Relaxing like the Mexicans in Mexico

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After the cold of Europe and New York, we finally arrived back in the sun - god it was good!! We arrived at Cancun airport and needed to start stripping off our clothes - it was so nice and warm. We got a bus to downtown and found our hostel and made arrangements to visit the famous ruins at Chichen Itza (or chicken pizza as our tour guide joked) the following day.

The ruins really are amazing. Although the tour was a bit of a pain - the required stops at sheds full of souvenirs and the guide deciding that part of his job was to sell us special souvenirs, and the massive delay in organising people into groups - it was worth having the information provided by the guide when walking around the site. The most interesting thing is that it was all constructed primarily based on astrological principles. Numbers are important - 13, 7, 9 - all for some astrological reason. So there might be 13 steps, or something like that. Also, there is one of the ruins where if you stand in exactly the right spot and clap your hands, there will be an echo that actually sounds like the local quetzal bird. It sounds stupid, but its true!

After a couple of days in Cancun we wanted to get out of American resort tourist mecca, so we took a ferry across the way to Isla Mujeres. We only planned to stay a couple of days but it was very nice and relaxing and we ended up staying there for the next week before we flew out. We spent our days on the beach, reading and sleeping and variously hanging out with different people we met along the way including a crazy bunch of New Zealanders on holiday from London and an American couple from Montana. It was a beautiful spot and was quite hard to leave, but there were so many more things to see and we had a plane to catch! So back to Cancun for one night and then it was off to South America!!

(Guys, sorry about the mass of blogs we just hit you with, but we are now pretty much up to date! I will send another blog about our recent experiences in Chile and Ecuador very soon.)

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Photos

When they say pina colada....
They mean a really BIG pina colada!

A beach bar at Isla Mujeres
Love the swing idea

As you can see - Isla Mujeres is a party sort of place
Happy Hour until you are drunk - where else do you find that?

What a way to end a trip to Mexico
The view from our five star resort room in Miami