Alice Smart

Our transfer from Antigua Guatemala took us to the city of Santa Ana, the transport company would have dropped us directly at our next destination in the mountain village of Juayua for another £40 but we decided to try and do it ourselves on chicken buses as it would cost less than $1 USD.

The Chicken buses here are all old US school busses that have been pimped out with sound systems, paintings of Jesus and lots of mirrors and flashing lights. They also have a constant stream of people getting on the bus walking down the center aisle trying to sell everything from fresh fruit, bags of Coca-Cola, phone chargers and anything else you can imagine. But at least they have set routes and bus numbers here which makes things easier. We had a pretty uneventful ride until it came to getting off the bus. Lord knows how people signal they want to get off, we tend to just hope Somone else wants to get on or off near where we do and try and get out then as quickly as possible. But it’s always fun trying to lift 12kg bags from the bag rails above peoples heads while standing as the bus speeds around sharp corners. I nearly killed a woman getting mine down, luckily she was very forgiving! We weren’t quick enough to get off the bus in time so we staggered to the back of the bus and hung on for dear life until a local took pity on us and did the secret whistle that is apparently the signal for the bus to stop. Somehow we had managed to get off the bus directly outside our hotel which was a bit of luck.

The next morning we headed into the centre of town to book our 7 waterfalls hike. Once we got to the tour place they informed us there was a tour we could join in 20 minutes so we rushed back to our hotel, got changed, got water and cash for the tour and then ran back, hoping the banana we managed to get down our necks would be enough to sustain us.

We joined a tour with 5 other backpackers, our English speaking guide, Andreas, and our local guide, Carlos. As El Salvador isn’t on many backpackers lists, the trails tend to get overgrown, so our local guide, Carlos, was ahead of us with his machete cutting back the route and pointing out any dangers, of which there were actually quite a few… including wasp nests, spiders and eroded parts of trails where we could easily fall to our death. So that was fun.

We were also joined by two doggie guides, Tony and Fernanda, who made the track more fun but also more deadly. They tended to run through your legs while you were traversing tricky bits of paths or to jump from ledges above you when there was nowhere to land but the spot you were standing on, or if you didn’t manage to scramble out of the way in time, onto you..

The hike itself was really fun, we climbed through steep forests and coffee plantations to reach the top of a river flowing down steep rocks forming lots of waterfalls. Then to my surprise we were told we would be rappelling/ canyoning down the waterfalls. It would have been nice to have been informed of this before hand as I have quite the fear of heights… But I was at the top at this point, and far too proud to make a fuss or let on I was scared. Something an American girl in our group had no issue with and complained loudly. I don’t blame her, as the poor girl had been telling us how uncoordinated she was and had already fallen over on flat ground when we had only just started the walk.

It was also a much longer way down than any of us were expecting and we had to do sections at a time. At points we were all perched half way down a waterfall, waiting for ropes to be reset and our turn to descend the next section, which meant we got absolutely soaked through. Luckily, with the human guides helping and avoiding the, now wet, doggie guides hindrances, we all made it down the waterfall. We were all pretty impressed with ourselves until Carlos shot straight back up the waterfall, untied the rope we were using and came back down with the rope in one arm and a machete in the other…all while wearing crocs.

Once we had made it to the bottom we waded down the river for a while, which was no easy feat. The water was running so fast it was hard to see under the surface where it was safe to put your feet. The river bed also changed depth drastically within a few steps, so that one minute you were knee deep and the next step you were waist deep. That’s if you hadn’t lost your footing and fallen over completely, which happened a few times. So we were all using the larger boulders and rocks to steady ourselves, which Carlos kept saying not to do, but with nothing else to steady ourselves with we mostly carried on. That was until he pointed out a tarantula under one of the rocks, we quickly stopped after that. Turns out getting a bit wet from falling in isn’t that bad. Grace and the American girl were not fans of the spiders and rushed past. Carlos found this hilarious and took it as his queue to point out every huge spider he saw. There were a lot.

He told me most of them weren’t venous which I passed on to grace in English, he also told me there were way more in the forest they were just less easy to spot. I chose not to pass that one on. He also told me the one that was venomous and spiteful to watch out for was the black and ??? one. Very useful, I wasn’t able to understand the second colour, the most critical info of the day and I had no idea! (Andreas later told me he was saying black widow, no wonder I didn’t know the colour!).

After Carlos realised I spoke some Spanish he had a great time chatting away to me, I’m not sure it mattered to him I was only getting about 60% of what he was saying, so I just nodded along. Although I did enjoyy when he told me about his friend that had moved to London and asked if I’d seen him about, which I thought was very cute.

The last part of the hike was the least enjoyable, we had to climb back up to where we had started but this time while dripping wet. On the plus side we got a late lunch of boiled egg sandwiches, which after a long hike tasted much nicer than it sounds!

The next day we headed into the center of the village to sample the delights of the food market held in Juayua at weekends. It was made up of loads of different market stalls selling different sweets, drinks and plates of food, and even one man who tried to sell me a baby rabbit by just placing it in my hand. As cute as it was, I didn’t fancy trying to smuggle it through airports and borders…

Interesting side fact Bitcoin (an electronic currency) is a national currency as of 2018 in El Salvador, the only country in the world to list an e-currency as a national currency. Even the market stalls in this mountain village took bitcoin which was very surreal to see.

