Well, not really. You just need to know when to get on and off. It always seems someone is able to help translate if you really need it. But if you to downtown Cancun on the R-1 bus, it stops at a McDonalds that is across the street from the bus station. The routes and times and fares are posted on the wall above the ticket sellers. The ADO line is the First Class Bus and ADO has 2 lines that are even better, the GL and the Platino, but their times are more limited. The "regular" ADO is the most cost effective and is better than any Greyhound. For some more remote routes, there are two other lines called Oriente and Mayab. These do not have reserved seats and it is possible that they oversell them so it can be standing room only. If you have an iPhone, Smart Phone or Blackberry, you can use Google Translator for some basic stuff. You can pretty easily write down what you want, like 2 - Valladolid - 11:20 am. They will swing the monitor toward you for seat selection, tell you the price and you are good to go. Best to pay in pesos and not worry about getting ripped off on the exchange rate. The bus station in Valladolid is much smaller as there are fewer routes from there. Now the bus station is Coba is more like a bus stop, more or less like getting out at store that happens to sell bus tickets. But "dos boletos a Valladolid" is pretty easy. Money conversion is not too hard. Simplest way is to figure the cost in dollars at $10 MXN for $1 USD. So $100 pesos is $10. The rate is a bit north of $11 now at the exchange houses so $100 is actually in the $9's but who really cares. Berlitz has a blue pocket size dictionary that you can pick up at the big US bookstores. I keep one in my car even though I rarely use it anymore. The truth is that the more remote you get from the Hotel Zone, the less English seems to be spoken, BUT there is always seems to be someone around to help. I was looking for a Mexican friend in a hospital once and I only knew her first and last names. Here they have two last names. I did not know the room number and she was not answering her cell. The hospital was in the bowels of Cancun. At the entrance to the visiting area, I was having some trouble locating the lady and a guy in work clothes stepped up and assisted me in communicating. Very nice. It's nuts sometimes but when you "look" American and speak semi decent Spanish to someone, they don't expect it and tell you in Spanish that they don't speak English. This happened to me yesterday at Walmart when I was asking what was the exchange rate (tipo de cambio). The bag boy laughed at the cashier and told her I was speaking Spanish to her. He even knew the exchange rate and told me what is was in English. If you are not too skiddish I would not hesitate to take a bus ride to a touristy place, like Coba, Chichen Itze, Ek Balam, Valladolid, Merida, etc. Good luck.
thanks for the replies... thanks for all replies.. wundaben sorry I missed ur post as I didnt check email as my stupid 'orange ' got no reciprocal services.. on the 2nd last day wife booked at the hotel tour by internet station for the mayan encounter..perhaps u may have already done it and hope urs was better than ours.. we started off kayak!!, then a cenote which was great!!..and then zipline and zip down into a drop..ok, except that by the time we got to Coba we have very little time to really enjoy the ruins ..it was a fast walk and up the pyramid and then back to bus home.. on the whole it was good but we did want to see Coba..and not the activities.. there;s was a trip on fridays that did tulum, cenote and coba but we were flying back firday noon!! hope u enjoy ur trip to coba.. cheers :uk1:
SaltyB- We ended up finding another couple to join us on the shorter private tour of Tulum, Coba & Cenote offered through this site/Entertainment Plus. While I would have rather saw Ek Balam & Chichen Itza then Tulum it still ended up being a terrific trip and I would personally recommend anyone booking this excursion to ask for "Fernando" as their driver!
I am pretty sure that if you book a Private Tour from Entertainment Plus, that you can pretty much go anywhere you want to go. Their link is at the bottom of this page if it doesn't link in this mesage.
TJ - By the way... Thanks for all the bus info! I tired to go that route but my better half wasn't cooperating!
