Braids and Beaches

If you have medium to long hair, I highly recommend getting it professionally braided at the start of your trip. Playa del Carmen makes it easy. You won’t have to deal with beach hair and it’ll look great in all your pictures. There are braiding stations all along La Quinta Avenida, and plenty of braiders walk the beach with a backpack full of supplies, offering to braid right at the resorts or on the sand.

I like to get colored synthetic hair woven into my braids. For Mexico’s Independence Day this week, I had the colors of the flag put in, which was fun and festive. Last time, I matched my hair to my swimsuit. The benefits are huge: your hair looks neat in every photo, it won’t get knotted to pieces by the water, and you don’t waste time dealing with it while you could be enjoying your trip.

A few tips make the style last longer. Bring a silk bonnet to sleep in to protect your braids and reduce frizz. It took a moment to get used to sleeping in braids, especially since my first style was much tighter than the second.

Have a tool on hand to cut the rubber bands out when you’re ready to take them down. I’ve also seen people use a dab of nail polish remover on a cotton swab to weaken the rubber, and they say the bands snap right off. I plan to try that when I take out my current set. It took me around 40 minutes total to get the braids out the first time around, and some of that may have been because I had zero experience. I ended up taking some of it out and leaving the rest as a pony tail for a day and then finishing…so just be prepared to spend some time taking them out.

Rinse your hair before and after going in the water, especially at cenotes, where they usually require a rinse anyway. There can be algae in the water and you don’t want that growing in your hair.

Keep in mind that your scalp sheds hair daily. When your hair is braided, that shedding stays trapped in the braid, so when you take it out later, it might look like you’re losing a lot. It’s just normal buildup. After taking out a fancier set of braids, I was also weirded out by the visible parts in my hair. It took a couple of days for them to fade and for everything to look normal again.

All in all, I’m always glad when I get my hair braided. It’s so much more satisfying to have neat hair in pictures. My hair can be so unruly at the beach and this is just my favorite. It saves time, makes life easier in the water, and looks great the whole trip.