Misol-Ha, Agua Clara, Agua Azul

Water falls n that... The three bottom photos are of Agua Clara. The middle two are of Misol-Ha, leaving the top couple being Agua Azul and Richo eating a mango. Enjoy...

We stayed at a great place near here called El Panchel, which is a hippy commune/ ranch in the middle of the jungle. Despite what you might expect, there were not as many weavin hippies out there, more a genuine laid back type of place.
The accomodation was timber/ flyscreen/ palm leaf cabanas for 12 dollars a night. It was very tranquil but on the third night the wild figs started to fall and crashed into the river, giving us both a shock. We thought they were Drop Bears... We also had a couple of pet geckos as guests.

Next stop Mexico City.

Palenque Ruins

Top Photo - "What do you call this, a ruin for ants!! It needs to be at least... 3 times as big".

The Real Cancun Baby...

So you want to know the real Cancun? Well its like this... The water

is magnificent but you will have to reach it through a construction sight because the entire coast line is owned by giant hotels and resorts, who give their guests wristbands to wear, preventing the unsightly rifraf (aka richo and ebs) from reaching the public beach through their marble lobbies. On the beach there are the beautiful people and not no beautiful people tanning, consuming, consuming, taking paragliding rides, platting hair and wondering how else to spend their money. We were guilty of this and took a 30 min jet ski ride to see the billion dollar sand castles from the water.
Apart from the beach Cancun it quite boring. Its set out like Movie World, but doesnt really draw the crowds appart from Spring Break time. The only shops more numerous than the tacky suvenior shops are the Starbucks.
We decided to stay downtown (a decision made for us by our wallets) which is where all the locals hide and so did we.

Isla Mujeres (the island of women)

A few shots just showing what Isla Mujeres is like. It´s an island just of Cancun, only about 400m wide at some parts and only 8km long. When we there we met up with Kristy again and took it fairly easy. Beaches were awesome, turtle farm was pretty impressive, and Ebs and Richo celebrated their 6 months of travel.

The few days we were there was the week before Ash Wednesday, making it Carnival time on the island. Although we didn´t see any of the g-string clad brazillian babes of Rio, we did see scores of sequened spandex costumes, and Ebs and Richo were invited onto the King and Queen float for a short Samba.... no photographic evidence but can be confirmed by Kristy. The island itself served as a bit of a respite from Cancun, even though it´s only a 15 minute ferry ride from the mainland, there´s nowhere near the amount of hotels and plastic fantastic.

Sailing Playa Del Carmen

Just a quick blog about a funny afternoon in Playa Del Carmen (a beach about an hour south of Cancun). Unlike our guidebook informs us, Playa Del Carmen is not the sleeply little ¨getaway¨from the hectic Cancun. It is infact a mini LA, with more plastic fantastic than you can poke a stick at.

We decided to hire a small hobby catamaran for only an hour, to go for a sail around the bay and have a look at the coast from the water. Upon hiring the vessel, we assured the nervous owner that we were more than qualified to return his boat to him in the amount of time we had paid for.

With the prowess of a Sydney to Hobart skipper we easily managed to make our way down wind and around the 100m jetty jutting out into the sea. At about the half an hour mark we decided we should head back, but realised this would be a bit more difficult with the wind howling from the direction we neaded to head. After about 20 minutes of pulling all the various rudders, sails and ropes, the sail came down.

So we headed to shore, and the blokes walked the 1.5 km back up the beach to a concerned owner, while the girls remained with the beached boat. The first question the owner asked to Chook and Richo¨, in broken english was ¨where have you sunken it¨? We walked back to the boat for him to sail us back after rerigging the sail, and after an hour and a half of floundering in the water, the boat was again beached by the skipper so that us four could wlak back. He tried to navigate it himself one more time, but ended drifting backwards into the marina full of boats, and making the marina master beach the boat again, and we think it was still there the morning after. So it was by no means the fault of the four at sea, simply faulty equipment that impeded our return sail.

Tulum

We reached Tulum, our first stop in Mexico, after spending a bit of quality time in a few smoking hot Belize bus stops. The plan was to check out some ruins, rest on the beach, and if we felt like it\ had the cash\ didn´t shit ourselves and chicken out, maybe do some cavern dives.

We managed to meet up with Chook and Kristy again outside one of the well established strret meet taco stands that run all the way along Tulum´s main street, and decided that the next day we should hire bikes and browse the local sites.

It turned out that no one in town had any bikes left to rent, not to say that we were shattered as we managed to hitch a ride in brand new mercedes 4wd, and arrived at the beach club in style. The beach was pretty much out of a post card, with the only slight imperfection being the ominous storm clouds that rumbled our way. Strange having black sky all around, but somehow remaining in the only patch of blue sky on the coast.

