Duuuude! Spring Breeaaaak! Mecthicoooo!

I woke up on the morning of my birthday, just as the bus was pulling up in Tulum, to find my head nestled against the shoulder of the Mexican man sitting next to me. He greeted me with ‘¡Hola, Buenos Dias!’ looking quite pleased with himself. Embarrassing Times. After getting a basic little cabaña on the beach, I went to use the internet in town and after less than 5 minutes Laura just happened to pop in. Fortuitous! She gave me the best card EVER, full of magazine cut-outs, drawings and ridiculous travel memories, from llamas spitting to Tom hitch hiking. Back at our cabañita, we raced seawards and after a little while it began to rain and it felt like hailstones but that did not deter us from our swim.

Of course, no birthday would be complete without presents, and my trusty travel companion did not disappoint. She filled the room with panda balloons and glowsticks, then presented me with a big bottle of Belizean rum appropriately called ‘Barrel,’ a diamante studded sequined purple and gold sombrero which (before I opened it) she made me promise to wear on the plane home to meet my parents after 5 months, and the piece de la resistance, a teenage mutant ninja turtle PIÑATA. Some guy working at the hotel saw me attacking it viciously with my hairbrush so he dutifully went to fetch a wooden rod (which he probably wrenched off the building somewhere) but by the time he returned, the damage was already done. If the brush can get through my matted curls it can get through a papier maché turtle. But all I found inside the beloved piñata was a shred of newspaper because Laura didn’t realize she had to fill it with sweets herself! This just made the whole situation even funnier, and somehow quintessentially Mexican, and we collapsed in a fit of hysterics.

Since our cabin was an overpriced hovel, Laura then had the bright idea of walking along the beach and checking out all the other hotels while rewarding ourselves with a cocktail in each hotel bar. However many of the places we went into (barefoot, sandy and sweaty) only had rooms up from $200 per person per night…we dreaded to think how much a drink would cost. We traversed the infamous nudist beach, totally deserted, and encountered many sharp rocks, then the beach became unpassable so we trekked descalzas along the road – many taxis stopped but we were determined not to give up, even when tempted with the offer of a free ride (gratis…only the price of a kiss…maybe not!) In the end we opted for the hotel right next to ours which had the same type of cabañas for less than half the price. Around here we found a beach bar with SWINGS on which to sup our piña coladas. Unfortunately our drinking was put to a dramatic halt over dinner when I inexplicably fainted into the cheesy mushroom stew. Probably due to dehydration, stomach cramps and birthday excitement, as diagnosed by Dr Fitz. An early night it was, lying next to the sorry remains of my flaccid piñata.

Having spent 2 entire days doing NOTHING in Tulúm, we decided it would be sensible to cram all of the sights into the day we were leaving. I visited the ruins in the morning, which are scenically perched atop a cliff, just metres from the sea… and are literally swarming with Cancún cruise shippers and day trippers, wandering the ancient Mayan temples in the cursory thong bikini and speedos. The afternoon saw something a little more exciting… cenote diving!! Cenotes are underground freshwater cave systems, carved into the limestone rock, and found all across the Yucatán peninsula. We did 2 dives in a system called Cenote Dos Ojos (two eyes)… and it was freaky!! You turn up to the dive site in a TRUCK, not a boat, put on your gear and WALK down steps to the huge pool in the cave´s mouth… the dives themselves took us through stalactites and stalacmites, past see through blind fish and shrimps (who are endemic and apparently eat fruit…), into a tunnel with no natural light (where we turned off our torches and floated in the pitch black for a while, with just the sound of our bubbles… weird), and we surfaced for a while in ´Bat Cave’ and contemplated the existence of the blind fish… why do they have eyes?

That evening we waved goodbye to our rustic cabaña and boarded a bus to Playa del Carmen, 1h north… not dissimilar to Transport for London – standing room only! On our various bus journeys around the country, we have discovered that there are worse films than 'straight to TV movies'...there are straight to Mexican second class night bus movies. Things like 'Blade Slasher VII' or my personal favourite, one that started out like a typical gangster movie then inexplicably morphed into a cheerleading film, genre blending all the way, and one of the cheerleaders is an offensive Mexican stereotype, swearing in Spanish the whole time, and pretending to give birth on a bus headed to the Mexican border while crying 'Dios mio, Dios mio, please stop the bus, I don't want to have my baby in Mexico!' Would Mexicans actually find this amusing??

