After leaving George and Anne's we headed back to the beach side campsite at Tulum and spent the afternoon on the white sandy beach.

That evening we had a surprise. A few months ago an American journalist had picked up our website and posted a short review of it on the Expedition Portal, a forum for Overland travellers. See http://www.expeditionportal.com/trip-report/2481-the-overland-family-goes-a-lap-around-the-globe.html. We did not know anything about this until we saw a surge of visitors to our website. We were then contacted by a Czech couple,Marek and Zuzana, with the comments "Did you live in Vilimovska in Prague? We think we used to walk past your truck parked in your drive". Well we did live there, and it turns out Marek and Zuzana lived in the same street and were driving a van from New York to Patagonia. We were just relaxing at the campsite in Tulum when Zuzana turned up and said "I think you are our neighbours from Prague". What a small world. We lived in the same small street, both preparing for a big overland trip and we never knew each other. Anyway we had a lovely evening catching up with them over beers.

From Tulum we headed to the lovely campsite, Yax Ha in Calderitas just outside Chetumal, close to the Mexican/Belize border. This was a lovely campsite with a great setting and we were able to park the truck right next to the sea. There was also a lovely swimming pool and a French family with 3 children for the girls to play with.



We spent our weekend here relaxing, swimming in the pool and preparing for the border crossing. This meant eating up all our meat, vegetables and fruit. We also need to finish off the beers!



And this was the view from our bed. Not a bad view to wake up to.

Heading further north east in Yucatan we came to one of the most famous Mayan ruins, Chichen Itza. We've found getting to ruins as soon as they open the best plan for us, before too many tourists arrive and before it gets too hot. This was particularly true at Chichen Itza, as it's fame as one of the new wonders of the world and it's proximity to Cancun made it really busy. Luckily we were already heading out after an interesting 3 hours taking in the impressive ruins, when the streams of big coaches started coming in.









We were particularly impressed with the ball court and the main pyramid.





The previous night we had camped in the grounds of a hotel. It was close to the road and what we had not realised was there was a festival going on in town. This meant that a lorry drove up and down the road blaring out disco music until 4am. What made it worse was that they only played 2 songs all night. So we changed our plan to sleep there another night. Feeling very hot and sticky after visiting the ruins and not wanting to have another night of disco music we headed off and thought our lunch spot should be at a cenote (underground lake) near Coba. The entrance to the cave looked like a well with a spiral staircase heading down into the gloom. Amazingly when we got underground it opened up into a large cavern with some light and roots coming through from the jungle above. The water was cool, crystal clear and well lit, so you could see all cave formation below. There was a large submerged wooden platform just over a metre deep, you could then swim off to deeper parts if you wished.







We've been seeing pilgrims for the Virgin of Guadeloupe over the last few days. She is the patron saint of Mexico and is celebrated on the 12th December. Initially we thought the groups of mostly teenage boys were cycling to Mexico City to where her main church is located but many are actually doing local pilgrimages. I always thought pilgrimages were a time for quiet reflection of the saint's virtues but these groups usually have a car alarm siren, you know the one that have a series of different alarms in series, and flashing orange lights on the back of their bikes. They had added to the cacophony created by the disco lorry the night before.

We camped that night next to a beautiful white powder beach at Tulum. The following morning we set off early again to see the ruins at Tulum. It was just 10 minutes walk from where we were camped. Although the ruins are smaller and less impressive than all the ones we have seen already it is the location that is stunning. Perched on top of a small cliff above an azure sea, it really is a breathtaking sight.







We headed a short distance north to catch up with one of Steve's old colleagues George and his wife Anne. They have a lovely house and were very welcoming. Even when we realised a few hours after arriving that we'd bought a whole host of extra guests with us! I was mortified to find that the girls had nits when I washed their hair that night. Even writing about it makes me want to scratch. George and Anne were wonderfully relaxed about it, they took Steve to the pharmacy for the lotion, let us use loads of hot water to treat the whole family just in case and washed all our bedding. I felt like that we were the worst house guests ever. Hopefully the little buggers have gone now, we've no idea where they got them from but Alisha has a theory that Lucy picked them up from Santa when she hugged him in Merida last week. As you see we had rather a lot of hair to treat! I'm just hoping that this is the only time she gets them.

We had a lovely time relaxing at George and Anne's, spending time catching up and taking nice walks on the beach. We were also treated to some wonderful food.

