Month: January 2022

I think Merida has been our favourite place so far on this trip. It’s the first place we’ve visited that isn’t just for tourists with white people making up 80% of the faces you see. It’s a beautiful lived in city, with lots of pretty squares and beautiful buildings.

Our first morning here we headed into town for a free walking tour, our guide was very lively with lots of great recommendations on things to do around the town. He showed us through various beautiful squares, all with free wi-fi and electric sockets to encourage people to use them to work or put on public activities, and told us the history of each square. One was to commemorate the first Mayan leader of the city, one to commemorate Mexican independence, one to give thanks to mothers and some with a darker past, built to house slave camps. The ‘white city’ as it was known was built originally by Spanish conquistadors using slave labour and populated by white people only. It was also known as the city of five hills, believed to be a reference to five Mayan pyramids that were later taken down and rebuilt into houses and various structures about town. The guide pointed out parts of churches and houses where you could still see Mayan carvings in the stones.

After the tour we headed to the local market and had a look around. It was cool to see the different things for sale, fruits we’d never seen before and lots of tacky bejeweled light up Jesus’ that we hope to never see again. We didn’t buy anything from the market as our walking tour guide had advised against consuming anything from there as our non-mayan stomachs may not be able to take it. So instead we headed to a shop nearby selling traditional Mayan chocolate. We decided to go for the less traditional and more intriguing flavor of oregano. It was definitely an odd combination but not the worst thing I’ve eaten here.

Next we headed to the avenue of mansions. Which as the name suggests is a long row of huge mansions built by the first European settlers, very impressive. They are mostly now occupied by museums or other businesses. We had a look in the anthropology museum but as there wasn’t any information plaques in English for us to read it didn’t take us long to finish nosing around.

In the evening we decided to have a look at a concert that was being put on to commemorate 480 years since the city was built. It was a jazz band accompanied by some tap dancers. The songs the band played were all English or American but the lead singer obviously wasn’t an English speaker and tended to just say sounds that sounded similar to the lyrics rather than the lyrics itself. Which led us to an interesting game of working out what the song should be. Our favourite was ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’ where the chorus was sang as ‘zee es dat dancing clean’ and had us desperately trying not to laugh.

On our second day we visited the Mayan World Museum of Mérida, a really interesting museum all about the Mayan people, how they lived in the past and how they continue to live today (6 million people still speak the Mayan language). An American guy from our hostel, Nick, tagged along with us. We arrived just in time to catch an English tour with a very passionate and enthusiastic guide. He took us through the museum and gave us a two hour tour that I was honestly sad was over at the end. He told us about pottery, gods and beliefs, the written language, how the Mayan calendar worked. How and why humans and animals were sacrificed and so much more. I won’t bore you with everything we learnt but I will say if you ever find yourself in Mérida definitely visit the museum! On a less educational note me and Grace did have a great time pointing at all the weird cross-eyed looking statues and saying ‘that one looks like you’.

The guide noticed us doing this at one point and enthusiastically told us about the Mayan idea of unusual things being beautiful. Deformed or disabled individuals were seen to be messengers from the gods and were guaranteed a good life. He told us how mother’s would hang jewels or rocks between their babies eyes in the hopes it would make them cross eyed. They would also try to deform their heads to try and flatten out and elongate their foreheads and at age 7/8 would often burn away a ring of hair on their head in the hope of elongating the look of their foreheads. Since then, anyone unfortunate looking we have come across has been labelled ‘A Mayan beauty’. Because we’re nice like that.

On the way back Nick convinced us to try another unusual local food, Marquesitas. A crispy crepe filled with edam cheese, cream, Nutella and any other topping you like. Nick loved them but neither Grace or I were a fan. I could have gotten on board if they were completely sweet or completely savoury but there’s something not quite right about stringy cheese mixed with sweet cream and Nutella.

That evening we headed out to a bar with a group of girls and guys we met at the hostel the previous day. We ended up at Mayan Pub, a bar that did cocktails for $32 Pesos (~£1.20) so of course we ended up drinking waaayyyy too much, but it was a fun night.

