Mexico

Well here we are, 7 months and 10 days since we left, staring down the barrel of our last day of travelling, waiting to face the grim reality of the weather back in England. Ha its not all doom and gloom, both of us are really looking forwards to coming home and seeing our family and friends, its just the reality of getting jobs and dealing with the cold that might not be all that much fun! We've been holed up in a hotel in Mexico City for the last day or so, waiting for our flight, which is still a good thirteen hours away. So plenty of time to finish up the final (or maybe second to last, who knows) blog entry - Mexico.

The relatively simple hop down to Cancun from LA turned into yet another airline based nightmare... we'd got to LAX nice and early and found the Mexicana check in desk, only to be told we didn't actually have tickets for the flight. Joy.

After ten minutes talking to the most unhelpful customer services person in the world, it turns out BA never bothered to actually book us onto the flights we'd rearranged all those months ago in Aus/New Zealand. It took almost an hour on the phone to BA to sort it all out, and thank god the seats they'd booked were still there, its just that our ticket wasn't linked to them yet... or some other airline babble we didn't really care about. Needless to say we were both fuming but relieved that we'd made it onto the flight - after all that stress and hassle back in the Autumn is was so annoying to find out they'd messed it up, and then for the people on the phone to imply it was our mistake... gah, airlines really do their up most to ruin trips.

We just about made it to the gate in time, but from there in the journey was painless, and we arrived in Cancun four hours later.



Okay so we did pinch this one from the internet, its not an amazing photo from the plane :p We really didn't know anything about Cancun before we arrived, and we'd skipped the usual ritual of buying the guide book - the theory being we were there to spend a couple of weeks by the beach before heading home. In hindsight we should have done a little more research - it turns out there are two distinct areas in Cancun; downtown, and the hotel zone. The photo is of the fancy hotels in the hotel zone, which sadly were a long way out of our price range. Instead we headed towards the hostels in downtown.

We had managed to book a real duffer online - not only were we paying three times over the odds (thanks to HostelBookers, we've been ripped off by them plenty of times now, so if you can make your own reservations!) but our nice sounding double ensuite room turned out to be a nasty 12 bunk dorm. With a slatted window right onto the busy kitchen. Our day was going from bad to worse...

We managed to scrape out a pretty miserable nights sleep (once everyone else had gone to bed!) and left early in the morning to find somewhere better to stay. This took about 25 seconds, as there were a couple of nice hotels just around the corner charging less than we'd paid for the scummy hostel! After a bit of negotiating to get us out of paying the full pill at the hostel (hostels are really funny about this around holiday times it turns out) we jumped ship and took up residence at Hotel Tulum.



We explored the local area that evening, and it was clear the Mexican's went to town on the seasonal decorations. Apart from that we didn't do much in the run up to New Years Eve, except relax and explore the area. There were plenty of cheap local buses running between downtown and the hotel area, so we explored the whole place and didn't do all that much else... so fast forward to the big night...



It started in quite a civilised fashion, but descended fairly rapidly once we'd sampled a few of the local beverages =)



We'd made our way over to the hotel area on the handy bus and had a wander around, but the majority of places were charging 60 US dollars plus for entry and an open bar - which was a bit rich for our tastes. We found a nice place with no entry and regular drinks and settled in for the night. As midnight approached we celebrated by trying out even more of the local tipples =)



So by midnight we were thoroghly in the new years mood, and the bar handed out hats and balloons (and more tequila slammers...) and everyone had a dance to the crazy music.



All in all a good night out, and despite the looks on our faces we weren't in that much trouble the next day =) We took it easy anyway, and booked up a big trip for the next day. The Yucatán Peninsula is home to many ancient Mayan ruins, with the most famous being one of the new wonders of the ancient world - Chichen Itza.

As Cancun tourist traps go, the Chichen Itza tours are right up there. We signed up to the cheap and cheerful one anyway, and tried prepared ourselves for the usual faff of the conveyor belt tours.

We were up bright and early for the 7am pickup, but then sure enough we had to wait around at a staging area until about 9am whilst they found enough buses to fit everyone on to. Not a good start... it was like it was there first day organising the trip. Once we finally got underway, the first stop was a cenote to have a wander around and for brave souls to have a swim in.



There are so many of these sink holes dotted around you can't really find any tour that doesn't take you to one, so this wasn't the last we'd see of them. It was a nice enough place to have a look at, but the water was so full of sun cream it looked a bit like crude oil in places. Nice.

After that, we were dragged to the usual 'local market', specifically set up to relieve US tourists of their money by selling 'authentic' locally made products. Having been forced to endure this scheme on at least three continents of far it wearing a bit then. Next up was a pretty good lunch buffet, which cheered us up. One of the more genuine local dishes was a delicious lemon soup, which was much more tasty that it probably sounds!

So we'd been on the tour for about 8 hours, and finally it was time to actually visit the main event...



