Author: Alice Smart

On Sunday we got on a shuttle to take us back to Mexico from Guatemala, the journey took 11 hours in total, including a very anxious wait at the Guatemalan border when our shuttle left and assured us someone would be there to pick us up in 10 minutes, 2 hours later another shuttle arrived and we eventually got to San Cristobal on Sunday evening.

San Cristobal is a colonial town a few hours from the Mexico – Guatemala border, it has a similar look and feel to Antigua but is much more busy with tourists, Mexican and foreign.

On Monday we decided to go on a free walking tour of the town, it took us around various parts of the city and showed us different churches and view points of the town, we also got to go to various restaurants and bars and try traditional food and drink, soups, juices, tamales, molies and posh alcohol. Not that it’s fancy it’s just called posh and is an alcohol made from corn and sugar cane. We also visited a market and our guide explained that each little town around San Cristobal specialises in different crafts, leather, metal work, pottery, amber etc. And how San Cristobal acts as a hub for all these places to sell their goods.

Our guide also explained to us about the tensions and history between the indigenous Mayan population in the area and the colonialist government and how the various Mayan groups bound together to take control of San Cristobal in the 90s until an agreement to more rights for local people lead to a somewhat peaceful resolution, although natives still feel sidelined by the government.

The walk lasted about 4 hours and afterwards we went back to the market to try and buy some jumpers. San Cristobal is elevated 2200 m high so in the evenings it gets very cold here. We found some jumpers but they were expensive and itchy and as we’re off to the beach next we decided to save money and be cold for one extra night. Something we regretted later on, but we ended up going to a wine bar with some people from our hostel as they had been the previous night and said it was nice and also they had outdoor heaters, so it wasn’t too bad in the end.

Today we booked our bus tickets to Puerto Escondido by the coast, we were going to go to some local villages by horse this afternoon but it was expensive and we both feel a bit knackered after all the late nights and early mornings, so we’ve just had a chill day reading and sunbathing in the hostel.

Keep you updated on what we’re up to next.

Lots of love,

Alice x

We had heard from a pair of American travellers about a Mayan cooking class in San Pedro that they really recommend so we decided to give it a go. It was run by a woman in her 30’s called Annetta, she met us at 9 am by the dock and we walked with her up the steep streets away from the tourist trap by the lake and into the local market. While we were there she brought all the ingredients fresh for the meal we were going to make, she explained to us that most of the locals don’t speak English or Spanish, just native Mayan dialects so encouraged us to ask her any questions we had about the food or people we saw while in the market.

She showed us all the different types of bananas  and avocados they have, and explained we normally only get one kind of tough skinned avocado in the UK as it is the only one that travels without bruising easily, she also brought dragon fruit for us to try along with other ingredients needed for the meal we were making. We had noticed in Mexico and Guatemala that sometimes tortillas are a grey colour and she explained this is just because they use grey coloured corn, and in Guatemala they have white red and grey corn but only white and grey are used for cooking as the red corn is considered sacred and is only used in Mayan ceremonies. We also noted how nice it was that no plastic bags were used in the market, apparently this was a new thing, they had recently been banned with a fine of 1500Q (£150) for using one, which is pretty hefty as the average weekly wage in the area is ~40Q (£4). Apparently there used to be plastic bags everywhere in the streets which got swept into the lake every time it rained and as the lake is effectively just a valley filled with rain water they just stay in the lake, so a big effort was made to stop the pollution. We also asked her why throughout Guatemala women seem to wear traditional dress while men rarely do, apparently it is due to the civil war in Guatemala, the men used to be recruited and would kill men from opposing areas that were distinguishable by the slight variations in traditional clothing so they changed to wearing western clothes that are imported cheaply second hand from the US.

After we had all of our ingredients we headed back to Annetta’s kitchen, a large room with two open sides looking out over the lake. The meal prep wasn’t exactly a cooking class as we didn’t all cook our own meal from start to finish but instead was more like communal cooking where we all had different tasks overlooked by Annetta. Some people got to cut the exotic fruits and vegetables and some people were shown how to peel an avocado with out a knife but I of course got the very exotic task of peeling and chopping potatoes, then carrots and then beans. We did all however get a go at making tortillas (which is much harder than it looks!), potato and herb pancake type things and also a tamale type dish of mashed potatoes and vegetables wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. We ate these with rice and a type of chicken and vegetable stew and for desert we had fried plantains covered in a sauce made from blended chillies and chocolate.

