my life

We woke up nice and early and surprisingly un-hungover after the night before. Perhaps the answer was always Corona and Tequila and we just never knew! We wandered around the corner to see if we could take advantage of the free breakfast at the hostel: there were plenty of eggs and not much of anything else. I tried to make me and Broady some eggs on toast (which should have been simple), but failed miserably and I’m sure he’s convinced that I am the worst cook in the world now.

L-R: Johan, Me, Broady, Karen - check out Mr Teapot in the background

I looked around to see who looked distinctly ‘Tortoisey’ and realised that everyone looked Tortoisey, and having met Karen the night before in a restaurant, decided that it was very possible that everyone could be joining us on our trip. Turned out that just one girl was; the rest were just passing through on their way to other places.

As the time to board the bus drew closer, we set off down the street to meet our fellow travellers. It wasn’t 30 seconds before we met one of them: a blonde lady lady rushing towards us muttering something about “when you get on the bus, tell them I’m late” – I think we missed the first half of the conversation. I promised her we would and walked the 20 or so feet to the bus.

About half of them were already there – or at least that’s what I thought. Turns out that the bus was only half-full and there was only 18 of us in total. This was promising to be a lot more relaxing than previous Tortoise trips I have done. We all introduced each other, trying to remember names, and instantly forgetting them – expect for Karen of course, who we had met the night before. It was like we went back years compared to how little we knew this lot! We met the drivers, who were Concrete Jimmy and Josh – after my tales of Concrete Jimmy looking like Jesus, Broady settled on the fact that he actually looked more like ‘The Dude‘ from The Big Lebowski. I could see what he meant actually. What with that and the fact that Josh looked like Jack Black…

We boarded the bus, settled down and started to introduce ourselves. Having travelled on the Tortoise a couple of times before I could look around and see little groups forming within minutes of us all boarding. It was interesting to see and I wondered if I would be proved right.

Me and the Broadwah in Tulum; such an outstandingly beautiful place

We travelled for almost 4 hours, but it felt like minutes as everyone was quickly chatting, telling stories, jokes, laughing and generally getting to know each other. It didn’t feel like long before we arrived at our first set of ruins: Tulum, Mexico. As we hadn’t had much in the way of breakfast, we decided to sample the local cuisine; so Karen, Johan (a Swedish lad we had met), Broady and myself went to get something to eat before embarking on a trek to the ruins.

Tulum is situated on the coast of the Carribean and is the best preserved of all theMayan coastal ruins. We finished off our meals and set out to discover these for ourselves – accompanied by our Mayan tour guide, who happily led us around the ruins for an additional fee, which split between us all wasn’t much at all and was well worth it to learn about the people who built the place and lived here centuries ago. He liked to tell the odd joke too, which made for a really nice tour.

As this was just a flying visit and we were due to come back here at the end of the trip, we started the 20 minute walk back to the bus. On our way back, we noticed a novelty train-looking bus full of tourists chugging back to the car park so we set about running after it in the hope of jumping on the back, Back to the Future style (without the skateboards), and arriving back to the bus in good time. This was not to be though: have you ever tried running in baking heat, sweating like I don’t know what, whilst wearing flip flops? It’s not easy, and we never managed to make it. Oh well, it was worth a try.

We finally got the bus a little late and realised that people who had set off after us were already on – apparently we had taken the scenic route. The one which we took on the way there and that the 20 minute walk was in fact a 5 minute one! Shit. I need a swim. Which was a good thing, because our next stop was the cenote at Aktun Ha- a local swimming hole with a rope swing. Get me there!

Nguyen trying to cross the cenote - impossible

After an hour or so on the bus we arrived at the water hole, nicknamed the ‘Carwash Cenote‘ and it was full of fish! Swimming in this was going to be strange. But try as we might to catch any of the buggers, it was impossible. Even if you dived [dove? diven?] in you couldn’t even touch one, which was surprising because they were everywhere. It was great fun – two rope swings, a large hut thing with a roof you could dive off, and a rope which spanned the length of the cenote.

It was a great place to cool down, and rope swing-related memories from my childhood came flooding back – only this time if you fell in it was a bonus and not something which meant you had to go home to get a bath.

We must have spent a few hours there, even though the time seemed to pass so quickly. Trying to cross the cenote using the rope and no hands was something about 5 of us tried, and none of us managed more than about 3 steps, and even then we were holding on to a branch above us.