Our first stop was a coffee for Grace which was reportedly quite disappointing as it hadn’t been strained properly and had granules floating in it. Next we tried a pineapple drink, where they core a pineapple, blend it with some ice and serve it back to you in what’s left of the pineapple. It was 50 cents more to add rum, so we figured it would be rude not to. Although it was 9am so we got some judgement from the lady running the stall, it was a good call and very delicious.

Next up we decided to try a plate of food. Grace was a bit apprehensive as she’s not keen on meat cooked in central America, and after seeing markets where it’s not stored well, I don’t blame her. But I figured the locals wouldn’t eat at the stalls if they had been given food poisoning there previously so I was going to try my luck. Once we started to stop and look at the different sample plates at the front of the stalls loads of sample bits of cooked meat on cocktail sticks appeared and they were delicious so Grace agreed to share a plate with me.

We opted for a plate that was a bit of a mix of everything. We had a chicken chorizo sausage, a thin steak, pasta salad, Pico de gallo (a mix of finely cut tomato and onion), sweetcorn, a rice and bean mix, a tortilla, spring onions and a potato with ham and cheese. All for $6 USD! And we ate every bit.

After this we were pretty stuffed, but we did want to try a local sausage that was supposed to be nice. So we brought one of these to try and asked for it without all of the extras which the woman serving seemed quite offended by, she gave it to a guy on the stall next to hers to bring over to us. We thought this was strange and that we really must have upset her, but it turned out that the guy who brought it over just wanted to practice his English on us as he had been learning for some while but had never heard an English accent before. After our chat we got down to business trying the sausage, its taste was really nice, like a corn chorizo mix, but the texture was not great, it was very grainy with lumps. We had one section each and threw the rest away. At that point the woman at the stall really was offended…woops.

We were really quite full after this so we decided to have a walk around the market to walk it off. It was interesting and we saw people selling donkey rides, a man selling turkeys and a reptile house charging a $1 to hold a snake. So of course we had a go.

We also came across a stall selling different fruits and sweets and had to have a go. The woman gave us a sample of pumpkin covered in honey which was surprisingly very tasty although extremely sweet. Grace brought some other fruits in a sugary sauce that tasted kind of like a very sweet tomato but had a pip in the centre, we think it was maybe a crab apple.

We finished off the market with another delicious pineapple drink, before wadeling back to the hostel to pick up our bags and get on a chicken bus to El Tunco.

I’ll tell you all about El Tunco soon, lots of love Alice x

We finally made it into Guatemala! Although we missed most of it due to me having COVID, we didn’t want to have to skip it entirely. As one of our favourite towns from our last visit to Guatemala, Antigua, is so close to the border with El Salvador we decided to make the short trip.

We spent our first afternoon nosing around the town, Guatemala is famous for its jade and we decided to have a window shop in the jewelers. Predictably the ‘window’ shopping became actual shopping and we both spent far too much on jade rings.

We also brought some necklaces with our Mayan birth animal on. We don’t really buy into the whole birthday dictating your personality and more just wanted a cool momento but we had to admit the description did match us quite well.. Grace is a bee, very organised but quick to anger. I am a spider, keen on learning and defending the weak but tight with money ?

After making our purchases we decided to track down our favourite restaurant that we visited the last time we were here, it was honestly one of the tastiest meals we had while traveling. Although simple food, chicken roasted over a fire with garlic potatoes and salad, it is done to perfection. It also comes with tortillas and a drink (no idea what of, but it’s tasty and refillable) for £3.50. We ate there everyday for all three days we were there.

The rest of the afternoon we spent wandering about the town.

Seeing as we’d already done the main attractions in Antigua the last time we visited, we decided to try some of the more obscure attractions this time. So on our second day we decided to hike through a national park above the city to a beautiful view point. It was so obscure as an attraction that our Uber driver had never been there before and seemed very confused as to why we would want to be dropped off at them end of a dirt road at the base of a huge hill and kept asking us if we were sure this was right and if we were going to be okay.

It was reportedly an easy hike, but myself and Grace definitely disagree. We’re not sure if it was the hot weather or the altitude but the hour long hike upwards to the view point was a hard and sweaty one. We had to limit ourselves to 20 second breaks, just enough to slow our breathing, or we would have taken most of the day to reach the top. It was a beautiful walk though, we saw woodpecker’s and beautiful little birds that looked black when still, but we’re a radiant blue when the sun hit them in flight. We also saw two rainbow coloured moths, which a friend who is a moth and insect enthusiast has since told me are either new to science or very very rare. So I present to you the Alice moths ??

Once we made it to the top we had to pay a small entrance fee to locals to access the view point. We paid ~40p to a man with a hook for a hand, wondering what we were in for but the view point was really cool!

After traipsing down the hill again, which was almost as hard as the way up and more of a controlled skid, we had a cool shower and then headed into town for the evening to meet up with Santi, Tod and Tom who we’ve met several times in Mexico. We went to a few cool bars including one Irish bar where we got chatting to the owner. He was teasing us that he had moved to the other side of the world to get away from the English and we’d followed him here. He treated us to his home made scotch eggs followed by a more regional shot of tequila. We continued on to more bars and eventually a local club until the early hours.

The next morning Grace felt really ill and kept throwing up, I gave her very little sympathy believing it was just a hang over but when she was still throwing up at 8pm that evening it was clear it was probably something more. We stayed in all day and unfortunately missed saying goodbye to the boys before they headed back into Mexico, but Grace was just too ill go out in public and I don’t think I’d live it down if she keeled over while I was supposed to be looking after her. Finally the next morning she was starting to feel better and passed on her supply of snacks and painkillers to the girl in the bed next to us who had started to show the same symptoms as Grace, clearly something was going around.

