Category: Mexico

It’s time to say goodbye to Latin America! We can hardly believe (or Belize 😉) all that we’ve done so far. We’ve also now tipped over the half-way point of our total travels, meaning we have more days behind us than ahead of us. Which is daunting and exciting all at once.

But first, we had a few more days left in Mexico after Hector and Sophie left us until our flight out to Hawaii. Initially I wanted to go somewhere else and have a final injection of Latin-life, but six months on the road has made us tired, and yet another bus journey would eat into the budget. Plus, we know we’re going back to Peru, so this is by no means farewell to Latin America forever.

Our final days were spent splashing about in a pool, walking to and from Walmart, checking out an incredible Catholic sanctuary more akin to a Buddhist refuge, almost burning down our Airbnb host’s apartment, planning Asia, and enjoying a final Mexican meal.

In terms of how we’ve found Mexico itself… Well, I don’t feel like we’ve really gotten to experience ‘Mexico‘, and this was a bit of a planning faux pas on my part. But decisions had to be made all those months ago, and I’d heard only amazing things about the Yucatan Peninsula.

The Yucatan Peninsula certainly seems to be a beast unto itself, and sure, there’s loads of Mexican food and people, but it’s all felt incredibly manufactured for tourism. On the other hand, that has made this bit really quite easy, so many people speak English, a range of public and private transport exists depending on your budget, and we have felt incredibly safe. It’s definitely felt more like holidaying than backpacking. We’ve also gotten to learn a lot more about the maya civilisation and culture, experience varying places mimicking paradise, and enjoy some cooler climes thanks to the coastline.

This has certainly been the most developed part of Central America, and we seem to be here at the beginning of the next huge wave of tourism, thanks to the development of a few new trainlines. Tren Maya to connect up Cancun with the rest of the country, but also one spanning from the Atlantic coastline to the Pacific, to compete with (or complement, according to some people) the Panama Canal. These developments are controversial, lots of natural forest has to be destroyed, as scar-like lines are cut through it. Indigenous communities and animals are also being displaced and their habitats threatened. On the one-hand, it’s an incredible feat of engineering and infrastructure done in such a short time. On the other, there’s a cost to pushing that through, and not just a financial one. As Sophie pointed out, these things stop in our countries because of rules and regulations to protect people, land and nature. Would we prefer our governments to just bulldoze developments through?

So, Mexico is probably somewhere we’d need to come back to. We can see why so many people come here on holiday and cannot blame them at all. I honestly didn’t realise beaches like this existed at all, let alone here, and if you’re on holiday and not short of money, there’s plenty of options to have a whale of a time.

Rule of Three

Highlights (Alex): the boat trip in Bacalar, absolutely gorgeous. Welcoming Hector and Sophie with tequilas and having their company for five days. Chilling out in Tulum

Highlights (James): Tulum ruins and cycling around the area, Bacalar boat cruise, spending time with Hector and Sophie

Lowlights (Alex): Chichen Itza being over-run by sales people and stalls, being scalded for not giving a big enough tip for an already expensive tour, entry chaos at Tulum

Lowlights (James): Dogs rudely interrupting my jogging, aggressive hawkers in Chichen Itza, entry/exit fee confusion

Takeaways (Alex): it’s possible to do all these expensive touristy places on a budget, and paying more at an all-inclusive doesn’t guarantee a better time.

Takeaways (James): As with Colombia, Mexico has a reputation of being dangerous and run by cartel gangs, while there are certainly parts of the country like that, you shouldn’t consider the entire country to be like that. Whether it’s the influence of American tourism or not, there is definitely a focus on consumption and convenience, anything you want, for a price of course.

Description (Alex): tourist-ville, absolutely gorgeous, tortillas galore

Description (James): great holiday destination (didn’t feel like backpacking), sea, sun and sand, tasty food

Entertainment

TV & Film: Justified: City Primeval, Goodbye Christopher Robin, Coco

Books: Red Dragon

Where We Stayed

Airbnb (Bacalar): 4.5 ⭐️ great space, very quiet, calm and private, missing a few things in the kitchen but otherwise very comfortable here.

Airbnb (Tulum): 4.5 ⭐️ wonderful design and amazing bed and bathroom. Unfortunatelt surprise view of building, teeny tiny kitchenette and no heating element on the pool dragged this one down a bit, but everything else was spectacular. Also, free bikes.

Airbnb (Central Cancun): 4 ⭐️, good space, nice pool, amazing huge bed (for us), but needed a bit more care and attention to really make it shine, that cupboard smell will haunt me

Airbnb (outer Cancun): 5 ⭐️, wonderful host couple, felt very comfortable here, lovely design, pool to ourselves

Airbnb (bus Cancun): 2 ⭐️, you get what you pay for, basic accom but proximity to loud music keeping me awake all night, and someone remoting into out TV at 3am lost any stars for convenience of location. Of course, James slept through it all!

