Hmm, it is a bit hard to remember where we were the last time we wrote. I think it was in Flores, Guatemala. Well, on the next day we caught a bus from Flores to Chetumal in Mexico. The trip was pretty long, because we had to drive through Belize which meant two border crossings, from Guatemala to Belize and from Belize to Mexico. This also meant that we had to pay the Belizean exit tax again, which was a bummer.

After the exhausting trip, our plan was pretty ambitious - to catch another bus from Chetumal to Merida. Even this would have meant a whopping 18 hour trip totally from Flores to Merida, but as it was Friday the 13th, things didn`t go like we planned. After making it right on time to the ticket encounter in Chetumal to buy new bus tickets, we heard that the 5 PM bus to Merida was already full. As we already had booked a hotel in Merida, we didn`t want to pay for one room in Merida and now for one more in Chetumal, so we decided together with one Indo-Trinidadian-Canadian guy that we met on the bus to buy tickets to the next available bus at 11.30 PM.

So we had a night on the bus ahead of us which didn`t sound very pleasant. To make the most of the situation, we decided to head to a local shopping mall. Our luggage situation has been a major pain in the ass since August when we left Finland, as buying anything new would have had meant either carrying it all over the place or spending crazy amounts on shipping stuff back to Finland. We already have shipped a huge load of stuff we wouldn`t need in Central America from New York to Finland in December, which costed fortunes. And now in Central America we have left all the shopping to the end of the trip so that we would have to carry it as little as possible. Now we are in the end of our journey so there is not so much carrying left, plus I managed to negotiate a good deal with one hostel in Cancun when we left the city, that allowed us to leave some stuff there for three weeks after I promised to come back to stay in that same place when we get back from our trip to Belize and Guatemala.

So our theme for the next days was shopping. We arrived to Merida at 6 AM the next morning after a night on the bus, and after catching some more sleep we spent the next days buying stuff and enjoying the festive atmosphere of the zocalo (central park) of Merida where our hostel was so centrally located. We bought some clothes and we always got involved into the main drag of Yucatan souvenir business - hammocks. (in Finnish: riippumatto) We have learned the fine art of swinging in a hammock well during this trip, and buying an own one has been our plan for some time. But we never imagined how annoying that would be! It seems that selling hammocks is such a big thing for many local entrepreneurs in Yucatan that it has created a whole network of confusion.

First we met a friendly restaurant owner who told us how the sellers in the street will trick us to buy very low quality hammocks that are imported from China, and we would be better off visiting a local Mayan co-operative where we would get a good quality one and help local families. Well, we visited one, where we learned that buying a good hammock would cost us something like 3000 pesos which is 180 euros. Of course that was a starting price that would come down after some time, but even we are not that good in bargaining that we could make the price suitable for our wallets. Plus that we had heard that the material they were using, sisal, was not even used in Mexico any longer, so the hammocks were probably also imported.

Well, after this we decided to hear the story from the point of view of the street sellers. One guy told us, that the whole story of Mayan co-operatives is only a big lie, and in reality the so-called co-operatives are owned by rich guys who maintain a cartel to keep the prices high and private sellers out of business by telling tourists that they sell fake hammocks. Which in reality are exactly the same hammocks that the co-operatives are selling. It is really hard to tell which side of the version is true, but we decided our wallets make the decision and bought a hammock from the street with a price that was only a fraction of the price we had heard in the "co-operative."

After struggling with hammock business and enjoying our awesome hostel room with a balcony to the main square, we packed our stuff and left for Cancun, the final destination of our journey. We picked our extra luggage from the hotel storage and now we are ready to head home. Maria left already in the yesterday morning, and we spend the last day by relaxing before the long flight. We also saw the most amazing street artist, who made beautiful pieces of art by using only spray paint. We bought two of his works for a very good price, which completed perfectly our 4-day shopping spree.

Now we are spending time in the Internet cafe before taking a bus to the airport in two hours. It feels really unbelievable to go home after all these months abroad, but I have actually really been waiting for this day for a week or so. It just feels that we have got everything we wanted from this trip, and now it is time to get back. New friends, new experiences, new languages - and I even got new football shoes yesterday! Sometimes during this trip it has been really devastating to think about going back, but now I have started to feel that the end of something is the beginning of something new.