We decided to take it easy on our last day and signed up for a ‘bean to bar’ chocolate course. We learnt about the cacao tree and got to gut out the cocoa beans from the fruit and try them fresh, the pulp around the beans is lovely but the seed themselves are very bitter. Our guide explained how the beans were fermented with banana leaves and then left to dry out, which can take a few weeks. We were then given pre fermented and dried beans, (as we didn’t fancy the 3-6 week wait for one bar of chocolate) which we roasted and de-shelled before grinding them into a paste. The paste was then melted and sugar and milk added ready to pour into our chocolate bar.

While our bar was cooling in a fridge we also got to try making traditional hot chocolate drinks. We tried the spicy drink the Mayans drank, made with the Coco paste, honey and chili. It was quite nice and the spice actually really worked well with the chocolate. Spanish invaders learned how to make the drink from the Mayans and both groups discarded the waste shells from the Coco beans. However Spanish slaves used to use these to make a tea, which we also got to try, the tea was actually really light but a little bitter. We also tried the drink made for European royalty from imported Coco, with milk and cloves, this was also very tasty and smooth. I think a combination of milk coca and chili would have been my favourite of the lot.

It was a fun afternoon and we got two bars of chocolate from it, although someone ate half of Grace’s when she left it in the hostel fridge so that was less fun.

Next we’re moving back into El Salvador, tell you all about it soon, love Alice xx

We arrived in the El Salvador capital, San Salvador, after a very long journey and having been awake for 28 hours. Unfortunately for us the San Salvador airport isn’t actually in San Salvador, it’s an hour away so our journey still wasn’t over. Luckily some super helpful locals directed us to a local chicken bus and spoke to the driver about where we needed to go. We paid 60 cents (El Salvador uses USD) for the hour long journey, it was actually really enjoyable apart from the fact Grace had to sit on the door steps for the first 10 minutes. But we didn’t bash anyone with our massive bags and Grace didn’t fall off the back so we took it as a win.

When we got to the hostel we pretty much collapsed into our beds and had a 3 hour nap. After we woke up and started to feel slightly more alive, we decided to head downstairs and be social, well as social as you can be on three hours of sleep…

We met a group of English, Irish and Canadian people and went out to a bar where everything on the menu, food and drinks, was $1.39 so we ended up drinking waaayyyy more than we probably should have.

After the bar we headed to a ‘club’ although I use that term very loosely. It looked like it was just someone’s house that had been gutted and a dancefloor and bar added. It was very strange, the toilet still had a bath in it… But it was an enjoyable evening none the less.

The next morning we were headed to the second largest city in El Salvador, Santa Ana. We were going to get two buses, which we were not looking forward to in the heat, but realized two of the guys we went out with the previous night were also headed there and between the four of us an Uber would be the same price but much more direct. Unfortunately the only car that would take us that far from the city was tiny, we all had to sit with our big rucksacks on our laps. Poor Grace didn’t even get a seat as where the middle back seat is normally positioned in a car, this one just had a cup holder. After the hour and a half journey she was branded with cup holder buttocks for the foreseeable future.

We spent the afternoon wandering around Santa Ana looking at all the churches and pretty squares. El Salvador gets a lot less tourism than the other south American countries and the locals are a lot more interested in us. Everywhere we went people came up and said hello in broken English. It was very cute.

The next day we had planned to do a hike up a volcano, there is one bus a day to the volcano at 7:30am. After finally testing negative for covid we were planning to head into Guatemala the following day so needed an official test to cross the border. We were hoping to get to the clinic as soon as it opened at 6am and get seen quickly and be back in time for the 7:30am bus to the volcano. Unfortunately a lot of people had the same idea of getting there when it opened, we didn’t get seen until 7:30am and had to return two hours later for our results.

Once we had our results we decided to make the most of what was left of the day and got an uber to Lago de Ilopango, a lake about an hour away that we had heard was very beautiful.

The lake is open to the public but unfortunately there is no way to get to it for free as it is surrounded by lake front properties, so we found a bar that did a day pass for $5. Fortunately for us they let us in for free, I think because we were white and it’s good PR for them the have western ‘rich people’ in their bar. Little did they know me and Grace are a long way from being rich haha, but we enjoyed the free pass anyway. The lake was super pretty and we spent a chill afternoon swimming and divebombing into it.

Around 3pm we decided to head back to Santa Ana, we knew the last bus back was at 4pm and they came every 30mins, so we figured if one didn’t turn up we could get the next one. But obviously we don’t have the best luck with journeys, after an hour and a half there were still no buses. No taxis or Ubers would come to the lake to pick us up either and it was a three hour walk back along a motorway. A couple we were waiting with decided to hitch hike to their destination, but seeing as we would have to go further than them, we would have to travel as two women alone for most of our journey. It would be getting dark soon and again us not having the best luck aaaannnnd me being a big wimp, we decided not to hitchhike with them and continued waiting long after they were gone. Eventually we saw an American guy getting into an airport shuttle and I asked him if we could get a ride in his prepaid taxi to the closest town they would pass through and he kindly agreed. They dropped us to a town ten minutes away where we were able to get a chicken bus the rest of the way home.

Now we’re going to get an early night sleep as our shuttle to Guatemala will be picking us up at 4:30am!

