A Day In Mexico City

En route to Vegas I spent a day in Mexico City between flights. Landing early in the vast metropolis that is Mexico City, I headed to the central square (Zocalo) to get my bearings.

It was the morning of the Mexico v Uraguay World Cup match and Fifa had taken advantage of one of the Worlds Largest City Centre Squares and set up a multi giant screen outdoor arena to watch all the games. This was a big game so the Zocalo was packed. With an atmosphere and crowd like a huge carnival I had a great time here getting into the game.

Following this match they screened the iconic England v Argentina (hand of god) match, which was great to watch in such an awesome setting, surrounded by Argentinian fans waiting for their match at 1.30pm.

After a little stroll, I then got back on the Metro that evening and headed to the Airport to catch my plane to Vegas.

A Little More Mexico...

From the bustling towns of Campeche and Merida I headed to Isla Holbox, a tiny, stunning and surprisingly underdeveloped island off the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. Here I found a great little place to stay in some basic beach Cabanas, where I stopped for a few days. My time was filled pretty much with sitting in hammocks reading and laying on the beach. I also did a little fishing, where we were joined on the way back to shore at sunset by 7 or 8 Dolphins, which was pretty special.

After Holbox, I headed over to Isla Mujeres, a similar size to Holbox but dramatically more developed to service the day trade of fat, lazy tourists visiting from Cancun. A great spot for Beach Volleyball, swimmimg and people watching.

Then I headed South to Tulum, the home of a fantastic beach and some famous Mayan Ruins on the coast above the beach. A nice little spot to hang out for a day or two, but as with most places in this region it's a little expensive and geared up for vacationers rather than backpackers.

All in all it's been a great couple of weeks here, good to be on the move, great to be on the beach, but at the same time i'm looking forward to getting South into the less developed countries like Honduras & Nicaragua.

Mexico

Finally, i`m in Mexico, heading for the Caribbean Coast via some pretty amazing places en-route. San Cristobal De Las Casas was my first stop, which was a stunning town, but was at high altitude and was cold and raining. So I headed to lower ground for the warm Jungle of Palenque, where I linked up with an Aussie and a Mexican America and we spent the day at the Mayan Ruins of Palenque and at the incredible Aqua Azul Waterfalls.

Next stop was Campeche, where I met a cool French guy who was an Archeaologist and he had just spent 2 months in the Guatemalan Jungle excavating a site of Mayan ruins. So, armed with this fountain of knowledge we headed to a buzzing town called Merida, which was our base for a visit to the Uxmal Ruins, which was a great trip when accompanied by my French friend who enlightened me on many Mayan nuggets of information.

So far it's been a great few days in Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula is hot and sticky, the people are great and tomorrow I head to Isla Holbox in search of the opportunity to swim with Whale Sharks.