|
|
|
|
Once you have cleared immigration and customs you will have to walk down a long hallway with stores on the left and right. On the left just before exiting the building there is an ADO ticket booth, as indicated below, but quite often it is closed. If it IS open you can buy the ticket from Cancun to Merida right there. There will be MANY guys waiting around to try and sell you anything from free rides to time share presentations to overpriced rides into downtown. They will even lie to you and say the shuttle bus no longer runs. Just ignore them and walk straight out the exit doors. Once outside you will see a bar/restaurant on your right. Just past that there is the bus parking area as shown below. If the inside ticket booth is closed there will be a couple of attendants in ADO shirts who will sell you tickets and make sure you get on the correct bus to the downtown Cancun bus terminal. Cost is 42 pesos and there is lots of storage space under the bus for luggage, (they tag the luggage and give you a claim voucher)
The ride into Cancun is about 30 minutes. Below is a rough map of the Cancun bus terminal. If you didn’t buy your Cancun-Merida ticket at the airport booth then you can do it here. There are several options for tickets. You can go to the Fiesta Americana in Merida or to the main downtown CAME terminal (pronounced KAMAY). We always choose the CAME option because the buses to there run much more frequently. There are also 3 options as to which class of bus to take. ADO is the lowest priced, ADOgl is middle priced and Platinum is the highest priced. Again, we take the regular ADO, which is very comfortable and runs much more frequently than the other options. One note, the bus ride to Merida is approximately 4 hours. Sometimes the bus will make a stop in Valladolid, about 2 hours from Cancun, to pick up passengers or packages. You can get out and stretch your legs or have a smoke if you wish, but just make sure to get back on board when the driver does. Another note, there are several bus lines that run from the Cancun terminal, make sure you get a ticket with ADO. Bus ticket will be approximately 280 pesos.
Below is a map of the Merida downtown CAME terminal. Once you get off the bus turn to the right and walk to the small ADO ticket booth at the end of the building. You don’t even need to enter the actual bus terminal building. There you can purchase a ticket for one of their taxis to take you to Progreso, if the beach area is your final destination. This will cost another 280 pesos, but it is, by far, the simplest and fastest way to get to your destination. Just tell the taxi driver where exactly you want to go and he will drop you off right in front of it.
There is also a direct bus from the Cancun airport to the AltaBrisa mall and the Fiesta Americana hotel in Merida, however it usually only runs twice a day. One departure time is around 1:30 pm. About an hour faster, but more expensive.
A few final notes. In Mexico, bus tickets are per person, of course. Taxi fares are per taxi, not per person.
There is a bus service between Merida and Progreso, but it is a long six blocks from the CAME terminal to the Auto Progreso terminal and the sidewalks are quite bumpy and narrow. We have done the walk in the past but it was done while carrying backpacks only. I would never recommend trying to haul large suitcases.