Tell you all about it soon, lots of love, Alice x

We arrived in San Cristobal in the early evening. The altitude here (~2000m) means it’s a bit colder than anywhere else we’ve been so far, especially in the evening. So we decided to get some beers and sit around the hostel campfire to warm up. We were soon joined by other hostel guests with the same idea and got chatting. Including Santi, Tod and Tom who we’d already bumped into several times on our trip.

The next morning, after breakfast at a delicious french bakery, we decided to explore the local markets. First we visited the textile/craft market and saw a lot of cool hand crafted clothes, bags and jewelry. Grace brought a cute cloth bag.

Next to the market was a free museum on traditional Mayan weaving. We popped in and had a look around, it was interesting to see the different types of weaving and styles from different regions. Apparently the weaving skills, still on display today in the markets, have been passed down the generations for over a thousand years.

After the craft market we decided to look around the daily market that sells everyday goods. It was vast and like a maze. There were so many stalls selling every fruit and veg imaginable and some we’d never even seen before. It was super cool to just nose about, except the poltry stalls. I had a hard time not banging into the chicken heads dangling off the sides of stalls and the live poltry were no better, they stank. But they were more than made up for by the deliciously smelling spice stalls and the beautiful flower stalls. We spent a good hour wandering around the stalls, partly because it was so interesting and partly because we couldn’t find our way out of the maze. I didn’t take too many photos as it felt a bit intrusive to photograph people just going about their shopping. The last thing I’d fancy while in Tesco would be someone snapping their holiday shots of me. So the photos below were some I took sneakily.

Before we were completely shopped out, we decided to head back to the French patisserie. Tod, one of the boys mentioned earlier who we kept bumping into, was turning 23 and we wanted to treat him to a cake. We got him a teeny tiny birthday cake which he enjoyed greatly and even tried to cut into slices to share.

That evening we went out to a local bar to celebrate Tod’s birthday. It was a really fun night and we got to dust off our salsa skills which honestly had not been used for three years for good reason!

Some street doggos on our way home.

The next day we had horrible hang overs, I had the headache from hell and honestly felt so sick all morning. The boys well and truly showed us up by still managing to wake up at 8am to make their river tour around a nearby canyon. Me and Grace were sea sick enough on land without bringing a boat into the mix. Instead we had a lazy morning at the hostel and when we finally started to feel a bit better we decided to take a collectivo out to a local Indigenous village.

The village San Juan Chamula is almost entirely made up of indigenous people, they are self governing so make their own code of conduct and the community prison is completely open on one side so you can see all the prisoners and publicly shame them (If that’s something you’re into, we gave it a miss).

There is also a ‘temple’ in the town, it looks and feels for all intents and purposes like a Catholic church but as the Catholic church no longer recognises it as Catholic, it is now called a temple rather than a church. It is not recognised as Catholic due to the residents having a very strange blend of beliefs. Catholicism mixed with indigenous beliefs, mixed with well… A kind of intense brand loyalty to Coca-Cola!

It is cheaper to buy Coca-Cola in the town than water. The residents on average drink 2 liters of Coca-Cola a day! That includes the children. They believe it has healing properties and the burps it gives them are cleansing evil spirits out of their bodies.

We decided we had to have a look inside the temple. Unfortunately you weren’t allowed to take photos there, which is a shame as it was absolutely breathtaking. The marble floor was covered in a layer of pine needles and every inch of the considerably expansive walls were covered in fresh flowers. There were no pews, just tables around the walls, and every possible inch table and floor space was covered in lit candles, hundreds and hundreds of them. It was absolutely beautiful. The collective heat of them was boiling, but we walked around every part of the temple to take it all in. There were also families lighting candles and chanting/praying in unison and the whole effect was just surreal.

The above photos are ones I found online of the church, I think we must have visited on a special occasion as the walls were covered in flowers when we were there and there were waaaay more candles but at least the photos give you a small glimpse of what we saw.

On our way back out of the town we also passed through a graveyard, it was kind of sad to see, different colour crosses indicate deaths at different stages in life and there were unfortunately a lot of white crosses simbolising children and babies.

To leave the town we had to walk up a big hill. I’d had a cold since Palenque but walking up the hill made me very short of breath and my sore throat seemed to feel as if it travelled right down into my lungs. I’d been taking COVID tests every other day since I’d gotten my cold (not daily as we only had one box from the UK and they are £20 a test in Mexico) and the next morning when I tested, I was positive.

I think my awful headache was more covid than a hangover, as this is apparently one of the first symptoms. I felt awful that we had been out and about while I was possibly contagious but at least we had been hand washing and sanitising regularly and worn masks all the time, in Mexico you have to wear them even outdoors. We had also booked private rooms since I started getting a sore throat. Even though I was testing negative for covid at that point, it’s still not nice to risk passing a normal cold on either. After we got the positive test we booked a private air BnB to isolate in for a week and that is where we have been since.

Unfortunately we have had to change our plans quite a bit, firstly to make up the lost time spent isolating but also as although I am past being contagious I could still test positive via lateral flow for up to a month from now and a negative lateral flow is needed for entry into Guatemala. So our plan now is to skip Guatemala and fly straight to El Salvador. Not ideal, but seeing as I’ve recovered from COVID for a second time unscathed I feel lucky to still be travelling at all.

Our journey to El Salvador is going to be a long one. We checked out of our air BnB at 11am, we are now currently relaxing in an orchid park until 7pm when the last bus to the airport leaves. The bus takes around 2 hours so we will arrive around 9pm and then have to wait for another 2hr 30 for our flight from San Cristobal to Mexico city. Once we arrive in Mexico city around 1am we need to wait in the airport for another 6 hours until our flight to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. It’s going to be a very long sleepless night for us.

