Month: January 2018

View from the Ek’Balam summit

Then off to a Hacienda (Kaan Ac).  It’s meant to be a 5-star hotel, but appeared totally deserted apart from a guard on the gate and some other staff.

Who made us a coffee while we sat on the terrace.

And finally St Bernadine Church – fortified!

I haven’t really talked about food, apart from our coffee-maker last night.  Think Mexican, and you’ll be there.  No shortage of refried beans – especially yummy with breakfast.  But the fajitas, nachos, marguerites, tacos etc are well up to scratch, and better.

Chichen-Itza tomorrow.

There is a bit of a technical hitch, so doing today’s blog in bits.  Firstly a huge thanks to Andreas, our host on the first night.

He had noted the flight was early, but had no knowledge of the ensuing chaos nor our lack of IT skills when trying to contact him.  Anyway, we met up at last and he was a superb host – including a terrific breakfast and checking over our hire car when it was delivered.  Thanks, Andreas from two tired travellers who picked us up and got us going.

Guess where!

As we were close to the beach, we went to have a walk – beautiful and temperature in the mid to low 20s.

Found a friend.  Wonderful watching them diving for fish but photography skills not up to recording that.  So here is one resting, just to remind us.

You remember the Cancun sign?  Look closely at mid-right and you can see it.  You can also see the massive queue to have photos in front of it.  I kid you not!

If Rick can eat there, so can we.  So a short walk across the square.

Cheers.

This is what happens if you let a pyromaniac loose.  One Irish coffee ..

… and an apple crepe.

Brilliant meal and incredible value.  And just to prove that the master of selfies has nothing more to learn!

Then the first real taste of Mexican driving.  Actually probably not.  100 miles to Valladilod on a straight dual carriageway with one exit and fewer than 10 cars.  So dull doesn’t even come close!

Then to a beautiful little town – Valladilod.  For any of you who might have watched Rick Stein’s Mexico Journey on BBC2 the other week, he ate at the darker red restaurant.

In the courtyard.

More of that later.  For now a few views of the town.

… and us.

Only 9 hours 37 minutes to go (which is already an hour less than we thought/feared).

9 hours and 30 minutes later things are looking good.

2 hours later, a bit less so …

It may be a brand new airport but it does help if you staff it properly.  There’s us thinking an hour to get through passports is a real pain but at least the bags will be there – ha ha!  It ended up taking well over 2 hours – that’s longer than Los Angeles.

Holiday starts tomorrow.