The food was nice and while we ate Annetta told us stories about her life, how she taught herself English at 7 by learning phrases from tourists and how when her mother got sick she became the head of the house aged 8 and how she married a man who cheated on her, (which is apparently very common in Guatemala as woman are seen as subservient to men) and when she tried to leave him was told she was just lucky he was a good husband and didn’t beat her, which he later went in to do and when she chose to divorce him her family disowned her, then when she tried to get a job rather than go back to her husband her society disowned her for disrespecting her husband. She eventually became successful and her family, community and husband wanted back into her life, she told us how she forgave them and tried to change the community’s view on women supporting them selves and had opened a weaving co-op where local women could make and sell there goods. After we had finished our meal she took us down to the weavers co-op shop and showed us the different types of cotton that grow in Guatemala and how the colour of the plants flower indicated the colour of cotton, how they cleaned the cotton and turned it into thread and how they got a wide range of colours from natural dyes such as beetroot and barks. It was a very interesting and informative day and Annetta seemed like one bad-arse woman!

The course finished about 3 and some girls we met on it suggested we went to their hostel bar after, it was a cheap bar and you could jump straight from the bar into the lake, they also had an inflatable in the water and people were taking it in turns to sit on one end while someone jumped on the other launching them into the air. It was a really fun afternoon and we ended up going out, which seems to happen a lot these days, but it’s just so much fun going out here it’s a mix of locals and tourists, young and old, salsa and Latino club music and everyone is so friendly and dancing with each other it’s a lot of fun and like nowhere I’ve ever been out before. It’s was also very strange as around the lake they close everything down by midnight so people start going into clubs at 8 pm, leave at 12 am and have a good night’s sleep, I don’t see why we can’t do that in the UK to be honest!

We got to sleep at 1 am and were up at 5 am to catch a shuttle from the other side of the lake back to San Cristobal in Mexico, an 11 hour trip in a small shuttle on 4 hours sleep. It was a very long day to say the least but we’ve made it here!

I’ll keep you updated as to what we get up to.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Ps. We’re in the attic of the hostel which has huge windows; look at my view from bed!

We decided to head to Lake Atitlan for my birthday because the lake itself looks beautiful and San Pedro, we were told, was a lively town that would be nice for a meal and drinks in the evening. We had a three hour shuttle ride from Antigua to get to the lake, the last 30 minutes of which was spent on winding roads down the volcanoes surrounding Lake Atitlan. The views were breathtaking, I felt like I was in a painting. However after a small taxi boat across the lake to San Pedro we realised it was less than picturesque.

San Pedro is the worst kind of tourist trap, it’s one step up from a shanty town except with added tattoo parlours, blaring music and people trying to sell tat, everything is crammed in and made out of any spare material and you feel like sitting down may lead to catching an STD. Our hostel felt more like a building site, although at least it was clean, other travellers seemed to agree that it was less than pleasant and some even cut their losses and paid for a second hostel in another lake town. Travellers who had swam in the beautiful lake also advised us not to do the same, apparently it contains parasites and nasty bacteria and makes you sick, also local tap-water is drawn from the lake so best not to shower while here. Happy Birthday me!

So as you can imagine I was not optimistic about my birthday, but I awoke to lots of lovely Facebook messages and cards from family that Grace had been carrying with her for the last month, which cheered me up. We decided to avoid the lake and San Pedro and check out another town on another part of the lake which we heard was nice and that had a pretty pool bar and decided to take a hike there.

The hike started in San Marcos and began as a road that slowly turned into rubble and then a dirt path, and climbed higher and higher until it finally was a tiny path cutting across the steep volcano side. I would like to complain more about how steep it was and how scared I was but there were locals planting crops up the steep sides and several carrying huge bales of sticks and some even carrying several large rocks across the thin path, making us look like wimps sweating away when all we had to carry were our backpacks containing water and swimming stuff.