I’ll let you know more about El Salvador soon, lots of love, Alice x

Above are some photos from the orchid park. Below are our last tacos in Mexico and my favourite, a series of photos I took of Grace trying to con me into trying a chilli she just had, telling me it isn’t spicy. I think you’ll agree, the photos bsuggest otherwise!

I think Merida has been our favourite place so far on this trip. It’s the first place we’ve visited that isn’t just for tourists with white people making up 80% of the faces you see. It’s a beautiful lived in city, with lots of pretty squares and beautiful buildings.

Our first morning here we headed into town for a free walking tour, our guide was very lively with lots of great recommendations on things to do around the town. He showed us through various beautiful squares, all with free wi-fi and electric sockets to encourage people to use them to work or put on public activities, and told us the history of each square. One was to commemorate the first Mayan leader of the city, one to commemorate Mexican independence, one to give thanks to mothers and some with a darker past, built to house slave camps. The ‘white city’ as it was known was built originally by Spanish conquistadors using slave labour and populated by white people only. It was also known as the city of five hills, believed to be a reference to five Mayan pyramids that were later taken down and rebuilt into houses and various structures about town. The guide pointed out parts of churches and houses where you could still see Mayan carvings in the stones.

After the tour we headed to the local market and had a look around. It was cool to see the different things for sale, fruits we’d never seen before and lots of tacky bejeweled light up Jesus’ that we hope to never see again. We didn’t buy anything from the market as our walking tour guide had advised against consuming anything from there as our non-mayan stomachs may not be able to take it. So instead we headed to a shop nearby selling traditional Mayan chocolate. We decided to go for the less traditional and more intriguing flavor of oregano. It was definitely an odd combination but not the worst thing I’ve eaten here.

Next we headed to the avenue of mansions. Which as the name suggests is a long row of huge mansions built by the first European settlers, very impressive. They are mostly now occupied by museums or other businesses. We had a look in the anthropology museum but as there wasn’t any information plaques in English for us to read it didn’t take us long to finish nosing around.

In the evening we decided to have a look at a concert that was being put on to commemorate 480 years since the city was built. It was a jazz band accompanied by some tap dancers. The songs the band played were all English or American but the lead singer obviously wasn’t an English speaker and tended to just say sounds that sounded similar to the lyrics rather than the lyrics itself. Which led us to an interesting game of working out what the song should be. Our favourite was ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’ where the chorus was sang as ‘zee es dat dancing clean’ and had us desperately trying not to laugh.

On our second day we visited the Mayan World Museum of Mérida, a really interesting museum all about the Mayan people, how they lived in the past and how they continue to live today (6 million people still speak the Mayan language). An American guy from our hostel, Nick, tagged along with us. We arrived just in time to catch an English tour with a very passionate and enthusiastic guide. He took us through the museum and gave us a two hour tour that I was honestly sad was over at the end. He told us about pottery, gods and beliefs, the written language, how the Mayan calendar worked. How and why humans and animals were sacrificed and so much more. I won’t bore you with everything we learnt but I will say if you ever find yourself in Mérida definitely visit the museum! On a less educational note me and Grace did have a great time pointing at all the weird cross-eyed looking statues and saying ‘that one looks like you’.

The guide noticed us doing this at one point and enthusiastically told us about the Mayan idea of unusual things being beautiful. Deformed or disabled individuals were seen to be messengers from the gods and were guaranteed a good life. He told us how mother’s would hang jewels or rocks between their babies eyes in the hopes it would make them cross eyed. They would also try to deform their heads to try and flatten out and elongate their foreheads and at age 7/8 would often burn away a ring of hair on their head in the hope of elongating the look of their foreheads. Since then, anyone unfortunate looking we have come across has been labelled ‘A Mayan beauty’. Because we’re nice like that.

On the way back Nick convinced us to try another unusual local food, Marquesitas. A crispy crepe filled with edam cheese, cream, Nutella and any other topping you like. Nick loved them but neither Grace or I were a fan. I could have gotten on board if they were completely sweet or completely savoury but there’s something not quite right about stringy cheese mixed with sweet cream and Nutella.

That evening we headed out to a bar with a group of girls and guys we met at the hostel the previous day. We ended up at Mayan Pub, a bar that did cocktails for $32 Pesos (~£1.20) so of course we ended up drinking waaayyyy too much, but it was a fun night.

The next day we were very hung over, my mood was also not improved by the fact that when we received our laundry back from the hostel they had broken two of my bras. I only brought three with me and would now have to go out and buy another one. Something I struggled with sooo much last time we travelled, it took 3 months to find one in my size that didn’t look like some sort of medical device or straight jacket. After much argument with the hostel they agreed to pay half of the price of the bras. They wouldn’t pay more as I didn’t have a receipt for the cost of the bras. How foolish of me not to bring the receipts for every item of clothing I have along on the trip…

After our fill of arguing with the hostel we headed out to see the Sunday market that had popped up around the main square. I always enjoy how much Latin American families use public spaces. The square was filled with people dancing and children playing with bubbles. We tried once more to branch out from tacos and expand our Mexican repertoire, again with out much luck. We ordered some tortas, the Mexican equivalent of sandwiches, which we knew we liked and then each ordered one experimental dish. We tried a Pancho which was like a deep fried tortilla with bean inside and pork belly on top, a bit too oily for us. We also tried a Pulcan, a kind of corn and kidney bean roti type mix with grilled pork on top, this was okay but a bit bland. We gave up on our experiments and went back into the square to enjoy some tried-and-tested churros before heading back to the hostel.

