Update 2!

Had to read over my last email to see where I left off... After that, we finished our 3 weeks of Spanish lessons, which were super useful, as before then we basically couldn´t say anything, and our teachers were really good (if you ever find yourself in San Cristobal wanting to learn Spanish I´ll give you their names - they wanna start their own school!).

We then met up with a friend we met in Oaxaca and a couple of her friends and hung out with them for a couple of days before going to Palenque. We had to get 2 kombi vans there, and going into the town where we changed there was a roadblock set up by the indigenous people, so it took a while to get in. Think it cost the driver about $5 to get past, and I assume some people were refusing to pay so it took longer. Then there was another roadblock on the other side that was completely closed so we were told to walk past and find different transport on the other side. We waited around for a while, whenever there was a "Palenque!" call we´d grab our bags and run. Eventually we were the last 2 on a rather packed ute used for people transport (totally closed by a much bigger thing on the back, I forget the name). It was so full I spent about 2.5 hours standing on the tailgate holding on to the bar at the top - what a rush! 

We got to Palenque and got another kombi to a little town most of the way to the ruins, and found a place to set up our hammocks to stay in, and settled down for the night. In the morning, we walked the rest of the way to the ruins up a hill through the rainforest. By the time we got there I´d almost forgotten why we were there, til we walked out of the forest and into the open, surrounded by ruins. It´s hard to describe beyond saying that it´s a fucking cool place - having never been in the rainforest or near anything near that old the combination was stunning. We spent most of the day walking around seperately checking out all the ruins, which is apparently only a fraction of the entire city; they´re constantly uncovering new bits, and I assume opening them to the public. On the way out we stumbled upon a couple of guys who were staying at the same place as us, and discovered the joys of refried bean tacos, which have since become our most common meal (with tomatoes, avo and salsa it´s delicious as hell, though you´d never think so til you tried!).

The next day we went to a small Zapatista community near to Palenque which is also home to some really nice waterfalls with a few waterholes you can swim in, with a few other people. Spent a couple hours there then got an overpriced kombi back to Palenque, as it was too late for the cheap ones to be running. Thankfully this night was our last, as the place we were staying had crazy loud awful Mexican music (essentially the equivalent to gangster rap - accordions with lyrics about trafficking drugs and so on) until 2am or so. 

After this we got a series of cheap buses and kombis and only made it to Escárcega, a place the internet says to try not to stay in, but it was too late to make it further. Stayed in a cheap hotel there, then moved onto Campeche. Campeche could be really cool, but all the historical stuff was closed for maintenance, making it just an average, smallish coastal town. 

Merida followed Campeche, and we stayed in a really cool hostel with a swimming pool and a hammock garden for a couple of days. Had a day of chores and on the other went to our first cenotes. Cenotes are basically sinkholes of various sizes with water in them, supposedly related to the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. The crater isn´t visible, as it´s something like 100km in diameter, but there´s a really high concentration of cenotes around the circumference. Anyway, we got a kombi, then a cool lil motorbike taxi thing, then a horse-drawn cart thing around 3 cenotes. The first was so-so, the 2nd was really cool and deep with a tiny wee pool in the bottom, and the 3rd was Lovecraftian - really long, pitch black at the back. Cal was talking about swimming to the back but wasn´t that keen, so I just did it and the rest followed. Apparently when I was at the back they couldn´t see me at all and when I stopped were a lil worried by the silence. Really cool place though.

After Merida, we spent 2 days in Progreso, a small town on the Golf coast near Merida, staying in another sweet hostel owned by some Italians that´s basically just a huge old villa. When we first got there there was a cruise ship parked up, so the town was -packed- with tourists, but that evening it left and then the place was totally empty. We had a really good time chilling out, but didn´t end up swimming as this was the middle of the week we didn´t see the sun for all the clouds (Cal still managed to get sunburnt!). Cal had read about a hostel in a town just up the road called Libros y Sueños (books and dreams), so we went there the next night, having a look through their rather large amount of books, and burying some treasure on the beach to satisfy a piratey urge Cal had (the map´s on FB, and there should be enough clues around for you to find it!). 