The hike was actually a lot of fun and turned out to be one of the most enjoyable things we’ve done so far, the views where breathtaking and the trail switched between high and low points (although it was very annoying to spend 10 minutes puffing up a really steep uphill part only to head straight down again as soon as you got to the top) and changed between roads to tiny side of volcano paths to climbing rocky edges and river beds. We also didn’t see any other tourists and each village we passed through there were lots of young children trying to ask us questions in Spanish or shouting any English words they knew, it was very cute! The trail was supposed to take about 3 hours but we made it in 2, although we did have jelly legs by the end, whether that was all the rock climbing or just the fear of heights I don’t know! We found the pool bar alongside the water’s edge and stopped for 2 hours for lunch, cocktails and a swim. Grace even managed, with the help of Google translate, to get me a chocolate brownie with a candle in, all in all a lovely afternoon!

We decided to continue around the lake hiking to the next town after lunch but unfortunately even though it’s my birthday my body didn’t want to give me a break. As you may or may not know, I have Crohn’s disease, which is where my body attacks itself, especially the digestive system, so whenever you get stressed or ill the body goes into overdrive and in my case this means I vomit a lot. So after out lovely meal in this fancy pool bar I had to rush to the bathroom to throw up (the staff probably thought I was the fattest bulimic they had ever seen) which was annoying and made me feel super weak, but on the plus side my birthday cake and lunch was pretty much calorie free! So after that we decided to just head home on a water taxi.

Back at the hostel we met up with some friends we had made in the previous hostel who also ended up here and spent a nice evening playing cards and discussing the difference in the US and UK political systems, they had been on a cooking course all day so we decided to do that too the next day on their recommendation.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Lots of love,

Alice x

On Monday we didn’t get up to much, unfortunately Moctezuma’s revenge caught up with me and I suddenly wasn’t feeling up to much adventure or travelling far from a working toilet. I decided to try and starve it out which worked quite well at the time but ended up not so good in the long run.

In the evening but we ended up going out to a brewery with a rooftop bar and then onto a kind of square of bars where each bar specialised in a certain type of alcohol. I wasn’t planing on drinking but it was ladies night and I got 3 free drinks, it would have been rude to waste an opportunity like that, after the free drinks the price for ladies drinks were 5Q (50p). You can guess how well that ended, especially as it was done on an empty stomach. I ended up getting to sleep about 2 am and was up at 5:30 am for a volcano hike up Pacaya.

The hike up the volcano was 2 and a bit hours, it was an uphill struggle, especially hung over and having not eaten in about 20 hours! So near the end I gave up and got a horse and spent the last part of the ride up trying not to throw up and also debating if making a horse carry my fat arse up a bloody steep hike counted as animal abuse. It was a really cool ride though and I got to chat to the back up guide in my broken Spanish about the volcano and the plants on it. She told me how it had erupted 4 weeks ago with a small river of lava which had solidified but was still warm and she also showed me these really cold leaves that were dripping with water, apparently people on the mountains use them to drink from when it’s dry and to store cheese for weeks at a time as they keep it moist.

Luckily for my horse we reached the top quite quickly after that, and I would like to say the view was worth climbing hung over for, but unfortunately it was thick fog at the top! We did roast some marshmallows though after a steep decline down to the lava through this sand like ash, which actually resulted in near death experiences for a few people in the group! Getting back up from the lava was even more of a struggle and I emerged covered in ash. The way down was much more fun although more of a work out of the leg muscles holding us up from rolling down the steep path.

We got back and had a nap before heading out to the local party hostel where me and Grace discovered a hidden talent for beer pong, although we still got a last minute defeat, it was good fun there although we did feel like extras in an American frat movie.

The next morning we dragged everyone we knew in the hostel to watch the England game and covered them in red crosses made of lip liner. Which led to a funny sight for the locals when 19 minutes into the match we made a mad dash running 3 blocks to another bar after the TV signal dropped in the one we were in.

It’s still to soon to discuss the match, but afterwards we spent a while consoling lots of drunk English lads. We headed to someone we’d met’s hostel and got lots of free shots and abuse about it not coming home. We were given the chance to reclaim glory in many drinking games, beer pong, killer pool and donkey ping pong. All of which we lost, by bigger and bigger margins the more we drank.

We moved onto another hostel bar, this one had a roulette wheel on the wall where you could win free beers, shots and other cool stuff or have to jump naked into the pool, do chilli shots or body shots on the bar etc. It was good fun and the whole bar was joining in, we won some free drinks and also had to do some of the forfeits which I won’t disclose (Hi Mum). After 6 hours drinking we headed home and were asleep by 10 pm.

