One week in Cancun

We"ve been in Cancun since Wednesday now and feel like it{s probably time to move on...it{s nice here, very touristy in parts so lots of English-speakers to help us out while we get up to speed (on Spanish and the life of a traveller in general - I cannot even get this goddamn keyboard to do an at sign or an apostrophe so bear with me!).It{s very different to being in the van in Canada (starting with the weather, which is about 40 degrees hotter than Canada!!), carrying all our stuff on our back and not having to worry about driving or parking, which is a huge load off our minds!




So far we{ve been acclimatising to Central America, getting tans, I{m working on my Spanish (John is also getting stuck into the basics), and we are working out our route through the rest of Mexico. I am encouraging his efforts to hail taxis and buy drinks while also trying to stop him counting off stocky locals as we pass ("Sleepy, Grumpy, Happy"....and so on and so forth) or referring to a famous Mayan site as "Chicken Itch." He{s got me doing that now though. We will get to the bus stop tomorrow morning and I will ask for two tickets to Chicken Itch. In Espagnol, natch.





On our first day, Thursday, while we were lazing on the beach and sweltering, we heard the dulcet tones of two south England girls, Rashan and Davina, who struck up a conversation with us after a few minutes. They were very sweet and gave us the name and address of their hostel (one street away from our hotel but half the price) as well as providing some nice girly chat for me about the impossiblity of carrying too many pairs of shoes, fending off local would-be suitors etc.! The hostel turned out to be really nice, just off Avenue Tulum, and staying in downtown mean the shops are all runs by and for locals so everything is cheaper than the tourist areas, also everything is in easy reach, like the supermarket. We{ve done some swimming, some sunbathing, sampled Saturday night in Cancun during Spring Break, taken a ferry to Isla Mujeres just off Cancun coast a couple of times, where we hired a scooter to get around, which }i drove! (Did{t think John needed to know til we stopped that I had never driven one before. Nearly took out some fat Americans in a golf cart but they really had it coming, and didn{t hit anything else. A triumph).




Tomorrow we go to Chicken Itch , stay for the night and then head back to Cancun for another night before heading on a little further down the coast of the Yucatan to Playa del Carmen for some beaching, snorkeling and maybe jet-skiing if my knee is up to it. After that is the coastal site of Tulum, clifftop Mayan ruins which are supposed to be really beautiful and on a gorgeous bit of coastline (this travelling is tough!). From there we will probably head to Chetumal on the Mexican border and thence to Belize. We{ll let you know what the long-distance buses are like after we{ve had a go on them in the next few days!

p.s. pics to follow, we´re having a really hard time uploading on crappy bandwidth and bad connections!
em and j