Viva Mexico!

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Our Mexican journey started in the most un-Mexican of cities; the dreadful tourist trap known as Cancun. Not interested in spending time on a manmade sandbar, laden with oversized resorts and the kind of numpties we are trying to get away from, we waited for Neil and Tom to touch ground after their flight from London and got out of town as soon as possible. After avoiding the taxi touts waving homemade signs that claimed the bus into the city costs $10US per person (the real cost being $4US per person), we swiftly made our way to the coast for the short boat ride out to Isla Mujeres in search of white sand, crystal clear waters, cheap tacos and some peace and tranquillity. Isla Mujeres (which translates as Woman Island) is a 7km long, half a kilometre wide island off the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan peninsula, so-called because of the many images of goddesses found there when the Spanish arrived in the 16^thcentury. The pace of life on the island is slow, as reflected by the main mode of transport; golf carts with a top speed of 15mph.

After a day catching up with Neil and Tom, lounging on the beach, getting stuck into the Mexican cuisine we had been longing for and sinking a fair amount of Coronas and Sols, we headed out into the ocean for the first of many water-based adventures and one to tick off the bucket list; swimming with whale sharks. There are only a handful of places in the world where you can enjoy such encounters and even fewer where the animals best interests are taken into consideration. The government tightly regulate the whale shark tourism industry here, ensuring they are not fed, no one wears suncream (which can be toxic to the sharks) and only a few people are in the water at any one time. After an hour at full throttle, heading out into the deep blue, we struck gold in finding a school of 10-15 enormous sharks. Swimming alongside the biggest fish in the ocean, some up to 12m long, fills you with a mixture of awe and ‘oh my f****** god’. Even though they are filter feeders and almost exclusively eat plankton, having one glide right by you with an open mouth wide enough to swallow you whole is quite an experience. I must give a massive shout out to Tom at this point, who snorkelled for the first time in his life, an hour out into the open ocean, with the biggest fish in the sea. Balls of steel (and a face full of freckles).

Within a few days we had scoped out the best places to eat (with the locals at the luncherias), the best food to eat (lime soup, ceviche and 10 peso tacos, LOTS of tacos) and what not to drink (Sol Clamato which is Sol beer with tomato juice, flavoured with spices and clam broth, in a can… so wrong). We had also started to work our way through the tequila menus at a bar or two, starting with the cheapest options, of course. One hungover morning, Neil, Kate and myself headed out on the water again for a day of diving with an awesome dive operation, Mundaca Divers. Before leaving solid ground, our dive host, Lalo, pointed out that some stormy weather had created choppy conditions and currents may be far from ideal. With these being Neil’s first dives for over a year and our first dives since Cuba, we were determined to dive, even if we were still suffering from the previous night’s intoxication. And choppy they currents were. The first dive, I spent the vast majority of the time trying to not throw up 20m below the surface. During the surface interval, Neil made it known that he was struggling too and I was determined to not be the first to blow chunks, although I would have happily been a close second. Thankfully, the moment never came for either of us, and the second dive was a bit more bearable. The reef was healthy and the fish were in abundance. By the end of the day we had swam through some natural tunnels, seen some interesting underwater sculptures and a good variety of marine life including turtles, barracuda, pufferfish and a giant grouper.

With Isla Mujeres being so small and the roads so quiet, we decided to commandeer a golf cart of our own to circumnavigate the coastal road that stretches around the full perimeter of the island. We checked out the turtle sanctuary that saves turtle eggs from poachers by moving them to secure, protected areas of the coastline, and also spent an hour or two at a delightful little beach where we shared our sun loungers, and lunch, with the curious local iguana population. Further into our journey we found the cliffs at the tip of the island, Punta Sur, the rugged, windy eastern shores and the one and only reggae bar on the island which had complimentary bug spray on every table, and for a good reason too. With a few drinks polished off, and our assumption that golf carts don’t follow the same drink-driving rules as other four wheeled vehicles, we took it in turns to get behind the wheel. Even Kate had a go, albeit on a long, straight section of road with nothing to crash into and no corners to turn.

Our final day of diving took us out to the further reaches of the island’s dive site options. With a sober head and some loaned full-length wetsuits to help manage with the colder currents away from the protection of the coast and warm shallows, we explored the battleship wreck and Punta Negra, supposedly one of the finest dive sites the island offers. We had the whole ship wreck to the four of us and what a wreck it was. Super clear visibility made the dive even more enjoyable and the gentle currents meant we could penetrate the wreck and have a proper nose about. Punta Negra was also a great dive and again we had the site to ourselves. The unique coral formations were home to a giant parrot fish, turtles, lobsters, lionfish and a huge moray eel. We (Lalo) also found a ‘splendid toadfish’, a very unusual creature which is rarely, if ever, found in this area of Mexico.

