Last Few Notes about Mexico before Belize

(Map and pictures up to date!)

Over these last few days we have finished up our journey on the Yucatan Peninsula, seeing a quite few interesting places and now we are heading off to Belize tomorrow. We did not visit some of the more well known Yucatan beaches, such as Cancun, Cozumel or Playa del Carmen, as these would break our budget and are loaded with American resort tourists. However, we wanted to share a quick update with you of what we have done since our last post.

While staying in Valladolid, we took a day trip up to Rio Lagartos to see the flamingos which nest there. Unfortunately, it is flamingo low season, and the trip up there was a bit more adventurous than we orginally anticipated (missed busses, bus detours to completely different towns, and so on), but lots of fun! After all of that, we were very thankful to actually see some flamingos, a hundred or so. Almost as enjoyable as actually seeing the flamingos themselves, was the hour long private boat ride out to the preserve, which brought back great memories of boating on the Illinois river, except of course the lack of smell and the clear water.

After Valladolid, we headed to Tulum, which is famous for their amazing beaches and Mayan ruins set right on the water. We definitely agree that the beaches are amazing, soft white sand, warm clear water, and gentle waves. We did spend one glorious afternoon on the beaches. However, the town itself was overrun with tourists from larger resort towns. This held even more true when we went to visit the ruins. The ruins were not particularly spectacular, but they were nice next to the water. However, the whole experience was less magical as you were herded through the complex like cattle. We were even asked at one point what tour bus number we were with. To make matters worse, the hostel we stayed in, although it looked great on paper (free breakfast, hot showers, bike rental), was kind of dirty and rough around the edges (no toilet paper, cold showers, busted bicycles).

Needless to say, we decided to spend more significant beach time in Belize where we have heard of an island 1\2 a mile long next to one of the best snorkeling spots in the world. We head there tomorrow after a holdover tonight in the border town of Chetumal.

Our time in Mexico has been great, although somewhat shorter than we imagined. We feel like we had quite a variety of experiences with food, climate, and culture. It has been a great country to get our travel legs established as the people have been generally friendly and helpful. We have also learned alot more about the Mexican culture which we experienced in Chicago, but did not really fully grasp. For example, when you see the pushcart ice cream vendors on the lakefront in Chicago... those kinds of carts are everywhere in Mexico. There are a lot of little things like that you notice when you travel.

Overall, we are excited to keep moving and are looking forward to the very different and unique culture Belize offers in Central America.