Our last day in Mérida was unfortunately spent shopping for a new bra, as the largest city in the Yucatan peninsula we stood the best chance of finding one here. Several hours later in our third bra shop, and after much raking around, the staff finally found two black bras in my size, wooo! I also tried to get an evening dress but again my progress was hindered by being well over the height and boob size of the average Mexican woman. Grace on the other hand had a grand time picking up several new items of clothing. Now we’re back at the hostel waiting for our evening bus to Palenque. The first overnight bus of the trip, I haven’t missed these!

Will let you know how it went soon. Lots of love, Alice x

P.s. some of the boys from our hostel were getting the same bus route to Palenque but an hour earlier. I asked them to let us know once they were on the bus if the station was hard to get to, but phrased it as ‘once you get there let us know if it’s a maze’ they took it as let us know if it’s ‘amaze’ i.e. amazing. I’ve never felt the generational gap or my age as much as I did in that moment.

After a two hour bus and then a ferry we arrived on the island of Holbox, our first new stop in Mexico. The island is separated into nature reserves and a tourist section of several blocks, criss crossed by sandy roads. Well, the roads are normally sandy, but it would appear we arrived after quite a bit if rain and the roads had turned to a more clay like consistency and in some places more of a lake-like consistency, with large impassable puddles.

We arrived in the afternoon and it was sweltering, so we headed straight to the beach at the far end of the island. It’s known to have bio-luminescent plankton so we planned to stay until dark to look for some.

It took a while for us to reach the beach, as we had to keep doubling back each time we came across an impassible flooded road. Eventually we just took to the sea to wade around to the beach. After setting out our towels and opening our books we felt the first drops of rain. The bad weather had followed us to Holbox. After a while of trying to wait it out we gave up on the beach and the plankton and headed back.

The next day we booked a Kayaking tour around the nature reserve part of the island. We were picked up at 6:45am and driven to the mangrove section that marked the beginning of the nature reserve. There we received an introductory briefing. We would be in two man kayaks and were told not to touch anything or make too much noise and that if a crocodile approaches it’s best to just keep still inside the Kayak. Until this point I wasn’t aware there would be crocodiles, the guide reassured us with the information that the big crocodiles over 5/6 meters were caught and moved to another part of the island and usually didn’t come back. I can’t say I was very reassured to be honest. The guide also asked if anyone hadn’t kayaked before, I’m not sure why he asked this as even after we’d confirmed we were new to it he offered no tips or advice.

We did however get given a life jacket, I’m not sure why as the water only ever came to knee height at most. I assume it is an attempt to fill up any attacking crocodiles before they get to eating your vital organs?

We set off into the sea in our two man kayak and discovered within the first 5 minutes of out 3 hour tour that we were absolutely useless at kayaking. We were constantly spinning in circles and seemed to spend most of our energy keeping ourselves in a straight line. Our guide didn’t seem to notice/care and no helpful tips were given. In fact most of the trip we could just about see him off in the distance with a fag hanging out of his mouth. He seemed to chain smoke the whole way round and glide about with ease while we struggled with our full lung capacity.

Eventually we got into the mangoes and fared a bit better without the tide pulling at us. We got to see various different birds, some flying fish and even a crocodile, luckily only a small one!

After an hour or so paddling through the mangroves we headed back out to the sea for the return journey. At this point our arms were killing and we seriously considered just calling it a day and letting the sea take us, but we paddled on until we really couldn’t be arsed anymore and I just got out and pulled a knackered Grace and the kayak along the shore. We decided we wouldn’t be sea kayaking again any time soon.

Our last day in Holbox was not a fun one, we had two issues: 1) all of the buses to our next stop of Mérida had been booked except from the late one from 5:30pm-11pm and it only had 4 seats left. 2) Grace had been getting some strange bites on her, we had been watching for new ones hoping it wasn’t what we feared it might be, but when she awoke that morning with another set of bites in a straight line we knew we had picked up the dreaded curse of travelers everywhere… bed bugs.

So our last day in Holbox was spent trying to sort these issues. We had a tense time trying to book two of the last few bus tickets as the internet kept dropping out. If we couldn’t get on this bus we would be slightly screwed as all of the hostels in Holbox were already booked for that evening. Luckily we managed to find good internet in an expensive cafe and book the tickets.

The rest of the afternoon we spent running around various laundry shops, seeing if anyone would do a boil wash and high temperature tumble dry (the only way to kill bed bugs) on all of the clothes we owned and have it dry and ready before we left that evening, no small task! We eventually found someone and handed over our huge bags of washing and then went and checked every seam and crease in our backpacks themselves to make sure they were bug free.

It had been a stressful last day, Grace had dealt with it by chain smoking and I had dealt with it by chain eating a pack of three small muffins. We all have our stress dealing techniques. After repacking our bags, we finally started to relax as we were waiting for the bus to our next stop, the city of Mérida. A cat came up and decided Grace’s lap would be its next nap spot which Grace declared a good omen. It was only when we got up to leave we realised the cat had an injured paw and had gotten blood all over Graces shorts, I’m not sure what that means in terms of omens but I’ll guess we’ll find out soon…

Lots of love, Alice x

The small island of Cozemel is just off the east coast of Mexico, we planned to stop two nights/one day here. Just enough time for Grace to scuba dive and me to snorkel and then move on, as it is somewhere we’d visited before. Last time Grace dived here it chucked it down with rain and annoyingly our luck with the weather was even worse this time with a torrential downpour and high winds.

