fajitour

[fajitour]

One of the people who I went cave diving with on Friday had a GoPro and kindly sent me the videos. I’m the one in the middle.

Since Friday I have been devouring information on the 2018 rescue of the Thai football team trapped in a cave, spearheaded by a group of rescuers from the British Cave Rescue Council, a sort of International Rescue for caves. As a beginner, we were understandably not allowed in any place where multiple people couldn’t fit 

[fajitour]

A very sweaty sunrise run this morning. Moderately strenuous exercise before a flight is one of my fave flying tips (along with bring slippers, bring sweets and remember to bring your house keys).

Off to breakfast and the airport now

[fajitour]

What's that I hear you say, you want to see more pictures of ruins and me jumping into Cenotes? My wish is your command!

Chichten Itza was impressive but I am so bored of ruins right now. The main pyramid has 91 steps on each of four sides, summing tp 364, add the top platform and tada it's actually a giant calendar. Apparently at the equinoxes it looks like the snake slithers down the side of the pyramid.

Later on, I went to another cenote, did more jumping, hammock reading and chilling before heading east to Puerto Sam, about 5km north of Cancun for my last evening. I saw on the beach eating octopus for my last big meal. Tomorrow I fly home and that is firmly where my thoughts are at the moment

[fajitour]

What's that I hear you say, you want to see more pictures of ruins and me jumping into Cenotes? My wish is your command!

Chichten Itza was impressive but I am so bored of ruins right now. The main pyramid has 91 steps on each of four sides, summing tp 364, add the top platform and tada it's actually a giant calendar. Apparently at the equinoxes it looks like the snake slithers down the side of the pyramid.

Later on, I went to another cenote, did more jumping, hammock reading and chilling before heading east to Puerto Sam, about 5km north of Cancun for my last evening. I saw on the beach eating octopus for my last big meal. Tomorrow I fly home and that is firmly where my thoughts are at the moment

[fajitour]

More ruins today, Kabah and Uxmal, interspersed with a Yucatan speciality of Cochinita pibil, a variant of pulled pork. I had Kabah to myself, and Uxmal, with its ellipsoid pyramid, shared with 100s of others. I drove east and ended the day in Izamal, a town whose claim to fame is that's even more yellow than Coldplay's breakthrough bit. It was a nice quiet, not too touristy town to relax this afternoon

I'm starting to adjust to UK timezones, which means an early night and a 6am start. Tomorrow is my last full day (SAD) - I'll go to Chicten Itza, another cenote before finally hitting the beach in the afternoon.

[fajitour]

Friday afternoon, I continued my mini trip and headed west from Coba, eventually ending up in the very off the beaten track town of Oxkutzcab, which has won the award for the place I've attached with the highest Scrabble score.

Along the way I visited a centoe to swim. There were a handful of people there but soon my belly flops drove them away ( that and the fact they were all on a tour bus that had a departure time), meant I had the place all to myself (plus a single lifeguard and a pair of bats). This cenote was underground, you had to enter by tunnel. It was slightly bigger than an Olympic sized swimming pool (the canonical yardstick but which to measure things of this order is magnitude, any bigger and you have to start using Waleses to measure size) though much deeper

[fajitour]

In this first picture there is the shark, I am right next to its tail.

[fajitour]

Did I mention there was an zip line and a post swim hammock?

[fajitour]

In this first picture there is the shark, I am right next to its tail.

[fajitour]

I picked up a rental car on Friday evening, ready for a 90 hour mad sprint around the Yucatan peninsula to make sure I've seen everything before my flight home on Tuesday. I resisted the strong urge to spend it on the beach.

On Mexican Driving:

- Very few roads have streetlights and there are no cats eyes so night driving is not fun

- Topes, speed bumps concrete and Mexican cousin, abound

- Gas pump attendents fill up your tank for you

- The roads are usually about three car widths wide, with 1.5 lanes each way, if you're slow you keep to the right. Overtaking is common place. Everyone breaks the speed limit, the question is by how much. The heuristic I use is if about the same number of cars overtake me as I overtake, then I'm probably driving at a sensible speed.

On Friday I drove south to two Mayan archeological sites, Tulum and Coba. Between you and me, by this point I'm getting a bit bored of Mayan archeological ruins. Tulum was further marked down for the preponderance of tourists. I refuse to enjoy any archeological site with a Starbucks. Tulum's USP is that it is right in the coast, and was perhaps the first place in what-is-now-Mexico spotted by the Spanish. Coba is further inland, deep in the jungle.

[fajitour]

In this first picture there is the shark, I am right next to its tail.