The next day we were very hung over, my mood was also not improved by the fact that when we received our laundry back from the hostel they had broken two of my bras. I only brought three with me and would now have to go out and buy another one. Something I struggled with sooo much last time we travelled, it took 3 months to find one in my size that didn’t look like some sort of medical device or straight jacket. After much argument with the hostel they agreed to pay half of the price of the bras. They wouldn’t pay more as I didn’t have a receipt for the cost of the bras. How foolish of me not to bring the receipts for every item of clothing I have along on the trip…

After our fill of arguing with the hostel we headed out to see the Sunday market that had popped up around the main square. I always enjoy how much Latin American families use public spaces. The square was filled with people dancing and children playing with bubbles. We tried once more to branch out from tacos and expand our Mexican repertoire, again with out much luck. We ordered some tortas, the Mexican equivalent of sandwiches, which we knew we liked and then each ordered one experimental dish. We tried a Pancho which was like a deep fried tortilla with bean inside and pork belly on top, a bit too oily for us. We also tried a Pulcan, a kind of corn and kidney bean roti type mix with grilled pork on top, this was okay but a bit bland. We gave up on our experiments and went back into the square to enjoy some tried-and-tested churros before heading back to the hostel.

Our last day in Mérida was unfortunately spent shopping for a new bra, as the largest city in the Yucatan peninsula we stood the best chance of finding one here. Several hours later in our third bra shop, and after much raking around, the staff finally found two black bras in my size, wooo! I also tried to get an evening dress but again my progress was hindered by being well over the height and boob size of the average Mexican woman. Grace on the other hand had a grand time picking up several new items of clothing. Now we’re back at the hostel waiting for our evening bus to Palenque. The first overnight bus of the trip, I haven’t missed these!

Will let you know how it went soon. Lots of love, Alice x

P.s. some of the boys from our hostel were getting the same bus route to Palenque but an hour earlier. I asked them to let us know once they were on the bus if the station was hard to get to, but phrased it as ‘once you get there let us know if it’s a maze’ they took it as let us know if it’s ‘amaze’ i.e. amazing. I’ve never felt the generational gap or my age as much as I did in that moment.

After a two hour bus and then a ferry we arrived on the island of Holbox, our first new stop in Mexico. The island is separated into nature reserves and a tourist section of several blocks, criss crossed by sandy roads. Well, the roads are normally sandy, but it would appear we arrived after quite a bit if rain and the roads had turned to a more clay like consistency and in some places more of a lake-like consistency, with large impassable puddles.

We arrived in the afternoon and it was sweltering, so we headed straight to the beach at the far end of the island. It’s known to have bio-luminescent plankton so we planned to stay until dark to look for some.

It took a while for us to reach the beach, as we had to keep doubling back each time we came across an impassible flooded road. Eventually we just took to the sea to wade around to the beach. After setting out our towels and opening our books we felt the first drops of rain. The bad weather had followed us to Holbox. After a while of trying to wait it out we gave up on the beach and the plankton and headed back.

The next day we booked a Kayaking tour around the nature reserve part of the island. We were picked up at 6:45am and driven to the mangrove section that marked the beginning of the nature reserve. There we received an introductory briefing. We would be in two man kayaks and were told not to touch anything or make too much noise and that if a crocodile approaches it’s best to just keep still inside the Kayak. Until this point I wasn’t aware there would be crocodiles, the guide reassured us with the information that the big crocodiles over 5/6 meters were caught and moved to another part of the island and usually didn’t come back. I can’t say I was very reassured to be honest. The guide also asked if anyone hadn’t kayaked before, I’m not sure why he asked this as even after we’d confirmed we were new to it he offered no tips or advice.

We did however get given a life jacket, I’m not sure why as the water only ever came to knee height at most. I assume it is an attempt to fill up any attacking crocodiles before they get to eating your vital organs?

We set off into the sea in our two man kayak and discovered within the first 5 minutes of out 3 hour tour that we were absolutely useless at kayaking. We were constantly spinning in circles and seemed to spend most of our energy keeping ourselves in a straight line. Our guide didn’t seem to notice/care and no helpful tips were given. In fact most of the trip we could just about see him off in the distance with a fag hanging out of his mouth. He seemed to chain smoke the whole way round and glide about with ease while we struggled with our full lung capacity.

Eventually we got into the mangoes and fared a bit better without the tide pulling at us. We got to see various different birds, some flying fish and even a crocodile, luckily only a small one!

