a good selection of quality teas. We go there regularly for their turkey panninis, and they actually get our ’sin mayonesa’ (no mayonnaise) request right about 70% of the time, which is quite good around these parts where mayonnaise is considered essential.

Coffee Cafe is fun too! They just added a 2nd ping pong table! How cool is that!! They also have backgammon and other games if you ask. Show up at night, and you just might catch one of the owners, DJ Mr. Fantastik, spinning records. Oh yeah, there’s also wireless internet and espresso chocolate martinis. Go there now! Boy, I should really be getting paid for this.

North of Coffee Cafe are a Sotheby’s real estate office and deliT, a neat ice cream shop. They will mix your choice of fruit into ice cream, frozen yogurt or smoothies. They even have my favorite — blueberries - tough to find around here. They also have fresh fruit popsicles (paletas).

As I approach Calle 38 and the neighborhood of Zazil-ha, I see the Via 38 condos at 5th & 38th.

Just about everything in this area is new, but this convenience store at 5th & 38th has been around for at least 3 years.

Next door is a new seafood option, Kool Fish.

Another old-timer is this pizza joint. Pizza slices were just 10 pesos until a recent price increase.

New adults-only boutique hotel, Casa Ticul. Looks very nice.

A couple of new home decor shops. Wisdom Afrika

And Heneke (sp?) Limon

Spidy Gonzalez gets your clothes clean in a flash! Spidy is spelled with an ‘i’ on purpose because ‘i’ in Spanish is pronounced like a long ‘e’ in English.

The Jam Session is open for business.

Modern office building between Calle 40 & 42.

Gettin’ a cold beer to go.

Baxal Paal, a local preschool and elementary school.

Baxal Paal is offering classes in Robotic Programming, Lego Robots, Fitness and Creative Corner. I’m pretty sure those are separate classes, but it’d be real interesting to see them roll those all into one cool class.

A series of public service announcements …

Consume your energy, not your life. Get rid of drugs.

Listen, observe and talk to your children.

There is always a ray of light. For advice against addictions call us …

There are some aggressive street dogs in this neighborhood, so when this fella starting running at me, barking all the way, I didn’t exactly embrace him with open arms. (Sidenote: Can you see Cozumel off in the distance?)

But he turned out to be a real sweetheart and I got me some doggie lovin.

There is so much construction in this area, particularly east of 5th toward the beach. Trucks that service the construction sites were to be found everywhere!

And then I reached Avenue CTM. Crossing this street takes you into the Colosio neighborhood — a walk for another day.