Once more unto the beach (sic.)

We soon began to suspect the island of Holbox’s reputation as a haven for mosquitoes - embellished with peninsulas, t-shirts and even warnings in the guide book - was a conspiracy to keep the place from being swamped by tourists. Their presence (both tourists and mosquitoes), although undeniable, was not hugely significant on the calm-watered beaches of shells. In this setting we managed to occupy our first two days with very little: a paddle here, some sea kayaking, a paddle there, hammock time, final chapters, the conquest of a sandbar and more paddling until sunset.

It was on Thursday that any concerted effort was made at organised activity. The result being we went on a utterly amazing voyage in search of Whale Sharks at the restaurant at the end of the Gulf Stream. At up to twenty metres in length, these domino-patterned beasts are the largest fish in the sea but, like many whales, eat nothing but plankton. We met up with a male of a (not very) humble ten metres and swam with the local shoals in his wake as he grazed on the rising plankton-rich currents.

Dolphins, a turtle, a ray, reefs full of rainbow fish and sunburn in a bio-degradable-and- waterproof-lotion-only-zone were all there for the taking too. It was a great way to cap days of inactivity and the trip before heading to Cancún and home.

City of the Time Lords

Our ninth and final Mayan ruin (or Lowri's one and only) is justified its fame. We, for the most part the Lonely Planet's jaded visitors, were in awe. The site was an unexpected high after the justifying-our-detour- to-the-tour-party- less-Calakmul stop at Coba's temples two days earlier. The ball court was huge and resonant - the biggest in fact - with guides and mimicking audiences clapping to catch the supposed seven audible echoes - one for each player. The engravings too were unexpected; the most detailed, numerous and best preserved yet: soldiers carrying severed heads, eagles tearing out human hearts, scull-lined walls, serpents as banisters and atlas-impersonating columns and the central crowd drawer, the Castillo - Temple of Kukulcán - the crisp time keeper.

If I had a hammock

With out too much specific effort we have travelled from cowboy country through regions of Aztec, Maya and jungle explorer to find ourselves on what are definitely pirate shores. The car has bargained us a beach-side spot and taken us essentially pot-holing in wetsuits - promoted more silkily as cenote snorkelling:

Setting out into the bush in a stalling, spluttering, watch-me-as-I-crash-into-a-tree- and-nothing-happens, scrapheap challenge vehicle, we made semi-submerged tours of two small-hole-in-the-ground cenotes with a chirpy Catalan photographer and a large Mexican guide with thorough Yankee vernacular who got incredibly frustrated with anything other than Hollywood-sales-pitch levels of enthusiasm from us at all times. The first cavern had large vaulted ceilings and a healthy fish population but it was the second that proved most spectacular for the scraping-between-stalactite- and-stalagmite course the water level allowed us to navigate to the entirely enclosed spot where the lights went out.

Two vast and trunkless legs

The road had one destination and, although fine, would be reduced to a jeep track in a year and be swallowed by the jungle completely in ten without constant maintenance. We had to swerve for spiders, brake for butterflies and trundle behind turkeys. Branches, of course, were closing in on all sides.

The ruins themselves were set round a swept path surrounded by a scrubbier buffer with those uncovered representing only a fraction of the former capital. The highlights were the pyramidal temples whose summits jutted above the tree-line to reveal dense virgin lowland greenery in all directions to the horizon. There were not many more than thirty other visitors and with closing and the rains it was only us and the monkeys.

The motley collection of Maya ruins within striking distance the following day turned out a feast of abandoned plazas, earth monster doorways, false staircased temples and a living undergrowth. Although biting insects annoyed, ant megalopolis highway, scorpion, black monkeys, frogs, butterflies, crickets, kestrel-like birds and woodpecker were among the day's harmless sightings but, sadly, no startled flight of wild toucans or soporific jaguar dozing in the shade of crumbling walls.

We left the jungle through storm and speed bump and disappearing road to Chetumal, the border with Belize and the Caribbean coast.

In the jungle...

It’s either Jurassic Park or Indiana Jones; I can’t decide. In any case, Spielburg must be involved somewhere and I’m sure John Williams is crouching behind a bush because we just managed to isolate the theme tunes. But they’re not, it’s all real: real jungle, real waterfalls, real temples. In place of peril and doom there’s a guy with a walkie-talkie telling us not to jump on the bridge, Europeans atop temples in the pizza hut style chanting the gospel according to Michelin to their companions. Guides sit in the shade, more absorbed by the newspaper word search, awaiting their return. Curious insects hover above the grasses, butterflies flicker through the undergrowth and monkeys howl from the hills sounding more like King Kong but no one’s head is turned.

Calm in the Clouds

Boarding a coach that raced through the night, we have arrived in the cool, calm, colourful, cloud-level, coffee-scented town of San Cristobal de las Casas. Despite being a bit of a traveller town it still has the air of an isolated, indigenous, mountain community. Its climate allows everyone to keep exact opposite hours to the nocturnal Vercruzians. After puffing up to hilltop churches today, it seems a horizontal night at much less than 90 miles an hour is overdue. Before we head further afield tomorrow.