After an hour or so paddling through the mangroves we headed back out to the sea for the return journey. At this point our arms were killing and we seriously considered just calling it a day and letting the sea take us, but we paddled on until we really couldn’t be arsed anymore and I just got out and pulled a knackered Grace and the kayak along the shore. We decided we wouldn’t be sea kayaking again any time soon.

Our last day in Holbox was not a fun one, we had two issues: 1) all of the buses to our next stop of Mérida had been booked except from the late one from 5:30pm-11pm and it only had 4 seats left. 2) Grace had been getting some strange bites on her, we had been watching for new ones hoping it wasn’t what we feared it might be, but when she awoke that morning with another set of bites in a straight line we knew we had picked up the dreaded curse of travelers everywhere… bed bugs.

So our last day in Holbox was spent trying to sort these issues. We had a tense time trying to book two of the last few bus tickets as the internet kept dropping out. If we couldn’t get on this bus we would be slightly screwed as all of the hostels in Holbox were already booked for that evening. Luckily we managed to find good internet in an expensive cafe and book the tickets.

The rest of the afternoon we spent running around various laundry shops, seeing if anyone would do a boil wash and high temperature tumble dry (the only way to kill bed bugs) on all of the clothes we owned and have it dry and ready before we left that evening, no small task! We eventually found someone and handed over our huge bags of washing and then went and checked every seam and crease in our backpacks themselves to make sure they were bug free.

It had been a stressful last day, Grace had dealt with it by chain smoking and I had dealt with it by chain eating a pack of three small muffins. We all have our stress dealing techniques. After repacking our bags, we finally started to relax as we were waiting for the bus to our next stop, the city of Mérida. A cat came up and decided Grace’s lap would be its next nap spot which Grace declared a good omen. It was only when we got up to leave we realised the cat had an injured paw and had gotten blood all over Graces shorts, I’m not sure what that means in terms of omens but I’ll guess we’ll find out soon…

Lots of love, Alice x

The small island of Cozemel is just off the east coast of Mexico, we planned to stop two nights/one day here. Just enough time for Grace to scuba dive and me to snorkel and then move on, as it is somewhere we’d visited before. Last time Grace dived here it chucked it down with rain and annoyingly our luck with the weather was even worse this time with a torrential downpour and high winds.

Grace’s dive was cancelled and there really isn’t much to do on an island whose main attraction is diving and snorkeling when its raining. We spent the time planning the next leg of the trip, reading our books and socialising with the other people also stuck in the hostel. We also tried to go for a walk but after 30 minutes of walking in the wind, we discovered there really wasn’t that much to see on this side of the island. We decided to extend our stay for another night so Grace would have a chance to dive the next day.

That evening we went out with some guys we met at the hostel, Grace wanted to try some traditional Mexican food that we hadn’t seen before and the woman in the hostel suggested a restaurant called La Choza. It turns out when Grace said she wanted to try new food what she actually meant was she wanted me to try it and if it was good she would then have half. Which is how, when everyone else had grilled chicken or fajitas, I ended up with the experimental dish.

I tried a dish the woman at the hostel had recommended, a large green chilli stuffed with Mexican cheese, deep-fried and covered in a tomato sauce. I can’t say it’s a dish I would have again, in premise it sounds nice and perhaps it would have been in a different restaurant. But the chilli was quite bitter and the batter around it was very soggy and just not to my taste. The waiters seemed overjoyed that a gingo had branched out and tried something more traditional and kept coming over to ask how I liked it. Grace took one look at it and decided to forfeit her half and as I didn’t have the heart to tell the waiter it wasn’t for me, I forced way more than I would have liked down. Much to the amusement of Grace and our new friends.

The next day the rain had stopped but it was still very windy and Grace’s dive was cancelled again. We decided to make a bit more of the day this time by renting a scooter and taking it around the island. Grace was a bit nervous about driving a scooter again, I offered to drive but after falling off my bike just days ago I don’t think either of us was keen to be testing my skills in a similar situation, this time with more speed. But the much scarier prospect of having me drive her spurred Grace on.

There is only one road around the island and we made slow progress around it. We didn’t have any protective clothing except a helmet so we limited ourselves to 40km/h (~25mph).

