Don Diego De La Playa Tulum

haha!
only gone and bloody done it! made it to a beautiful beach of fine white sand and a wonderful turquoise carribean sea.
Not without its headaches of course! flight was a nightmare - perhaps to do with the 4 pints with neil in the airport before we left...
fulfilled a little dream to fly into mexico city and witness the sheer size and vast amount of smog that encompasses it, after that on to Cancun....
if you ...

... From the bus station, we took a taxi out of town and towards the beach and our hostel. On the way the taxi driver told us the locations of several upcoming salsa parties and said he would gladly drive us back if we needed a ride at 3am. We politely thanked him for the offer and declined. Meanwhile, as we drove, we rounded a corner and got our first view of the Mexican Carribean Coast, and OH was it beautiful. The water is ...

We spent almost 6 weeks down at our houses in the Yucatan penninsula near Tulum. Friends from Berkeley, Cleveland, Sab Francisco, Germany and relatives dropped in and spent time with us. We were able to go on a week road trip where we visited Hobox Island and the ruins at Palenque. Our favorite activity was to get up each morning and kayak out onto the lagoon where we would walk the flats fishing for bonefish. We have decided we need to spend more time in Mexico in the future.

... guard walked us down the street, then down another side street, to a prison-like building. We were far from impressed at being segregated from the main hostel, including internet, breakfast, kitchen, drinking water and people. The room had stains on the walls and the mattress and the sheets were dingy and stained. It rained during the night and the water poured into the room, out of the ceiling fan! Tom ...

... made it all better! Was a really stunning place, hopefully our pictures can give it some sort of justice. Last port of call for that day was a Mezcal making factory. Mezcal is the Mexican tipple, coming from the Agave plant, and has many flavours. It was great, imagine us...free bar with some deathly strong spirits! So, after coming home, we went out and watched the fireworks display in the Zocalo (main square), which was pretty cool. The next day we both nursed some more diarrhoea ...

... two weeks. Lucky I did because several large transactions had been carried out on the card in the proceeding hour, none of my doing. Apparently it should be fine seeing as I reported it stolen and have a police report of the incident. On reflection, I'm very impressed with how we responded to the realisation that we'd had stuff stolen. I saw it as an inconvenience as opposed to a major problem. Now we're in Mexico, with a ...

... to get back to the resort safe and sound. Finally back we went to lounge for a decompression drink and then got ready for dinner in the Italian restaurant. Many guests did not like the restaurant because it was not pasta based but we had a delicious dinner, a glass of wine and again exceptional service. A drink out in the plaza (we finally figured out how to get a blueberry tea) and then it was off to bed. Boy we must sound old!

If anyone is still bothering to check my blog I`ll apologise as it`s a mess of random bits! It`s just neigh on impossible to make yourself sit down and do it when this wonderful place beckons....plus, I've discovered skype and that usually takes over whenever I do actually get to a computer for more than 10 minutes...as you all know how addicted I am to the phone!! I just know that I`ll be writing up the blog and uploading pics over Christmas ...

... take a picture from this temple. It reminded me of "Lemmings" if there wouldn't have been a rope to stop people of getting to close to the cliff. So actually we didn't really enjoyed the ruins. But back at Papaya Cabanas we met the frenchmen (Francois) and the canadian girl (Brandy) again and accompanied them to Tulum town because francois didnt want to stay another day on the beach. After we arrived at his guesthouse ...

... I thought it was very nice that I was told about a two night credit being applied to my bill. I had confirmed this again at check-in. Today there was no sign of it. So we mentioned this and got the credit applied after all. So not a big problem, it was resolved, but still worth mentioning. We did have a balance of around $100 and I picked up the credit card voucher, and take out two $50 USD travelers checks to pay with. These are the ...