Anna kicked a racoon

Another drizzly day :( We went out for yoghurt in the rain, had to hide for a 2 min downpour, and then had it with granola and bananas for breakfast in our room (plus Anna ruined my healthy breakfast idea with a chocolate muffin!)

We stayed inside reading and it eventually brightened up a bit. After lunch we headed out with the aim of walking along the beach around to Paraiso island. After 5 minutes of walking the beach was deserted and looked beautiful. We carried on, wading in the shallow waters around a few buildings where necessary. Then the mozzies came! Just a few at first. Then Anna said she looked up and saw a dozen on my back. I tried to shake them off but they were persistent. I wrapped my sarong around me and we headed off, batting them off. They seemed to multiply until literally a swarm was surrounding each of us.

We were determined to carry on, having seen barely anything of the island yet and getting a bit cabin feverish. We came across a lagoon and about 20 bright pink flamingos. We waded towards them to try and escape the mozzies but they followed. The zoom on my camera decided this was a good time to stop working so I figured I'd wade out further to get closer to the flamingos but Anna had had enough of the mozzies and shrieked it was time to leave. We tried to run but the sand was covered in sharp shells so it was more of a quick shuffle as the swarms chased us.

We both killed a good many of the buggers each but they kept on coming. We both had quite a lot of bites, though probably not as many as we expected. The swarm lessened but didn't leave us until we got back to the main beach which doesn't seem to suffer until nightfall (possibly because it is free of seaweed). We were both hot and itchy so went straight back and jumped in the hot shower. From experience, this plus a thorough soaping seems to reduce the itching; or we've become more immune to the bites.

We hung out in the room but the banging from some renovations drove us out. We tried the Caxton card in the ATM, which I discovered still had a bit of money on it, and success! Along with our emergency dollars we have enough to avoid the paypal charges.

We went for dinner at our usual breakfast haunt as we'd noticed last night it did dinner as well. Anna had a lovely salad with hibiscus dressing (85P). I asked for something veggie and got a ton of veggies, beans and rice plus a basket of tacos for just 65P. Amazing! We've discovered that most places don't have many veggie options on the menu but will usually make something up if we ask. This place is the only cheap eatery that does great food that we've found.

We were due to stay another night here but the weather, building work and mozzies have put us off. We'd love to discover more of the island but after today's adventure we've ruled out any more exploring and the tours are quite pricey. So we've decided to leave early and head back to the Caribbean and if we don't like it there either we'll go back down to Akumal for a few days. We'd had a lot of recommendations for Holbox so we're pretty disappointed in our experience of it. I can see it's potential... we've just been unlucky with the weather. We hope to come back in dry season and see the whale sharks - it's such an easy trip from Cancun I'm sure we will.

We picked up two more posh beers for Anna and headed back to play some chess. The drunkard beat me :( Anna went out to feed the stray cat that appeared yesterday and a racoon tried to steal it’s food. Anna instinctively kicked the racoon away to protect the cat but she needn't have worried, the cat held its own. The racoon continued to try and swipe the cat’s food but she hissed at it (the cat, not Anna). So we gave the racoon some cat treats and he happily gobbled them up. He was very tame and let us touch him but we didn't want to get too close in case he had any diseases. We've seen them before on the streets but never quite so close :)Read more