It’s a beautiful island and apparently a popular holiday spot for Americans, several menus were costed in USD and not pesos. The American influence did mean I could get a lunch that wasn’t tacos which I appreciated. We also had a close encounter with a raccoon which I’d never seen before. I made the American tourists laugh by taking photos of it. I can’t blame them I’d probably laugh if I saw a tourist taking photos of a fox or pigeon…

Apart from the wildlife photography we mostly stopped along different beaches and had a snorkel or a swim. We spotted the boys from the previous night on the beach and arranged to meet them again that evening for some drinks. We had a fun evening socialising and then headed back to pack up our things ready to move on to Holbox the next morning.

I’ll tell you all about Holbox in the next post. Lots of love Alice x

I’d forgotten how much I enjoy traveling on buses. Buying tickets and finding the right bus is always stressful and masks really don’t help when you’re trying to understand what someone is saying in a noisy place. But being on the bus itself is nice, you can just chill out, listen to music and watch the world go past your window. You get to see the non-tourist parts of the country and people just going about their daily lives.

The bus to Tulum was especially nice as it was away from the American influenced Cancun and further into actual Mexico. It was a fun trip down memory lane of all the different parts of our last trip we’d forgotten about, how locals play instruments that look like cheese graters, the performers who juggle fire infront of cars waiting at traffic lights hoping for a tip to be thrown at them, the beautiful murals painted everywhere and how the bus drivers always drive like they’ve stollen the bus.

Tulum itself was very different from the place we left four years ago, much more touristy. We opted to stay in the slightly less touristy town center rather than the beach front. The hostel was fun and lively, on our first night we were treated to a violin concert by two girls who were both traveling with their instruments. It was very different from the guitarist playing wonderwall we’ve come to associate with hostels! They started with some classical pieces and then with some encouragement tackeled some club and regatón (Spanish dance/hip hop) songs with a good level of success!

On our first day we decided to check out a Laguna de Kaan Luum, a beautiful fresh water lagoon with a sandy bottom. There is loads of cool stuff to do in Tulum and this was one of the things we didn’t have the chance to do last time. We got there quite early as we heard it’s popular with locals who arrive around 11am. We headed for a wooden jetty that headed out into the lagoon and ended with a large square space on the end that could fit around 10 people lying down. There were two Americans sitting there already, but before we could attempt to put our things down they informed us we couldn’t sit in the square and they required the whole space for their session. We tried to argue that surely you can’t reserve such a large area in a public area and it should be first come first served. Eventually we gave up in a very British attempt not to make a scene and tutted as we settled a bit further down. They did the same thing to several other groups of locals and tourists for about an hour until their friends turned up. They then set up for a sound healing session…

However, I don’t think they were prepared for how petty me and Grace are. If you’ve not heard of sound healing before, (lucky you! I’ve had to listen to far too many people telling me about how it can cure me of anything from my Crohn’s to my sunburn..) it’s in the same realm as crystal healing and aligning you shackras. Sound healing mainly consists of a person lying down and someone playing various bells or ringing bowls over their body, the cleansing sounds are apparently what do the ‘healing’, although there is no scientific proof for this ‘healing’ as I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear… The relaxing sound is definitely the key point. Although they could exclude people from the area they couldn’t stop us making noise.

We started with over enthusiastic opening and crunchy consumption of a bag of Doritos and then a long and loud conversation about the various flavours of Doritos and what other crisps we liked. A British couple next to us, who had also been forced out of the square, picked up on our attempts and joined in on our obvious attempts to be as noisy as possible. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as patriotic as I did wordlessly coordinating a campaign of passive aggressive noise making. We were shooshed by the sound healing group and asked not to speak. After more tutting, the couple had the frankly brilliant idea of cleaning their flip flops by loudly smacking them together or against the jetty. We joined in with sporadic loud yawns. Now instead of annoying low level noise they had relaxing bowl ringing randomly interuped by loud piercing noises. Eventually we felt they had learned their lesson and left them to it. But they then made the mistake of clearing some locals out of the water where they wanted to float about. And wouldn’t you know it, Mexicans dislike entitled rude people too. They cleared the water but would periodically dive bomb next to the floating group. I’m not sure many ailments got cured that day…

On our second day in Tulum we decided to rent some bikes, I was a bit apprehensive as I never seem to have much luck with bikes. Last time I rode one I dropped my phone and it was immediately run over by a car and the time before that, I came off in Cambridge and had a concussion for a week. But Tulum is only a small beach town so thought that hopefully my luck would be better here (spoiler alert it wasn’t!).

