Mexico here we come

Thur 5th Oct: After a very long tiring flight - 4 hrs to Toronto, then 4 hrs wait, then 4 hrs to Cancun, we arrived to a very warm and sticky 31°C - I think time to stick all the jackets in the bottom of the bag. Went and picked up our little Nissan March rental car, where they tried to sell us about US$500 more insurance. First time we have booked a car through a third party, Discover Cars, and we paid for insurance with them. But apparently if we have an accident we have to pay it then claim back from Discover Car. The rental places rather you had insurance directly with them. We decided not to pay extra, therefore had to do a US$8000 deposit on Doug's credit card as it was in his name, however his credit card is no longer valid as TSB has just switched from Visa to Mastercard. We tried using my card but when he realized it wasn't Doug's said no, so we put some money on our joint BNZ credit card as the limit on it was only NZ$8000 and Doug used his card. After all that fluffing around they used my BNZ credit card, which he had already done the transaction on after all. Anyway we got our car and was soon on the highway for 1.5 hrs drive south to Tullum. The accommodation I had booked back in July got canceled last week so I had to find somewhere else, and we were certainly pleased with Bufo Alvarius. A little tropical paradise just of the main road heading down to the beach. A simple room, but has the all important air conditioning, and at NZ$27/night wonderful value compared to USA, Canada and Chile. It was about 4.30pm and we were both pretty jaded - brought back memories of those post night shift feel. We really knew it was best not to sleep now, but the bed was right there calling our names. Ended up having only a quick 20 minute rest, which was good. Decided to go for a walk down to the beach, about 2 kms away. About 2 kms the road continued to the right, with a smaller side road to the left. We went right, however it was all fenced off with resorts etc and after walking another 1.2 kms without finding access to the beach and now being dark we returned back to Bufo Alvarius, stopping at their little restaurant for our first Mexican dinner - tacos. Yum, however Doug learnt the hard way, don't dip the corn chip in the chilli sauce 🔥🔥🔥. After dinner it was a quick dip in the pool, then a shower before happily retiring to slumber land.

Fri 6th Oct: Enjoyed our well needed sleep until 9.30, then got up and went in search of a Scotiabank to withdraw some Mexican Pesos. It wasn't to far away (~1.5 kms), but they couldn't connect to my bank so have to try again later. Then to a supermarket to get breakfast and lunch supplies. Since it was after midday when we got back to our accomodation we didn't bother with breakfast and just had lunch. Afterwards we had another attempt at getting to the beach, only to get all the way down there in the scorching heat to find you have to pay MX$58 as it is a National Park, and since we were playing it safe by not taking wallet or anything with us we just had to turn around and walk the 2 kms back. So instead we had a relax by the pool and ended up talking to an expat NZer from Timaru who has lived here for the past 2 years for most of the afternoon. The accommodation is based at a Healing Sanctuary, which does detox treatments etc using the poisonous venom from a frog from the Amazon, and a toad that only emerges from underground 2 months of the year. It was interesting hearing about what they do, but at NZ$500 we won't be partaking. In the evening we went back to Scotiabank to try withdrawal some money, and was success this time. We then wandered down the main street, which was a mixture of mainly tourist market type shops and bars and restaurants. It was after 9 pm with the tummies rumbling that we finally stopped at a street food vendor and had a "mexican pork sandwich" for dinner. It was then back to our room for showers and bed.Read more