Happy New Year 2008

Stepping off the boat from Isla Mujeres I start chatting to a women who to is going to Cancun airport as well so we thought we would share a taxi together. Tamara was 40 years old going on 20 (must be all that clean air in Colorado as she looked great) A teacher at Boulder university . An extremely interesting woman who had so much to say I ended up sitting in Starbucks at the airport chewing the fat with her over a overpriced chicken sandwich and Java Chip frappuccino. I said goodbye to Tamara and let her get on her way and I headed over to the arrivals t meet my next travelling companion who would travel with me over the Yucatan.
Jodie Jo headed out of the doors of arrivals in to the rain cloud that had just rolled in from the Caribbean ocean. Here she is thinking that she has escaped the rainy weather of the uk and was going to have a sunny holiday around the Yucatan for two weeks. The first stop was a night in the Hotel Zone of Cancun, over priced and over hyped in my opinion. I really can’t see the point in spending so much money in 2 weeks to basically sit on a ‘ok’ beach (seen better in the area) and spend all your time sitting around in a soulless hotel. It reminded me of Vegas and really everything I hate about the western world. It doesn’t even feel like I was in Mexico anymore. It felt like I was back in Miami.

So a day later we were on the boat back to Isla Mujeres to meet up with everyone again. The next few days the weather wasn’t the best so Jodie, Caz and I hired a golf cart and cruised around the island. Once out of the main town the buildings change in to small tin shacks which wouldn’t look out of place in South Africa and then past huge ‘gringo’ modern mansions that lined the bare stretches of beach looking out towards Cuba. The contrast couldn’t be so different.

New Years Eve was upon us so it was party time on Isla Mujeres, so as you can expect i was on my best behavior. Not much to say except it was a wicked time with highlights which include
My coconut thong.
Trying my hand as one of those annoying statues you get in Covent garden. (I didn’t make any money)
Jodie and I Seeing a shooting star on the 1st of Jan 2008.
Caz’s Coconut bra and palm wings.
Annelises Bruce Foresight impression.
Katie and I dancing with a strange old lady in the main plaza.
Jodie making it through a night without passing out.

New Years day was a day full recovery and relaxation, lucky the weather was good enough so we spent the day down the playa sunning our white bits.

Time to say goodbye to the girls as Jodie and I headed off to the other-side of the coast to the capital of the state Merida. Merida it was very different to Cancun, being a colonilal city its very much like a small Mexico City. It wasn’t the most beautiful city but none of the less it was an interesting place to hang out for the next few days.

Around Merida are many pyramids and Maya ruins. We headed out to Uxmal which was an important Mayan city. Located deep in the jungle and with many of the ruins that haven’t been uncovered or resorted yet, it also isn’t such a big tourist destination compared to Chichen Itza.
It was cool spending the day climbing the ruins and overlooking the the jungle canopy which goes on as far as the eyes can see in every direction and with the tops of the pyramids punching there way out of the trees towards the heavens.

During the night Jodie and I went out for food, opposite our hotel there was a fiesta going on to start the week long celebration of the city. Bands and traditional dancing played for hours in the plaza as Mexican families gathered to eat and drink. One of the things on offer were pancakes with nutella and…… cheese, a rather odd combination but somehow the flavours complemented each other. Go on, give it ago.
Second day in Merida was spent looking around the modern art gallery which was ok and shopping, I had to buy a new digital camera as my Samsung had finally given up on me. In 8 months it only had taken 3000+ photos. I guess i did work it hard as it has been lower than sea level, higher than 5000 meters and through jungles and deserts. I now own a Nikon Coolpix 5100 which seems pretty nice. I manage to haggle the price down a 100 pounds as well.
The afternoon we caught the bus to Valladolid, a beautiful town and well worth a look around. The hotel we stayed in was stunning and for 20 per night it was a steal. Set in a old colonial building the rooms and outside surrounded the old court yard and at last we both could get that hot shower that seemed to be alluding us for the past week. Check out the key ring for the room, there is no way I’m loosing this one.

The main reason we stopped off at this town was in the morning we wanted to be one of the first in to the ruins of Chichen Itza. The thing about most of these ruins is if you leave it till middle morning or afternoon all the tour buses roll in from Cancun and Cozmel and they just get so rammed you can’t move. The Maya site its self is one of the biggest ancient cities in Mexico. The main pyramid is a engineering marvel, if you stand in front of it and clap the echo that you hear sounds like a bird squawking. There are a few other interesting buildings in the Chichen Itza. The huge ball park with precision acoustics where if you stand at one end of the pitch you can here peoples conversations at the other end. Yes even the ancient civilizations played a type of handball/football where the goals are big hoops on the side of the walls. The loosing team apparently was sacrificed to the gods, I think lessons would be learn with English football team if they had this type of punishment dished out to them and their chavy wife’s.
After 12am we couldn’t handle the place anymore as the tour groups from Cancun arrived. The ruins were a sea of hawaiian shirt wearing America’s, The Chavy tattooed Brits and Camera wielding Japanese.