Cutting Room Floor

• Chatting with Misse, the young Swedish lad who crossed the border with us into Bacalar, told us his ultimate tactic to save money… he would just have the free hostel breakfast and one other meal each day, either skipping lunch or dinner.
• Compared to us, where if we miss just one meal, we get so hangry that our relationship is more important than our budget!
• An older Canadian gent who has been ‘travelling’ for the past twenty years tells us that parts of the Mexican states were carved up to make Quintana Roo, the ‘new’ region of the Yucatan Peninsula we’ve journeyed through.
• This being invested in to make a place for tourists from the USA who would have gone to Cuba, but had to stop because of the cold war
• Meeting yet another person who got salmonella on their travels, and being very grateful that we have each other to lean on. Not just when poorly, but also when just needing a rest, it really is so much easier travelling as a pair. Huge respect to all the solo travellers out there keeping on, especially the women, they’re far more capable than I was when I tried the solo travel thing 13 years ago.
• The 1 star Google review of an all-inclusive resort saying “essentially we paid thousands of dollars for food poisoning and volleyball”.
• Mexico has the second highest population of Catholics in the world. Brasil has the highest.
• Similar to those in Peru and Bolivia, communities now practice a combined religion that melts together traditional Maya practices with Catholic ones.
• Tombs are painted in wonderful bright colours because they celebrate the dead here. They go to pray to the people that die. After a week you go to the grave, you go and pray and do the rosary, every month for a year you do the same, then you make it like a home at the year mark, and you do that every year. Then at each Day of the Dead they make it like an altar, and everyone honours the dead at the same time each year.
• Day of the Dead (which I learnt most about from Coco, thanks Disney), seems like a wonderful tradition, to talk about and remember those that we’ve lost, keeping their memories alive and passing them down through the generations. I wish we talked more about those no longer with us.
• Cancun means Snake Nest in Maya, we didn’t see any though.
• The Spaniards gave everyone Catholic first names, so you get a lot of Joses, Marias and Guadalupes, but the indigenous maya retain their surnames, so you’ll typically get a mix of a Catholic first name with a maya surname meaning Jaguar or some kind of animal.
• Chichen Itza is built at the intersection of four cenotes, but there are 60 around it in this area.
• Each side of the main kukulkan temple has 91 steps, with one side having just one extra. Add all the steps on all sides, you get 365.
• The temple is oriented to the points on the compass.
• Kukulkan means snake with feathers, kukul = feather, kan = snake (as in cancun).
• Similar to Tulum, clapping here creates an echo that sounds like the quetzal. This is caused by the specific height and angle of the steps.
• This whole area was a ceremonial one, people didn’t live here, they lived around it, and certain ones would come for ceremonies and games of pok a tok.
• As elsewhere, the temples are not hollow.
• They engineered drainage to stop the pooling of water in the large congregation platforms.
• Mayas had an obsession with water and time. They are called masters of time. They had a precise control of agriculture, by being in contact with the universe and having an exact understanding of the calendar.
• Uayeb is five days in August that makes up the 365 days of the year alongside 20-day-long months. Uayeb was typically an unlucky period, bad things would happen in these days. Uay = bad, Ep = spirit.
• Their circular calendar (see photo below) shows the months, and also numbers in dot form, including zero, which is a big deal for reasons I forget. They also have a further calendar on top of this for years and multiple years, which ended in 2012, and why many people thought the world would end that year.
• Many congregated at Chichen Itza on the predicted end of the calendar date in 2012, and rather than the world ending, they saw a bunch of planets aligning. This alignment only happens every 5525 years. It is a mystery how they knew this.
• Time rules everything. The day and month you were born is what you are good for. The day you were born, and the day you realise why you were born, are the two big days of your life. We check out our maya months and predictions (akin to horoscopes), Hector’s is the only one that really fits.
• The whole yucatan peninsula is on a limestone platform. It’s perfect for non-machine agriculture, but not great for the machines.
• Tourists here are half Mexicans, half foreigners, according to our host. This is a better ratio than a lot of tourist areas we’ve been to.
• Our host works in interior decoration and said that the quality of goods imported from China far surpassed that of anything made in Mexico, so he imported everything.
• The story of Mary, Untier of Knots, which is totally random but I quite like it. The grandfather of the donor of the painting was having marital issues and sought help from a priest. The priest prayed “In this religious act, I raise the bonds of matrimony, to untie all knots and smoothen them” and the knots of the marriage were undone. I like to think of this like a masseuse massaging a knot in your muscle to release it, but using religion to work through the knots in your life, through faith and hope.

The Photos

Farewell night to our beautiful freezing plunge pool:

Boating:

So many cute seashells:

One of the maya calendars:

Tequila is made from blue agave, pictured here, whilst mezcal is made from a mix of agaves:

Chichen Itza:

Cenote:

Sophie trying to dodge the whacky wavy inflatable tube… [insert what you think it is here]:

A beautiful bird singing to us outside the window:

Someone leaving a ribbon at the Sanctuary for Mary to help Taylor Swift untie the “knots” of her life:

This worker, who turned on this huge spinning disc of destruction, standing right in the firing line as it spins around. No health & safety here!

I love Crunch chocolate, and so finding an array of no less than six different ice creams from it was like a dream:

You can literally buy everything and anything in walmart!:

Art?:

James is going to miss having six different kinds of hot sauce:

After a fairly painless bus transfer from Tulum (once they fixed the Aircon), Alex and I arrive in the sprawling tourist-centric hub that is Cancun city. Laden with heavy backpacks, we trapse down to our Airbnb, dump our belongings and immediately set off in the direction of Walmart. Time to stock up before our esteemed guests arrive. The superstore is absolutely huge and sells everything from pancake mix to motorbikes! (We only buy one of these things).

We return home and decide it will be a nice treat for Hector and Soph to be welcomed with a cocktail. Time to learn how to make a margarita! It’s one of the easier cocktails to make, a 3-2-1 ratio of tequila, orange liqueur and lime juice plus a ring of salt around the edge of the glass for that extra flourish. Before long we see them coming through the garden and greet them with a big hug, it’s hard to believe we’ve been planning this meetup for over 6 months! We let them settle in and we all enjoy our first of many margaritas to follow.

After a good catch up, it’s time for some grub, I’ve found a place popular with locals called El Estadio. Unsurprisingly it’s opposite a huge stadium, slightly more surprising is the fact it’s at the back of a car park surrounded by retail shops, not quite what I’d imagined, but they’re playing good music and it’s full of locals. We order another round of margaritas and then move on to craft beers. Weirdly burritos are unavailable so we instead go for burgers, pizza and a huge bowl of guacamole. For the first round of drinks we toast to all being together, for the second round I ask Hector if he’ll be part of my best man duo, it’s another yes!

Delfines Beach

As our guests have had a long flight across the Atlantic Ocean and then a short hop across from Mexico City, we decide to have a chilled morning by the pool. They’ve been kind enough to bring a bunch of supplies from back home, one of these is a water proof phone case. Time to try out my new toy and take some underwater photos… with mixed results.

