Hotel Del Gobernador Merida

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When we got back to the hotel, my bed broke so I had to sleep on a tilt all night. I had to give one of the girls a sleeping tablet just so she could get through the trauma of the hotel room.

The next day we headed to Chitchen Itza, "the Disneyland of Mexico' as Diego described it - the first time he has said anything sensible all tour. It is an amazing Mayan site (more ruins!) but lacking in any of the atmosphere we have seen at other places, as it is overrun with ...

... which was nice. Found the place and luckily the Engineer spoke better English than me as my vocab doesn´t stretch as far as electronics and other technical stuff. He had a look and said there was sand in the battery compartment, which had caused the internal problems and let water in, causing the battery clip to corrode. Yet despite it clearly being caused by my misuse, he said he would fix it on Warranty. Unfortunately this would take 2 months as they had to ship in ...

... against going near large public gatherings, shaking hands, kissing, etc, etc. We are pretty lucky that we are in a house right now, instead of a hostel with people coming and going from all areas of the country. There isn't much point moving anywhere right now, as most things are closed so we cant see anything, I don't like the idea of getting on a bus, etc, so we have decided to stay put here until things have at least calmed down a bit. 28th April World Health ...

... only for the events that make them memorable but also for the location and moment where the event was witnessed. So it was with the inauguration of Barak Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America.

We shall always remember that on this day, at this historic moment, we were in Merida, Yucatan.

Since we were not in Washington, DC, the best we could hope for was to see the event on television. The question was where to go ...

... different things here in Merida and Yucatan state at large. The first weekend I went to nearby Izamal to see the ruinas there and also the monastery (built right on top one of the Maya pyramids, a common way the church communicated its worldly power over the Maya traditions, I saw the same thing in Athens with the site of Plato´s Academy). This weekend I saw more ruinas, those of Dzibilchaltun and those of Chichen Itza. The former site was very nice ...

... the churches there is usually a block-wide park surrounded by administrative buildings. In a large city like Merida, churches and squares seem to exist every few blocks. These town squares are perfect for the daily festivals Merida is famous for. We´ve found the festivals are most lively Saturday and Sundays. The main streets around the squares are blocked off and dozens of restaurants set up tables and chairs for dinners or drinks ...

Flying into Mexico City, hang on I've just realised I could not have actually flown into a city, if I had I would either be the first person ever to fly independent of any mechanism or machine or I would have very large bruises because clearly if you fly into a city this big it's going to hurt. So I'll begin again Looking out of the aeroplane window at the vast expanse of Mexico City. (It lacks poetry doesn't it) I was conscious on only one thing ...

... alike blond kids stepped in regular 18 month age gaps. The women and girls were spookily reserved in their long cotton floral frocks (Exactly Little House on the Prairie)and the men and boys looked other-worldly in their denim dungarees and checked shirts (various sizes of shirt but same check and colour for siblings. Lamanai was interesting but the tour was too short. We actually prefer visiting independently but sometimes its more economical to take a tour as ...

... checking our bags in on our flight to LA (it was 10.30am, our flight wasn't till 7.40pm). We headed into the Zocala and again did one of the LP walking tours. Mexico City was great! We started at the Zocala (a massive plaza with amazing buildings around the edges) where something was going on with lots of red, white and green tinsel and the flag of Mexico on one of th buildings. We don't know what was being celebrated, but I will have to find ...

Hola from Mexico, My final flight for a while, went better than expected. I left San Francisco at 3am, the boys I´d been out with the night before were just getting in!!! My flight to Dallas went probably to quickly for me, I can´t even remember taking off. The other flight left two hours later to Mexico City. This was interesting as we flew though a thunder storm. Just after first class were served their drinks we hit an air pocket and drinks went everywhere, also lighting coming to ...