Just writing this on the shuttle to Lake Atitlan out last stop in Guatemala before we head back into Mexico. Hopefully it will be a lovely place to spend my birthday tomorrow!

Keep you updated.

Lots of love,

Alice x

We loaded into the overnight bus from Flores at 9 pm, we didn’t get much sleep as the driver kept ‘bibbing’ other cars and randomly turning the lights on inside the coach, so we were pretty tired when we reached Guatemala City at 5 am. From there, we were loaded into a smaller bus and were driven to Antigua, we reached the hostel about 7 am, but check in wasn’t until 2 pm so after they let us leave our bags in a locker we headed out to get some breakfast. Along with our bacon and eggs, we received a recommendation to visit a spot on top of a high hill that overlooks the whole of Antigua, so off we headed. The weather is a bit cooler here 28°C rather than 32°C and it is also less humid which is lovely. The walk was really pleasant, it wasn’t too much of a climb and the view was absolutely beautiful!

When we first got to the top about 9 am it was peaceful and quiet and really enjoyable, but by 10 am we could hear a loud bunch of Americans on their way up, they were obviously a Christian group and decided to bring the word of God to unsuspecting sightseers, eventually breaking out into song. Unfortunately for us they didn’t know any of the British primary-school classics like ‘give my oil in my lamp’ or ‘he’s got the whole world in his hands’ and we thought requesting Wonderwall may be a step to far, so we decided to climb down and explore the rest of the town.

Antigua is full of beautiful buildings and cobbled streets, it was once the colonial capital of Guatemala, built by the Spanish and used until an earthquake destroyed the area, but it’s been rebuilt in much the same style and is lovely to walk around.

In all we had walked about 7 miles on very little sleep so we headed back to our hostel and had a sit down until we could check in at 2 pm. Once checked in we went in search of some lunch/dinner. One of the staff suggested a local restaurant called Rincon Tipico and it was delicious! We ordered a chicken and potatoes dish, for Q300 (£3) we got a quarter of a chicken a tonne of potatoes some salad, some tortillas and a weird glass of rice milk, the chicken and potatoes were cooked to perfection over a huge fire and the salad and dressing were great, honestly one of the tastiest meals I’ve ever had, except the rice milk, which tasted like icing in liquid form.

After that we picked up some shopping in a supermarket so we can do a bit of cooking for ourselves as we will be here for a few nights, I’m getting a bit sick of tortillas!

Tomorrow we’re going to see a monastery and attempt a few hikes up a volcano, hopefully this one isn’t active!

Keep you updated.

Lots of love,

Alice x

The boarder crossing from Belize to Guatemala was a lot less stressful than our last crossing. We got a stamp, paid a clearly laid out and standard fee (£15 per person) and crossed into Guatemala. It was pretty uneventful apart from the lady in front of us, who was taking a turkey across the border in a tied up bag, the turkey had a hole for its head and was quite content watching the crossing procedure. That was until the woman dumped the bag on the floor to get her passport, then all hell broke loose and it was like watching the turkey version of Dancing on Ice as the bird tried and failed to regain footing in a rolling bag.

After that excitement the rest of the day was just a long journey to our hostel in Flores. Once the bus dropped us off we were guilt-tripped into going into the bus company’s shop to check out their prices for trips to Tikal. We had already decided we wouldn’t buy them there and would check prices elsewhere, but our indifference to their sales pitch was taken as us driving a hard bargain and they followed us out of the shop and offered us a reduced price with an English guide and hostel pick up thrown in so we agreed to pay $100 GTQ (£10) per person for the hour drive and an all day guide.

We got picked up at 4:30 am and got the park at about 6 am, we were again lucky that either because its the off-season, the recent eruption has scared off travellers or just because we got there so early, that the park was really quiet. Our guide was quite interesting, he had originally grown up in Tikal before locals were re-homed once it became a national park. He showed us lots of birds, insects and plants special to the region, we saw woodpeckers, monkeys, jumping spiders and at one point he stuck some grass down a hole in a log and pulled out a tarantula! Which we all got to stroke and the bravest amounts us got to hold (after reassurance they aren’t deadly!). We were also shown different herbs and plants along the way, one plant stank like chicken soup with too much pepper and garlic, I thought the guide was joking at first and that the smell must be coming from a café until I picked up a flower, it reeked. We also tried some of a plant that tasted a bit like mixed herbs, although I have no idea what it was.