We have a family trip to Walmart (who doesn’t love trying out new supermarkets on holiday) and return home to make some huge burritos. For the afternoon we’ve picked out one of the many beautiful beaches in the Cancun hotel district, Delfines beach. It’s similar to the Santa Fe beach that Alex and I visited in Tulum, sand so white you need sunglasses to see anything past the glare, and beautiful turquoise waters. We gulp a cold beer in the shade then head into the waves to cool off. Time to play with another toy I bought in Walmart, introducing Wilson the beach ball.

Alex timed this photo just after a huge wave washed over all of us:

In the evening we put our new guests to work and they make us a delicious spaghetti bolognese. I introduce Hector and Soph to Marie Sharp and her irresistible hot sauce. Back in Belize I bought the Red Hornet sauce, expecting “Lava Heat” to be somewhere in the middle of the scale, it turns out it’s the hottest sauce they do and it really does have a sting! Soph makes some scrumptious frozen margaritas and feeling adventurous we add some of the Red Hornet to make what we shall call “Lavaritas”, they have quite the kick! After dinner, Alex and I teach the group how to play the card game Yaniv, a game we’ll play many times over the next few days!

Boaty McBoozeface

Now we’ve had a day of relaxing, it’s time for a full day excursion! We’re up at 8am and on the boat before 10. It’s not long after that we’re offered the first of many alcoholic drinks we’ll consume today.

The first activity on the trip is a snorkelling stop in the midst of the tropical sea. Although it’s not the most relaxing snorkelling experience (as big groups of tourists are herded around the water following their guide and avoiding merging with other big groups), there are some pretty fishes and an underwater museum to look at. Alex even spots a deflated puffer fish.

As we bob around in the water waiting to get back on the boat, Alex and I clash toes, mine are armoured with a hard rubber flipper, hers are unarmed. Having won the game of footsie, I think she’ll be fine in five minutes as she grimaces by the side of the boat. Southern Softies.

We pass time drinking more booze and enjoying the stunning scenery. There’s time for another swim stop before we dock for lunch at the South end of the Isla de Mujeres (Island of Women). By this point Alex’s middle toe has swelled up and is turning a nice shade of purple. Whoops. Guilt sets in, maybe I did more damage than I thought. We hobble along to the huge lunch buffet and all of us stack our plates as high as mountains and sip ice-cold beers.

After a bit of time on the beach for lunch to go down we get back on the catamaran and head for the North part of the island. On the way there, after a shot of tequila, we’re all encouraged to stand up on the swaying ship and dance. A shark leads the group through half-hearted efforts to dance along to the Macarena and YMCA. Alex’s toe now conveniently gives all of us an excuse to stay seated.

We arrive on the North part of the island, the atmosphere is less relaxing here as everywhere is either flogging overpriced souvenirs or trying to get you into their restaurant. We briefly try the “free” tequila tasting but one look at the prices and we’re quickly out of there, some bottles are for sale at well over $200!

After a quick visit to Señor Frogs, we cross to the opposite side of the narrow island where we find a quiet beach spot to chill out and chat, away from the hustle and bustle of touristville.

It’s time to head back to the mainland, the sails are opened up and now the booze really starts flowing. While we’re already holding constantly topped up beers, we’re now also presented with cold, freshly made Pina Coladas, well you can’t say no to that can you. The music is switched to rock hour and we all enjoy the good times, beers in hand, sun shining with a cooling breeze as we sail across the Caribbean Sea with our friends. Life doesn’t get much better than this. Luckily the cocktails aren’t too strong otherwise we’d be wiped out by now, though it definitely has had an effect on the sunburnt Canadians dancing away like there’s no tomorrow.

In the evening, Alex consults Dr. Google to diagnose her poorly toe. She can’t really walk on it and it’s even more swollen and purple than earlier. We figure we’ll give it until morning and if it’s worse we might need to make our first trip to a doctor on this trip. Getting 6 months in without a visit to A&E isn’t bad eh? We have leftovers for dinner and hit the hay early. A full day of sun, booze and being thrown around in the waves has hit us all hard.

Easy Like a Sunday Morning

As Hector will be running the London Marathon in a few weeks time, he needs to get a training run in, even on holiday! Alex’s toe now provides a convenient excuse to have a lie in, suss. We set off around half seven with the sky full of clouds and the air cool and still. We head back towards the beach district, chatting away and dodging crocodiles in the mangrove swamp! An hour into the run we contemplate really pushing ourselves, but the heat from the sun keeps us sensible and we manage a 16km run. We agree we shouldn’t overdo it as we have another full day out tomorrow and it’s super warm. We return to the Airbnb where our better halves are in the middle of cooking us a delightful fried breakfast. I’m surprised and relieved to see Alex bouncing around the house saying her toe is still sore but she’s found a way to walk on it now, phew. We devour a huge brunch and spend the day relaxing around the Airbnb, playing in the pool and of course, another trip to Walmart.

In the evening we head to a local taquería, ensuring we’ll go somewhere that sells local mexican food this time. We order almost one of everything on the menu and share tacos, tostadas, quesadillas, guacamole, burritos and margaritas before rolling home for desert, more home-made pancakes!

Enter Through the Gift Shop

Having missed out on the 3am sunrise tour (perhaps for the best?) we board our tour bus at 7am and our guide for the day ‘Moto Moto’ introduces himself. It’s a two hour journey inland to reach one of the seven wonders of the modern world, Chichen Itza. Bizarrely we cross a time zone to get there, so we are essentially an hour behind what our phones and watches say, this must be a nightmare for some people. Our first stop on this twelve hour journey is to receive a blessing from a shaman, it’s a nice gesture to ward off bad energy and a bit of fun to start the day.

