Saturday: As the capital of Michoacan Morelia had long been on my list of places to visit and after a few false starts Theo and I had finally arranged a weekend trip. Tickets bought during our school lunchbreak and bags packed the night before all we had to do was drag ourselves out of bed at 4am. Oh dear. I struggled out of bed and pottered around the kitchen hearing an alarm go off in the next room a few minutes later. 20 minutes later with the alarm still going I decided to try to rouse my apparantly catatonic housemate. I soon learnt that the reason for this was while I'd gone to bed early he'd instead gone out... returning at nearly 3 am and getting a mere hour's sleep before going to catch our 5am ... read more

I decided to spend today at Teotihuacán. Teotihuacán and Chichen Itza were the two images in my head when I first came to Mexico and I was disapointed not to be able to fit a visit to Mexico City into my Easter travels with my boyfriend. I had a map marked with the route I need to get to the pyramids and decided it was more relaxed going alone than joining the tour at 9. As I walked down the stairs I bumped into Theo coming the other way. The coincidence of us both staying at the same hostel and meeting each other was surprising. He was heading off with his visiting friend for other sightseeing and we agreed to meet up for dinner or if not, see each other back in Sahuayo when we returned ... read more

Considering I spent the morning running around on a quest for bus tickets and taxis I was glad to have the afternoon lazing on the beach. I walked to the bus station, caught a taxi back and requested him to return which he did, after we'd been left standing on the dusty street with our bags for more than 20 minutes. Arriving at the bus station we filed onto the second class bus, only to find there wasn't a seat free. We eventually found one space and squeezed the two of ourselves and our bags into the space. We arrived in Cancun and found our hostel. In the earliest colonial sources the island of Cancún was originally known to its Maya inhabitants as Nizuc meaning either "promontory" or "point of grass". In the years after the ... read more

We are now in Tulum. The end of our stay in Palenque passed rather uneventfully, and after our last day we opted to take the overnight bus directly to Tulum rather than staying an extra night. Our hostel in Tulum is a bizarre affair. It's a plot of land with three rooms and a semi-outdoor kitchen. The owners live elsewhere and merely dropped us off. We found ourselves the only residents in the strange hostel and bizarrely the entire area of town seems to be a work in progress, with not more than two of the buildings actually looking completed. We passed another uneventful day, walking the dusty road into town for lunch and browsing the seriously overpriced gift shops. The one good thing we did find at our hostel was a leaflet for Xel-Ha, a ... read more

We arrived in Palenque yesterday. Coming out of the bus station we were confronted by a large billboard across the road declaring our hostel to be 10 minutes walk this way. Not wanting to drag our bags we hopped in a taxi. We soon found our hostel at the bottom of 'Hostel Street'. Bizarrely here in Palenque none of the hostels are situated in the actual town but in a seperate traveller's world where hostels and their attached cafes and restaurants line a road surrounded by jungle plants and replica stone statues of Mayan gods and monsters to give it that authentic look! We went into the hostel, walking down a corridor rather like a cave, that smelled remarkably like Colchester Zoo to my mind. We were escorted to our room and for once splurging on ... read more