I am headed to Cancun with my family very soon and we all may be in for some technology withdrawal. OK, so they have electricity, satellite TV, and some pretty lively entertainment, from what I've heard. Buses and boats and whatnot are plentiful too. Clearly our all inclusive hotel will qualify as an overindulgence of eat and drink. BUT ... no phone, no net, not a singly luxury ... as primitive as can be.
Although we should be able to get cell coverage, it will be absurdly expensive (for us impoverished gringos). We are all quite used to calling anyone, anywhere (in the US), any time, especially amongst ourselves. That's out.
I thought about using our FRS and GMRS radios that haven't seen the light of day for several years, but they aren't legal in Mexico. They have FRS (no GMRS) but our radios are not certified for Mexico. I might take a couple anyway, but my family always thought they were extremely hokey.
I have found that no hotels in the Cancun zona have free Internet of any kind and the only free Internet I have found was one spot at the airport. That would leave us paying $20/day at the hotel (I think) or something like $7/hour at a cafe. I'll probably have to spring for that.
Part of the purpose of the vacation (for me at least) is to get away from the keyboard, so maybe that's not so bad, but I hope the withdrawal symptoms can be mitigated with tequila.
It would be nice if the professor were there to figure out how to fix our cell phones and connect to the Internet with coconuts and bamboo.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
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This is Bob. The reality of it turned out to be that the hotel had free wireless in a big lobby section, by the main bar, by the pool and maybe some other places. We only had one computer between us and we used it in the lobby a bit (but not a lot). Had we known, we might have brought more than one computer.
ReplyDeletePhone calls using our AT+T phones from Mexico (without any special plans) are $0.99/minute. You have to figure out how to add a + before the number (I only called once, and I just programmed the number because I couldn't figure out how to dial it).
Text messages were $0.20 to receive and $0.50 to send, regardless of what kind of texting plan you have.
So it was not as primitive "as can be." And the TV selection was OK (really didn't have time to watch much). It was nice to be out of touch with reality.
Bob