Things are a little different than they ...

Things are a little different than they were a week ago. Now I´m going around in shorts and a t-shirt rather than looking around and seeing snow. Now most people are speaking Spanish not English and I´m back to moving every day or two to a new place to stay rather than having a fixed place to return to each night.

Tulum

So once again I´m on the move again, currently in Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula for a couple of weeks. No fixed plans of where I´ll be from day to day, and no rush to get anywhere. I can just take my time and see what I want to and in whatever order I want to.

So far it´s been a case of arrive into Cancun late at night and find a place to stay - I´d been travelling all day and so all I wanted to do is find a place to sleep. The next day though was a time to try to figure out what I´m going to do now that I´m here. There are places that I want to see, but no set way of getting there or tight timeframe to see it within, and I´ve very happy about that. Mexico is an interesting place to get to, but it´s not the same as at home which makes things a lot more drawn out when you want to do the simple things. Finding a place to stay, ordering food, getting money and finding transport, is always that bit harder in a new place and it becomes even more so when you don´t speak the language of the place you are in. But somehow or other it all seems to fall into place and you get where you want to, although not always the way you originally imagined.

Backpacking in Mexico means revising the luxury standards again. After the luxury of Canada and the US, it´s now more like is there running water and electricity. And if there is, that´s great. If there´s purified drinking water, temperature controllable, 24 hour running hot water, then that is bliss. And if there is a toilet that is great too, but if that toilet has a seat even better. And best of all if there is toilet paper it´s amazing (and if you can flush it rather than putting it in a bin you´ve hit the jackpot). So yes, things aren´t like what I´m used to, but it´s pretty much what I was expecting for here. Getting back to basics is what travel in a country like this is like.

Cancun was not the type of place I was looking to spend much time in. Driving along the Zona Hotelera the first night getting to downtown was like seeing a part of the USA ripped up and desposited on the coast in Mexico. Lots of big expensive hotels, surrounded by American chain restaurants. So basically you can get to Mexico on your holiday and not see anything that you wouldn´t have seen at home. I tend to like my beach to be actual beach rather than literally the back yard of some huge hotel, and consequently covered with beach chairs. I guess it´s not a bad place to find you feet as there´s lots of people around who speak English and can direct you to the banks etc and give you some tips on what else is out there. A light introduction to life in Mexico, but not a place to see the real country as it´s become very much a tourist haven.

The hostel I stayed in gave me some introductions to other travellers and the usual list of hints and swapping of stories. A few of us decided to go visit the playa (beach) and sat there for a while talking and exchanging stories of home and travel. First time many of them have spent a Christmas Eve on the beach, although not that uncommon for us from Australia. The beach certainly has some beautiful colours in the water, but the sand is very coarse coral and so you end up having it sticking to you for hours. You can take the person from the beach but you can´t take the beach from the person.

So after a day of finding my feet in Cancun, it was off down the coast to Tulum. This actually was Christmas day here, which for me ended up being a very quiet day which was what I was hoping for and which I really enjoyed. I found a cabana (wood branch walls and thatched roof, with sand floors and candle lighting) by the beach, with hammock and spent the day there exploring the beach and the ruins situated just next door. The Mayan ruins here are very different from many of the other ruins in that they are set right on the coast and surrounded by a wall while many others are in the forest. The building construction and the carving detail is very impressive, and would be even more so without the effects of passing time diminishing the detail we can see.