Mexico - Todo Bien Hombre!!!

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Todo bien hombre is our new saying which means "All good man!" we have managed to improve our Spanish a bit by being here. So after 2 ruins in 2 days in Merida we headed to a place called Valladolid which was also a nice colonial town and a great stepping off point for the most famous ruin - Chichen Itza. Unfortunately our bus was late and we didn´t arrive at Chichen Itza until 3.30pm. We walked around (thinking it closed at 5.30pm) but it closed at 4.30pm so we didn´t get to see the observatory :-( Apparently the Mayan priests were great mathemeticians and quite into their astronomy lining up stars and positions of the sun etc when building these great pyramids. The pyramid there was amazing though, and interestingly, during the equinox the sun lines up perfectly to cause a shadow which looks like a huge serpent body that joins the stone seprent head at the foot of the pyramid. The following day we visited another cenote (which is an underground cave with stalactites and a natural river to swim in - very beautiful!) So clear, the photo´s are awesome.

From Valladolid we took a couple of buses to get to a small northern coastal town called Rio Logartos. At the bus station these uni students came up to me and asked if they could interview me, so I said "ok". One of the girls was whispering the questions to ask in English in another girls ear, and a guy was filming me on his mobile phone which was a bit weird. I stopped when they asked for my email address! Rio Logartos is famous for seeing loads of birdlife, including a colony of 2000 flamingo´s. The town is just a small fishing village and it was nice to stop and slow things down a bit after 3 ruins in 3 days (which is really hard on the feet in the heat). We took the tour the next morning (at 7am so up again at 6am) and saw so many amazing birds we were writing down all of the names and filling pages in our diary. Birds such as Egrets, Frigates, spoonbills and of course Flamingo´s! We even came within a metre of a crocodile which was a bit too close to me for my liking, and the strangest crab I ever saw!! (see photo) it looked so prehistoric and apparently is referred to by locals as a cockroach of the sea as it feeds from the sea floor. We finished our tour at 10am and continued to out next destination (so much for the slow things down right?) taking a couple of longish bus rides and a ferry to Isla Holbox which is in the northern Yucatan coast.

Now this place was chill city!! There are no cars, the streets are sand, and the mode of transport (apart from your two feet) is via golf cart taxi´s. I loved it. We headed straight to the beach and I could not believe how prisitine it was. Powder white sand and turquoise blue water, absolutely postcard beautiful. So we pulled up a banana lounge and finally relaxed for 3 nights...my feet really needed it to! They are quite swollen and a little uncomfortable at times. Our hostel was fantastic (facilities wise), although, again as with nearly every other place, the bed was like concrete. What is it about Central America and hard beds??? This hostel was probably worse than others, and I was not getting much sleep and aching all over. (Girls who have had babies will understand that at this stage, I am generally lying on my left side so my left shoulder and hip were killing me!) However, we met a great bunch of people and Jon went out on the town to a few bars so he was happy to have people to go out for a few drinks with.

From Isla Holbox we made it to Tulum which is south of Cancun on the Carribean coast. It also has more Mayan ruins to see only these ones are right on the beach. Having gone through Cancun to get there, we decided not to spend time at Cancun as it doesn´t look that nice. We have asked lots of people we have met along the way and everyone says that its a bit of a dive compared to the places we've been, in that, its a concrete jungle full of high rise apartments and full of American students who are there to party etc. Now whilst, this would normally sound quite appealing to me, in my current state it doesn´t. Amazing what being 6 months pregnant does to ones head! So after finding a place to stay (and finally a lovely soft comfortable bed) we headed straight to the beach, and it was equally as beautiful as Isla Holbox much to my delight. So Jon set off to see the ruins, and I plonked myself under a palm tree (one without coconuts), had a swim and read my book! After 4 lots ruins I am confident that I didn´t miss much ;-). The following day we went on an amazing tour and actually swam with green turtles!!! I was so ecstatic!! They are so graceful in water. One that was about a metre long came up for a breath right next to me! The water was not too deep either and the beach we were at had a large bed of seagrass close to shore. The was the highlight of the trip for me. As we were the only 2 people on the tour we were able to stay longer with the turtles (2 hours). We also swam along the coral reef and saw some colorful tropical fish as well. From there we were taken to a centote on private property which was the best we'd seen. We started at literally a hole in the ground (like all the others) and walked into a huge cave system that saw us exit around 300 mts from our entrance. It was quite spectacular inside as we waded (and sometimes swam) through the tunnel looking at beautiful stalactite formations. In the evening we went to a well known local restaurant where Jon tried cerviche for the first time. It's fish that has been marinated in lemon, fresh tomato and coriander and he loved it.

From Tulum we spent the last night in Puerto Morales a small fishing village very close to Cancun without actually being there so we could catch our flight to LA. Jon had octopus cerviche here and raved about it (I am not allowed to eat raw fish :-( Yet another pristine beach and a snorkeling tour to the reef. This time apart from all of the beautiful tropical fish we also saw 2 eagle rays. Jon also saw another green turtle. So our 2nd half of Mexico was a lot more relaxed for me (and bouncer)!! In fact bouncer was not really thrown about much at all but is certainly moving around every day now.

Some final notes about Mexico....Ever wondered where all of the VW beetles went?? Well they all went to heaven in Mexico. I have never seen so many in years. There´s heaps of em here!

NQR - Mexico is generally good with customer service etc, but mostly not quite right. And its with nearly everything. You walk away from a restaurant or a tourist attraction saying that it was good but.....things could have been so much better. Restaurants especially, they pounce on you virtually if you look sideways at the restaurant, get you in, are attentive....until you actually order something, then you don´t see ém for dust! So if you finish your drink, you just sit there and try your best to get there attention to bring you another. They could make so much more money if they got onto this. For us, it was great as we saved moeny by not purchasing more drinks!

Tattoo´s - everyone has them, especially girls. At the beaches I was the odd one out because I didn´t have a tattoo!
Piercings - all babies seem to have pierced ears. Just something I noticed.
Size - the Mexican people are genrally short (like 5ft) and really quite stocky. I felt like a giant sometimes! It came in very handy (I think Jon mentioned last time) at the carnival when we had to stand behind the crowd to see. HA HA

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Photos

Myan Head Massage
With a horse shoe crab

Wading Flamingos
You should see them run on water as they take off

Holbox
Beautiful sand, beautiful water, bueatiful Holbox