The ruins them selves are very impressive and as always have about a billion steps to get to the top (temples are up to 70 m high). The main square had 4 structures to represent the 4 seasons and each of them had a different number of steps to represent days of the calendars and then these steps are set into layers that represent moon cycles and on and on it goes. There is just so much detail in these huge buildings it makes them even more impressive, they were built in such a way that the sun hits them in a certain way during the solstice, and in the mornings shadows of the buildings look like a snake making its way to the ground. One section is designed so that when you clap it echos back sounding like a Tolkien (a bird indigenous to the region). The complexity of these huge buildings is just crazy, and it’s even more mind blowing when you think that it was done over a thousand years ago!

There were also sacrificial altars scattered about, we asked if it was seen as a privilege to be sacrificed or if someone was chosen as a victim when the Gods were not happy and, apparently, it was considered an honour. They would have not only have been chosen from birth to be sacrificed later in life but the parents would also purposely get pregnant at certain times so the chosen one would be the correct age to be sacrificed for specific events! It’s still not know why the city was abandoned, it was left deserted for 500 years before the Spanish came to the region, by then it was so overgrown it went unnoticed. Only whispers of the city where known until in 1853, when a Guatemalan man collecting gum from the rubber trees noticed the ruins and alerted a newspaper and the site gained interest and was investigated. Even today it takes a team of 30 to daily remove vegetation off of the buildings to stop them being reclaimed by the jungle, our guide told us to uncover a temple takes a team of 20 about 7 years and around 2 million pounds!

After 5 hours of walking around, the park started to get busy so we headed home grabbed some lunch (burritos and a drink for £3?! Don’t mind if I do.) and plan our next stop. Tonight we’ll be getting the night bus at 9 pm to arrive in Antigua tomorrow morning around 8 am.

As always I’ll keep you all updated.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Hey everyone,

Yesterday we made the crossing into Belize from Mexico. The journey wasn’t too bad except getting ripped off at the Mexican exit boarder, we were charged $30 USD (£23) per person in ‘taxes’. I’d already heard this was a scam they try and did as advised – printed off our plane tickets summary, where it showed we had payed for the taxes already in our ticket. We advised the groups in front of us to argue the point and show their tickets too. After a heated argument the first group to do this were allowed to leave without paying, the next group were let in only paying half but by the time it got to us they pretended they couldn’t read English and we were told pay or don’t cross, so we ended up paying. Some groups behind us hid their money and said they didn’t have enough and they just took whatever petty cash they had and let them through. The whole thing was very frustrating and left a bad after-taste of Mexico in our mouth which is a shame as so far we have had nothing but amazing memories in Mexico.

I had expected Belize to be very similar to Mexico, but as soon as we crossed the boarder it was completely different, the houses, the nature, the people. There is much more of a Carribbean feel here, the people all speak English as a first language which made it a lot easier to get directions to an ATM and find our hostel.

After a short stop at Belize city, we caught a speed boat ferry to the island of Caye Caulker and got a golf cart (the main method of transport on the island) to our hostel. It was a bit more basic than we’ve had so far, built with off cuts of wood and metal with a very DIY feel to it, and no air-con, which is probably something we’re going to have to get used to.

After we checked in we went for food in a little shack next door which was delicious! We watched the women make everything from scratch, even the tortillas and asked them 101 questions as they spoke English. They were telling us about the difference between certain dishes and how what we think of as Mexican food in the west is more like Belizian food, as in the west we have rice and beans with our burritos, which is a Carribbean influence, in Mexico it tends to just be meat and sauces.

This afternoon Grace went diving and me and Alyssa went for a walk around the island, the island was split in two by a hurricane a few years back so we could only walk around one half which took us a few hours, including a sit and relax on a jetty we found. We saw a few cool things like how the adverts here are all hand painted and that for scaffolding they just use propped up bits of wood, we also had a chat with a guy selling tamales (or as he put it “hooott taaammmaaales”) and bought some Banana bread which was delicious.

