Aussie, aussie, aussie!

I'm sure you'll all be relieved to know that my holidays didn't end in Mexico. When I got to Australia I arrived in Cairns for my friend Lisa's wedding, also the next week was my birthday so I figured it'd just be silly to go back to work on my birthday so I stayed two weeks :)

Cairns is a beautiful place to be in the winter, 25-30 degrees with blue skies, sandy beaches and greenery everywhere... you just gotta watch out for the crocodiles. I'm quite lucky as a couple of my besties from high school live up there so I can mooch free accommodation from them when the Melbourne winters get cold and dreary.

The morning after I flew in was Lisa's hens day, we woke early for a bbq breakfast and early morning kayak at Palm Cove, but the weather was crappy so we missed out on the kayak :( The rest of the day was fun and relaxing, we went to one of the resorts, had a picnic on the beach and I had a sneaky jet-lagged nap in a hammock while the others did yoga.

The great thing about the wedding was I got to catch up with the whole gang as Krichelle, Anna, Casey, Fay, Hayden and I spent the next few days with Lisa and Andy helping prepare for the wedding which was at Lisa and Andy's home in Speewah. Speewah is up in the hills behind Cairns where they have a split level block surrounded by rainforest, the perfect place for a wedding.

The rest of my time in Cairns I spent at Krichelle's place in Kewarra Beach, the beach is walking distance from her house where we go for BBQ's and to the beach bar, but no swimming... the crocodiles remember ... and stingers when the water is warm.

You can walk along the beach from Kewarra up to Palm Cove where you can find excellent restaurants for breakfast. And we did a day trip up to Kuranda to the markets and visited the butterfly house.

There are lots of things to do in Cairns but I was being super lazy. In the past we've done an overnight hike in the rainforest, visited the Daintree national park, Green Island, Port Douglas, the Atherton tablelands, gone swimming up in the rivers, gone white water rafting, been diving on the Great Barrier Reef and I've watched Lisa bungee jumping because there's no way in hell I'm doing it.

When I finally got home to Melbourne I wasn't there long before work send me off to Sydney.

Sydney is another excellent place to get out of the cold. I spent a lot of winter weekends getting some
sunshine as I ran along the coast from Bondi to Coogee, it's a great walk, in the summer the crowds are ridiculous but in winter it's great.

I was lucky to be staying close to the botanic gardens so in the morning I would run there, down through picturesque gardens and manicured lawns to the water overlooking the harbour and the bridge and opera house.

I have a few friends in Sydney who have been kind enough to entertain me - thanks Erica & Sean, Lucy and Nat, and I had my friend Julie come hang out for a weekend where we went to the Japanese gardens, Vaucluse house for high tea and got a ferry over to Watson's Bay to test out the cocktails.

Through work I also had Wednesday night travellers dinners so got to explore the restaurants and one night went to the Sydney Seafood School - I felt like I was on MasterChef.

Isla Holbox

We arrived in the tropical island paradise of Isla Holbox to torrential downpours. The sandy streets were boggy sandpits or flooded with a foot of water. Golf carts, the primary mode of transport, struggled and there was zero chance of getting anywhere and staying dry.




When the rains stopped blue skies appeared and the heat resumed so Robina and I took to wandering about the town with our new friend Sabrina from San Fran. It's a cute town of brightly coloured little bars, restaurants and souvenir shops, the beaches were clear green water lined with small fishing boats, pelicans would sit on the boats or circle above before face planting straight into the water and there were lots of tour shops advertising what we were there for - whale sharks!

Our whale shark tour began early morning, it was still dark when we climbed aboard a very small boat and then headed straight out from the coast for about 3 hours. As the sun rose there was no land in sight and no sound except our little lawnmower-like engine as we sped over the top of the glassy water.

We spotted some movement in the water and slowed down, the roiling, boiling spot of water was a school of fish bumping against the surface trying to escape the gaping maw of huge manta rays cruising about enjoying their breakfast.

Soon we spotted other boats in the distance, when closer we could see all the movement in the water, for every boat there were probably about a dozen whale sharks. There were hundreds of them, just cruising about ignoring all the snorkellers kicking about trying to follow them.

We jumped into the water in pairs and the guide yelled from the boat 'swim! swim!' as a large shark went past. I was giving chase when the shark did a big poo and suddenly I was paddling my way through yellowy-brown water thinking 'oh no, don't go getting water in your snorkel now!'

But even being poo-ed on couldn't ruin the experience, it was amazing, they're so huge and spotty and wonderful! In the water their colours look much brighter and their big vacuum cleaner mouths make them look like they're smiling.

 

Our first night in Isla Holbox turned out to be not so excellent. I woke in the night itching and sweating, covered head to toe with bedbug bites, literally - I had bites on my ears and my little toes! It was so painful and all I could do to alleviate the the pain was soak my sarong in the sink and wrap it over me. In the morning I looked like I had measles or chicken pox, the bites swelled up into big lumps and every time I started to sweat (which is pretty much all the time here) they started to itch again.

Robina was like 'wow, those bites are massive, stand still so I can get a picture!', but after she got her pictures had some sympathy for me and suggested we change accommodation to somewhere with aircon.

Because the bites were so painful except when in aircon or cool water we ended up at a lovely rooftop bar that had a pool most nights - I know, it sounds terrible and I'm sure we wouldn't have been there every night anyway! It did also have the most beautiful sunsets.