Not quite so fun is an enforced thirty minute browse of local handcrafted merchandise. This wasn’t on the itinerary and seems a bit of an odd way to start the day. There’s some impressive crafts on show including this gigantic skull that sadly would not fit in our backpacks. I wonder how many people on this tour ever buy items such as a crocodile made of crystals for the cool price of $4500…

Not far down the road we reach the entrance to Chichen Itza which Hector accurately describes as like the entrance to Thorpe Park. Huge queues and fast food options surround us as Moto Moto tries to guide his big group through the swathes of perplexed gringos. I’m immediately pounced upon by hawkers running at me, they almost manage to place hats on my head before I realize what’s happening. “Sombrero amigo, sombrero? Very hot today, you need one”, not quite the welcome I’d imagined! Once we finally get inside we’re slightly bemused to see stall after stall of more hawkers selling cheap tat. “One dollar my friend, one dollar only!”, “Special discount only today!”, “Treat your princess amigo!” and many other ways to try and grab our attention as we run the gauntlet of commerce.

Eventually we reach the main plaza of the site and the impressive pyramid dominates the skyline. We’re first taken to the arena where the game pok-a-tok was played hundreds of years ago. This game involved opposing teams attempting to hit a ball through a hoop, doesn’t sound too hard really, a bit like basketball right? Wrong. The hoop is a small hole 21ft in the air, you can only use your elbow and hips to hit the ball and the ball itself is solid rubber, if you were to head the ball you would likely die or be seriously injured from the impact. Matches could last several hours without a team scoring a point. To make matters more interesting, one of the teams will be sacrificed. It’s still debated amongst historians whether the losing team would be sacrificed, as some might suspect? Or could it be the winning team, as in Mayan culture having your heart cut out was a short-cut to paradise, sacrifice was seen as a great honour, not a ritual of shame.

Close to the pyramid, Moto Moto gives us a brief history lesson and then we’re free to explore. It’s mostly stuff we’ve heard before from Tikal or Tulum but it’s still mighty impressive to replicate the sound of the Quetzal bird by clapping directly in-between the structures; or hearing about how the sunlight will align with the buildings and columns depending on the various equinoxes throughout the year.

We have a bit of a wander around the rest of the historic site, seeing a giant cenote used as a sacrificial pit and various temples. We appreciate the peaceful sections of the site as we imagine it was intended to be enjoyed.

It’s hard to judge this experience, on the one hand the stunning achievements of the Mayans are still well preserved and as impressive as they were hundreds of years ago. At the same time the area is crowded with local merchants, constantly and sometimes aggressively trying to sell you their wares. It’s a surprise and a shame the local authorities have allowed any, let alone quite so many vendors to operate in this location which should be dedicated to history. I suppose it’s to be expected in an area of the country carved out to boost tourism and therefore maximize sales and taxes. Weirdly on the way out of the site we exit into a more official souvenir area, it seems odd they’ve not restricted it to just this spot.

After another stint of snoozing in the comfortable air-conned bus we arrive at our lunch stop. Here there’s a big buffet spread but even better is a taco station! We all request four tacos each and top them off with salad and, of course, habanero hot sauce 🥵 Try as we might, it seems impossible to get a cold coke to cool us down despite several requests. Instead we settle for cinnamon topped rice pudding with fried dough for desert.

No time to let our lunches digest, we must go for a swim in the cenote (sinkhole) just a few meters away. We don the obligatory life jackets, take a freezing shower of ice-cold bullets and tip-toe down the steep wooden steps into the abyss of carved limestone. Alex and Soph opt for the step access while Hector and I take the plunge option from the elevated platform.

As we frolic about in the cold water we notice large black fish and even a terrapin swimming around next to us!

It’s time to head back towards Cancun although there is still an opportunity for a final stop in the town of Valladolid. Here we are immediately shepherded into a tequila store. The owner takes great pride in his locally made alcohol and enjoys giving us several tasters, each with their own unique toast, some in Spanish and some in Mayan. We get to sample vanilla and chocolate flavoured tequilas with an additional taste of a unique local drink I’ve forgotten the name of. We just about have time to do a lap of the main square and finally buy a cold drink. Walking around here seems twice as hot as the already warm Cancun, Alex reminds me that we did look at staying here until we read about it’s reputation of “extreme heat”.

We arrive back in Cancun around 7pm, it’s been a long day! No rest for the wicked though as Alex and I get our chefs hats on, it’s our turn to cook dinner. Tonight is a special night for a few reasons, it’s our last night with Hector and Sophie, it will be Hector’s Birthday in a couple of days and incredibly it is the halfway point of our trip. Time flies. Alex makes her famous Spanish Tortillas (even without a grill!) and I make homemade guacamole and margaritas. We finish celebrating with a plate full of cakes with ice-cream and a final game of Yaniv.

So Long, Farewell 😢

Sadly after what seems to be no time at all, it’s our last morning with our wonderful visitors. We’ve had an absolute blast with these two amazing people and we are gutted to have to say goodbye to them. We wish them an enjoyable rest of their trip around Mexico and good luck to Hector in the marathon. We can’t wait to see them both again, wherever in the world that might be…

************

Adventure – Having a few brilliant days with Hector and Sophie. Swimming with a terrapin in a sinkhole. Boating and boozing.

Excitement – Wilson Ball, never go full salmon. Lavaritas. Dramatic games of Yaniv, so many surprise trips to the moon!

Trauma – Almost-broken toe. Aggressive, pestering vendors.

Central America has been exceeding our budget expectations, and Mexico has been no exception. Arriving by bus to Tulum, we decide to skip the £7 taxi for the final distance to our next accommodation, and make the 40 minute walk with all our bags (plus another food bag) to our next accommodation. We’ll be eating in whilst here, so have taken as much as we can to eat in. This does mean James is extra laden down with food. Every ‘peso‘ counts (‘peso’ being the currency here, but also meaning weight). We make it there, keeping strong and steady, proving we’ve not lost all our strength and stamina just yet. True backpacking life!

