The Itch

For 12 days I've been surrounded by every shade of blue there is. The seas, oceans, skies and lakes, their colours ever-changing with the passing Sun above. It has been, in a word, paradise.



Don't think though I can't find something to complain about... because I can, I will and I do. Almost constantly actually if you ask Nick. 

"But what could you possibly complain about?" I hear you ask. You've no job, no home, no bills, no responsibilities, no more stuff than you can happily carry on your back and you're doing so from one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

Its a good argument, I take that, I do. You're just forgetting one thing.

I'm a fair-skinned whiter-than-white redhead and for 12 days I've been roasting beneath the Mexican Sun. In fact, far from paradise, this region of Mexico can - at times - feel like where fair-skinned gingers like myself might come to die. It would for sure explain why I've counted fewer redheads than I've got fingers on either my hands.

Combined with the humidity here on the coast, the heat has been unrelenting and at times nothing short of paralysing

I think the worst place for the heat was on Isla Mujeres. In a bid to keep our expenses reasonably under control, we opted to share a double room. However, unlike our rooms before, this one had no air conditioning and instead came only with a standing fan, both wobbly and weak. The room was an oven. And not the sort of oven you cook meringue in, I mean the sort of oven you roast meat in.


In an attempt to cool things down a little, we on our final night chose to sleep with the door open. Bad idea that was though. In exchange for lowering the temperature by all of about 3C, we in its place let in the whole island's population of mosquitoes who heard on the grapevine apparently there were 2 fresh pairs of legs out on show and ready to be tapped. Fortunately for me, they seemed to prefer Nick's slightly younger pair of legs... Now covered in bites from shoulder to toe, his only solace is that they seemed not to have favoured his face.

Sunset on Isla Mujeres

So besides the itching, what have we been up to?

Well since my last posting a week ago we've spent the majority of our time eating, drinking or laying on a beach. Sometimes in fact we've done all three simultaneously.

On the beach in Isla Mujeres

Wednesday to Friday were spent in Playa del Carmen - the Yucatan's party town - a fitting place to celebrate Nick's birthday. From there, we headed back North further still, heading straight through Cancun, on to the ferry and across to my currently favourite place, Isla Mujeres (pronounced izla moo-hair-rez). Here, the eat-drink-lie-in-the-Sun theme continued yet further with afternoons on the beach and evenings in the bars. Mosquitoes aside, it is my favourite place. End of.


Alas, I can't spend the whole of this trip just eating and drinking. Correction: I shouln't spend the whole of this trip just eating and drinking. With that in mind, we yesterday made the 8 hour door-to-door journey away from the coast and down to Bacalar, the first place on this trip where I've not already visited at least once before.

So the town is small. Really small. Much quieter than I had pictured it in my mind. The hostel we're staying at is sited right on the lake and not like anywhere I've stayed before. With almost nothing to do in the town itself, our only excursion here has been for an hour on a canoe where we crossed the lake and swam in the warmest waters I've ever swum. It was spectacular.

My photos probably do it better justice than this... take a look on Facebook and follow me on Instagram if you haven't already.

Nick and I kayaking in Bacalar