Back to Playa del C...once a quiet fishing village, it is now, like Cancun, a bit of a cultural wasteland, but serves as a jumping off point for dive trips to surrounding islands. We arrived to find ourselves lost in a sea of bethonged fake tanned Eurotrash couples (the men sporting painfully tight bananahammocks) and slack-jawed Americans with offensive T shirts who seem to be in Spring Break mode year round (‘We’re in MEKTHICO! We can do WHATEVER WE WANT!! WOOO!!’) Our hostel was easy enough to locate, being directly opposite to a whopping great Walmart. Other places of interest are…a shop selling T shirts reading such tasteful slogans as ‘I heart to Fart’ and ‘It’s not a beer belly, it’s a SEX MACHINE’ or ones with pictures of drunk Chihuahuas with diarrhea, Señor Froga (Spring Break, MTV, semi-clad table-top dancing…), plenty of fast food joints and our 2 favourite restaurants: a cheap and cheerful (by Playa standards) pizza place, and the lovely ‘100% Natural’ which has about 30 different kinds of smoothie.

The plan was to get in and get out of Playa as fast as possible, but the news of Hurricane Dean spread like wildfire, and with it a panic-stricken mass of resort-dwelling tourists fleeing the place. We could tell the fear had reached fever pitch when, in an internet café, we looked around us and realized everyone in there was checking the same hurricane map obsessively, and we heard one American say to his friend ‘Duuuhude, Jamaica’s gonna get MASHHED!’ As a result, we found that the queues at the bus terminal spread out into the street and we couldn’t get out of Playa for another 2 days. We did what any sensible girls would do and spent almost the whole time shopping.

A pleasant 19 hr bus ride later, we arrived in San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico’s poorest region, Chiapas. This is much more like the rest of Central America, with a higher indigenous population, quite the contrast to the Yucatan Peninsula. It was a charming revolutionary town, full of pretty colonial architecture, churches and colourful markets…a little bit like Antigua but with more of a distinct personality. On our first day we went to a museum/hotel were they held an exhibition about the indigenous tribes of the Lacandon jungle, really interesting – accounts of the findings of an elderly American couple who’d been there back in the day, complete with black and white photographs, tools and ceramics used by the tribes, and their traditional dress. Sadly the jungle is being increasingly diminished by slash-and-burn farmers, which is putting the indigenous people’s way of life at peril, and very little is being done about it (why would the government care when the tribes are self sufficient therefore do not put money into the economy?)

The next day we took a trip to the outlying pueblo of Chamula to see what came to be known (by us) as Chicken Church. It was an eery and fascinating experience, walking across the grass-covered floors among rows of candles, past terrifying statues of saints, to the steady chant of locals sitting around wringing chickens’ necks as sacrifices. They also sprinkled refrescos (coke mainly) and alcohol into the candle flames for positive energy flow – they used to use sugar cane juice but this is now less readily available. On our return to San Cristobal, we visited the Mayan Medicine Museum where we saw a video of an interview with a Mayan midwife, wandered round the herb garden and amused ourselves with the remedies for sale in the pharmacy – such things as cures for obesity and baldness, and a curious ‘anti-contraceptive’ pill (pro-life? pro-choice? what?!)

From there we went to a museum/café (are there any museums that are just museums?) called Café Museo Café where we took coffee and cake before finding out the hows and whys of the coffee bean. There were some harrowing tales of pregnant and breastfeeding women who had to work longer and harder than the men on the plantations because they had to get up earlier to cook breakfast for their husbands, and as they were not paid hourly but by how much they got done, they obviously had to work more hours in the sweltering heat because the babies slowed them down. To round off our socially aware day we went to see a 2 hr documentary on the Zapatista movement, 1994 to present day, and I was ashamed at how little I actually knew about something major that occurred well within my lifetime. The film was very well put together, with some shockingly close-up footage of dead victims, soldiers attacking indigenous villages and arguing with the cameraman. Not quite in the right frame of mind for going out after this, nonetheless we had free drink tokens so went to this bar that was practically empty with awful orange sofas, only to discover that the ‘FREE COCKTAILS!’ were 1 shot each of sugary 15% alcohol beverage (if it was even alcohol). So we bought more, but felt compelled to drink them quickly and get out of there as we were immediately ambushed by all 4 barmen when we sat down, who had nothing to say to us except ‘eres guapa.’