We had high expectations for our next accommodation and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s a brutalist new-build with macrame and dusky pink accessories to soften the cold of the concrete. Not only is the decor totally ‘a la mode’, we have our own private pool on our balcony and a view of the trees. Less backpacking life! The jacuzzi pool turns out to be very much more pool than jacuzzi as it has no heating element, and with Tulum being even cooler than Bacalar, we actually would have appreciated some heat for the first time in a while! That being said, it’s really nice not to be sweating all the time.

This does make dips in the pool somewhat shorter than we’d imagined, but it doesn’t stop us practicing deep breathing, cold water plunges, and paddling my feet whilst reading my book, with the moon beside me, and beer to the other side. The moon in this case being a 3d-printed portable moon which I want to take with us, but also the bright full moon and stars shining down through the trees that still surround the property.

We’re staying a bit of a way out of town as the compromise on the accommodation, but we have fixie bikes to get us around the area. We decide to tick off the main attraction in Tulum the next day, the archaelogical site.

Tulum Archaeological Site

We’ve taken the scenic route to the site, which takes us down to the end of the developing new hotel zone. We’ve paid an unexpected couple of quid to get in here, as we cycle passed workers planting saplings, laying concrete, and finishing off huge entrances to the various beaches down here. It’s shady and quiet and, save a few weaving walking tourists, it’s a nice cycle. In fact the whole route was pretty much by cycle-lane, bliss!

We find ourselves at the entrance to the actual archaelogical site, and back to chaos. There’s a huge queue with tourists growing every second that passes, like a stream of unstoppable lemmings. We’ve not seen anything like this since the acropolis, so we quickly park up our bikes and join the queue. Thanks to a couple in front of us, we are told that we’ve only paid for the park and not the archaeological site, we still need to get our site entry tickets. Where would we get such a thing…? Well, at the ramshackle porta-cabin at the side, with ink-jet printed sheets of A4 or hand-written scraps of paper covering almost every inch of the window announcing they don’t give change, but do give some change, and only take cash, and only this but not that, and a big $9 5 on the window. Apparently this is the ticket office. The rest of this area is so immensely modern and well thought-out that it seems a spectacular bit of oversite to forget how people would actually buy their entry tickets. Thankfully the queue moves fast and I manage to get the tickets just before James makes it to the front.

Once finally in the site, the lemmings swarm into clusters around their guides, huddling in whatever shade they can find. I’ve deduced that we’ve arrived just as all the cruise ship and bus tours have arrived, oops. Hopefully it’ll thin out as we take our time and they are herded around. We find our own tree to shelter under as we load up our tour-guide app that is meant to guide us around and save us money on a real human guide. It’s smart enough to have GPS and will describe what’s infront of us as we walk up to it, like a real-life human, but at a fraction of the price! It’s time to get a taste of the future…

We fall at the first hurdle trying to figure out where we are on the map as the guide starts talking about things we can’t see or recognise as we look around us in all directions trying to find the thing he’s describing. We also can’t ask it questions to delve deeper into any part of greater interest. Tour guides, your jobs are safe for now. I wouldn’t recommend the app, unless you’re really scrimping and saving.

Atop almost every structure are camoflaged grey iguanas of all different sizes, basking in the sun, bopping their heads up and down and entertaining tourists with games of Where’s Wally – Iguana edition, or my favourite, Iguana or Rock. (Although we seemed to have avoided photographing any of them, let us know if you spot one!)

The walls here protecting the site are 26 feet thick! And over 10 to 16 feet in height. They also have an early warning system for hurricanes by way of a set of holes through their Temple of the Wind’s walls. When the hurricane winds blow in, the Temple whistles!

One of the most interesting portions of the tour is finding out that limestone hardens after it is excavated. This is how the Maya managed to carve such intricate designs into the rocks using stone, that are still in such good condition, by carving and manipulating the stone straight after excavation. Using the natural passing of time to fix their work. The structures here are a lot smaller than those in Tikal, but there’s more intricacy here, with pillars, carvings and even hand-prints still visible on the walls.

We learn about a bishop appointed to the Yucatan Peninsula after the Spanish invasion, Diego de Landa who arrived in 1549. He immediately began to eliminate so-called heathenism and convert indigenous populations to Christianity. Mayans were familiar with the concept of a god who dies and comes back to life, as their own Maize god did just that. As such, it wasn’t too difficult for them to accept the idea of Jesus Christ, and many mayans did convert. However Landa was paranoid. Suspecting a rebellion he burned over 40 Mayan books and 20,000 images. He tortured mayans who he suspected of idolatry. His actions were condemned and he was sent back to Spain to explain his actions. We would know so much more if it wasn’t for him. Only three books survived and they’ve been invaluable in deciphering the hieroglyphic language of the maya.

Previously knowing so much more about the Incas, it’s fascinating learning about their ancestors and how developed they were in terms of architecture, art, maths and astronomy. Their calendar being one of the things they are most known for, I suppose because it so closely matches our own modern day calendar, but developed hundreds of years prior. Each ‘month’, that was 20 days long, had a deity presiding over it. There were 18 of these months, and then an extra five day period in summer that was notorious for disasters, and that makes your 365. They had micro-calendars and macro calendars too, hence the end of the world prediction for 2012. Although time is cyclical for the maya, so apparently they didn’t really think the world would end. We wonder how much we have lost in losing these civilisations and how they would have continued to develop had various factors not halted their progress.

In terms of religion, they believed in an underworld, Xibalba (the entrance to which we got to explore in San Ignacio!), where your soul would go when you died. Your soul would have to find its way out of nine levels to reach the middle world, Earth. Above Earth, are the 13 levels to ascend through to paradise, called Tamoanchan. Unfortunately we haven’t gotten to explore the entrance to this one (although the beaches have come close)! This somewhat conflicts with what we’ve been told before, and serves a reminder of how much is still down to interpretation. Apparently, you could skip Xibalba in a few ways, by being sacrificed, dying at war, or whilst playing Pok-a-Tok, a game we’ll learn more about in Chichen Itza.

