Apologies to all for our pathetic keeping up with this blog lark.
We've managed to skype family a few times, spent far too much time on facebook and checking football results, and been enjoying ourselves too much to stay focused sit down and write this thing.

So here's an update:

USA was great, interesting, BIG, and ultimately exhausting! I've been surprised how much easier everythig has felt since getting to Mexico.
Christmas and New Year was lovely, warm, weird being away from friends and family but that's the price you pay for a trip like ours.

Since we got to mexico, or rather, after Christmas it has felt a lot more like travelling rather than being on a big holiday. The colonial cities in the central highlands are all great, interesting history and culture and architecture and food etc. Then in 2010 we've headed down to the south coast where it was nice and hot again but Chloe was really ill for about a week, liquid pouring out of both ends (sorry!) and not leaving the room which was frustrating for both of us. I knew what she was missing and she was gutted to be missing it. Thankfully an old uni friend, a housemate of Ali Burls', called Steve was in the same city, Oaxaca, with his Mexican girlfriend so I met up with them a few times and had fun while Chloe rotted in her death bed. Bless her. Great to catch up with him and hear about his Mexican travels.

A few days later at the beaches of a really undeveloped super chilled hippy Pacific surf village called Zipolite we met a French Canadian couple who had a minivan vehicle thing. The guy was a tour guide for this area of Mexico and so knew loads about it and was doing one last trip for his own pleasure before he sold the van and focused more on his Canadian life. They were looking for people that wanted to join them from the Pacific to the Caribbean to help with fuel costs so we did! They were going to the same places I wanted to go to except in a slightly quicker time frame. But we'd begun to worry about how expensve Mexico was and I was looking at Guatemalan prices and how cheap it is and thinking we should get there sooner rather than later so it was actually pretty good timing.
They were really nice, in their early 30s and very fun. He had all these contacts in hotels and places to get 'mates rates' so we stayed in much nicer accommodation than we would have done on our own. He also knew an indeginous family who lived in a tiny village 2500 meters up in the southern highlands so we visited their house and saw their traditional lifestyle, how they make the brightly embroidered cloths and things that we saw everywhere in the region, the bloody strong traditional alcoholic drink they drink, sat and had fresh tortillas that the young girl was making. All very rustic and charming and beautiful really. The villagers have started welcoming tourist groups into their homes as a way of gaining an income rather than hounding visitors in the mrket square like in the neighbouring village we visited. It was so much more rewarding for both parties as we were more likely to want to get something, knowing how it had been made and the care taken and the warmth of their family. Not that we did buy anything of course! Heaven forbid we should contribute to helping the natives!

Then headed to the jungle to a well known ruin called Palenque. We stayed for a few days in a groovy chilled out hippy travellers hang out called El Panchan between the town of Palenque ( a bit crap) and the famous ruins 6 km away. Chloe was over her illness so we foolishly thought it was ok for her to indulge in flavour agan. Coffee, booze and a big meal resulted in the next day being a write-off with her worst epsiode of diarrhoea and vomiting yet. Oops! So no trip to the ruins that day. Still, I participated in a traditional Mayan sweat lodge called a Tamascal. A fascinating guy called Alonso, who had lived there for 15 years, made it based on old Mayan techniques and design, with a few of his flourishes. he was mayan himself and had studied Mayan history and deciphered Heiroglyphs from various ruins and come up with new theories surrounding famous kings etc. He was a truly captivating guy to listen to. he spoke softly, with calm assurance and no hysteria when he told you that only the other day he'd deciphered a new heiroglyph which linked a famous king with a revered Mayan God. He'd also recently discovered a method, previously unknown, of how to make the natural rubber balls used in Mayan ritual ball games. Went on for hours about how he extracted it, the properties of natural rubber, which is essentially latex, how the one in his hand had been blessed by indigenous tribesmen from the nearby Lacandon jungle (one of the last few remaining areas of Mexico where Mayan decended tribes still exist) a few days ago etc etc. The sweat lodge was fantastic. 8 of us, travellers from Oz, USA, Argentina, me, French Canadian guy I was with (Patrick), Alonso the font of Mayan knowledge and another archaeologist from Mexico. Sweating our t*** off in a tiny Octagonal space full of steam from the hot stones in the corner. There was also a pool of cold water in the middle. We played drums, blew in massive conches, drank mint tea and tequila, poured cold water over each other in turn and listened to stories about Mayan beliefs.

The ruins were fantastic. Gleaming white stone in the hot sun, but they would have been vibrant blood rd in their day with blue and green murals. It must have looked amazing. The jungle backdrop and freedom to walk all over them makes them tripley interesting. We found a great vantage point atop one of the temples and soaked in the view for a while, listening to the howler monkeys grunting and shrieking away in the jungle behind us.

Next day Patrick drove through the night to the Caribbean. Woke up to sunrise over a pristine white flour-like beach and turquoise sea with coconut palms and hammocks swinging in the stiff Caribbean breeze. What a scene to arrive to!

Met up with Steph from college (for those that know her) and she has kindly put us up in her parents' neighbours' plush appartment outside Playa del Carmen, near Cancun. Thanks Steph! It's pretty f**king nice. Hot tub on the roof, great views, 2 bedrooms to choose from, en suite, the works. Spoilt!
Today we went to a nearby, soft as a baby' s bum, white as my bum, nice as Chloe's bum, beach, donned some snorkel gear (Steph is a scuba dive instructor by day) and swam with the sea turtles. Your average run of the mill day then really. Turtles are brilliant. So serene and dare I say it, cute? Really cute! Awwwwww look at their little squinty eyes and their flippers and the way they nibble at the sea grass and ahh he's coming up for air and look at his little head poking out of the sea and ooooo now he's swimming right at me, I just wanna squeeze him til his eyes burst (to be read in a high pitched voice whilst clenching your fists in a 'I can't believe how cute this thing is' manner). Great fun.

Tomorrow, Tulum, the ruins by the sea, and cenotes (limestone sink holes filled with water and teeming with wildlife that are ubiquitous in this area and form part of the longest cave network in the world). Day after, Isla Mujeres, where the marauding Spanish stowed their women in safety whilst they raped and pillaged.

La la la la la la la

We'll try and keep on top of writing on here a bit more to let you know what's going on.
We're about to embark on writing for a website called Hostel Trail as well, which should see us not only helping fellow travellers with accommodation information, but it'll get us free stays in places we're reviweing. Booya!

More on that to come.

take care,

Bodge xxxxx