First 3 weeks part 2

Well so where was I? Oh yes just heading off to San Cristobal. The drive down there was just a series of twisting and turning mountain roads for mile after mile. I was enjoying driving round them, although I'm not sure my passengers were enjoying it quite as much as me. I only wish I'd had something better to drive than a 1.6 automatic. San Cristbal was a nice old colonial town with cobbled streets, I can't really remember too much about it as we only stayed one night there and headed for Palenque the next day to see our second set of Mayan ruins.

Another eventful drive on the way to Palenque as well. Well the drive itself was pretty straightforward, but about half way through we hit a traffic jam. When it became clear than the traffic wasn't moving at all we got out to see what was going on. Teachers had set up a road block on the only road to Palenque to protest about pay and we were told the road was going to be cloased for four of five hours, so the only thing we could do was sit it out and have a very long lunch break. All the restaurants mush have done fantastic business that day. So we eventually got to Plaenque in the evening and found somewhere to stay. The town of Palenque itself isn't much to write home about, it's basically just there as as a stop off point to visit the ruins. So we just used it as a stop off and visited the ruins and headed up to the costal town of Campeche the next day.

The ruins of Palenque were even more impressive than the ones at Monte Alaban and well worth the visit. To describe them as ruins is not really doing them justice as a lot of the temples have been rebuilt. You get up there and these temples just start appearing from the jungle. They have only excavated and rebuilt part of the site, and that was large. So it must have been even more impressive still when it was first built. It's to hard to describe the site to do it justice so you will have to wait until I get around to uploading the photos.

So from Palenque we headed up to the coast to Campeche, which is on the Gulf of Mexico. This is were our stops from the army started! All around the south of Mexico there are army checkpoints, or I should say heavily armed checkpoints. But they were all very plesant and just wanted to know where we came from, while searching our car and armed with automatic weapons. At one checkpoint we were asked if we had any guns and we all just laughed. I also saw one of the army guy whip one of the others with a metal rd jokingly. I personally would never do that to a guy with a gun in his hand, even if I did know him!

Campeche was another nice old colonial town with cobbled streets, the only problem was even though it was on the coast it had no beach. I was struggling to think of what else to say about Campeche, but then I just remembered our visit to the purgatory club were Emmanuel found himself a local male admirer. He thought that the way to get rid of him would be to give him a beer! Well I'm sure you all realise that that didn't work! Emmanuel wanted to leave after the first drink, but as the rest of us found it very funny we stayed for 3 or 4. They bar did eventually gently push him out of the bar much to Emmanuel's relief. Oh yes just before I move on I can't miss out the showers I. Our hostel, there was a large hole in the wall between the two mens showers. Very disconcerting turning round and seeing another mans arse. It wouldn't have been so bad if they had been unisex!

So after Campeche we headed of east to Merida, yes you've guessed it, another colonial town with cobbled streets. We all really liked Merida, as I said in my previous post everyone was really friendly in Mexico, but it was even more so here. This was the heard of Mayan Mexico and they were very keen to make us feel welcome and share their culture and show us their craftsmanship. Plus the hostel had a nice pool with hammocks hanging over it.

So after Merida we headed of to Cancun via some of the best but very touristy Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza. The guide book said that they are very touristic but look past the hordes of crowdes and they are worth it. The entrace to them felt more like the entrance to Disney world, but they were right, definitely worth it. Again pictures to follow.

So we chose the hotel district to stay in in Cancun rather than the old town as this is where all the beaches are. Cancun is known as Mexico's Ibiza, so I e
Wasn't arriving with high hopes. The only hostel in the area was in an old shopping centre, which was quite cool. But that's about all that I'll say good about it. There was no sign of beaches as all the hotels had built infront of them and this allowed very few access points to the beach. So we headed the next day down to Playa del Carmen were we knew we were going to spend a few days as we were planning on diving there. Oh one more thing about Cancun, I have never been to Ibiza, and probably never will, but if it is like Ibiza then Ibiza has a lot less clubs and night life tha
I thought.

Anyway I'm just going to finish off my time in Mexico and leave Belize to another post as I'm getting iPhone RSI again. Playa Del Carmen was a lot more built up than I was expecting. There were all the posh shops you would expect in a westernised city, and multiple Starbucks! But there were nice beaches and very good diving. I had my first experience of fresh water diving when James and myself went diving in the cenotes. Cenotes is cave diving, I thought it might feel a bit claustrophobic, diving when I couldn't just surface when I needed to, but I didn't have any issues with that. Unfortunately it was too dark down there to take photos, so I have none to share. We also did some reef diving, where got some very good photos of turtles, which I will share, and saw my first sea horse. I was staring at it for quite a while before I actually saw it, they are very good at camouflage. As I said tired fingers so I'll start part 3 later with Belize