Mexico

Saturday 16 - Tuesday 26 July 2011

We left Flores at 7:30 on Saturday and had a cramped, long minibus ride with a cranky driver, crossing two borders - from Guatemala to Belize and Belize to Mexico. The first border crossing took forever because we didn't really know where we were going and we had to wait whilst a Korean couple on the bus got their visa organised (no-one else on the bus needed a visa). We got across the border to Mexico around 6pm and had another 3.5 hour bus ride to Tulum, finally arriving at our hotel around 10pm.

On Sunday we checked out the town of Tulum and talked to a few diving operators about snorkelling and diving in the cenotes. We caught a taxi to one of the resorts on the beachfront and tried to create our own Corona moment and watched the sun go down. We wanted to buy some beers when we got back to Tulum Pueblo but it turned out that there is a law preventing sale of alcohol in Tulum on Sunday (supposedly so people actually go to work on Monday).

Our Corona moment

Sunset

On Monday we decided that we weren't going to go to Holbox Island so we extended our stay from 4 days in Tulum to 8 and just hung around the hotel, improving our times on minesweeper!

On Tuesday we rented bikes and snorkels and rode first to the Mayan ruins on the beach, which were absolutely beautiful and then rode to one of the cenotes (caves filled with rainwater) where we went snorkelling. (We bought a cheap underwater camera but haven't had the film developed yet so photos will follow later)

Ruin site - on a cliff above amazingly blue Carribean water

There were iguanas everywhere

Beach at the ruins

Kitty in front of one of the buildings

Lawrie at the ruins

View into Gran Cenote

Tulum is the most laid back town on the Mayan Riviera, so we decided to head up the coast to Playa del Carmen on Wednesday to check out the madness there. We spent a few hours shopping on the main drag and we got hassled every five seconds by someone trying to sell us stuff. We were really happy about where we were staying and had a quick swim and drink and headed back to peace and quiet of Tulum. We stayed in a great hotel in Tulum called the Secret Garden and when we got back to the room we found a really cute present from the housekeeper.

Towel swans!

Thursday was another quiet day and on Friday we caught a colectivo to Cenote Dos Ojos, another freshwater cavern, which was nice but not as good as Gran Cenote. Lawrie decided to do a dive in the caverns, so he did that on Saturday and he said it was amazing. Sunday was our last day in Tulum so we took it easy again and packed our bags.

On Monday, we paid our Mexican exit fee and caught the bus up to Cancun, where we booked in to our hostel, bought bus tickets to the airport for the next morning at 4:30am and spent our last night in Latin America watching the final episodes of Spartacus: Gods of the Arena on the laptop!