We first cycled to a supermarket and got lots of fruit and water to keep us going for the day and then we headed to the Grand Cenote, one of the most impressive cenotes we saw last time, about 5km away. However, the guy on the entrance was trying to charge us around £25 per person entrance, last time it cost us around £5 and as £25 is roughly our daily budget we decided to decline and to head further along the road to the next cenote about 3.5km further on. Unfortunately, this one was closed so we decided to head back and try one closer to town. We cycled ~8km back and paid the entrance for another cenote we had visited last time in Tulum, it had changed quite a bit. Three years ago it had been a single track through forest into a cleared opening containing the cenote and our group were the only ones there. Now there was a toilet block, restaurant, shop and sunbathing area all centered around a cenote that could only hold a few people at once. But we’d cycled a long way in the sun so any cool body of water was appreciated!

We did our obligatory jump in and got a photo before the next group of people wanted to get in.

It was quite busy at the cenote and more of a photo opportunity than somewhere to chill out so we decided to head to the beach instead. We cycled the rest of the way back to town, grabbed a quick lunch and then headed to the beach (another 8km of cycling, this time in the midday sun!)

The beach was busy but very beautiful with crystal clear waters and beautiful golden sand, we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing there.

On our cycle home from the beach, another 5.5km, we were feeling pretty knackered. We’d cycled around 30km throughout the day and obviously it was all going a bit too well… While cycling the last leg into the town Grace swerved a broken bit of pavement that was sticking up at odd angle and shouted for me to do the same. Unfortunately I couldn’t hear her so looked up to see what she was saying and slammed straight into it and toppled off of the bike. Fortunately I got away with just a scraped knee and a bruised ego. I quickly slapped some hand sanitizer on the wound and cycled off in embarrassment. Luckily we ended up chatting with some Danish medical students at the hostel who assured me my leg wouldn’t have to be amputated just yet!

We spent the rest of the evening with people we had met in the hostel, playing drinking games with an American, a German, a Finnish guy and some other English girls. Discussing life in our respective homes, which mostly meant we felt gutted about how good Finland’s holiday is compared to the rest of Europe. But not as bad as the American guy who was spending two weeks in Mexico which consumed the whole of his annual leave!

Next we’re off to Cozemel for Grace to do some diving. I will let you know how it goes soon!

Lots of love, Alice x

On the 9th of Jan, after a tearful goodbye to our families, we headed to the airport to catch our flight to Cancun. My Spanish skills were tested far sooner than expected, when I made the mistake of making eye contact with the couple at the check in desk next to us who were struggling to understand the TUI staff telling them they couldn’t check in their broken bag. After a long time of not speaking Spanish I think I may have been more of a hindrance than a help. I got the message across that the bag needed to be checked in on a different section, but mixing up the words for behind and under/downstairs may have hindered their progress slightly. Hopefully my gesturing helped and they’re not still stuck in Gatwick looking for special luggage zone B on the wrong floor…

The flight itself was… Interesting. Within 5 minutes of boarding the woman next to Grace had taken her shoes and socks off and applied a facemask and the guy across from me had downed a bottle of wine to prevent the hostess confiscating it. On the plus side we did get a cream tea as part of the inflight meal and watching Mexicans try and figure out what the hell it was and how to eat it was amusing, my personal favourite being the man who ate a clotted cream buttered bread roll.

In Cancun we stayed at a beautiful 5 star hotel my uncle/Grace’s dad (hi Colin!) had kindly treated us to. I restarted my old habit of being ill in beautiful places by vomiting in an immaculately kept bush outside the hotel (yay Crohn’s disease!). After checking in, our three days there mostly consisted of sleeping off jet lag and planning out our next few weeks in Mexico. Which was handy as it rained most of the first two days, we got a bit of sunshine in on the third, had a nice walk along the beach and a sunbathe.

We also ventured out in the rain for the first tacos I’ve had since the last time we were in Mexico, I’ve only just recovered from eating them daily the last time.

Next we’re off to Tulum, I’m currently sat on a bus writing this (trying not to repeat the bush incident!). It was one of our favourite places in Mexico last time we visited and as it’s only two hours by bus away we figured we’d head there for a few days again.

I’ll let you know how it went soon. Lots of love, Alice x