A comedy cock moment

Ball Park

We headed back to Valladolid for the evening as we had to catch a bus early in the morning to our next destination. The bus journey was hell, trying to get to sleep on a second class bus when every 10 minutes or so it seemed to go over a speed bump. At 5am we arrived at the small port town of Chequila where in the distance over the sea we could see our next home for the following 3 days.

Isla Holbox is a very small island about 5 miles off the mainland, a 9 mile long sandbank covered in mango swamps on one side and the most fine white sand you will ever see on the overside of the island. The Beach is lined with small hotels, small fishing boats and pelicans that are on patrol around the fishermen waiting for there next meal. In the summer months Flamingos and Whale Sharks grace there presents around the island. This is as close as I have come to paradise on this trip so far, the thing I really loved about it is there are very few tourists as it takes a bit of an effort to get here and your average Cancuner would rather sit on there arse all day. There are no roads on the island and even in the small town it is just tracks made out of sand, most of the houses in the town are small shacks made out of wood and iron. There is still loads of building work going on as they are still recovering from the 2004 Hurricane. Most of the days were spent hanging out on the beach and driving around the island in a golf buggy which Jo nearly crashed in to the shop where we were renting it from. (How can you crash a golf buggy? they only go 8mph HAHA) We did see a disturbing sight on Holbox and that was a man wearing a thong….. I secretly think that Jodie was hoping that I was going to wear one. Its 2008 and men are still wearing thongs, thats so wrong. Other than that sight Holbox was my favourite place during the two weeks of travelling around the Yucatan.

The day later we were back in chavy Cancun eating overpriced sea food and watching loud American Dads sing in a bar much to the amusement of there family and not to the rest of us. The next day a tanned Jodie was heading back to cold wet winter back in Nuneaton, UK and I was heading on to a wet and cloudy Tulum to meet up with Chris. I hope you had a good time Jodie, thanks for the hoodie, I love it :-) I shall see you when I get back ;-) If anyone is thinking they would like a holiday to Mexico and thinking of visiting Cancun my advice is save your money and do what Jodie and I did, Cancun is like Blackpool meets the very bad part of Ibiza. The rest of the Yucatan is well worth a visit.

So then, Tulum, what can I say about this place, its beautiful (I must find another word) how about magnificent, yes that will do. I stopped here to visit the ruins and hang on the beach for a couple of days. They are not the most grand of the Mayan sites in the Yucatan but here its all about location, location, location. The ruins are perched on top a cliff looking out over the ocean with another….. wonderful errrr magnificent beach beside it. The only problem with this beach is that it is full of naked hippies and after a night on the beers the first thing I don’t want to see is a naked man doing yoga on the beach.

The rest of the 3 days there was spent at the hostel as the bad weather rolled in, Rainy days after rainy days, there isn’t much to do in Tulum if you can’t get to the beach so the best thing to do is party at the hostel. Good times had by one and all, a few people worth a mention were the German guys that had bought a car in America and are driving it down to Panama and then back. Ian was an interesting character, a carpenter from Canada who was riding on his push bike around Cuba and Mexico. The last guy worth mentioning was an Alaskan named Chad, a good guy but was a bit of a light weight when it comes to drinking. Bless him, he just couldn’t keep up with the Europeans.

Chris and I had a few more days before we left for Cuba so we thought we would hang out on Isla Mujeres again, yes thats right my third time there and I met back up with Dave the Irish guy, again a few more names to mention just because they made my last time at Poc-na very enjoyable. Toby (UK) Linda (Dutch) Alice (UK) Matthijs (Dutch) & Maurits (Dutch). Cheers guys I will catch up with you when I get back to London.

It was strange to be leaving Mexico after nearly 2 months there on the road, I will be coming back in a few weeks but first i had to travel to my next country and according to President Bush it is the 3rd most dangerous threat to world peace. Communism, beaches, rum and cigars. This place can only be the music capital of the world…. Cuba. I’ll let you know how I get on.

One Response to “Happy New Year 2008”

1. The Black Hole of Alaska | The Random Photographer says:

   October 28, 2009 at 11:04 am

   [...] me cast your mind back to this blog post. The reason I bring this up is because  we were meeting up with my  bunk buddy Chad, who I [...]