With a week passed on Isla Mujeres and a sinking realisation of how easily a week could turn into three or four, we headed back to the mainland and south along the Riviera Maya to Playa Del Carmen, another city that is not worth stopping at unless you’re 18 years old, like to drink a lot of booze and think that having your photograph taken with a monkey on a chain is something cool to share with your mates back home. We passed through Playa Del Carmen to take the boat out to Cozumel, another island and the location of some of the best diving in the world. If you are not into diving and don’t fancy paying $10-15US to use a beach at a beach club, Cozumel sadly doesn’t offer much more to fill your time with. There is only one town on the island, San Miguel, which sprawls off from the town square and is predominantly filled with the passing American tourists that pile out of the cruise liner port in their hundreds each day.

Since diving with some shockingly bad dive operations in the past for the sake of saving a few pounds, in recent years we have made a point of doing some research and only dive with the best each location can offer. Treating Trip Advisor as a bible of sorts, we decided to dive with ScubaTony, Cozumel’s leading dive shop. The dive guide and skipper let us choose the sites we wanted to dive which was a bonus, so we requested Palancar (or Alan Carr as we took to calling it), Santa Rosa wall and Punta Sur for starters. The coral and rock formations were unlike any we have seen before, with loads of swim-throughs and a few chimneys taking you from the depths up to the shallows where you could continue to search for marine life while making the necessary safety stop before surfacing. On the whole, I found myself slightly underwhelmed by the lack of marine life and biodiversity, although the underwater landscape made up for it and we left satisfied. Unfortunately, the diving in Cozumel wasn’t without dramas as Kate’s BCD (an inflating vest you wear when diving which, when balanced out with the weight belt, allows you to find neutral buoyancy) self-inflated and popped her to the surface like a cork. Luckily, we were at the start of the dive and had only reached 10m. If this had happened at much more of a depth it could have resulted in a trip to the local hyperbaric chamber but thankfully Kate didn’t start to see stars and her body continued to function as normal, with the addition of slightly more swearing than usual and a loss of trust for the company we had chosen. On our second day of diving, they ensured us that the equipment had been taken away for servicing and Kate had no further problems. Unfortunately, Neil and another guy on our trip fell victim to the same equipment failure but luckily knew to disconnect the inflator hose, something learned after Kate’s problem a few days previous. As a result of this balls up, the dive shop wiped off the equipment rental cost for the diving the three of us had done that week, saving us a total of $180US, or 112 bottles of Corona, whichever way you want to look at it.

To ensure Tom didn’t spend every last penny he had on presents while traipsing around town as we were underwater, we spent some time on terra firma, blessing him with our company. With a lack of public transport on the island, the only way to explore outside of the town was by taxi or hiring a vehicle. We chose to hire a yellow convertible VW Beetle through the guy we were staying with. I had a Beetle in my late teens and so I was familiar with the problems such a car can possess. It looked great, we pointed out the bangs and scrapes it had already to ensure we didn’t get blamed upon its return and received the keys. Everything seemed to work just fine but it lacked one thing; an accelerator pedal. Where the pedal once was there was simply the wheel that sits behind it. Not only did we have Mexican drivers and driving on the wrong side of the road to deal with, but using what resembled a golf ball to accelerate made for a bumpy ride. One can only imagine the amount of motorists who must have passed thinking ‘malditos gringos’. We sketchily used the motor to visit the islands main Mayan ruins, a hut that was about the size of our hotel room, and the beautiful but ferocious eastern coast where only a madman would dare swim. Just as we were about to give up on finding a beach where we could have a paddle without paying to ‘enjoy’ a beach club or risk drowning in a riptide, we stumbled across a natural sheltered rock pool and had a relaxing plunge.

