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!