After the beach we decided to have a look at one of the 8 cenotes in the area. A cenote is an opening to an underground water system. The Yucatan Peninsula holds the worlds largest underground river system, with something like 120km of connected underground waterways. We had heard from various travellers along the way that diving these cenotes is the best diving that many of them had ever done. We decided to go and have a snorkel and have a look at one. The one we chose was called Cristal cenote, and was pretty average, however we all saw the black abyss of an opening that the divers went down, and knowing that we were probably going to go diving the following day, wished we hadn´t seen what we were in for.

So after weighing up the fact that we were combining both diving and caving (both dodgy sports on their own), Richo, Ebs, Cook and Kristy set off on two cenote dives. Our crazy divemaster from Prague ensured us that their was no reason to fear death, as what we were doing was not technically cave diving but cavern diving. The distinction being that in cavern diving, a person can dive with only an open water diving license, and at any one time can be no more than 60 m from an air pocket or opening. In addition to still be classified as cavern diving all tunnel should be able to accomodate two divers diving side by side.

Although it sounded a little crazy, and for the first few minutes diving into the first cave (Grand cenote) it was a little crazy, the sights we saw were breathtaking beautiful and really peaceful. The visibility was seriously 2oom, we were told, because with no sediment in the water there was nothing to impede the views. The best way to describe it is that we were in a pitch black cave with limestone stalictites, mites and fossilised coral, but instead of walking around the various caverns were floating through them. We had torches so we could see.

The second dive was called theTtemple of Doom (comforting name) and was reached by a short dash through the jungle with all our dive gear on to find the 7m diameter cenote opening, that we accessed by jumping into from a 3m rock platform (still with all our diving gear on). ON this dive our master took us through a maze of tunnels, again with incredible formations. However in this cenote there was both saltwater and freshwater, with the colder less dense freshwater sitting on the saltwater. This creates what is called a halocline, which is basically what happens with oil and vinegar. From either layer it is difficult to see into the other, and upon passing through it visibility gets impeded making what you see look like an oil painting. The first time we passed through one was a little unnerving as we were relying on our vision so much, and realy really didn´t want to lose sight of the diver in front and get lost.

Both Richo and Ebs thought it was the single best activity we had done and Ebs who says she is a fairly anxious diver, couldn´t believe how peaceful and comfortable the dive was. Kristy and Chook were in the same frame of mind. We have no photographic evidence of these dives, but you can have a look at the cenotes on the internet if you want to see what we are on about.

Caye Caulker - Belize (aka paradise)

We came to Cay Caulker and met up with Chook and Kristy for a night, and then stayed and enjoyed the sun for the next three days whilst they headed down south for a stint at another coastal town. Were worried about the prices to start with (the Belize dollar being fixed at a rate ot 2:1 with the US dollar) but didn´t find it too bad. Managed to get our standard awesome accomodation overlooking the water for not much, (starting to get a little spoiled) however after two solid days of 12 hrs a day travel on 16 different chicken buses to get there, thought we were well deserving of it.

Really took it easy whilst staying here, did limited except laaaay back, read a book, eat fat lobster, cop about 15 hours of sun a day, and cool ourselves in the unbelievably turquoise waters surrounding the island. The diving here was literally three times the price of Utila, and so due to a few monetary issues, and the fact most of the sea life could be seen in about only 5m of water, decided to go on a snorkelling tour instead.

We opted to go on a sailing tour to three different sites around Caye Caulker - The Coral Garden, Shark and Ray Alley, and Hol Chan. The latter of the two sites were within a marine reserve, and had been for the last twenty years, so the amount of fish and coral reflected this. We thought we might have a chance at seeing a few rays, or maybe even a glimpe of a shark - weren´t dissapointed. At the first site we saw the standard fish and coral we had seen at Utila, but on our way back to the boat Ebs stumbled across the second shark she had seen (having seen one before but that had swam off), came over and grabbed Richo, and showed him the shark. After a brief look, we used the excuse that we had to return to the boat to leave quickly, not that we were scared shitless.

The next stop was shark ray alley, and as soon as we arrived our guide threw a bit of fish over the side (which he was not meant to do), and immediately the water next to the boat was full of activity, see the photo. We spent the next 45 minutes being passed by eagle rays, bull rays, sting rays, nurse sharks, tarpin, and schools and schools of various colourful fish. This place was incredible, a definite highlight of the trip.

Hol Chan was the final stop and just as impressive as Shark Ray Alley. It was a little deeper, and we could see the scuba divers from the surface (glad we didn´t fork out the cash to see the same stuff). Saw much of the same marine life as the site before, and Ebs had a field day playing in the bubbles emitted by the scuba divers below. Our guide was a big rasta guy who was constantly giving stick to the other companies doing the same tour at a more expensive rate, funny stuff.