We then spent the majority of the day in a variety of kombis, buses and hitched rides getting to Valladolid, via a pretty sweet little town called Izamal, the entire centre of which is painted yellow! We again stayed a couple of days in Valladolid, briefly meeting up with some friends from San Cris. On one of the days we hired bikes to ride to another pair of cenotes, but it turned out that the entry price we thought was for both was only for 1, so we just had a swim in the one. Really cool bikeride, and the cenote again didn´t disappoint - in all the ones we went to we were constantly reminded of the horrors of the deep in fantasy/sci-fi, but they were all hella beautiful.

From Valladolid we hitched to Cancun, and got the ferry to Isla Mujeres (we didn´t wanna stay in Cancun, though the ferry was only around half an hour, so I assume Isla´s basically the same). Had a pretty cool couple nights there, on the day we had we again hired bikes and rode all the way around the island (about 8km each way, I think, it´s long and thin). We didn´t really eat out as the food was really expensive, but I thought I´d better try some fish tacos before we left Mexico, which were totally delicious. 

A couple of kombis and rides later, we arrived in Tulum. We´d essentially been following a couple of friends who were following another friend who´s volunteering counting fish near Tulum, and the pair were soon leaving Mexico, so we crashed their final reunion/farewell. Our first day in Tulum we hired bikes and visited the ruins before the others got there as they didn´t want to go there. And for good reason. The ruins are in an amazing location on the coast with a little beach, but by the time we got there they were totally packed with what we assumed were tour buses from Cancun. We also couldn´t walk on any of the ruins; they were all roped off. I guess if they weren´t they´d get destroyed by the copious foot traffic that place probably sees every day. We therefore didn´t spend too much time there, and just took a nice ride back to the hostel. After lunch we went to yet another cenote with the others, this one called the Cenote Calavera (the skull cenote), as it had one big hole and two smaller ones directly onto the water. This was probably my favourite of the cenotes we visited, jumping through the eye-holes was particularly cool.

The following day we said goodbye to the others, and boarded an 18 hour overnight bus back to San Cristobal. This was 2nd class, so supposedly not so great, but the bus was basically up the standards of those we have in NZ, and there were no screaming backs, so it really wasn´t too bad. Had a little nap when we arrived, then met up with our Spanish teachers and went to another of their ex-students´ houses for the evening, which was interesting to say the least. Hanging out with people speaking another language almost exclusively was really cool, though we were extremely tired and reasonably drunk, so actually making conversation was crazy hard. Met up with another couple friends the following day for some more goodbyes, and after 2 nights we crossed to Guatemala.

We´d heard that apparently this crossing is sometimes this nightmare situation, but it went off without a hitch - we didn´t even have to pay for the exit visa, which was the icing on the cake really. On the Guatemalan side we got a kombi to Xela to meet another friend who´s been stuck in Guate for a month and a half after having her passport stolen, so we thought we´d come keep her company for a bit. The kombi ride was around 3 hours up this beautiful river valley - Guatemala so far is extremely mountainous, and somehow even more green than the Chiapan/Yucataneco rainforest. Looking forward to seeing the rest of Central America during it´s verdant rainy season, supposedly it mostly only rains in the afternoons/evenings, so you just get shit done in the morning and laze around the afternoons reading or whatever. 

That´s about it I suppose, yesterday we visited some really sweet hot pools which smelt of Rotorua, and got our first taste of a cloud forest (including the hammering rain). Despite only having around $0.60 between us on us after paying the entrance, and having to walk/hitch back to town, we had a really cool day. This weekend we´re going on a trek up Tajumulco, the highest mountain in Central America (we haven´t really done any tramping on this trip so far, and figure since the highest point is so close we´d probably better do it). Then on Tuesday we´re doing another trek over 3 days to Lago Atitlan, which has almost been a goal destination as it´s apparently amazing. Both of these are through a really neat-sounding non-profit that donates everything to local schools, so we feel less bad about blowing the budget...