Our final country! Mexico!

We got the 8am boat back to Belize City ($15). The boat looked full with about 20 people left on the dock but they managed to squeeze them in somehow until we were squished like sardines. Anna's regular iced coffee man had evidently overslept so she couldn't get her fix. She was caffeine-less until Chetumal but didn't turn into a monster for once.

There’s little info online on buses to Mexico. We knew there was a night bus direct to Tulum but a lady on CC had told us there was one in the morning. When we got to the mainland they told us there wasn't one until 1pm which was $25 to Chetumal. Not wanting to wait around for 4 hours, we decided to save some money and look for a chicken bus. We got a taxi to the bus terminal (8B), where a chicken bus showed up almost instantly to Chetumal. We climbed aboard and it was pretty comfy and not too hot for the 4 hour journey (15B).

The landscape was flat with grass, palm trees and sugar-cane plantations on single roads. At the Belizean border we all jumped off for a stamp. As tourists, we had to pay $18 departure tax. Only 3 of us got back on the bus (no idea where everybody else went!) and we drove a surprisingly long way to the Mexican side. There we got off, got our stamps and put our luggage through a scanner - I was questioned for dodgy looking items but he was satisfied with my Christmas presents explanation without having to unpack it all.

Mexico is like a completely different place with it’s 3 lane roads and clean, Americanised shops at the side. Shortly after the border, we arrived in Chetumal. Despite it being in Mexico, all the lamp posts where we were dropped off had Belice (Belize) written on them. Must be some weird overlapping territory thing? Explains why the buses cross the border. It seems apt that our first and last border crosses have been done on chicken buses.

The taxi driver even wanted Belizean dollars but we only had US as Anna had given our last 4 to the bus guy. The taxi took us to the nearby ADO terminal ($2) where we were able to pay in US dollars for our tickets to Tulum ($13). We'd gone forward an hour so we only had an hour and a bit to wait until our bus (which aren't quite as regular as we'd been told!). The terminal had free wifi to keep us entertained.

We boarded the Mayab bus at 4:45pm, which wasn't quite as nice as we'd hoped - slight upgrade from a chicken bus with proper seats and aircon but certainly not modern and no toilets. It stopped a fair bit too and by the end of the 4 hour journey our bums were slightly numb! It was mainly a 2 lane highway with grass / bushes either side and not much to see.

We walked to our AirBnB place and were shown around by Donaji who was lovely and gave us a map and told us where to visit etc. It's a small 2 bed apartment in the centre of town and at only $23, is a lot better value than any we found on Bookings.

The hotel that we stayed at on our first visit to Mexico 3 yrs is apparently 5 minutes drive from here. We did look into going back for a night or two but it's really pricey. It'll be lovely to go back to the stretch of beach we got engaged on and see the area from a backpacker’s viewpoint.Read more