One day we decided to go out of town to Punta Coco, a point with lagoon on one side and beach on the other, to see if we could see some flamingos. We hired a golf cart and immediately got it bogged in the first puddle we tried to navigate. I was like 'what the hell, we can't be bogged, it's too shallow!' I got out and was shin deep in muddy water looking at the wheels but there was nothing blocking us, Robina revved and the cart didn't seem to be even trying to turn the wheels, which didn't seem right, but a couple of local boys appeared and gave us a push and out of the puddle it seemed to work again.

We stopped to pick up some supplies, but when we went to reverse the cart wouldn't go into reverse, we rang the hire place and a guy came. He kept putting the cart into forward and telling us it worked, we kept saying, 'no, no reverse' and he just shrugged his shoulders, like well don't reverse then.

So we got to the lagoon a couple of k's out of town and parked in an open area so we wouldn't have to reverse.

We had a swim, saw lots of flamingos and also heaps of the giant grasshoppers they have here, but when we were ready to leave our golf cart started but wouldn't move. No forwards or backwards.

We were just trying to figure out how we were going to explain to the guys at the shop where we were when a Mexican couple walked by and didn't think it was totally weird when we asked if they could make a phone call for us. So they rang the hire place for us and explained where we were, what was wrong with our cart and they stayed with us until Victor the mechanic appeared.

Victor agreed our cart was broken and gave us an oily rag so we could reach down into the back and push the gear in manually. The problem was once it was in it didn't stay in so we had to reach in and shove it back into gear every 30 or 40 metres. It was a long trip home, but our new friends hitched a ride back with us, so it was a bit of a laugh and the golf cart hire guys were nice enough to return our money when we finally made it back to town.

We returned to Cancun for our last couple of days where we went to Coco Bongo a giant club/theatre thing which was awesome. There were stages with performances and dancing themed from movies like Beetlejuice, Spiderman and my favourite was a battle scene from Tron, people were swinging overhead and falling from the ceiling on ribbons and the whole time you watch you're dancing because it's a big club. It was a lot of fun.

 

Not so awesome was getting attacked by bed bugs again followed by an allergic reaction to the cream I got from the pharmacist. So after that causing me more misery I was ready to jump on a plane home and to a bug free bed.

Where in the world is Carmen, Quintana Roo?

Playa del Carmen is a bustling tourist town, it's long main street lined with souvenir shops and restaurants, shop-owners and tour guides calling out as you pass and Frieda Kahlo imagery everywhere. I liked it a lot.

 

A block from the main street is the beach and at one end is a restaurant called Senor Frogs which has cheap cocktails and hammocks in the shade so Robina and I spent a fair bit of time moving between the hammocks and the ocean.

Food in Mexico is excellent, sometimes we'd find a cheap local place and we'd get lunch and a drink each for $5. The expensive restaurants were also relatively cheap, one of our favourites was the Frieda Kahlo restaurant. It was pretty fancy, closhes were lifted with a flourish and a puff of smoke and we had the tastiest guacamole ever - it had strawberries and pork crackling! We got entrees, mains, dessert and cocktails all for about $80 AUD! Bargain!

 

A short bus ride from Playa is Xcaret which is a water park/entertainment venue. It has rivers of turquoise blue that you float down, passing through caves and coming out alongside restaurants where you glide past as people dine.

There's a rocky beach where you could snorkel, it was super crowded but there were lots of fish and in the deeper water large sting rays gliding past underwater sculptures.

There was a butterfly house and a bird house, in the bird house was this crazy bird that looked like a small dinosaur and kept chasing people - it was terrifying. I made Robina wait until there was a family walking past and when it was busy terrorising their small children we made a run for it!

There was entertainment during the day including the traditional Dance of the Flying Men where some guys climb to the top of a pole, tie a rope to their feet and then swing round and round the pole unravelling the rope until finally they reach the ground. They then follow that up by climbing on top of a small windmill thing and go round and round in circles, I got dizzy just watching.

In the evening was the main show, on the walk to the arena a series of stages above the winding path had freaky dudes dressed as warrior animals watching over the crowd.

 

The show started with two teams playing the ancient Mayan Ball Game. A rubber ball, a bit smaller than a soccer ball, is hit with the hips and bounced through concrete hoops. This was followed by another game that was similar to hurling but with a ball that was on fire! They started at dusk, the red glowing fireball carried on sticks like hockey sticks and thrown across the court to each other before being tossed into the fire pits at each end.

The rest of the show was dancing from different areas and a musical history, showing the mayans working the land, then the Spanish arriving and conquering the Mayas, then ended with everyone holding hands and being happy about being christians. The Mexicans went crazy for it, all cheering and giving a standing ovation.

From Playa del Carmen we went further south to Tulum where we stayed at an 'eco-lodge' and discovered 'eco-lodge' was code for no air-con! In the night woke we up sweating balls and ended up sleeping on the beach beds down on the beach. This was great because there was a thunderstorm lighting up the horizon and a big meteor shower, I've never seen so many shooting stars!

In Siam Ra'an national park we did a river and lagoon tour and the river was the most amazing crystal clear, vivid blue-green water, we put on our life jackets upside down with our legs through the armholes like big nappies so we could float down the river with the jackets acting like floating seats. That was a bit weird but worked pretty well.

After floating down the river we jumped back into the boat and toured the lagoon where we saw crocodiles and manatees. The manatees are shy creatures, appearing as nothing more than a white shadow in the water occasionally poking a nose out with a snort before disappearing again.

We moved accommodation to the tube hotel which had rooms created out of large concrete tubes, they were cute and had little round doors like hobbit holes and most importantly air-con!

In my next adventures... Whale Sharks!!!!