We learn that this site started as a small village, but grew to prominence as the larger cities (like Tikal) started to be abandoned, becoming the controller of maritime commerce along the coast from here to Honduras.

The site was eventually abandoned about 70 years after the Spaniards came to wipe them out. Whilst they fought back, as with much of the other indigenous populations, their numbers had been decimated by disease from Europe, and their weaponry no match for the gunpowder and horses they were up against. They didn’t have a chance.

Despite this, six million still live on today, farming their ancestral lands. They are the largest block of indigenous peoples north of Peru. That they live in on concentrated block is one of the reasons their identity and culture has been able to survive, compared to the remnants of indigenous cultures we have seen in the rest of the Latin America, trying to revive what once was. However, we are told that there are many threats to mayan people, one having been the crimes against humanity that the Guatemalan president carried out in the name of destroying “communist subversion” (one guess for who was really behind this…), the rest relating to human and climatic threats to their land and way of life.

The best part for us exploring this site is just wandering around, through the ruins and palm-trees, and spotting the glorious white-sand beach below and turquoise blue sea lapping up against it. Sadly the beach is no longer accessible ‘to protect the area’, but honestly there are so many tourists here I can’t imagine how they would all fit down there anyway.

As we meander around, the tour groups start rounding up and leaving, giving us some more peace and space to enjoy the site.

It’s a small site so it doesn’t take long to give it one final lap not faffing with the app, before we head back to find our bikes for part two of the excursion. Vamos a la playa!

Playa Santa Fe

Amidst the beach clubs and resort hotels in the hotel district is the publicly accessible Playa Santa Fe. Walking down the white sandy path with palm trees and flowering bougainvillea to the side, the view opens up to a huge white-sand beach, green, turquoise and blue water framing it, turning to a deeper blue as it goes further out.

Further along you can just about see the ruins of Tulum on the cliff-edge. The sand is so fine it’s like a white dust. It doesn’t stick to you like typical sand, and it isn’t like lava to stand on. I think this might actually be paradise? Aside from a couple of guys lazily saying their offerings to the air around them, there’s no hawkers, no tatty, plastic umbrellas and loungers laying empty to lure in a sale. It’s just peace. I take a swim in the water and it’s got a bit of a chill to it to cool you down from the blazing sun. Lovely.

James, aka lobster arms, is feeling sensitive to the sun, so we don’t stay here too long as he covers his arms with his tiny towel, like a genie about to conjure some cocktails with a nod of the head, but instead he’s doing magic to protect more burning. We stop at a huge supermarket on the way back, it’s the biggest supermarket James has ever seen, and I’m so excited to see an abundance of food we could actually eat. If only our budget agreed! We resist temptation and only get the essentials we couldn’t carry from Bacalar… namely beer. Backpacking priorities.

We spend the rest of the day chilling out and enjoying the flat.

A Day Off

Of the things to do in Tulum, there are two main ones. The archaeological site, and the cenotes (sinkholes full of water). We’ve researched the cenotes around us, and decide to save ourselves and our money. We’ll definitely do one with Hector and Sophie from Cancun, and the ones here are highly priced and apparently over-rated. This means we have a day to do nothing! We decide to go back to the beach we found yesterday, but better prepared this time, and going the direct route rather than the scenic route, to maximise on time.

The direct route still somehow takes us twice as long as Google thinks it should. We know that not having brakes means we go slower than we would normally, but we didn’t think it would slow us down this much! This means we arrive, once more, at the same time as all the tour groups. Except this time we’re coming in via the main entrance, and leaving them to enter the ruins whilst we get to skip at least that line. What yesterday was a woman taking our money and slapping wristbands on us is now absolute carnage. There’s touts everywhere selling tickets to this, that, hawkers with poor caged monkeys and iguanas luring you to take photos, street performers, shops, even a Starbucks, and of course, hoards of tourists. No ticket booth though! No sign for one either! We once more divide and conquer where I join the queue and James hunts out a park ticket office.

As I wait in the queue, I overhear a guide explaining that this park fee goes towards the maintenance and protection of a new park that has been constructed to ‘compensate’ for the destruction of nature needed to build the new trainline that will connect Tulum to Cancun (and beyond). We’ve clearly arrived at the start of the end of the government’s huge investment in tourism in this area to be ready once the train-loads of tourists start coming, but development in the rest of Tulum is clearly picking up speed. As with a lot of environmental issues, there’s no black or white. The train will destroy a lot of nature, but it will also (hopefully) reduce the demand on planes, cars, buses or shuttles polluting the area (although they have also built a new international airport here though too). Considering how much land-transport we see stopped still with engines running, blasting out fumes, I can’t help but lean towards any mode of transport that isn’t powered by fossil fuels. I have to say though, the investment seems to be being done well, with some actual forward planning and big-picture consideration, rather than just building things piecemeal like so many governments.

Part of the new development:

By this point, I’ve gotten to the front of the queue and James is still nowhere to be seen. I wait to the side as the already braceleted masses file in, stopping only for their plastic bottles to be confiscated and thrown into a giant pile that won’t get recycled. But at least it won’t enter the park! Sigh.

By the time James finds me with entry bracelets in hand, the queue dwellers think people in the same situation as us are jumping the line, my socially-awkward-anti-rule-breaking-nightmare. As luck would have it, a huge group of people get to the front and realise they don’t have the bracelet they need, and in this kerfuffle James and I slip in. Apparently in James’s queue there were people who already had the bracelets not realising that wasn’t the queue for the archaeological site. As with yesterday, hilarious oversight.

The time we saved cycling the direct route was totally eaten up by this chaos and also added so much extra unnecessary stress to what was a lovely bimble on the bikes up to that point. We enjoy cycling passed queue chaos part two for the archaelogical site and make it back to paradise beach. And relax.