The next day Laura took a day trip to Palenque while I went to see Cañon del Sumidero which we sped through on a boat, past crocodiles, pelicans and waterfalls, then on to a non-descript village which had some views of the river. I had a bit of an unnecessarily stressful afternoon, getting lost, slipping in a puddle on the road, crying in public, not having enough money for the kind taxi driver, almost missing my bus to Merida…I was an emotional wreck. But it was all OK because I arrived at a very nice hostel in Merida and met Laura (she’s my rock). Laura's bus journey was equally sleepless, involving 3 stops to get out and remove fallen trees from the road. Hurricane Dean had hit land. Naturally after our respectively bad journeys we wanted nothing but the sweet surrender of sleep in our dorm bunks, but instead we went to see some art. First up was the modern art museum where we saw an exhibition full of colourful, imaginative paintings ostensibly of the natural world (butterflies, fish, etc.) but on closer inspection the background was full of sexual embraces. Next up was the popular art museum, which we practically had to SWIM to through puddles in the pouring rain, but it was so worth it. Where else would you see a room full of papier maché mythical beasts (reminding me of the poor piñata) or 2 stone leopards facing identical toilets? We gamboled about like children, with the place all to ourselves, pulling stupid faces and poses next to the beasts, until the owner came along and asked us what we were doing. It was a nice day.

Since Mérida’s famous evening cultural events (open air theatre performances… concerts… dances) were on hold for the rest of the month, due to building renovations, we cut our stay short and travelled onwards to Chichén Itzá, another large set of Mayan ruins, where we took an informative guided tour, mainly focusing on the fact for the ancient Mayans, football was a sacred ritual, the outcome of the games interpreted by priests and indicating the fortunes of the coming year, and we resented the fact that it was recently voted one of the new wonders of the world – this meant they’d closed the big pyramid, and you can no longer climb up it or go inside it. After a mere couple of hours we left the ruins (with more photos of the iguanas than the stones…) and bussed to Valladolid.

Here we decided to rent bikes and cycle to the nearby Cenote Dzitnup, about 40 minutes there and back, so that we could see the lay of the land. Unfortunately I was wearing my pretty new sandals (pretty = flimsy as hell), having broken, lost or soiled all my other footwear, and sure enough, they too were destroyed. This incident occurred when Laura was ahead of me and I had just skimmed through a filthy big puddle, spattering my WHITE top with mud, and sort of crashed into a bush because this picturesque little country lane wound its way through a thicket. I cried out in dismay, and a Mexican kid who was cycling on the road heard my cry and came to my rescue. He offered to take me to the cenote on the back of his bike but I didn’t want to lose face (or what was left of face) so I carried on shoeless. The cenote itself was (possibly) worth the ride, as we got to swim in it with all the fish, grab onto the stalactites, stand on the rope and watch the bats flitting above our heads. I managed to purchase a pair of flip flops on the way back into town that subsequently tore my feet to shreds (karma I guess – I had torn up so many shoes).

