Mexico (12 - 27 March)

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Route: Mexico City - Oaxaca - San Cristobal de las Cases - Merida - Tulum

After various emotional farewells across England we finally arrived in Mexico City, it had been a long time coming! Our flight was thankfully uneventful with the only thing of note being the TV system breaking down half way through the journey and with about half an hour left of Michael Clayton - I´ll assume Clooney saved the day and the bad drug company was brought to justice.

We spent a few days in Mexico City mostly just wandering around visiting the various sights on the main Zocalo (apparently the third biggest square in the world). Amongst all these attractions (National Palace, Cathedral, Museum, Aztec ruins...) was the jewel in the Mexican crown - a bloke covered in Silver paint doing the Couchy robot dance!

Probably the highlight of all Mexico for me was our visit to the house of the artisans Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Rivera and Kahlo were staunch communists who housed and protected Leon Trotsky and his family while he lived in exile. We also visited a second house where Trotsky moved to following his affair with Kahlo and was subsequently bludgeoned to death. You can still see the bullet holes all over the house where an earlier (failed) attempt on his life had taken place. We also took a day out of town to visit the ancient Mayan/Aztec City of Teotihuacan, photos speak for this place better than I can - the sheer size is breathtaking (photos to follow)

We spent a few days in Oaxaca, a peaceful little colonial town and then had our first encounter with a Mexican night bus. The buses themselves are great, a lot better than home anyway, but they have aircon and dear God they like you to know it! We quickly developed bus protocol of wearing just about every item of clothing we owned including wooly hats!

After Oaxaca we spent a couple of days in San Cristobal de las Cases and visited a couple of indigenous villages whp are still living in the traditional Mayan way. There are around 18,000 Mayans remaining in Mexico but they are heavily discriminated against and largely ignored by the Mexican government.

Next stop was Merida and a visit to Chitzen Itza, one of the "New 7 Wonders of the World". I was completely underwhelmed by Chitzen, the monuments are impressive and striking but unfortunately it has the feel of a modern theme park. There are tourists everywhere, literally everywhere and stall after stall selling 'handmade' shite, it's like the tourists are pushed through on a conveyor belt. I did kind of expect this and many people believe it isn't even the best example of Mayan ruins in Mexico nevermind Central America. It seems Tikal in Guatemala is the way to go so I'll look forward to that; I guess a mixture of Mexico's superior marketing budget and Chitzen's proximy to Cancun saw it home in the public vote for the 7 new wonders.

Our last stop in Mexico was just down the coast from Cancun in a place called Tulum. It was a nice enough town with some pretty ruins on the cliff top but we will remember it as the place that a thieving swine stole our day bags! We were actually quite lucky as we didn't lose cameras, cash or passports but we did lose a lot of things useful to us (Lonely Planet, sunscreen, ear plugs, sunglasses, books etc). Nothing of much value to the thief which actually made me quite smug and cheered me up :o)

I'm not sure if we´re just not in the swing of traveling yet or my expectations were too high but Mexico disappointed me a little bit. I've always really wanted to travel to Mexico since being mesmerised as a 7 year old watching Maradona in World Cup '86, so it's probable I'm being a bit harsh. Two weeks is no time at all for such a big country so maybe we need to return another time and give it another chance. I was also surprised how developed it was, or at least the places we visited anyway.

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