To the tours credit, they did lay on a pretty good walking tour, telling us all about the traditions and history of the place.



This is the view from their footy pitch, which was pretty well proportioned but the home to an entirely different ball game... archaeologists reckon it went on for a few days, and the captain of the winning team was decapitated - apparently a good result in those days.



After the tour we had at least 23 minutes to stroll our by ourselves before the place closed and we were herded out by security. What a wonderfully planned day out... by the time we'd stopped at all 400 hotels on the way home, we'd spent 13 hours on the trip - having only spent two hours at the place we'd actually want to see. Ho hum, it was a pretty amazing site but it'd have been nicer to spend another hour or so there to see everything.

After that slowed the pace down even further - we had a few weeks to kill and not all that much to do on a budget. Our next trip out was to the Isla de Mujeres, a popular island just off the the coast. The main form of transport here was golf buggy, and we couldn't resist hiring one to tear about the place for a few hours:



It turned out that the island took the brunt of the winds coming in of the Caribean Sea, and it was absolultey freezing as we pottered around in the open.



Forunately it was much warmer around the other side so we were able to get some good beach time in before we headed back to the mainland.

Our regular days of pottering around to the beach and having dinner at the locals food market continued for a while longer, before we booked another day trip, this time a bit more adventurous - zip lines.



We went to a place claiming to be Mexico's number one attraction, and it turned out to be a good one. That picture isn't us as yet again they did the 'no cameras' trick and then scammed you for the photos their camera guys took along the way. I guess we should have been used to it by now, but the way they pretend you shouldn't take your camera for other reasons is a bit much.

The zip lines were amazing fun, and there were plenty of them. After the zip lining there was the inevitable trip to another cenote, but we'd booked the special option to get there on all-terrain segways, oh yeah =)



I'd always wanted to try one of these things, and going along the tracks through the jungles was pretty amazing. It wasn't all plain sailing, as one of the ladies in our group couldn't get the hang of it and had some nasty falls (driving them into trees isn't the best way to get around...) but we had a blast - if you get the chance to have a go we thoroughly recommend it =)

That was about it for the trips out, we idled away the final few days and enjoyed some pretty tasty feasts - its going to be hard to go back to home cooking again after this!



And that was that - we had one last trip to the beach to say goodbye. We've spent quite a bit of the last 7 months strolling down some of the most amazing beaches in the world, so it was a sad farewell.



And here we are, up to date once more. From Cancun we flew to Mexico City; we've been a bit reclusive and not seen anything of the city - it felt a bit like tempting fate to risk one of the more dodgy cities we've visited on our last day, so we've been watching TV and counting down the hours until the flight.

I think we may do one more post once we've got home to round things off, and look back at some of our favourite bits so we'll remember things in the future. Already when we look back and read our first few posts it feels like a lifetime ago... so it'll be great to have this record of our amazing journey for the rest of our lives.

If you told us eighteen months ago we were going to have circumnavigated the world, we'd definitely had laughed... but when the situation changes you've got to take good advantage of the opportunities life puts in front of you... but that'll do on the reminiscing until we are back home safely in one piece, there is still plenty of time for BA to screw up again and send us (and our bags) somewhere totally random ;)

See you all soon!

Vegas Baby

We left things last time as we were heading from San Francisco to Vegas, via another night in LA. We were back on the old faithful greyhound buses that we'd spent half our Aussie live's on. Fortunately for us these were only six to seven hour journeys.

The landscapes we travelled through were pretty amazing; quite different to those of New Zealand where everything seems right up close, but the vast expanses of the plains and the mountains in the distance made for some great window gazing.



Despite being impoverished travellers, scraping by on 30 quid a day each for most of the last 5 months, I'd pulled out the big guns and treated us to four nights in a super fancy hotel for Christmas. Thanks to everyone who made suggestions on where we should stay, we ended up going for the Bellagio - one of the fanciest places on the strip.

As soon as we arrived we felt totally out of place wandering through the amazing shops with our backpacks on, everyone there looks so filthy rich, and by the time we made it through to the reception we thought it was only a matter of time before they busted us and pointed us down the street to some grubby hostel. Thankfully, in Vegas anyone's money is good money, even in the swankiest of places =)



The lobby was a crazy combination of flowery glass arty ceilings and fancy Christmas decos, and about a million people all fighting for the check-in queues! It took a fair while but eventually we checked-in and headed for room sixteen-thousand and something... they are mind blowingly big hotels, that's for sure.

We'd arrived in the last evening, so we headed straight out to get our first hit of the Vegas atmosphere and stroll down the strip as everything was lighting up.



No sooner as we'd left the hotel the famous water fountains sprang up and we joined the throng watching the show, with the Paris hotel in the background.



This is the view back towards the Bellagio from the lake, sadly a bit blurry but it gives an idea of the size of the water area at the front of the hotel. Our room was right around the other side, I guess you have to pay the big bucks to get the fancy rooms overlooking the fountains!

