We wanted an unconventional spring break experience — not one that involved sipping cocktails on the beach all day, but one that was off the beaten track. Why four of my girl friends and I chose to go to Cancun, Mexico was a good question, but in any case we wanted our one-week respite from school to be all about having a bold cultural and natural experience. We wanted to get down to the heart of Mexico: the history, the cuisine, the people. The real deal.

Gazing out the window of the van that took us to the Hyatt Regency hotel, we cruised down the hotel strip, passing by dozens of hotels that peppered the Cancun coastline. Driving through the stretch of road lined with a dozen clubs and bars, it was spring break fervor at its peak with blaring music and drunken shouts, which easily drowned out the soothing waves against the nearby shore. Tik tok on the clock, but the party don’t stop, no. It seemed as if 99% of Cancun’s population was of the 18-21 demographic, sunburned, and with lots of disposable income.

Determined to leave the bubble of the hotel strip, my friends and I decided to explore downtown Cancun the next day, away from the tourist traps. We were off to a decent start. After asking at least five people for directions (all offered conflicting opinions save the last one), we managed to find our way to the bus stop. The R-2 bus we were supposed to take arrived just as we caught sight of the stop, and the five of us made a mad dash, fumbling with Mexican coins and handing them to the driver. The ride was exhilarating since the driver seemed to step on the gas as often as he breathed. Speeding down the tropical lanes lined with palm trees, I looked out the open window at people on the streets wearing tank tops and shorts. I think I spotted a Hawaiian shirt with red flowers.

We arrived in downtown Cancun and looked around for Market 28, the famous flea market. Spotting a cardboard sign that had “Market 28” scrawled on with a Sharpie, we thought that we had found the real deal. Diving through the narrow alleyway piled with Mexican tapestry and artwork, we admired the Mayan calendar depicted on a colorful fabric of sunset orange and red, woven with blue strands of ancient symbols. Sombreros were artfully displayed on a rack. Ceramics bursting with cobalt blue, brick yellow, and coral red imbued a Mexican aura. Porcelain lizards hung off walls and ceramic plates covered the cement ground in a smattering of color. The Mexicans next to their colorful stalls smiled at us. This was it, we thought. We had found the secret treasure trove of traditional Mexican goods…

Until we saw that the next store curiously displayed the same tapestry of the Mayan calendar, in a different color. There were more sombreros in heaps on the floor. The ceramic lizard that I had just fallen in love with stared at me innocuously from its mesh wired abode, indistinct from the first stall. As we continued our trek through the alleyway, we found that each store contained the same mass-produced souvenirs. T-shirts proclaiming “Cancun Spring Break” in bold lettering appeared right and left. It was disillusioning to see the same commercialized souvenir being sold ubiquitously, when we expected to find a flea market selling unique Mexican artworks and clothing.

After unsuccessfully haggling for a tapestry, we headed for the open-air food court in the center of the flea market. We craved authentic Mexican cuisine: burritos so packed with beef and beans and guacamole that they would burst at the seams and salsa chips so crunchy they would crackle in our mouths; no more of the Chipotle wanna-be Mexican food. As soon as we entered the food court, we were surrounded by restaurant servers waving menus for their respective establishments. “Free drink with your meal,” one called out. “Here, look at our menu,” said another and promptly placed it in my hand.

“Is your restaurant the oldest?” said my friend, turning to the waiter who had stepped out of a restaurant in the center of the food court. She was under the impression that good food only gets better with age.

“Yeah,” said the waiter without blinking.

“Are you lying?” quipped my friend jokingly.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he replied. We had a good laugh about it and decided to go to the restaurant that offered us free drinks.

Don’t get me wrong, the homemade guacamole was top-notch. I actually tasted the smooth creamy texture of the avocado chunks for the first time, which, mixed together with a hard-boiled egg, tasted heavenly. The chips were indeed crispy to the point of a pleasant cacophony, and the salsa was so spicy that it made me slightly teary-eyed, which is probably the way it’s supposed to be. The burrito, however, was a letdown. With watery beef stacked carelessly into a lettuce-laden tortilla, the burrito tasted disappointingly like that of its fast-food chain store north of the border.