We set off early the next morning for a town called Tizimín, whence we boarded a bus for Chiquilá, a coastal town with a ferry service to our final destination: Isla Holbox! This is a tiny sandy island off the northern Yucatán, famous for the whale sharks that congregate there in unheard of numbers every year between May and September. We travelled with Sarah, a friendly Canadian, and chose the island’s only budget accommodation… a campsite with hammocks in palapas (thatched shelters with only mosquito netting for walls) over the sand. We would regret this in the morning, when we awoke bitten to DEATH by sand flies and mosquitoes, despite sleeping in jeans, jumpers, scarves and socks (in the blistering heat), thinking they’d never bite through. This was of little significance however as we set off early on a boat trip… to SNORKEL WITH THE WHALE SHARKS!!!! Ridiculously excited, I had bought myself an underwater camera for the occasion (will have to wait til I get home to see if the pics come out…), and it was after about an hour’s boat ride that we saw the first fins sticking up above the water. Whalesharks are the world’s largest fish, known as ´gentle giants´ since despite their enormous size (babies are about 6m long, adults can grow up to 13m!), they have no teeth and feed solely on plankton. They have a protective coating on their skin which, if brushed off by poking humans can lead to their death… they have no defense against disease causing bacteria. Only two snorkellers were allowed in the water at a time, and the time you spent with the whaleshark depended on how fast you could swim… even with fins it left most of us breathless after just 30 seconds, spluttering and panting behind the whalesharks, which glided effortlessly fast through the water, swishing their graceful tails. We got to jump in with then quite a few times, and I swam with one baby for a good 5 minutes, which was unforgettable. It would come up to the surface and open its huge mouth, all the while watching me with the eye on the side of its head. The visibility can’t have been more than 5m (I think the hurricane, which by the way had decreased to a category 3 tropical storm by the time it hit land, had churned up lots of silt – but thankfully it hadn’t scared the whalesharks off!), but standing on the boat you could see about 10 whalesharks in any given direction, sometimes coming right up to and even passing beneath the boat. One of them was clearly too boat friendly, and its dorsal fin was frilly, having been cut by a propeller. Other highlights of the trip included watching 3 to 4m wide manta rays jumping above the surface, and a bunch of dolphins that followed our boat for a while. After an utterly incredible morning we headed back to Holbox, elated and smiling, and spent the rest of the afternoon back on the mainland on a series of buses (standing room only), talking about our amazing morning, and debating whether whalesharks looked more like leopards or spaceships, all the way to… Playa del Carmen!!, where we felt at home once again amongst the permatanned speedo and sombrero wearing hordes, and ate dinner in our standard pizza stall, surprise surprise.

Breakfast was at 100% Natural (naturally), and bikini shopping filled a few more hours before the ferry to Cozumel. Pon arrival in Cozumel we were horrified to discover that it is one of the world’s top cruise ship destinations, filled with substandard mariachi bands, Tshirt shops and establishments such as ‘Tequilaville’ and Señor Frog´s. This also meant a lack of budget accommodation, and we checked into a positively luxurious $35US a night HOTEL (no S!) room, complete with AIR CONDITIONING, FRIDGE, 4 MIRRORS, PRIVATE BATHROOM with TOWELS and a HOT WATER SHOWER... and a TV!!! Given the limited tasteful nightlife options, most evenings in Cozumel were spent languishing in our double beds (one each!), infront of Friends, MTV and real life survival thrillers on the discovery channel. What – we haven’t watched TV since Trinidad, Bolivia!!

The reason for visiting Cozumel was diving… it is a world renowned diving destination, and certainly didn’t disappoint. Laura made 11 dives in 4 days, and Rebecca 5 (sinus issues forced her to stop on the 3^rd day), including some spectacular night dives (octopi! Snake eels!), a famous swim through cave called the Devil’s Throat (pitch black tunnel!!), a handful of nurse sharks, countless turtles, a freaky little thing called a Splendid Toadfish (endemic to Cozumel), a really fun wreck of a Mexican Navy ship, where the bathrooms are still in tact and you can pose for stupid ´don’t pee in the wetsuit’ photos on the toilets, and much more. The best dives however were on our last day there… a mountainous Texan with man boobs (referred to by our Mexican DM as a ´great white tourist’) and a need to brag to his friends requested to go on a deep dive, and minutes before we got in the water the divemaster agreed to let me join them!! We went to a spectacular drop off wall called Maracaibo, and made our descent…. To SIXTY METRES!!! Ok my computer read 61.6m, but that’s splitting hairs… I got a bit narked and had really tingly fingers, but apart from that it was unremarkable. There’s not much point going to 200ft (by the way just for comparison, the PADI ‘deep dive’ in the Advanced course takes you all the way down to 30m/100ft…) as you can’t spend that long down there, and most of the marine life is miles above you anyway. The second dive however was incredible… just like a nature film… we watched a nurse shark eating a fish it was pulling out of a hole in the coral, it was thrashing around, and then suddenly a 3m green moray comes up and joins the fray and tries to get the fish from the shark’s mouth!! The shark held onto the fish but swam off, and the moray stayed around baring its teeth for my camera, surrounded by dozens of enormous grouper (mmm) who came to see what all the fuss was. Spectacular!

We are writing this update from where else but Playa del Carmen, where we find ourselves for the THIRD time (how? Why?), but sadly the last time (much as we maligned it to begin with, it has now become a home away from home), for tomorrow we are flying to……… HAVANA!!! Until next time xx