Looking forward to our last few days on the beach in Mexico before Belize we started to head south. However as we were leaving the guarded complex that they have a house in we had an "incident". As we were going through the boom gate at the exit we asked the guards to open both gates as it was such a squeeze, there were 2 gates across the road as it was so wide. The lazy guard couldn't be bothered to walk over and manually open the second one, so he waved that we should proceed through and that we had enough space on both sides, which we did. However, the pause in asking meant that the boom gate timed out and came down on the back of truck, obviously it didn't have an automatic sensor working. We stopped to find out what the damage was to us and were relieved to find none. However then the guards started going on about the damage to their boom gate. "What!?!? Your gate crashed into us, when you were waving us forward and we have damaged your gate ?!?!?" Steve remarkably kept his cool but it started to get very complicated from there. The gate had a slight dent in the bottom end, like it had been pushed slightly forward. They were claiming initially that Steve had crashed into the gate while it was stationary but there was no physical way that he could have, as he would have taken out their guard hut at the same time. More guards came, then the boss. We phoned Anne and George who came with her brother Richard who is a long term resident and a fluent Spanish speaker. He was wonderful and tried to help smooth things out. Then the police turned up, and then two more police cars. In the end, neither the security guards or the police were interested in what they saw on the CCTV footage or what had actually happened. So we ended up paying for the gate regardless of whose fault it was. Then the police tried to fine Steve for reckless driving.... it was all sorted out in the end.

We drove from Palenque to Campeche to stay at Club Nautico a short way from Campeche. This was a wonderful beach club with a trailer park attached. However we were the only people there. It had an amazing swimming pool overlooking the sea with the pelicans flying and bobbing around. It just seemed strange that it was so deserted. Perhaps it was because it was midweek.







One downside was that it was about 10kms outside Campeche and down a long private road so we were not able to catch a taxi or public transport into town. Having inadvertently driven through some Mexican towns I was not keen to drive the truck into the centre. Then Gilly came up with a great idea, park the truck at the airport just outside town and catch a taxi in and out. That what we did and it worked out great. Campeche is a lovely little colonial town on the coast. It was fortified to protect it from pirate attacks and some of the walls are still standing. It has been recognised as a world heritage sight and the houses on the streets are painted in bright pastel shades. We had a lovely walk round as well as stopping for a lunch of Yucatan specialities. The cuisine in the Yucutan is different to other parts of Mexico, the food is just so varied here.





Transport here can also be interesting. Not sure this one would pass a UK inspection test!

On returning to the truck we noticed that a stone had pierced the front tyre and part was still bedded in. Whilst the tyre had not gone down we thought it was probably prudent to change the wheels and put one of the spare wheels on. So the next day we were on the look out for a tyre change place and came across a hut beside the road with lots of tyres and a few small trucks on jacks. We stopped and explained our problem. Whilst the owner of the "garage" said the tyre would probably be ok we agreed to change the wheel. This was all done in 30 minutes and we were feeling pleased with ourselves. However when we pulled away something was obviously catching on the new wheel. We discovered this to be the valve which was positioned differently to on the other wheels on the truck. So back to the "garage". Off came the wheel and the valve was catching on the brake disc cover. This was annoying as this was the extra spare wheel we had bought from MAN and it didn't fit! The solution was to take the new tyre off the bad wheel and put it on the old wheel and then put the old tyre on the bad wheel. Anyway after 2 hours we were on our way and we still have a good spare on the back. The guys fitting the tyres were very friendly and took a number of photos of us and the truck and the total cost for all this work including tip was 30 dollars! Much easier than doing it all myself.



Despite having to do the tyre change we still reached our next stop at Uxmal in time for lunch. Here we camped right next to the ruins on a grassy patch next to the car park. Whilst there are no real facilities, they let you camp there for only a small fee. This meant we were able to visit the sound and light show in the evening. Alisha and Lucy did not like the noise and to be honest it was a bit boring but the ruins did look good in the lights.



Uxmal is one of the most important Mayan ruins and has some of the best decorations and carvings. It was in its heyday in about 900AD but was then abandoned. The main restored ruins are a temple, the nuns courtyard and the giant pyramid.











We climbed to the top of the giant pyramid, which was easier than going back down!



After Uxmal we drove the short distance to Merida where we camped in a large RV campground (virtually deserted again). The campground was next to an upmarket shopping gallery called "Liverpool" of all names. We headed off to the shops as it had been ages since we had been in such a place and took the opportunity for all of us to have our haircut. Alisha and Lucy were then excited to see a running sushi restaurant like the one they loved in Prague, so it was sushi for tea. The next day we headed into the centre of Merida. Merida is the capital of the Yucutan and as such it has all the hallmarks of a city established following the Spanish conquest. A Cathedral, main square and government buildings around the square. The area is also famous for sisal and the people who became rich with this trade built grand mansions on a large boulevard in town.







We had another lovely lunch where the ladies were making the tortillas by hand in the restaurant.

And there is no avoiding it. Christmas is coming.