Yuca-Tan...

We decided that we wanted to make it up to the beaches in Yucatan for New Years and therefor caught a monster of a busride, over the mountains and through the rainforests for 40 hours. At one point we had to stop and wait for more buses, as the Mexican drug cartels had been holding up the buses, and apparantly travelling in convoy is safer, allthough I think a bunch of machinegun gangsters would just rub their hands at the thought of hitting the jackpot and robbing three buses at once. Finally we got to Playa del Carmen unharmed, managed to find a hostel which wasn't fully booked, then decided to make the most of the day and go snorkelling with turtles at a nearby beach.

That night my luck kind of turned for the worse, so far I haven't really had any troubles, but after a big night out I got a taxi back to the hostel to get more money and when I got back in to head back to the club, he drove me for a while, and then locked the doors and told me to hand over all my money. I didn't want to get into an argument in his cab, so handed over the money then he unlocked the doors and pushed me out. I was so annoyed and looked for a stone to throw at his car as he drove off, but couldn't find one in time, so then I stood in the middle of the road with two rocks, holding up every taxi, hoping the same driver would come back and I could at least get some revenge by smashing a window and running. Police must have got wind of this crazy gringo stopping traffic with stones in his hands as soon I heard the sirens, dumped my rocks and saw a group of policemen running towards me. They tackled me to the ground, and started handcuffing me, but when I told them my story and that I wasn't American, they became a lot nicer, asked me where I was staying and gave me a lift back.

The following day we got a short minibus trip up to Cancun and then disaster struck, as one of the straps on my backpack snapped. This is probably one of the worst things that could happen to me at the moment, as my backpack is carrying pretty much everything I own. I set off on a long mission to find anybody who could fix it, and after a few days search I found a girl in a shoeshop who said she'd give it a shot. Two hours of her hard work and my attempts at a broken spanish conversation later, she had done it, I tried to pay but she refused to take my money, so naturally I proposed and told her I would be back in a few years to marry her (If her reparations hold up...) A few hours away from Cancun is the former Mayan town of Chichen Itza, having been named one of the "Seven Modern Wonders of the World" it was overcrowded with tourists but nonetheless a very impressive sight with ancient pyramids and ruins, as we took a bit of time out to see some culture. Apart from that culture shock, Cancun was a few very hectic days, of beaching and large consumptions of alcohol, culminating with a huge New Years Eve party where a few hours after midnight, some random Scotsman came out of nowhere and punched me straight in the eye. This came completly out of the blue and wasn't exactly the start to the New Year I had been hoping for but it wasn't too bad and just left me with a sweet black eye for the coming weeks. Even the weather took a turn for the worse now and we went back to Playa Del Carmen only to find more rain. This wasn't exactly optimal beachweather so after a couple of days here, Tony and I were joined by Mexican Paolina and Kiwi Paul, a couple we'd been hanging out with for a while as we all decided to head south to Tulum. Tulum was a lot more relaxed than the American resort towns of Cancun and Playa, unfortunatly the weather was just as bad if not even worse. We decided to brave it out to the nearby ruins and got absolutly drenched in the heavy rain. We also went swimming in one of the many cenotes that the area is famous for, a cenote is a lake or waterhole which is filled from underground rivers and the water is amazingly clear and fresh. After this it was time to say farewell, not only to my newly found "Pauls" but also to Tony, my Australian travelcompanion who had been by my side ever since Cabo San Lucas more than a month ago. The three of them headed back west, as I caught a nightbus further south, across the border into a new country...