Everything is much more expensive here, we got rolls, cheese, crisps and two drinks for the journey to Guatemala tomorrow and it cost us $50 BZ (£20) so we’re glad we’re not stopping for a long time! So tomorrow we will be getting a coach from Belize City to Flores in Guatemala and we will be in Guatemala for a while. Keep you updated.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Update: Last night there was a tropical storm here which was slightly terrifying in our little hut with holes cut out for windows! It was shaking the whole hut and lighting up every time there was lightning. But we made it through and are currently sat waiting for a bus to Flores Guatemala eating some street cake and chatting to the woman who sold it about university grants in London for her son.

Hey everyone,

Were currently in Bacalar in a hostel right on the lake. As with all the places we’ve been so far, it’s beautiful here. It’s been like a holiday within a holiday. After all the running around and visiting things in Tulum we all needed a chill out and here is perfect for it. It’s a small little town next to the lake, with views like something out of a travel advert. It’s really clear water due to these living rocks inside the lake called stromatolites, which are formed from bacteria that filter the lake water, they are one of the oldest forms of life on Earth, which is pretty cool. We’ve spent most of our days in the lake playing games and the evenings sat on the little jetty playing card games and chatting.

Today we dragged everyone to watch England-vs-Columbia in a local bar which thanks to extra time and penalties ended up taking most of the day. Although obviously it was worth it as we won, maybe not for the boys who were going on about how the Netherlands used to dominate football. But Alyssa decided Australia and England were basically the same having a shared Queen and took to spectating like a champ, she even made us teach her all the chants…

After we won, we got offered several free Tequila shots, which we were of course to polite to refuse, so we stumbled home and went for a swim in the lake. We were swimming when a storm stuck, which looked amazing and I thought was super cool, until someone pointed out we would be electrocuted if lighting struck the lake, after that we suddenly decided to have a speedy race to the jetty.

This afternoon we went to look at bus tickets and times as we were undecided on whether to go to Belize, pass through Belize and go straight to Guatemala or to stay in Mexico as we’re loving it so much. Our decision was made for us by a woman in front of us taking 45 minutes in the boiling hot room to sort out tickets for a big group, we just wanted out of there as soon as possible. So went for the easiest option of booking a bus to Belize city tomorrow, which is super exciting but also a bit sad as the group were travelling with are all heading off in different directions now. But hopefully more fun and friends to come.

As always I’ll keep you updated.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Hey everyone,

Haven’t posted since we arrived in Tulum, so this may be a long one. Tulum has been amazing and so much fun! We’ve literally packed every day full of activities so there’s been no time to write this until everyone fell asleep from exhaustion.

We didn’t get up to much on Wednesday evening when we arrived at the hostel, but we came down for the free cocktail hour and ended up meeting Lin and Victor, two Dutch guys, after chatting we decided to go to the Coba ruins together the next day. We took a Colectivo to the ruins about 8 am and it was almost empty, we got to read a bit about the Mayan culture and to see the stone buildings that were not overrun by the forest. We even got to climb one of the structures. The Mayans believe that the taller the building the closer you are to God, and judging from the amount of steps we had to climb, they were pretty damn tight with their God. The view from the top was amazing we could see miles and miles of surrounding jungle, and we had it almost to ourselves.

After that we tried this local Taco place which was amazing and also very cheap ($16 pesos/60p per taco!). In the evening we again went to the free cocktail hour (who wouldn’t it’s free?!) and met other people from the hostel including Alyssa, a girl from Australia, who convinced us to stay another day and to go to a mojito bar that evening, not that it took a lot of convincing. They had a band playing salsa music and everyone was up and dancing, including us, it was a great atmosphere.

We left after the band finished and got tempted into the block party outside (open front bars with dance-floors that extend into the street) and then onto a club. We didn’t know any of the music, but that didn’t stop it being an amazing night. We didn’t get in until 4 am, but we had promised Grace when she left us after the mojito bar, that we wouldn’t drink much and would still be up at 7 am to visit the Grand Cenote. We only managed to keep half of that promise, which I regretted at 7 am on Friday morning.

