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Originally Posted by The Lipo Fund
also does anyone have any suggestions for which company/which plan/which air card to use as a back up?
i saw suggestions earlier but was wondering if anyone had any personal experience yet.
I live around Playa Del Carmen as well and have a BAM (Banda Aceh Mobil) card as a backup. It's nice to have also just for when you take the laptop down to the local cantina/beach and surf around while you're drinking beers. It works OK, but obviously when I do have to switch over to it I start to wind down my session just to be safe.
Also, my internet is over the phone lines from Telmex. It's super quick in the mornings and at night, but it bottlenecks during the day and is kind of spotty. So I set up an account with Playa Wireless. They're bulletproof. It's really pricey to get the antenna ($600USD, but you can shop around for a used one). I met the American owner in his office and he showed me the whole system, his backup UPS, his backup generators, etc. He uses a microwave signal and guarantees the download AND
UPLOAD speed, as opposed to Telmex which advertise "
UP to 2Mbps". He really knows his stuff and services businesses mostly. So now I use the Playa Wireless as my main, the Telmex as my backup, and I've got the BAM aircard as a leftover backup, but I'll probably keep it just for road trips and messing around when I'm outside of my place.
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Originally Posted by Ricepaw1226
how'd kite boarding go btw?
i was just lookin' at the prices of classes and skydiving lol
think i'm gonna get a (skate)board down there as well..
Kiteboarding is really good in Tulum (about 1 hour south of Playa). The summer months are the slow season though since the wind dies down a bit and isn't consistent. It should pick back up in Oct-Nov. I do a lot of paddleboarding, diving, freediving, and spearfishing. It's awesome. It's great to live here in Paradise and then take a "vacation" for a few days somewhere else. I love to take the ferry over to Cozumel and dive for a few days. Chichen Itza is amazing, Lake Bacalar (about 3.5 hours south) is awesome and has wakeboarding, Tulum is super chill and a cool hippy place to hang out, Palenque and Chiapas make for an awesome longer road trip (about 12 hours each way), Ixcalak and Belize are awesome (about a 4 hour drive to Ixcalak and another 30min ferry to Ambergris, which is cool), etc.
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Originally Posted by jsnipes28
haha no worries. ya if you could get a USD account then you could go USD from whichever site --> MB --> Mex Bank --> US Bank without incurring any fx fees. But as is, there will be conversion fee from MB-->Bancomer for me and then again from Bancomer -->Bofa + any applicable wire fees et cetera.
Here's the story with USD/EUR accounts in Mexico. The Mexican Government doesn't allow non MXN currency accounts, so the banks will open them up for you and you can conduct transactions like normal, but the monies and account are held in another country (Germany for EUR and Grand Cayman for USD). For this reason, Stars won't do a wire transfer to my accounts because the wire information has to go to Bank in Germany/Caymans -> Mexican Bank -> For Further Credit to Your Name. Since that is 3 levels, they say their payment processors won't do it and can't make exceptions. Very frustrating. So in Mex the only cashout currency is EUR, so if I want money sent to my EUR account, I have to do a wire cashout in Pesos to my Mexican Peso account, pay the fx fees, then pay the fx fees again to change it back to EUR and put it in my EUR account. I'm looking into the MB options, but so far it doesn't seem possible.
Let's see, what else... Oh, it's ridiculously safe down here. The Mexican Government actually built Cancun out of nothing. About in 1970 they realized how much money Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco were making, so they decided to look for the next great spot to build a vacation village. Only 3, yes THREE, people lived in Cancun in 1970. The Mexican government poured tons of money and resources into this region and built it up like Vegas. The amount of tourism dollars that comes into the Maya Riviera compared to Cabo/PV/Acapulco/Mazatlan/etc. is staggering. Therefore, this is truly their crown jewel and they keep it extremely safe. When I travel in other parts of Mexico, I also feel very safe, but I don't see as many police officers, federales, security guards, etc. They are just overly safe here in the Riviera Maya. I live right on the beach and leave all my diving/paddling gear strewn about my deck, even when I go out for the day or dinner, and never any problems.
Once everyone gets situated down here, we should all meet up for happy hour!