Hotel Nachancan Chetumal

Hi All. It is a really sad feeling as i am in the border town of Chetumal and about to leave Mexico tomorrow after nearly 3 weeks of fun in the sun.

My last night in the islands was, like the others, a night to party on the beach to the wee hours with the gang of lovely people that i have met there. I was a bit tipsy when i got back to the hostel and danced my ass off to the point where i got a free drink for being ...

... excavated. In fact, the area is so enormous that they don't have the manpower to even come close to excavating this most beautiful of the classic Mayan city-states. On numerous occasions our guide would pick up broken pottery on the ground that belonged to the ancient Maya. It's all over the place. Helen and I couldn't imagine that ever happening in the United States. Archaeologists would have it roped off for miles. Only 5% of the total Palanque area has been excavated.

... found a gas station but found a mechanic who sold him 5 gallons of gas and we followed him to the guys' workshop. In front of the garage, a gang of turkeys would gobble at us everytime they heard the motorcycle engine so the three of us was creating a crazed group of turkeys.  What a strange bird, I had never seen these birds for real before - so weird - but we bought another five gallons of gas and headed to the next gas ...

... I have to buy a bus ticket at the border that I never use, so be it. WHATEVER. I am really ready for a change in cuisine for sure. I love Mexican food but not 6 months of it. No running down to the Vietnamese restaurant here for a little pho. I will admit that I when I was in Tulum two days ago (fabulous beaches by the way) and anxious to escape the broadening influence of Cancun, I went to a pretty expensive Thai restaurant on the beach ...

Enjoying so much my time in Tulum, and realising that the longer I would stay there the more difficult it would be to leave, so I made the most of a really auwful looking sky (very dark, very big, and very fast!) on a Saturday morning to pack all my stuff and leave Tulum. Took a bus in the pueblo of Tulum to go to Chetumal...where unfortunately the weather was as bad as it seemed to have become in Tulum. So I went to a cyber cafe and met this nice French couple, who I happend to ...

... of a shark, and then more and more. At one stage I was diving around about 10 - 12 black-tip reef sharks, it was amazing! The other two dives were really cool as well; we got to see a lot of different marine life as well as amazing corals. We also did a couple of swim through's which were pretty awesome! That night we were pretty shattered so didn't have a late one. The next day we carried on with our travels, going south to the Garifuna town of ...

... with a bottle of wine and waited for the onslaught. We were not disappointed and at 6:00pm we began to hear the familiar 'rain' on the van. We shone a flashlight outside and were amazed; there must have been at least a million of them flying around. Within the hour though, the mayflies were all gone and we were free to open our windows and enjoy the cool breeze. We sipped on wine, chilled out and stayed up until 9:00pm....well past our ...

... we had even less of an opinion of it. Don't bother spending any time there. All things considering, we got to Orange Walk ok. There were some really cute kids that sat with Jeremy and I on the bus. We took some funny pictures with them. Not much in Orange Walk, just came here to do the Lamanai Ruins tomorrow. We went up to Corozal to check it out later on in the day and there is even less up there. The plan is to see the ruins and get out as fast as possible.

... writing letters and calling poultry distributors to ask for donations of "chickens." Barbeques are very popular here for lunch on Fridays and Saturdays, and a lot of groups put them on as fundraisers. Chicken is the most expensive part, hence my interesting work of late. Not something I thought I'd be doing in Belize, but it's an experience! And at the YWCA, the swimming fundraiser/water safety education event I'm organizing is kind of, sort of taking off. A lot of ...

... realized I sounded like all the tourists I despised in Cancun. I just wanted to hole myself in the room and not leave until morning when I'd head out to Belize. I wasn't dealing and tolerating the challenges thrown at me. I thought the whole adventure was about not having structure and just going with the flow. Yucatan? You can too! Eventually I headed off because I got hungry and was hoping something good could come out of Chetumal.