Bars and clubs near Fifth Avenue: the ten-minute rule

Playa del Carmen is a grid, and it is a small one. From Fifth Avenue, almost every bar and club in town is within a ten-minute walk — which means the question is never how far, it is which direction.

How the streets are numbered

Avenues run parallel to the sea and streets run down to it. Fifth is the pedestrian one. Everything one block inland — Tenth, Fifteenth — is where the rooms with no sign are, and it is quieter with every block you move away from the water.

The even-numbered streets carry the traffic; the odd ones are the calm ones. If a place tells you it is on a street rather than on the avenue, that is usually a good sign.

What is worth the walk

Cocktail bars, small clubs and the rooms that open at ten and are full by half past eleven. None of them will be visible from the avenue, and most of them will not have a queue outside — being off the main run is what makes that possible.

PRAYER is inside Mezontle, a turn off the avenue. Close enough that you will still hear the street behind you; far enough that nobody arrives by accident.

Getting back

Taxis wait on the avenue and on the corners of the even streets, all night. From most of these rooms, home is a five-minute ride or a fifteen-minute walk along a street that is still awake.