Out of the hills and into the heat

You could spend a very long time in the anthropology museum in Mexico City - camp out in one of the dioramas. We almost did and could have stayed even longer if we had anticipated the delays in Lucy's flight. At this point I should point out that I cannot seem to find most of the punctuation on this keyboard - bear with me.

We are now on a colonial trail down to the Yucatan. Yesterday, we left Puebla. It looked like a film set to such an extent that there were streets cordoned off with crowds of onlookers in blood-stained clothes and lots of people running around with walkie-talkies and someone taking autographs. It was not all fictitious. One museum, riddled with bullet holes, had played host to the 1910 revolution. Less than 100 metres lower than Mexico City, the weather was still clement and the daily downpour still on our trail.

However, we have taken a bus down to the sea at Veracruz; the landing spot of Cortes. Arrival on a Friday night had something of the fleeing Saigon about it: a Doors-alike band in the streets playing through the night, turret and palm back drop, heat and overhead fans. But then this place has been raided by pirates - it is that sort of town.

Belly-button of the moon

We have now been in Mexico City for three days. It is alive and far more temperate than Texas with daily half-hour downpours just in time to rush to the bar. Arriving on Sunday, the day of rest took a while to register. The streets were full of peaceful leftist election protesters all clad in yellow. There tents have been redirecting traffic for three weeks. In search of some where quieter we headed for the canals of Xochimilco - originally a farming area conquered by the Aztecs. Quiet it was not but the colours we more varied. Vibrant punts clogged the waterways while mariachis drew up to serenade and, in the words of Tom Lehrer, would not shut up ´til they were paid. On our way back in to town we caught the persistent, syncopated chants of second half of a pre-season friendly at the futbol stadium and, though not accounting for all twenty million of them, we gain a pretty good idea of a day off in the city.

Yesterday, it turned out, was when many places actually closed and any attempt to sweep through all the museums within walking distance was fruitless. The streets were clearer but tents, of course, remained and were a constant background through the streets of subsiding churches pitching at all angles on the dubious drained lake of a foundation; a scruffy skyscraper from whose summit the full city spread of crimson roofs and clogged highways stretching to the mountains could be seen; a glinting palace of a post office fit for kings to collect their pension (or whatever the place was used for since, almost equally amazingly, it lacked queues.) and a foreign correspondent’s spot in a rooftop hotel bar looking onto the main plaza to watch the left contender Obrador speak to the depleting masses as the rain came in.

Today has been spent at Teotihuacan; the vast mysterious and reverential city of the gods with its pyramids rivalling Egypt.

Thirty-one miles from Utopia

Remember the Alamo?

I didn't. The Mexican Army laid siege here in 1836 and everyone died, among them Davy Crockett - the king of the wild frontier. Now surrounded by San Antonio's skyscrapers, the fort, which resembles the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, looks a little out of place. Houston was fun. Wondering round on the first day, I picked up a baseball ticket for a dollar and almost interrupted "the Texans" pre-season training at the American football stadium. The Houston Astros - after whom the artificial grass is named - play at Minute Maid Park, hastily renamed after an orange juice when the name Enron Park lost its appeal. For a game that is little more than rounders, it drew a huge crowd and three of us from the hostel were among them.
In San Antonio, Andy and I have been in search of cowboys and Rodeo in the scrubby hill country - full of bikers, trucks and Stetsons - the buckle in the Bible belt. Our Greyhound leaves for Mexico City in an hour.

Houston, we have lift off.

Don't Mess with Texas.

it says on a sticker on the door as I stumble into the hostel reception past a veranda with "Live and Let Die" piped over a Tannoy. It's all big and hot and as a result seems quite empty for America's fourth largest city. The cardboard cutout downtown skyline on the hazy horizon I glimpsed as we touched down took an age to enter the third dimension and stop resembling a Truman Show backdrop as we chugged through rush hour traffic on a bus calling itself the Bush Express. I have little more to say as since arriving I have just slept.

Welcome

Dear readers,

Last summer, you read, in some sixty installments, of our journey from the divided regions of Kashmir to the newly annexed states of the European Union in the Letter from Stan:

Following a bureaucratic marathon vis-a-vis the visa fee, Mike was jam-packed from Jammu and Andy and I arrived in Pakistan and went in search of the bus to the apricots in Hunza only to rush from peak to get an appendectomy, with the selfless assistance of Yaqoob and Gilgit's Medina Guesthouse. With things not going to plan, Andy and I took a detour to the UK, while the charms of a fashion exporter in Delhi named Bimal got Mike out of India and united with Lowri in Kyrgyzstan. With me Aerofloated back out we headed for the Tajik border and into the Oblast from the past to arrive in Murghab at midnight. Taking a ridge too far we yurted it up before returning to the road where delays gave us cause to blame Canadia and our eventual ride took us, via a wedding with sherry, chips and a monobrow bride, to the house of Dr Khorog whose estate also hosted a sneak peak and a prophet. From here we toured the Wakhan, Baby!, and made for re-union with Andy in Monday's town, Dushanbe, and onward on the golden road to Samarqand over crossing of contrasts by train through Russia to Moscow, police cell, St. Petersburg and the battle of the beards, Tallinn and STANstead.

This summer, read on as we head south of the border to deliver the extended postcard that is the Mexican Lexicon.