At one point, two quad bikes with four jungle-camo military men burdened with huge guns roll up just down the beach from us. I’ve been told the military presence in Quintana Roo (the tourist district up in the Yucatan peninsula) is meant to reassure tourists. It does the opposite for me. Thankfully they move on after a bit, and I can relax, enjoying the clouds rolling over and giving respite from the sun. We enjoy a read, paddle and swim in this slice of paradise. Serious bliss.

It’s gorgeous here, but we’re conscious of the sun on our skin, so we head back for lunch and also enjoy our lovely flat some more, by watching a film on the big-screen TV. Not on our phones! Simple things. The rest of the evening is spent just chilling out, testing our resilience in the ‘cold plunge pool’ and discussing what we’d put in our dream home from here (almost all of it).

The War On Dogs

It’s check-out day of this little slice of ‘cool’ and also Tulum as we’re to head north to Cancun to meet up with Hector and Sophie. But first… It’s time for a run! We haven’t had a run since Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, and Hector is training for the London marathon, so we best check everything is still working before joining him in a training run!

We’ve mapped out a quick 5k loop and head off… straight into a wall of barking dogs. The road doesn’t go anywhere else, so we try and boldly walk through, but they seem to be riling each other up and getting closer and closer to us. We’ve been barked at by many a dog on an attempted run, but this has been the worst and closest they’ve been. We give in, the dogs win this round, we sheepishly and frustratedly turn back.

It’s actually a blessing we went that way because if we’d looped the other way, we would have been stuck the wrong side of the wall of dogs and had to go the whole loop back on ourselves. Thankfully, this way we know to do an out and back. We only encounter one more angry dog on the way, but without the pack, it is content with having done its job as we continue to run away from whatever it is it’s protecting. This is something we really will not miss about Latin America, but there’s plenty else we will.

We say bye to the flat of dreams with a plunge in the pool, a sun-dappled-through-leaves shower, and a pasta breakfast (every peso counts).

Off to Cancun!

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Adventure – exploring Tulum by bike on actual bike lanes making it really fun and a relaxing way to get around (for the most part). Swimming in the turquoise sea looking at the magnificent limestone ruins clinging to the cliffs.

Excitement – the path opening up to paradise beach. Trying my new ‘lava heat’ hot sauce I bought in Belize (James only). Using our chilly plunge pool after our run.

Trauma – the wall of dogs. Ticket chaos. Navigation woes. Cooking in a tiny kitchen with no chopping board.

Our romantic escapade in Belize has come to an end. We return to business as usual with a horrendous border crossing into Mexico. Our transport is over an hour late, it’s a cramped collectivo rather than a coach, we have to pay $20 each to leave Belize (expected but still) and to add insult to injury we’re strong armed into paying $45 each(!) to “enter” Mexico. For some reason we need to pay the exit tax as we enter the country, even though we’ve already paid it via our airline to leave Cancun, apparently we can claim it back from the airline, yeah right. We were warned about this somewhat scammy procedure by a couple of Brits in Lanquin but were later reassured by our transit company we would not have to pay it. They were wrong, every gringo in the queue gets pissed off and tries to argue their case to no avail. After this debacle, the military guys responsible for scanning our bags make us wait until everyone is through before getting off their arses to do their only job… Not a great welcome to a new country! Things do get better once we eventually arrive in Chetumal, albeit a few hours later than planned, as we’re greeted with a free beer. Now that’s a proper welcome.

Despite the rough journey, Alex still befriended a new creature:

We swap buses and continue the last short leg of the journey to Bacalar. We’re dropped on the main plaza and it’s rather pretty with lanterns and fairy lights adorning the trees and restaurants. On our way from Belize we got chatting to a girl from Sunderland called Ashley, which we later learn likes to be known as a Mackem, NOT a Jordie. She’s been travelling for a few months like us and we reminisce about how amazing the Patagonia Brewery was in Bariloche and many other locations we’ve both been to. We part ways as she goes to immediately book onto a boat tour for tomorrow. We’ve decided against this as we’ve got an extra night here and it’s forecast to be 38°c tomorrow. Having read you’re not allowed to wear sunscreen while on the lagoon we decide to wait until the day after where it will be much cooler. We check into our Airbnb and head straight out for some grub. Our last meal was eight hours ago in Belize City. We find a nice pizza joint and make the smart decision to get it to takeaway and enjoy it in our lovely and peaceful Airbnb.

Lost Lalo

Like most first days in a new country, today is mostly getting our bearings and a few admin bits and bobs. Before all of that we pop down to have a look at the lagoon. Most areas of this stunning piece of nature have been commercialised and consumed by the tourism machine and so require payment to enter. There is one last bastion of public space at the Balneario Municipal El Aserradero. We pop down to take a look and enjoy a few moments watching locals splashing around in the surprisingly choppy waters. We vow to return later with our swimming gear ready.

Returning to the main plaza we book onto a boat tour for tomorrow. We haggle down a small discount on one of the sailboat tours. The sailboat option will be a slower, smoother ride and better for maintaining the lagoons beauty compared to the motorised options. We head to the nearby ATM and see Ashley waiting for her tour to start, we have a quick chat and agree to meet her later on by the lagoon. We’ve not timed this well as the cash machines are being topped up and there are several security officers with multiple guns each so we won’t be going anywhere near them. We pivot to another option nearby, here after queuing for a while, the girl infront of us has her card swallowed by the machine… We decide not to risk it.

