K, so a few days since the last update so here is what we have been up to!

So we arrived in Tulum on Friday afternoon, a really nice little town and sweet owners of the hotel.  We went for a wander around the town when we arrived and decided we should go check out the beach.  What we thought was 3-4km walk turned out to be more like a 8-10km walk, eventually in the heat we gave up and decided to grab a taxi and what fun that was.  No more than 200m down the road, the taxi driver pulls over "uno momento" as the taxi begins to overheat and he frantically tries to get water into the radiator, he really didn't want to let us go but eventually we just walked off and got another taxi.  When we got to the beach, it was stunning, Bec described it as the most beautiful beach she had ever seen.  The sunset was amazing.  We sat at one of the beach bars, mind you on a swing at the bar, very peaceful way to relax.

Day two in Tulum we decided to take a trip to a place called Xel-HA (Shell Ha), it's half theme park, half nature reserve.  I think essentially it is a theme park that has been dumped right on top of a nature reserve.  We made sure we go their nice and early to avoid the crowds.  The first thing we did was went snuba diving, this is a combo of snorkeling and scuba, scuba mask and the oxygen tanks are floated on a raft above you.  This was really cool and we got to go all around the bay and feed all sorts of different fish that live there.  Had a great day at Xel-Ha.

Sunday in Tulum we headed off to the tulum ruins, even though starting to be a little ruined out, these were again interesting as they are built on a cliff obviously to have control of the seas and see who approached.  We then went to the Grand Cenote, the cenotes exist all around this part of Mexico and are a series of underground rivers and caves that the Mayan people used for water.  Essentially all cenotes are linked and you could swim between them all, they have the clearest water and we timed it perfectly as the afternoon sun shone into the Grand Cenote.  We swam between two of the caves, and as we swimming through bats flew above us, a strange kind of experience.

We moved on Monday to a tiny little town called Akumal Bay which is Mayan for home of the turtles and we soon found out why. Akumal Bay is actually 2 bays - Akumal beach and Halfmoon bay, on Monday when we arrived we lounged around on the beach for a bit, then went snorkeling on Akumal beach.  Akumal beach has an enormous reef which means it is quite protected and calm at one end and then at the other end is open so good waves for surfing.  We snorkeled around for a while with all kinds of fish and enormous sea urchins - luckily I had spotted the spanish sign telling us to be aware of them.

Tuesday morning we went into Halfmoon bay. In Akumal Bay turtles lay their eggs in both bays, but what really makes it home of the turtles is half moon bay.  The turtles are not laying eggs at the moment, but the adults always return to Half Moon Bay, the bay is made up of one small reef and the rest is all sea grass - which the turtles love and come back to eat.  We saw 4 turtles while we snorkeled around, as we floated above them, they happily ate the grass from the bottom below us.  We even head one swim up to check us out and poke his head out of the water right in front of us. Amongst a variety of tropical fish we also got to see a stingray as well.

We then caught a collectivo (These are like a 12-15 seat taxi, but make frequent stops to pick up or drop off others, but at $2.50 for any distance they are too good to pass up) to Playa Del Carmen.  Everyone had told us that Playa was very touristy and it was.  Heavily American influenced, but at the same time a really nice place, again great beaches and 5th Avenue (the main shopping strip) was a hive of activity and almost a zoo of "have your photo with" - monkeys, boa constrictor, baby lions, tigers or pumas. 

Day 2 in Playa Del Carmen was spent lazing around the beach, we deliberately tried to make the day as lazy as possible as we wanted to come out later in the night to see how much the street and town really livened up, unfortunately our plans were thwarted.  We headed back into the town around 6pm found a nice bar for a drink and then went to start wandering the street to find somewhere to have dinner and it started bucketing down, we hid ourselves in one of the shops while we waited for it to pass. Unfortunately the storm didn't let up for about half an hour.  We got talking to one of the workers and he told us that most of the shops would simply shut as there would be nobody out shopping anyway!

Thursday was spent flying to our next destination - Costa Rica (With a stop off in El Salvador too), can't really tell much about Costa Rica just yet as we only arrived at midnight after a 4 hour delay on our flight.  Today we are heading to a town called la Fortuna where there is an active Volcano and often at night you can see the embers and lava flowing from it.

hope you are all well.