Recent Progreso Review

Overview

Maded it to Progreso on 1/19 on the the 1/17 Ecstasy cruise and had a good time. Progreso gives you a good taste of Mexico. The beaches were rough as seaweed had piled up from the northern that had blown through so that put a damper on playing at the beach.

Took the free shuttle from the end of the pier into town. It was a nice and comfortable 5/10min ride. Walked straight to the beach and sat at Buddy's. Cheap beer ($2) and decent food. They really took care of us while we were sitting there. We spent the entire day at the beach and it was great. The boys played in the sand I the wife and sister-in-law took the opportunity to get a massage.

There are a lot of vendors, but this board had prepared me for that and "No, gracias" worked 99% of the time and the vendor moved on.

My parents took the AutoProgreso tour to Dzix... (sp?), the ruins that are about 30mins away, and loved it. Small tour group and cheap. I will probably do this next time. They bought it right were you get off the shuttle.

On the way back we hit the market that is block from where the buses pick up and drop off. That was neat! I wanted to do the double decker bus tour, but it had already stopped running. We then boarded the bus and made it back with plenty of time to spare.

Recommendations

If you sit in the restaurants, rather than on the beach, the vendors are not nearly as bad. "No, gracias" works as long as you don't show any interest. Made the mistake of looking at a mayan mask and the guy just kept coming back until my father-in-law finally bought a small mask for $5 and told him not to come back :D

If you want to do the double decker bus tour, do it early in the morning as it apparently stops running in the afternoon.

Should have listened to one of the tour salesmen when we got off the bus. He was selling a private beach (didn't get the name but said it was 5mins away) with round trip transportation for $15 a person and kids free. Would have been a cleaner beach and they had a pool.

I liked Progreso and would go back! It was a lot of fun!

Regarding vendors; the advice above is dead on. Make no eye contact and show no interest and they will move on to someone less savvy.

We were in Progreso on 1/17/11 & the seaweed that had washed in was horrible. We had a great day there too though. I think we went to the beach you said the tour salesman told you about for $15.

It is a relatively new beach resort called Silcer Beach Club that is geared towards cruise ship passengers & is only about 10 minutes away. It was $15 each for transportation to & from there & the use of the facilities.

We were impressed. For the $15 each we paid we got roundtrip transportation with vans leaving every 30 minutes, nice beach chairs, pool, VERY clean nice restrooms & showers, & the use of ocean kayaks.

They had an all-inclusive liquor package for $25 each or food & liquor for $35 or you can pay as you go. Beer was $3 each. We ordered chips & salsa that was very good. The salsa had lime in it giving it a different flavor. The service was EXCELLENT.

The beach was nice (it is not Barbados nice but much nicer than at the Reef (the pool area at the Reef is amazing though) or what we saw of the beach close to the pier (the seaweed was horrible the day we were there). We had a view of the ship from the beach. It is kind of quiet there though.

My DH & I took a long walk down the beach & met some really nice people that were wintering in Progreso in condos. We watched some locals out fishing & pulling their cart with their catch down the beach. It was really very quaint & not crowded at all! If you like to collect shells we saw TONS of beautiful shells on the beach while we were walking.

Massages were available & there was only one vendor there selling his wares & he only approached us once!

The man that told us about Silcer Beach Club, Cristobal Figueroa (he said everybody calls him Cris) showed up to make sure we were having a good time. I told him I wanted to post about the Silcer Beach Club on CC when I got back so he gave me a card. If anyone is interested his e-mail is criss.tours@live.com or his website is www.crisstours.webs.com

Juli

I agree with all of this. There were a ton of seashells that my daughter enjoyed picking out of the sand... drinks were good, nachos were decent. all in all a decent trip.