Grace’s dive was cancelled and there really isn’t much to do on an island whose main attraction is diving and snorkeling when its raining. We spent the time planning the next leg of the trip, reading our books and socialising with the other people also stuck in the hostel. We also tried to go for a walk but after 30 minutes of walking in the wind, we discovered there really wasn’t that much to see on this side of the island. We decided to extend our stay for another night so Grace would have a chance to dive the next day.

That evening we went out with some guys we met at the hostel, Grace wanted to try some traditional Mexican food that we hadn’t seen before and the woman in the hostel suggested a restaurant called La Choza. It turns out when Grace said she wanted to try new food what she actually meant was she wanted me to try it and if it was good she would then have half. Which is how, when everyone else had grilled chicken or fajitas, I ended up with the experimental dish.

I tried a dish the woman at the hostel had recommended, a large green chilli stuffed with Mexican cheese, deep-fried and covered in a tomato sauce. I can’t say it’s a dish I would have again, in premise it sounds nice and perhaps it would have been in a different restaurant. But the chilli was quite bitter and the batter around it was very soggy and just not to my taste. The waiters seemed overjoyed that a gingo had branched out and tried something more traditional and kept coming over to ask how I liked it. Grace took one look at it and decided to forfeit her half and as I didn’t have the heart to tell the waiter it wasn’t for me, I forced way more than I would have liked down. Much to the amusement of Grace and our new friends.

The next day the rain had stopped but it was still very windy and Grace’s dive was cancelled again. We decided to make a bit more of the day this time by renting a scooter and taking it around the island. Grace was a bit nervous about driving a scooter again, I offered to drive but after falling off my bike just days ago I don’t think either of us was keen to be testing my skills in a similar situation, this time with more speed. But the much scarier prospect of having me drive her spurred Grace on.

There is only one road around the island and we made slow progress around it. We didn’t have any protective clothing except a helmet so we limited ourselves to 40km/h (~25mph).

It’s a beautiful island and apparently a popular holiday spot for Americans, several menus were costed in USD and not pesos. The American influence did mean I could get a lunch that wasn’t tacos which I appreciated. We also had a close encounter with a raccoon which I’d never seen before. I made the American tourists laugh by taking photos of it. I can’t blame them I’d probably laugh if I saw a tourist taking photos of a fox or pigeon…

Apart from the wildlife photography we mostly stopped along different beaches and had a snorkel or a swim. We spotted the boys from the previous night on the beach and arranged to meet them again that evening for some drinks. We had a fun evening socialising and then headed back to pack up our things ready to move on to Holbox the next morning.

I’ll tell you all about Holbox in the next post. Lots of love Alice x

I’d forgotten how much I enjoy traveling on buses. Buying tickets and finding the right bus is always stressful and masks really don’t help when you’re trying to understand what someone is saying in a noisy place. But being on the bus itself is nice, you can just chill out, listen to music and watch the world go past your window. You get to see the non-tourist parts of the country and people just going about their daily lives.

The bus to Tulum was especially nice as it was away from the American influenced Cancun and further into actual Mexico. It was a fun trip down memory lane of all the different parts of our last trip we’d forgotten about, how locals play instruments that look like cheese graters, the performers who juggle fire infront of cars waiting at traffic lights hoping for a tip to be thrown at them, the beautiful murals painted everywhere and how the bus drivers always drive like they’ve stollen the bus.

Tulum itself was very different from the place we left four years ago, much more touristy. We opted to stay in the slightly less touristy town center rather than the beach front. The hostel was fun and lively, on our first night we were treated to a violin concert by two girls who were both traveling with their instruments. It was very different from the guitarist playing wonderwall we’ve come to associate with hostels! They started with some classical pieces and then with some encouragement tackeled some club and regatón (Spanish dance/hip hop) songs with a good level of success!

On our first day we decided to check out a Laguna de Kaan Luum, a beautiful fresh water lagoon with a sandy bottom. There is loads of cool stuff to do in Tulum and this was one of the things we didn’t have the chance to do last time. We got there quite early as we heard it’s popular with locals who arrive around 11am. We headed for a wooden jetty that headed out into the lagoon and ended with a large square space on the end that could fit around 10 people lying down. There were two Americans sitting there already, but before we could attempt to put our things down they informed us we couldn’t sit in the square and they required the whole space for their session. We tried to argue that surely you can’t reserve such a large area in a public area and it should be first come first served. Eventually we gave up in a very British attempt not to make a scene and tutted as we settled a bit further down. They did the same thing to several other groups of locals and tourists for about an hour until their friends turned up. They then set up for a sound healing session…

However, I don’t think they were prepared for how petty me and Grace are. If you’ve not heard of sound healing before, (lucky you! I’ve had to listen to far too many people telling me about how it can cure me of anything from my Crohn’s to my sunburn..) it’s in the same realm as crystal healing and aligning you shackras. Sound healing mainly consists of a person lying down and someone playing various bells or ringing bowls over their body, the cleansing sounds are apparently what do the ‘healing’, although there is no scientific proof for this ‘healing’ as I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear… The relaxing sound is definitely the key point. Although they could exclude people from the area they couldn’t stop us making noise.

