Mexico - Playa Del Carmen to Palenque

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On Monday 1 February I flew from Habana to Cancun in Mexico, being the nearest point on mainland Central America. Cancun really isn't my sort of place so I got straight out of there to Playa Del Carmen, which is a smaller resort town about an hour away. Playa is more chilled out than Cancun but still extremely touristy and pretty expensive. It is in fact pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum from Habana: very commercial, full of western goods and shops, everybody speaks english, and full of mainly American and Canadian tourists. Having said that, it was great to be able to use the high speed cheap internet and go shopping for all the things I was lacking in Cuba.

I met up with German David and two other backpackers, Francois and Hagit, and the next day we took a trip to a quieter beach - Akumal. The beaches are really lovely here on the Carribean coast of Mexico and the beach at Akumal was even better than the one at Playa. We spent the day sunbathing, snorkelling, and chilling. The water is very clear, blue and teeming with wildlife - I saw three turtles, a sting ray, a variety of reef fish, and plently of coral.

The experience was marred slightly by me getting really sick towards the end of the day, which resulted in me spending the rest of the evening with pretty acute food poisoning. I had been feeling a bit dodgy all day, presumably due to the Tacos we ate the night before. I decided to spend the next day convalescing and catching up on emails and shopping.

The following day I took the night bus to Palenque, which is about a 12 hour journey. David and the others had already gone on ahead, being pressed for time. Palenque is as well known site of Mayan ruins, most of which have been reconstructed so they look pretty much like they would have done at the time. The ruins consist of a complex of temples, buildings, and pyramid type structures all consumed within lush jungle.

I met two backpackers geting off the bus, Elena and Gabriela, and we shared a Cabana in a jungle camp close to the ruins. I really loved the surroundings here - dense jungle ringing with the sounds of birds, monkeys, and insects. The air was hot, humid and earthy. We arrived at 6am, had breakfast and spent the day exploring the ruins. We spent the next day hanging out in Palenque town. There's nothing to do there and it's not much to look at so we just hung around and drank a couple of beers. That evening we parted ways and I took anoth night bus of 15 hours to Oaxaca......

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