Mexico, Central & South America > Mexico > The Yucatan > Yucatan > Articles > Travelling with Kids in Mexico

We are TWIKS, Susanne and I: Travellers WIth KidS. In the seven ages of man, we've done the mewling, puking and backpacking, been through yuppiedom and done the TWINKY bits, and now we have excess baggage of the noisy variety - but that doesn't mean our holidays need to be condemned to a rental cottage in Suffolk.

Sunny destinations, with beach and pool, are much appreciated by Rhena and Thomas (three and five), but these destinations have to have some sense of adventure for us, and for the like-minded friends we usually travel with. So far we've done Morocco, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Bali, and this time Yucatan sounded good.

According to the brochures, 80 percent of beach packages to Mexico are all-inclusive. I know my weaknesses, and all-inclusives pander to all of them; I'd guzzle endlessly, and then race the Breitling Orbiter home. And besides, with everything free inside the hotel, who would bother to go out to see anything of the country itself? Then, of course, there were the prices, which started from £4,500 ($7000) for a family

An alternative to the brochures - the Internet. And, by gum, it worked. Playa del Carmen wasn't just a virtual world: the limousine was waiting at the airport, and an hour later we were in Treetops, which was exactly as it said it was, with a pool and 50 yards from the beach.

Playa may be too small-time to raise a tour operator's eyebrow, but it was just right for us. An endearing mix of slightly ramshackle palm-thatched cabanas, music bars and small, smart owner-run hotels along a crescent of sand, with a proper town at one end of its main pedestrian avenue, and designer boutiques, tiled lapis-lazuli blue on deep ochre walls, at the other. Stocky Mexicans in sombreros sat on the kerb playing the guitar, and occasionally suggested that you might want to visit their shop, amigo.

The sea was that translucent blue that only the Caribbean can achieve, perhaps because the sand beneath it is so white, and Cuban bands played in beachfront bars to an audience that was mainly seasoned, fashionable young Europeans.

Step back two roads and you were amongst brightly-painted cantinas serving guacamole, tacos and burgers, where we found we could feed the family - including a supply of Sol or Corona (with a slice of lime) for the parents.

Our foothold in Treetops gave us time to survey the rest of Playa's hotels, and on the fourth day we relocated to the German-run Paradis having negotiated a price for the rest of our stay. This was not one of the more designer establishments, but our room opened out directly onto the grassed pool area, with a palm-thatched restaurant and bar just beyond, where the pina coladas are cheap. Ideal.

Now settled, we alternated beach days with excursions by long distance bus - sweaty seats and smelling suspiciously of disinfectant, but frequent, cheap, and sociable.

You wouldn't come to this part of Yucatan for the scenery, though. The coastal highway grumbled on through a flat, tropical tangle, uninterrupted by human habitation.

One of our first trips was to Cancun, an hour north, the planted colony of shoulder-to-shoulder all-inclusives to which a brochure holiday would have committed us. This was a real Vegas on the beach, an outpost of Americana and a mecca of sun and consumption, where huge sound systems made the sand bounce. We had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe, next to a massive Hard Rock, just down from Bongo Bongo, and across from Planet Hollywood; needless to say we returned home to Playa feeling smug.

Another day we took the ferry across to the cruise-ship ringed island of Cozumel, disembarking amongst a crowd of ecstatic Americans - "pilgrims of Mary" according to their name-badges - who, judging by their girth, lived a regime of praise the Lord and pass the donuts. The pier shop sold a T-shirt printed with "10 lies you're likely to hear on Cozumel", which included "no, the free jeep rental has nothing to do with timeshare", which wasn't encouraging. We were there, though, for the undersea, Cozumel's main claim to fame.

In Chankanab National Park, past a dive centre with a sign which read "make new friends - and then eat them", the sea was gentle and crystalline, and rentable lifejackets helped the children turn their fear of sharing the same water as fish into delight at their colours and sociability.

But perhaps the best day out was hiring a "Herbie" (VW beetles are still made in their original form in Mexico) to seek out the cenotes, pools formed by underwater rivers. We found one cradled in a massive cave partly lit by a natural blowhole up through the rock, and dived in. The water was surprisingly warm, but whenever I stood still little fish took an alarming interest in a blister on my foot.

That was a Mayan ruin day, too. At Tulum, the palaces and temples were scattered like grey dice along a cliffy shore; but at Coba, inland, they were distributed through 75 square kilometres of jungle - too ambitious for the children even without the warning poster on the gate identifying Mexico's poisonous snakes.

Coba apart, the holiday worked out so swimmingly that it could have been virtual reality; the only real blip was an ear infection for Thomas, which brought us to a 24 hour clinic in the early morning for a consultation with a bleary doctor who spoke no English. Thomas didn't much appreciate the regime of anti-biotic injections prescribed, but it was the only way he'd be allowed back in the pool - a painfully non-virtual reality he was prepared to accept.

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