Since we left England I had a bastard of a toothache and was medicating myself daily with some rather strong painkillers I bought over the counter in Cuba. While enjoying yet another delicious chorizo taco on Cozumel, a third of my tooth decided to become part of my dinner and, being nearly 7,000 miles from my dentist, panic ensued. It turned out I was in luck as Playa Del Carmen, a short boat ride away, is the dental tourism hotspot of the Americas. After a brief visit to an emergency dentist, temporary paste had been pasted onto the tooth in question and we were in a 2^nd class, sweaty sardine tin of a bus heading south to Tulum, our next port of call. We managed to find a peach of an apartment online a few days previous, a huge two bedroom pad with a balcony and a lounge/kitchen big enough to swing a cat each. Within ten minutes of checking in we seemed to have an adopted cat. At first she seemed like the cutest, most lovely ball of fur ever, but within a day or two we were fed up of her begging and the constant need for attention. She soon became a balcony cat and tins of tuna were no longer purchased.

Tulum is an enchanting, chilled out town, sandwiched between the most perfect white sand beach to the east and the dense Mayan jungle to the west. It is the site of a pre-Columbian Maya walled city (Tulum is Mayan for wall) and the ruins sit atop cliffs, towering over the Caribbean coastline below. Tulum town is a great place to use as a base for exploring a lot of Quintana Roo and Yucutan sights and we ended up spending nine nights there, some of which were not by choice, but more about that later. As well as the magnificent beach and ruins, Tulum is famed for its cenotes. All of the river systems in the state of Quintana Roo are underground and some are accessible for swimming, snorkelling and diving via natural sinkholes called cenotes, which are only found in this part of the world. While in the area, we couldn’t pass on the opportunity to dive Cenote Angelita, one of the most unique dives on the planet. Cenote Angelita is a 200ft deep sinkhole that just goes straight down like a vertical tunnel. The first 100ft is crystal clear freshwater and the second 100ft is made up of saltwater, separated by a cloud of hydrogen sulphate which produces the illusion of an underwater river around a small island of trees that have rested there since the sinkhole collapsed thousands of years ago. Unusual enough just witnessing this phenomenon from above, we also took the plunge through the 4m sulphate cloud and into the pitch black abyss below, totally void of any natural light. A most bizarre experience and something we will never forget. We also dived another mind-blowing cenote called Dos Ojos (Two eyes), part of a 300 mile underwater cave system. Lead by torch light, we navigated through the caves and caverns full of stalactites and stalagmites with 60+ metres of visibility, basically as far as the eye could see.

Travelling as a four certainly has its benefits, one of which being the fact you can book a private taxi to sights for less than it would cost for the group of you to take a bus. We took advantage of this for the 3½ hour journey to see one of Mexico’s most visited and famous archaeological sites, the former Maya temple city of Chichen Itza. Although we were only a few days off the autumn equinox, when the sun creates the illusion of a serpent creeping down the staircase of El Castillo, the site’s central temple, we decided to avoid the expect crowds of 80,000 and instead arrived there early on a weekday morning to enjoy the place while at its least busiest. It paid off in doing so as for the first few hours there were hardly any visitors and the tour buses were yet to roll in from Cancun and Merida. Recently named one of the new seven wonders of the world, not only does Chichen Itza baffle you with the way the buildings, built around 1,000 years ago, were built to align with significant cyclical astronomical events, but the acoustics are also extraordinary. If you clap your hands in front of the 30m El Castillo, the echo that replies is not the sound of your clap but that of the chirp of the sacred quetzal bird. The replication is so precise that when scientists recorded the echo and put it next to the real sound of the quetzal bird, the sound waves looked almost completely identical. Whether this was just a fluke or something the Mayans somehow engineered it still a mystery to this day.

The original plan while the four of us were together was to spend the last few days of Neil and Tom’s trip off the beaten track at the laid back beach village of Mahahual, a further 200km south along the Caribbean coast. Unfortunately, our plan was shattered as the day before we made the move, we discovered the leaking hot water system that had been drowning our balcony on and off for the past week had seeped through into Tom and Neil’s room. Tom’s backpack had soaked up the majority of the water, as had his passport which was in the bag. The passport was left unusable and, with it being a Friday afternoon, the embassy was closed until Monday morning meaning we had to stay as far north as we were to give Tom enough time to get to Cancun to arrange a temporary passport before their flight home on the Tuesday. There are worse places we could have been reluctantly forced to stay, and after a lengthy argument with the owner of the property (who tried to argue the leak was an act of god) we managed to get a discount off our final bill. Come Monday, the embassy were extremely helpful and after an early start Tuesday morning, Tom and Neil made to it the embassy in good time and got their flight home with no further dramas. As they were flying home and making the most of BA’s free inflight bar, we made our way out into the Mayan jungle for the start of the next chapter of our travels; working and living at a monkey sanctuary and animal rescue centre.

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