It didn't take any time at all before we were swept up in the maelstrom of neon, adverts and noise as we headed up the strip taking in the sights. We got as far as Caesar's Palace before we caved in and headed to get a beer and do some gambling =)



We'd not done all that much research on the way the bars work in Vegas, but it became clear quite quickly that if we played on the video poker/blackjack machines they'd give us all the free booze we wanted. Each different place had slightly different rules on how much we had to put in, and what the minimum stake was, but before long we became pretty good at roughly breaking even whilst enjoying the complimentary booze. Happy days :)

The next day (slightly later in the morning than originally planned..) we set off for a longer trip to check out the sights and the wacky stuff going on inside the various casinos.

We liked the European themed ones quite a bit, maybe something to do with feeling a bit homesick - I liked Paris the most whilst Alex went for the Venetian, complete with its fake-sky indoor St Mark's Square:



Despite it being Christmas Eve, there weren't quite as much Christmasy spirit things going on around the place as we'd expected. Although we did find a good bit in the Bellagio once we'd got back and done some more exploring in our own back yard.



That evening we hit the casinos again - after an hour or so of polishing our blackjack theory online to maximise our drinking scheme returns - and played on the various machines and got merrily drunk again. I really wanted to play some 'proper' blackjack at a table, so we headed away from the Bellagio's 20 dollar tables to a cheaper place up the strip. I merrily lost forty dollars in the space of about six minutes (despite having been practising the theory stuff all day!) thanks to a wicked run of luck from the house. This quickly put an end to my dreams of "making it big in Vegas" and we headed back home relatively early so we'd be in good spirits on Christmas Day.

The big day arrived and we spent the first few hours on Skype calling our families back home. As we were talking to my lot there was a knock on the door which we thought was the room cleaners - so we sent them packing - but the shouts of "let them in" that flew back out of the screen meant we quickly opened the door... the little schemers back home had ordered a nice bottle of bubbly to be delivered to our room, so that set the tone for the day and we had a great day of eating and drinking.

We couldn't resist hitting the room service to get some tasty breakfast to go with the champers :



By the time we'd finished the feast we realised we'd only got another few hours until our lunch booking, so we quickly rescheduled that until later in the day to avoid any the inevitable culinary overload.

We went for a nice stroll to work off breakfast - and its amazing that there was absolutely zero difference between Christmas Day and any other in Vegas. The casinos were still busy, there were still throngs of people everywhere you could see outside, and the traffic was still crazy! Definitely a case of no rest for the wicked.

We'd booked at a table at one of the nice restaurants in the Bellagio for a late lunch, and when we arrived they mistook us for someone else who'd kicked up a big fuss to get a lake-side table outside. We didn't exactly do much to try and clear up their confusion, and before we knew it we'd been whisked through to a great table right on the beautiful lake with the fountains.



Hopefully this didn't leave another couple having an angry confrontation with the maitre d', but you've got to take your chances, especially in Vegas ;)

Sadly we couldn't get any traditional Christmasy food, it was a bit too fancy for that, but we both ended up choosing a really tasty chickeny-orangey thing which made us very happy indeed.



After all that food and drink we were definitely feeling the Christmas spirit, and took a stroll back in the other direction down the strip to walk it off, followed by more (mild!) casino action in the evening. We'd already booked our next days activity so wanted to be in a clear headed state to head off to the Grand Canyon by helicopter on Boxing Day.



It was both of our first times in a helicopter, and I'm not sure if there is a better place on earth to try it than the Grand Canyon.



The tour we'd booked involved a 45 minute flight to and from the canyon, with a flight down into the canyon and then stopping at a crazy cowboy ranch nearby. This last bit sounded a bit ropey on paper, but actually it kind of made the trip.



Our host at the ranch played and sang made up songs whilst we had a tasty bit of lunch, and then there was an opportunity for a horse ride (which we declined, it was extra and it was also freezing cold outside!) and we could stroll around the ranch. They put on a daft western shoot out demo as well, it was all quite cliched but good fun. Then we hopped back into the helicopters for the flight back.



The journey back was more direct than the way out, and the views were just as great. Before landing we took a route across the strip and had a chance to see all of the hotels from above which was amazing.



And that was about it for our frantic four days in Vegas. We didn't get to any shows, mostly because we'd spent so much money on the helicopter ride, but that gives us something to look forwards too next time we visit. Hopefully next time we'll not be backpackers, and have a bit more money to spend - it is possible to have a good time and not spend much, but we both get the feeling it'd be a whole load more fun if you could go crazy for a few days and do and see everything on offer!

It was pretty sad leaving our amazing Bellagio room too, this was definitely the pinacle of luxury so far on the trip, but we had to face the reality that we were heading for some pretty low budget hostels in Mexico for our next stop!