Retracing our steps we notice a large dog that was sat in the ATM booth has started following us around. We think it’s a coincidence at first but he follows us across the road and waits for us when we stop. He’s a little on the skinny side but he’s a handsome, friendly dog with a collar suggesting his name is Lalo. He tracks us all the way back to where we saw Ashley and embarrassingly barks at a local man in the queue. “He’s not our dog, sorry” we plead while it growls at the innocent looking chap. “He’s protecting you from something!” One of the local policewomen quips. Not quite sure what to do with him, we go back to our Airbnb and give him a bowl of water which he inhales without pause. We give him a bit more and although we feel terribly sorry for him we can’t let him follow us around all day. We make our way to the supermarket and attempt to keep a few aggressive street dogs away from him. We saw a proper dogfight in the street earlier on and it wasn’t pretty. We don’t want that to happen to our new best friend. We reach the supermarket and of course he follows us in. After a few minutes an attendant comes and chases him out, Lalo gives us the puppy dog eyes but there’s nothing we can or should do. We buy our items and heart-breakingly have to ignore him as he sits and waits for us a few meters down the street. (Don’t worry, this story has a slightly happier ending later on).

Mr Taco

Later that evening we head back to the jetty we were at this morning. It’s busier now but we find a spot and soon see Ashley and a new friend come to join us. Ashley has met Nicholas on her boat trip and despite his heavy French accent he is in fact from Canada. We sit and chat for a while before we try our first dip in the lagoon. It’s cooler than we imagined and the waves give us an unexpected slap in the face on more than one occasion.

For our evening meal we go to check out the famous ‘Mr Taco’ we’ve heard so much about from blogs and other travellers. It does not disappoint, with a huge selection of fillings for your taco, quesadilla or burrito. We opt to share three quesadillas and a burrito all with different fillings. A live band plays music in the background and it’s a really nice atmosphere. We’re joined for dinner by Ashley, Nicholas and another person from our minivan yesterday, Misse from Sweden. It’s nice to have dinner with fellow travellers, something we always intended to do but for one reason or another hasn’t happened as often as we thought. At dinner we mention Lalo and Ashley says he also followed her around for a while today. Clearly he is a fan of tall blonde gringos! We actually saw him on the way into Mr Taco’s waiting for his next temporary friend. We wish him all the best.

It’s gonna rain all day

We’re up early at 7am to have brekkie and make it to our boat tour starting point for 9am. Hmm. What’s that sound? Bugger, it’s raining. Not only that but those heavy dark grey clouds don’t look like they’re going anywhere and the forecast suggests it will stay like this for the whole day. We’ve been super lucky with the weather throughout our trip so far, so we figure it’s about time that balanced out. “Why don’t you see if they’ll let us switch it to tomorrow?” I desperately ask Alex, doubting we’ll get much response at all at this time on a Sunday morning. “Yep that’s fine, see you tomorrow 🫡” Gaby the tour organiser replies. Wow, result.

The rest of the day is spent writing blogs, watching football, washing clothes, calling home, relaxing, cooking and more food shopping. I even start to plan the Asia leg of our trip with my newfound spare time, we’ll be in the Philippines in just over three weeks. Yikes.

Breakfast beers

We repeat the same process as yesterday morning except this time the clouds have disappeared and the weather is back to normal by Bacalar standards. We leave our bags at the Airbnb and make tracks North of town to start our tour. We’re delighted to see we’ve got a sturdy looking catamaran and the lagoon is much calmer than the rough waves from the other day. We meet our shipmates (all seven of them are French) and our captains Alex and Mario. We set sail for the ‘Laguna de los siete colores’ / The lake of seven colours. The water turns from a deep navy blue to a clear turquoise.

Sailing along past the San Felipe fort we walked past a few times, Mario explains it was built by the Spanish to protect the area from pirates! The Spaniards used to export Palo de tinte (logwood in English) it fetched a high price back home as it was used by the monarchy and other wealthy customers.

The area here is known as the Mayan Gate as it’s where the Mayan communities would come to trade with the Carribbean traders. The Mayans built canals to reach this area using rudimentary tools like sticks and logs then used the power of water currents to finish the job naturally.

A final interesting point here is the long reed-like grass which was named the door to paradise and is how the area became known as Bacalar.

Our first stop is to visit the cenote negro / black sinkhole. Here the water depth immediately drops from 1 meter to a staggering 180 meters in the blink of an eye. What could cause such a dramatic geographic phenomenon? A meteorite of course.

Notice the change in water colour where the sinkhole begins:

Soon after passing over the sinkhole, too dangerous to swim in because of strong currents, we stop in a much shallower area and are ready for our first swim. The water is both a little bit deeper and a little big warmer than we were expecting it to be.

After climbing back onto the boat we’re offered our first beers of the day at 10.30 in the morning. Why not.

As we’re drying off in the sun, enjoying our beers, we pass Bird Island. This cluster of mangrove trees was formed when a hurricane ripped them up from the edge of the lagoon and dumped them here in shallow waters. Since then they have thrived and provided an ideal home to many a species of bird including the stork or “the one that delivers babies” as Mario puts it forgetting the English name.

The next stop is by the Pirates Canal, not hard to work out why it got it’s name, a short and narrow canal perfect for a quick getaway or ambush.

On our way back to where we started, the crew desperately try to use the sails to guide us home. After several attempts zig-zagging across the lagoon against the strong wind, we’re not makin much progress and they resort to using the motor. Sorry Pachamama but we’ve got a bus to catch.

It’s a bit of a safari on our quick march back to our Airbnb as I nearly step on a bright green leaf sprawled across the road ait, on closer inspection that ain’t no leaf 🐍

A chunky Iguana:

and son:

We make it in plenty of time for our bus. Especially as we’re told it’s an hour late, ah Latin American transport eh. Still, it gives us time to get some chicken, potatoes and tortillas from across the road which we eat with great difficulty and improvisation on our knees in the bus stop #BackpackerLife

As we wait outside for the bus to let us on I notice my arms are lobster red… Whatever good the lack of suncream does for the lake, it certainly does no good for me.

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Adventure – Sailing around on the beautiful lagoon. Getting through Mexican immigration.

Excitement – Mr Taco’s. Making a new four legged friend. Free beer on arrival. Discussing our dream ceremony. Waking up to clear skies and still waters to sail on.

Trauma – Endless mosquito bites. Border crossing.