Alice Smart

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

Hey everyone,

So yesterday we didn’t really get up to much, it was our last day in Cancun and in luxury, so we made the most of it by sunbathing and drinking cocktails. In the evening we headed into this local food market place it’s all outdoor food stands and music, with these tiny cars everywhere driven by kids. Grace really wanted a go in a mini car but apparently being a kid at heart doesn’t qualify you to have a go.

We got up today around 7 am to try and leave Cancun before the heat hit, unfortunately it seams to be 30°C and humid as soon as the sun is up. We got a bus to Cancun centre and then we got a Colectivo to Playa del Carmen, which was a weird experience. Colectivos are small minivans that fit about 15 people in, they drive along the motorway and you just stand in lay-bys and wave like crazy until they stop for you and then you just shout to the driver when you want to get off, it cost us $40 Pesos (£1.50) each for the hour trip. We then got a ferry from Playa del Carmen to Cozumel Island, where we’ll be staying for the next two nights. It’s absolutely beautiful here, I’m sat in a hammock looking out to sea as I write this bit (I hope you’re not too jealous!). Grace has gone for her scuba diving refresher course as she’s out on a dive tomorrow. Unfortunately I have ear problems that mean it’s too painful for me to dive so tomorrow I’m going to settle for a bit of snorkelling instead. I did have the offer to have a tour of the island by a Mexican man I met on the beach (who works as a bull fighter, as you do), but I think I’ll pass on getting into cars with strangers, as nice as he seemed.

The hostel seems nice so far, after a lovely dinner at a restaurant overlooking the beach we’ve just booked our next hostel in Tulum and are about to fall into bed.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Hey everyone,

Yesterday we got to swim with whale sharks! We went on a boat trip that took us to the sharks and two by two we were dropped in the water and got to swim right next to them! They’re huge docile things, but boy can they swim, 3 mph doesn’t sound fast, but in a very choppy sea we had to swim like crazy to keep up. We were really lucky in that we actually listened to what the guide was saying and got in the water fast, so we got right close to them, the guide also seemed to appreciate this, as other pairs weren’t listening and kept missing the jump, so on our second jump he let us stay on the water for much longer and the whale sharks were swimming right up to us, at one point we had a whale shark next to us and a manta ray right below is, it was like something out of a nature documentary! Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera on the second jump (which I’m still kicking myself over), as after waiting in the boat for ages for the other pairs to listen and jump right the choppy waters made me so sea sick and shaky.

The boat ride back was horrific, 6/10 of us on the boat were sick and curled up in fetal positions on the floor even one of the guides was struggling, at this point me and grace were also quite sun burnt as you’re not allowed to wear sunscreen before/while swimming with the sharks as it’s bad for them. So the 2 hour journey back was not fun.

We then arrived at a beach on the Isla Mujeresh, which was absolutely beautiful, we got to swim and have lunch and try a Mexican delicately called Ceviche, which is sea snail, cooked by being left in lemon juice, mixed with chopped onion, tomato and coriander. It was okay but I don’t think I’ll be including it in my pack lunch when I’m back in the UK. After lunch we got to do some snorkelling a bit further off the coast of Isla Mujeres which was good fun.

This morning we headed into Cancun town to watch Mexico play South Korea in the world cup, we found a bar full of locals who all claimed to know one of Mexico’s players as he was from Cancun and we then got a brief run down of his whole career, including his year in the UK, where we had to pretend to have heard of him. But it was a lot of fun, we were all thrilled when Mexico won, we got several handshakes and thanks for supporting Mexico. We had a look around Market 28, which was mostly full of tourist gifts and then made our way back to the hotel, after a brief traffic jam due to celebrations in the street. We’re having a little siesta round the pool (in the shade mind, still recovering from sunburn) and then heading to another open air food market where we were assured locals will be celebrating the win tonight.

Update you all soon.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Hey everyone,

We’ve made it to Mexico! The journey started with a drive from Norwich to Essex and then several trains to Manchester where we would fly from. We were already knackered from the journey to Manchester before we’d even left the country, luckily Grace’s friend Rob took us in for the night. We had a nice meal and a good nights sleep and a tasty round of egg bacon and avocado on toast to set us up for the morning before Rob drove us to Manchester airport.

We managed to get through the airport with only two minor security issues, top tips we’ve learnt: (1) Security get really angry about taking photos inside of airports and will confiscate your phone to delete them. (2) Security get annoyed if you have water bottles in your bag, even if they are empty. Luckily we were still let on the plane, unluckily 5 minutes before starting our 10 hour flight I was trying to download a podcast and managed to delete all of the music off my phone. It was a long flight.

But the hotel more than made up for it, it’s beautiful! And the poolside cocktails aren’t half bad either, although the highlight of the day had to be trying our very first Tacos in Mexico. We went for pork tacos which came with a selection of salsas, guacamole and sauces, some of which we were warned not to touch as they were very spicy and for locals, so of course we took that as a personal challenge and finished half the pot of the most spicy sauce, and honestly it didn’t turn out as bad as you would think.

This week were planning on catching a bit of sun, watching Mexico play in the world cup at a local bar and swimming with whale sharks if it’s not too expensive and then moving on to Tulum. Ill keep you all updated as we go.

Lots of love,

Alice x