Blogs from Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico, North America - page 10

Day 16: Tuesday 15th July - Tulum Beach and Ruins When I got to Tulum around 6pm last night I decided to head for a hostel which I have a leaflet for - its a good 25 minute walk from the bus station. Unfortunately when I arrive I get a shock when they want 800 pesos a night not the 100 pesos I have come accustomed to paying. Decide to walk further on to the beach thinking its only another 10 minutes, except in ends up being an hours walk from the bus station by the time I get down there. Enquire about a few Cabanas down on the beach (think it'll be quite cool to spend a few nights in basic conditions)but put off by the 250 pesos a night. Flag down a taxi and ... read more

The logical thing would have been to check the bus timetable and then have lunch. Mmmm, maybe that psychometric test was right and future employers should be weary of my lack of logic. Maybe it was the heat, and the 2km walk with our packs on, in the sun. Maybe it´s the universe saying that it is better for us to be sitting in this lovely air-conditioned internet cafe for 1 and 3/4 hours than in the open air bus station for 30 mins. Maybe I need to stop trying to interpret the universe´s messages because she writes like a poetaster with an obsession for bad metaphors. We are waiting for the bus to Chichen Itza--very exciting. I am both intrigued and excited to be visiting the ruins and learning more about the mysticism of the ... read more

All our efforts of getting up early to visit the internet cafe, have our last brekkie at Cafe Madrid, pack up our room that had been home for several days came unstuck at the airport. Although we got there early enough, our flight was the first of many that would be cancelled. We were told that Guadalajara airport had to be closed so "emergency runway maintenance" could be undertaken. What????? It turned out to be a 4 hour delay. Great! We now had an opportunity to undertake our own Spanish speaking maintenance which I have to say Charlie is getting a high distinction for. When people ask me if I speak Spanish I say no my friend does : ). Surprisingly 4 hours went pretty quickly but we weren´t really prepared for yet another delay when ... read more

Hello all, I have discovered that the map thing does not work the way that I thought it did, and so have fast forwarded to where we currently are--Tulum on the Caribbean Coast. This morning, as we were leaving our hostel, the guy ran out and told us that it was going to bucket down. This ordinarily would have been of no consequence, as we are in the tropics now, but, when your hostel room happens to have a tree growing through the floor and on through the ceiling, the possibilty of rain getting in and wetting all your stuff is fairly high, and so we had to move rooms. The raininess, and the big day of tour organising (through the national park--Siam Ka´an, scheduled for tomorrow), eating, and visiting sites yesterday, have necessitated a barato ... read more

What a change of pace! Although motels in the US aren’t that great they are a world apart from accommodation in Mexico. Our first night in downtown Cancun was a reality check. Although the accommodation and location was a lot to be desired we still managed to find some cool spots. In the local square / meeting place for locals, they served up food in a half permanent outside food hall thing. There was great Mexican cuisine. It was very cheap and a good selection too. To be honest the food was better than some of the restaurants we’d been to. The bonus of staying in Cancun is that it is easy to get to many other places. We took a day trip to Chichen Itza to see arguably the famous of all Mayan ruins. We ... read more

So I have now officially been in 6 Mexican states. After this week, it will be 8. Wow, I´m just getting around. Anyway, so this weekend I went on our program excursion which is called Inframundo, which in English means Underworld. The point of the trip was to look at Mayan sites and their representations of the underworld and also swim in cenotes, which, either having caves or being in caves are pretty Underworld-y. The first day we went to Coba, which is a site that´s really, really big. There aren´t a lot of buildings, they´re just very far apart, so you have to rent bikes to get from one place to another. At that site, I climbed the third highest pyramid in Mexico, which was pretty awesome. The site was pretty in general, and biking ... read more

nach diesen drei unglaublich intensiven partytagen, von denen nach der ersten nacht ein netter dauerregen eingesetzt hat. kam dann doch der moment wo ich mich von meiner fast schon familie verabschieden musste.. und irgendwie brachte ich das nicht uebers herz... so dass ich mich, man koennte fast schon sagen klammheimlich davongeschlichen hab.. ob das jetzt gut war oder nicht.. wer weiss. weiter ging es mit einem bus, direkt nach cancun (sprich 16stunden) und da ich ja doch langsam auf mein geld schau, nahm ich den billigsten, was ich nie mehr tun werde . naja auf jedenfall erwartete mich ein bus, denn selbst die mexikaner (also ausser mir alle mitfahrer) dazu bewog zu reklamieren. denn das gute ding stammte zwar aus deutschland, jedoch hatte diese schrottkiste mindestens schon zwei mal das zeitliche gesegnet, somit passierten wir mit ... read more