Zoë Bowyer

In which I tell you all about my Mexican holiday…

We arrived into Cancun airport where we picked up our hire car and drove off towards Tulum, except that we actually headed towards Cancun centre as the hurricane had removed most of the road signs. I imagine that it is pretty difficult to drive on the opposite side of the road, harder to do it without signage, and even harder to do it in the dark but D coped well; even when we flew over our first huge speed bump – oops, where did that come from!

Our first night was spent next to the Caribbean sea, in a rustic palapa roofed cabana. We were tired from our journey and fell asleep at what we thought was 8.00pm except it was only 7.00pm as the idiot steward on the plane had given us the wrong local time and we weren’t alert enough to realise he was wrong.

The next day we left Tulum, knowing that we would be returning the following week, and headed inland towards Valladolid along the most hideous pot-holed road. In Valladolid we took a Superior room in El Meson del Marque’s and ate delicious food for dinner. It was the best food we had all holiday but as it was our first food we didn’t realise at the time just how special it was.

From Valladolid we travelled to Merida via Chichen Itza. Merida was wonderful, in my opinion. I felt dazed and confused when I arrived. I was scared by the strangeness of the place and harassed by all the people on the streets trying to talk us into going into their shop (which they said was just the best ever shop we could hope for). I took hardly any photographs as I was scared that someone would snatch the camera from me. But by the time we left I felt very comfortable there and wished that I had the opportunity to see more and have a kitchen available to me so that we could buy the wonderful foods from the market and cook amazing meals. We wandered the streets, visited art galleries and museums, and took a bus tour of the city at night.

From Merida we travelled to Playa del Carmen on the toll road via Cancun, where we once again headed towards the centre of Cancun rather than down the coast! Initially I didn’t think too much of Playa del Carmen, it was too touristy for my liking but an essential stop for D to do some diving. It had it’s good points as well as bad points; it was an excellent place for people watching and had a good selection of places to eat. When D was unable to dive due to a tropical storm we went snorkeling in a lagoon and in a cenote. I didn’t really like the cenote snorkeling, it was much colder than the lagoon and was very deep in places. The lagoon was fun. According to D, the next step in getting me under the surface of the water is to have me snorkeling with a tank on my back!

Finally, we returned to Tulum and chilled out at the Diamante K. We relaxed, read, I knit on the beach, we went on a trip to the Sian Ka’an Biosphere, got eaten alive by mosquitos, woke up to find a dead rat on the floor of our cabana, ate yummy food and had a generally pleasant time.

Before I left I made a bit of money selling a spare set of knitting needles I had brought to someone D had met through diving. She is a keen knitter but had been unable to find knitting needles anywhere since she had arrived in Mexico 4 years ago.