We left the flea market as the sun began to set, oddly excited for the treacherous bus ride back to the hotel. My four friends and I met what initially appeared to be a kind-hearted man on the way back. He offered to take us to the bus stop, and we took up the deal because honestly, we were a bit lost. “How nice of him,” I thought to myself. When we reached the bus stop, the man whirled around and grimly demanded, “Can I have a little something something for my chicken taco?” We group of five girls stood in a stunned silence and observed him as he put his hand out expectantly.

“Oh, yes, yes,” I said with feigned magnanimity, digging through my wallet, whispering to my friend to pull out a dollar as well.

We looked on as the man shoved the two dollars into his jean pocket and headed back into the dark lane.

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We wanted to get in touch with nature, and decided to explore Xel-Ha, touted as a Natural Wonder of Mexico. The waters at Xel-Ha were different shades of turquoise blue, rippling up the cragged rocks that formed the lagoon in what felt like a tropical paradise. I was excited to have close encounters with fish — I had imagined that I would swim next to bright orange clown fish and laugh at their goofy white stripes, that they would be resting in the swaying tentacles of sea anemone.

With that mindset, I put on snorkeling gear and stepped into the cool waters of the lagoon with my friends. Through the mask, I squinted into the sandy bottom with no fish in sight. As we circled the lagoon, we pinpointed (with exaggerated hand motions to each other in the water) a few small gray fish that seemed underwhelming compared to the colorful fish in my imagination. As we excitedly swam toward the straggling fish, they darted into the crevices of a rock and decidedly lapsed into comas, refusing to emerge. The corals had turned a ghostly ebony white, reflecting the lack of life underneath the deceptively beautiful waters. When we caught sight of a sting ray, camouflaged against the white sand with a long protruding tail that gave it away, all five of us resolved that we had enough of this underwater adventure and swam ashore as fast as we could.

Exploring the rest of Xel-Ha, we walked across a floating bridge that rested upon the water on the river mouth, where enormous tuna loomed beneath us. The jagged rocks leaded into the infinitely blue ocean. We strolled along the “Path of Consciousness” trail that cut through the tranquil forest, stopping along the way to dangle our feet in fresh water cenotes. We climbed up a 15-feet cliff and jumped off after a lengthy deliberation, and I crashed down into the sapphire river waters below in a rush of adrenaline. Biking back to the main entrance of Xel-Ha, we rested on hammocks tied to coconut trees, enjoying the sweetness of doing nothing at all.

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We tried to find the pulse of Cancun, and, in a way, we succeeded. Tasting authentic guacamole with real salsa and chips for the first time pops into my mind every time someone mentions Chipotle. Despite getting slightly duped by a sketchy man on the streets, it was a necessary wake-up call to remind us that we were in the real world, in another country whose language and culture we were not fully acquainted with. Also, we experienced first-hand that Cancun’s wealth of nature in the form of pristine waters and rolling green forests was blindingly beautiful.

While we may have been disappointed with the commercialization of downtown Cancun and the lack of underwater wildlife, maybe we were wrong to have such high expectations in the search for authenticity in the first place. We must accept that Cancun, once established as a tourist destination, will in all likelihood continue to follow the trend of globalization. The flea markets where we looked for genuine one-of-a-kind Mexican artifacts will carry on selling mass-produced ceramic souvenirs churned out from a factory assembly line. The human impact on the environment may exacerbate the tenuous state of Mexican wildlife through water pollution. Clownfish, coral, and anemone may not dwell in the Xel-Ha waters anymore, but lonely gray fish and stingrays must still be protected.

At the very least, we succeeded in experiencing Cancun in a manner beyond the stereotypical spring break. Our tans mean something more than lying on the beach all day. They represent scouring the flea market, swimming the lagoon waters, and visiting Mayan ruins. They mean a whole lot more.