[fajitour]

My turtley friend

[fajitour]

My turtley friend

[fajitour]

Some pictures from the cenote dive. No professional photographer on this one so sadly no underwater photos.

[fajitour]

Since arriving in Puerto Morelos on Tuesday night, I've been diving! On Wednesday and Thursday I got my "PADI Open Water Diver" qualification which allows me to dive upto 18 metres with a friend, but without needing an instructor. On Friday I dived in a couple of centoes (not a centos as my autocorrect suggests it should be), which are limestone pits filled with water.

I paid far too much money for this new hobby, but it really was incredible. It's hard to describe the freedom of being able to breathe underwater and move in a completely alien three dimensional space, to use your breathing to control movement up and down. I feel so utterly privileged to have experienced it

I've spent large parts of Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday and Thursday doing online homework and training, all in all about 8 hours of theory, from understanding what pressure does to your lungs, all the hand signals, to the pleasing mathematical dive planning tables.

Wednesday morning, I was picked up by Crescent, a Canadian who moved here 15 years ago with her husband to start a dive school and I spent most of the morning with Gabriel, my instructor in a local resorts 1.5 metre deep swimming pool going over skills (such as what to do if your regulator (mouthpiece) falls out etc). It was fun and novel to be the subject of interest to others in the pool. After lunch (homemade tacos and banana bread) we went for two dives,

Each day involved two dives of 30-45 minutes in the Caribbean sea, about a 10 minute boat trip. Fun fact, this is the second* largest coral reef in the world after the Great Barrier Reef. A large portion of Wednesday and Thursdays dives were spent on exercises.

Highlights:

Wednesday dive 1 included an adult turtle 🐢

Dive 2 involved lots of colourful fish and a reef, ending with me practising a CESA, which is an emergency ascent procedure where you swim up for 10 meters without taking a breath

Thursday Dive 1 including an incidence where by BCD (essentially my life jacket but you can control how buoyant the jacket is by adding / reminding air) broke (not my fault!) so I spent most of the give hugging my instructor and using his air source

Thursday Dive 2 involved seeing a sleeping shark. It was a whale shark which doesn't look much like how I imagined a shark would look, and also a huge (about the size of a human) moray eel

Friday dive 1 was in a centoe, where I dived through a tunnel, the highlight of which was the glorious Azure/ turquoise light from above, and something called the halocline, an area where freshwater meets the saltwater below, it's amazing you can move your hand and feel the difference. Freshwater is noticeably colder. In the middle are almost oily bubbles which was fun to swim through.

Friday dive 2 involved one huge underwater cave / cavern complex, complete with underwater stalagmites and stalactites. The most interesting thing for me was the cave map, I'm a huge map nerd so it was interesting to see how the 3D space was represented. On Friday I was with three Americans, in Mexico for the nights for a friend's wedding.

Overall I've had an amazing time diving and if wholeheartedly recommend it. I felt totally safe and it's really special. I fly back on Tuesday 😭, but am now laser focused on during everything in over the next few days!

*sources disagree on whether it is second or not.

[fajitour]

I'm in the peaceful colonial city of Merida, the capital of Yucatan state. I arrived at 8am on Monday morning and despite having slept on a bus for the two previous nights, went straight into two hours of work job interviews.

Since then it's been hot so aive mainly been chilling by the pool, though I did find time to go to one museum, which explained that one possible etymology of the word "yucutan" is from the Mayan "Yuk ak katan", which means "I don't understand your language". Even if that's not true it's still a fun fact!

Yucutan has it's own gastronomic culture compared to the rest of Mexico, yesterday I tried Mukbil Pollo, a traditional dish of spiced turkey and corn dough wrapped in banana leaves and slow cooked underground. It was about as corny as a chat up line. I wouldn't recommend. This morning I tried castican, fried pork belly, which is about as greasy as it sounds.

[fajitour]

I'm in the peaceful colonial city of Merida, the capital of Yucatan state. I arrived at 8am on Monday morning and despite having slept on a bus for the two previous nights, went straight into two hours of work job interviews.

Since then it's been hot so aive mainly been chilling by the pool, though I did find time to go to one museum, which explained that one possible etymology of the word "yucutan" is from the Mayan "Yuk ak katan", which means "I don't understand your language". Even if that's not true it's still a fun fact!

Yucutan has it's own gastronomic culture compared to the rest of Mexico, yesterday I tried Mukbil Pollo, a traditional dish of spiced turkey and corn dough wrapped in banana leaves and slow cooked underground. It was about as corny as a chat up line. I wouldn't recommend. This morning I tried castican, fried pork belly, which is about as greasy as it sounds.