So very hung over after 3 hours sleep we decided to rent bicycles and cycle the 6 mile round trip. It worked out really well, we had a nice bike ride in the sunshine and it was much cheaper than a taxi, but much more sweaty. Although in Mexico we always seem to be sweating, it ranges from a moist sheen to dripping wet clothes, but it’s always there. The cenote is beautiful, it was huge, as the name suggests, and had been covered in decking so we could get in. There were several main segments to explore and we had a great time snorkelling and messing about in the water, we were originally only going for the morning and visiting the Tulum ruins in the afternoon, but ended up staying the whole day….so we decided to extend our stay for another day. We tried to go out again in the evening but due to the local elections, nowhere was selling alcohol (it’s against the law here to sell alcohol for the nights and days leading up to an election). We found out about this law just before the ban came in place and quickly bought some beers to take back to the hostel – which the shop owner wrapped in news paper and double bagged telling us to get home before the police checks. So we had a chilled night in, sneakily drinking beers with all the other hostel guests and chatting until the early hours of the morning.

On Saturday we got up again at 7 am and headed to the Tulum ruins on our bikes, these were overlooking the see rather than in the jungle like Coba. The Mayan settlement at Tulum was used as a kind of ancient port, the buildings here were a bit less grand and more practical. After spending the morning here we cycled the few miles back to Tulum, filled up on tacos and headed out on our bikes to another cenote as we enjoyed the last one so much.

This cenote was much smaller, but the distance from the ground level to the pool was much shorter, meaning we could jump in! I got brave and even jumped through a small shoot hole into the cenote, we stayed here jumping in and messing about most of the afternoon and some other people from the hostel joined us later until we got kicked out when it closed.

When we got back to the hostel we were all a bit gutted that we had to separate the next day as we’d gotten on so well and had a lot of fun. So we decided to move our schedules about and adjust routes so we could travel to the next place together. Instead of heading to Merida next we will be going to Bacalar and making our way to Belize from there.

It’s now 1 am and everyone has fallen asleep exhausted after a lot of cycling, swimming and dive-bombing. I should also get to sleep before we rush off tomorrow trying frantically to buy a last minute ticket to Bacalar.

As always, I’ll keep you updated.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Hola,

Yesterday Grace went for her day long scuba dive, I decided to rent out some snorkelling gear and go to the beach, but it then decided to chuck-it-down with rain all morning. At 10:30, after 3 hours of reading my book under cover, I decided to go into a restaurant on the beach for Wi-Fi and ended up seeing a guy I had met the day before who lived on the island.

After getting photos of his ID and sending it to Grace, I agreed to let him give me a tour of the island, mainly out of boredom than anything else. It ended up being a really good day, we went snorkelling in two national park corral reserves, we also swam to the outside of a dolphin enclosure in the sea and the dolphins swam right up the the fence between us – it was amazing how close we were. After that, we went to the original Mayan settlement on the island, it’s full of colourful papaya thatched buildings which still have people living in them today. There were also some old rubble piles that used to be Mayan buildings, a traditional Mayan church and a Tequila museum – where I got to have a Tequila and Mayan alcohol tasting course for free (as Octavia, my guide, was somewhat of a local celebrity; apparently he is big in the bull fighting scene in Mexico). We also saw the other side of the island where there was mostly forest and untouched beaches and everything smelt of honey. We finished the trip off with a quick look at a bull fighting stadium where Octavia trains, before he dropped me back at my hostel. All in all a 10/10 tour.

After my tour and Grace’s dive were done, we went out for dinner with two Irish girls and a Welsh boy Grace met on her dive. After dinner we went for drinks, ‘two English girls, two Irish girls and a Welsh man walk into a bar’ sounds like the start of a joke, but it was actually the start of quite a messy evening. It started with all you can drink Tequila for £2 per person (each shot was like a 1/3 of a pint!) and ended with karaoke at 3 am. It was a really fun night, especially for Liam the guy we were with, who kept having local men ask for his permission to talk to us and buying him drinks to bribe him into saying yes, which worked quite a lot – even though we’d asked him to say no.

This morning was less fun: we woke up after a few hours sleep to get a ferry and a bus in the midday heat to get to our hostel in the centre of Tulum. It’s a lot more lively here and they have free cocktails every night 5-6 pm so I’m not sure how early we’ll be in bed tonight either. Tomorrow we’re off to see the ruins at Coba and to try and swim in some cenotes.

Keep you updated.

Lots of love,

Alice x