I have sandals not flip flops but the look is otherwise complete.

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Apologies for my crude and slightly drunken last post. Whilst I do repeat myself from time to time, I am suprised at how few spelling and gramatical mistakes I made. Just to clear a few things up, the guy who was sick on me managed to aim most of it at his friends legs and so after I washed the side of my t-shirt I was fine. Also I made a mistake and failed to say that I jumped in to separate the fighters and this was the exciting bit. All in all, however, it was not massively exciting and I'm not sure why I was quite so high at the time of writing. One of the Brits who disappeared last night had still not turned up by 3pm yesterday afternoon when I left the hostel.

This Josh guy came to see me three times in my room on that night. It was about four in the morning and I was the only one in that room and if he hadn't been so small I might have been a bit worried. As it was it was just annoying. I lay in bed while he knocked over and over again until I eventually opened the door. I managed to get rid of him though with an appropriate amount of rudeness but at 9 in the morning, after I had been to the toilet and left the foor unlocked, he walked straight in again and it took me a while to get rid of him. He decided to teach me some Spanish because he knew I was learning and it took me ages to get rid of him, even with an undercurrent of hostility in everything I said and did. He told me he was having an operation costing $6000 (US I presume) to give him a six pack. What a tosser.

Slightly freaked out I headed out as soon as possible towards Wal Mart to buy some breakfast, sleavless shirts and short. I now look and feel like a proper traveller having shaved most of my hair off, bought some vests (although they only had white which are bound to get filthy) and bought some swimming shorts that look more travely than my combat shorts. I have sandals not flip flops but the look is otherwise complete. I headed off in a random direction and walked until I was lost then got directions for my way back. I have a bad habit of just walking around for hours when I am on my own, I did it in Delhi just before I came back to the UK and sweated a smiliar amount each time. It is hot and very humid, except after it rains when there are a couple of hours of sweet relief. It rains about once a day but not usually for very long, which is good I suppose. There was a massive thunder storm in the middle of the night on my first night. I think I am more sensitive to heat than most people, I can be sitting down and doing very little, sweating away whilst others around me just look a little warm, even those with long hair and more than a vest on. Hopefully I will adapt to it, otherwise I'll just have to keep drinking loads of water.

I walked around Cancun for about three hours in total, including my stop at the wonderfully air conditioned Wal Mart. Combined with banana sandwiches and a lot of water, this got rid of my hangover. There was nothing to see. There are shops and restaurants and the odd crappy looking fountain with dolphins or isometiric shapes or something, of the kind found in every beach holiday destination but wander just a little distance out and there is nothing. Even in these areas, everything is falling apart - the pavements, the walls, the roads. There is a lot of money in Cancun and the locals all blame corruption apparently. A lot of the Mexican people are pretty fat in Cancun but not as many as the Americans.

I hadn't been to the beaches but I wasn't bothered and I had exhausted the little that there was to see in the centre in two short walks so I bought a bus ticket to Tulum. It took about two hours and I was freezing as I was wearing next to nothing and it was heavily air conditioned. It was ok until the sun became less strong when I developed goose pimples rather rapidly. I was approaching the shivering stage when I arrived. They had a TV in the coach and of course I watched this instead of looking out of the window even though it was in Spanish. It hate Tvs in pubs and this was just the same. I read a bit of Peter Ustinov's autobiography as I wondered what this ex-Durham Chancellor had actually done and discovered he was an arrogant, pompous, egotistic tosser who had done an awful lot of acting, directing and writing on film, stage and television but I hadn't heard of anything he'd done. I'm going to try and get rid of it at the book exchange that my guide tells me they have at my hostel.

Tulum is famous for the Mayan runis that are on the coast at the top of a cliff. They are not particularly large or grand but the location makes them popular with travellers. You can stay on the beach in Cabanos (the n had the squiggily accent on top, I don't know how to do it) and I have made a couple of friends who invited me to join them in the one they are hiring tonight but unfortunately I have to get a bus early tomorrow so need to stay in the town a few miles inland. At midday I am catching the hostels shuttle bus with the two girls, Emma and Darcel, who met on a project in Honduras, and will spend the afternoon on the beach and at the ruins befor returning at five. Tomorrow, I will get the earliest bus and travel all day to Flores and onwards to the place where I am volunteering nearby, I forget the name of the place. For those of you who are interested, the webiste for the project is http://www.volunteerpeten.org I think, if not just search for it. I have mostly been eating tacos and tortillas, which are basically the same thing.

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Comments

[Lynn Thomson]

Did wonder.....
......how the head was after the big night out......seems to have been an appropriate degree of suffering? Lxx

[Ed of the Americas]

Head
Sorry for the lateness of the reply - my head was actually ok, I just felt a little dizzy and worn out. I had a bit of a headache because you sweat so much around here but I drank plenty of water before I went to bed like a good boy.