We started with over enthusiastic opening and crunchy consumption of a bag of Doritos and then a long and loud conversation about the various flavours of Doritos and what other crisps we liked. A British couple next to us, who had also been forced out of the square, picked up on our attempts and joined in on our obvious attempts to be as noisy as possible. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as patriotic as I did wordlessly coordinating a campaign of passive aggressive noise making. We were shooshed by the sound healing group and asked not to speak. After more tutting, the couple had the frankly brilliant idea of cleaning their flip flops by loudly smacking them together or against the jetty. We joined in with sporadic loud yawns. Now instead of annoying low level noise they had relaxing bowl ringing randomly interuped by loud piercing noises. Eventually we felt they had learned their lesson and left them to it. But they then made the mistake of clearing some locals out of the water where they wanted to float about. And wouldn’t you know it, Mexicans dislike entitled rude people too. They cleared the water but would periodically dive bomb next to the floating group. I’m not sure many ailments got cured that day…

On our second day in Tulum we decided to rent some bikes, I was a bit apprehensive as I never seem to have much luck with bikes. Last time I rode one I dropped my phone and it was immediately run over by a car and the time before that, I came off in Cambridge and had a concussion for a week. But Tulum is only a small beach town so thought that hopefully my luck would be better here (spoiler alert it wasn’t!).

We first cycled to a supermarket and got lots of fruit and water to keep us going for the day and then we headed to the Grand Cenote, one of the most impressive cenotes we saw last time, about 5km away. However, the guy on the entrance was trying to charge us around £25 per person entrance, last time it cost us around £5 and as £25 is roughly our daily budget we decided to decline and to head further along the road to the next cenote about 3.5km further on. Unfortunately, this one was closed so we decided to head back and try one closer to town. We cycled ~8km back and paid the entrance for another cenote we had visited last time in Tulum, it had changed quite a bit. Three years ago it had been a single track through forest into a cleared opening containing the cenote and our group were the only ones there. Now there was a toilet block, restaurant, shop and sunbathing area all centered around a cenote that could only hold a few people at once. But we’d cycled a long way in the sun so any cool body of water was appreciated!

We did our obligatory jump in and got a photo before the next group of people wanted to get in.

It was quite busy at the cenote and more of a photo opportunity than somewhere to chill out so we decided to head to the beach instead. We cycled the rest of the way back to town, grabbed a quick lunch and then headed to the beach (another 8km of cycling, this time in the midday sun!)

The beach was busy but very beautiful with crystal clear waters and beautiful golden sand, we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing there.

On our cycle home from the beach, another 5.5km, we were feeling pretty knackered. We’d cycled around 30km throughout the day and obviously it was all going a bit too well… While cycling the last leg into the town Grace swerved a broken bit of pavement that was sticking up at odd angle and shouted for me to do the same. Unfortunately I couldn’t hear her so looked up to see what she was saying and slammed straight into it and toppled off of the bike. Fortunately I got away with just a scraped knee and a bruised ego. I quickly slapped some hand sanitizer on the wound and cycled off in embarrassment. Luckily we ended up chatting with some Danish medical students at the hostel who assured me my leg wouldn’t have to be amputated just yet!

We spent the rest of the evening with people we had met in the hostel, playing drinking games with an American, a German, a Finnish guy and some other English girls. Discussing life in our respective homes, which mostly meant we felt gutted about how good Finland’s holiday is compared to the rest of Europe. But not as bad as the American guy who was spending two weeks in Mexico which consumed the whole of his annual leave!

Next we’re off to Cozemel for Grace to do some diving. I will let you know how it goes soon!

Lots of love, Alice x

On the 9th of Jan, after a tearful goodbye to our families, we headed to the airport to catch our flight to Cancun. My Spanish skills were tested far sooner than expected, when I made the mistake of making eye contact with the couple at the check in desk next to us who were struggling to understand the TUI staff telling them they couldn’t check in their broken bag. After a long time of not speaking Spanish I think I may have been more of a hindrance than a help. I got the message across that the bag needed to be checked in on a different section, but mixing up the words for behind and under/downstairs may have hindered their progress slightly. Hopefully my gesturing helped and they’re not still stuck in Gatwick looking for special luggage zone B on the wrong floor…

The flight itself was… Interesting. Within 5 minutes of boarding the woman next to Grace had taken her shoes and socks off and applied a facemask and the guy across from me had downed a bottle of wine to prevent the hostess confiscating it. On the plus side we did get a cream tea as part of the inflight meal and watching Mexicans try and figure out what the hell it was and how to eat it was amusing, my personal favourite being the man who ate a clotted cream buttered bread roll.

In Cancun we stayed at a beautiful 5 star hotel my uncle/Grace’s dad (hi Colin!) had kindly treated us to. I restarted my old habit of being ill in beautiful places by vomiting in an immaculately kept bush outside the hotel (yay Crohn’s disease!). After checking in, our three days there mostly consisted of sleeping off jet lag and planning out our next few weeks in Mexico. Which was handy as it rained most of the first two days, we got a bit of sunshine in on the third, had a nice walk along the beach and a sunbathe.

We also ventured out in the rain for the first tacos I’ve had since the last time we were in Mexico, I’ve only just recovered from eating them daily the last time.

Next we’re off to Tulum, I’m currently sat on a bus writing this (trying not to repeat the bush incident!). It was one of our favourite places in Mexico last time we visited and as it’s only two hours by bus away we figured we’d head there for a few days again.

I’ll let you know how it went soon. Lots of love, Alice x