We had our first cook-out, and got back on the bus to start our long drive, overnight to Belize where we would be woken up at around 5.30am and have to face the Mexican border guards.

We arrived a New York’s JFK airport pretty late on and queued at immigration for the usual hour or so. We knew that a well-needed sleep was just around the corner so wasn’t too bothered. We got into a taxi just outside the terminal and told him which hotel we were staying in (a Holiday Inn just outside the airport complex). He was gutted. He’d “just waited in line for over and hour to get to pick some passengers up – you should go into New York City first, then I take you to your hotel. It’s too early to go to bed now!”

It wasn’t going to happen and he reluctantly dropped us off at the hotel and said that there was a minimum $20 fare. By this time, we couldn’t be arsed to argue with an irate New York cabbie so we just gave him $20 – we wanted food and then bed soon after!

And after a long wait in yet another queue at the hotel, we finally got our American grub from the restaurant in the hotel, watched some Yankie trash TV, then went to kip. Both of us, knackered.

…

We woke up to about 3 different alarms – one from the 80s style clock radio, one from Broady’s mobile, and one from mine. We really weren’t going to miss this flight to Mexico in a hurry. As we had not booked breakfast online there was no breakfast to be had and we had to make do with a quick snack at the airport before boarding. We weren’t too bothered – as far as we were concerned the adventure had already started and it was a bit fun to eat soggy and partly frozen pre-packed boiled eggs with a granola pudding. We were backpackers now, and that’s what they do!

Tried to strap in on the way to Cancun; gave up

After a plane journey which seemed to pass pretty quickly we arrived in Cancun. It is HOT HOT HOT here! After spending a Winter in England I had forgotten what it felt like to be genuinely hot. We went outside to catch our bus to Cancun centre (where we would check into our hostel), and straight away started to get our much-needed sun fix.

As we both stood there commenting over and over how hot it actually was, we got increasingly worried about that fact that the bus we had just paid for wasn’t going anywhere – there was no driver, and no other passengers waiting to get on with us. Hmmm. While Broady took care of the bags I went around the other side of the terminal and asked someone in my best English where I should catch the bus. Luckily, the girl I asked was from Germany, spoke perfect English and directed us to a group of people all waiting for buses that had the same logo as the one we were waiting for, but these ones looked like they were made in the last few decades. I went to get Broady and we boarded the bus for Cancun.

Flying through the tourist zone in Cancun (sans seatbelt) was an experience; it was swarming with fat American tourists, shops selling shit (well, it was shit with ‘Cancun‘ written on it), big and ballsy nightclubs and bars, and more steak houses and burger bars than I saw when I visited Texas. I made a mental note to visit here when we got back from the trip – this was heaven and hell rolled into one!

We finally arrived in the centre of Cancun. A small hostel called ‘Mexico Hostel’ greeted us there. We checked in and were taken to a room about 5 minutes away as they were full. It wasn’t a bad room, we had a fan and water.

Running water - don’t get used to it Broady!

We left our stuff and went out to explore. Didn’t get far until we found a bar and ordered a Corona each – we had finally arrived and we were finally on holiday… ahhhhh.

We wondered around some more, and stumbled on a nice little restaurant where we were coaxed in by a lady with bright red hair who said it was “the best place to eat around here”. As we got chatting to her it turned out that she was American and would be joining us for the Tortoise trip the next morning – what a small place Cancun was! We chatted for a while about the Tortoise and what we expected before she left to go back to her hotel for an early night.

Not for us – we were in Cancun! We finished our food, and wandered around until we found ourselves in ‘La Taberna‘, a bar where we spent the rest of the night talking about what we would like to do on the trip, whilst gradually getting more and more drunk on Corona and Tequila – when in Rome!

Today started life a bit hungover as Broady, Ash and Myself had accidently strayed into Gala Casino the night before, and stayed there until 3.30. Ash borrowed £500, and got himself up to a grand, so at least I know I have some money for when I get back. The headache continued well into the morning and when we arrived at Durham station we were told that we couldn’t pick our tickets up as we had ordered them to go from Newcastle. The fat lady behind the counter seemed to take great delight in telling us this, and then said that we “should call customer services on 0870 … “. There’s us thinking that she was customer services, but no, they were ‘Ticket Services‘.

My headache was growing worse by the second.

I got through to a lady in India, which was nice: “Durham? Can you spell that please?” – nightmare! To try and prove to the lady behind the counter that I was having no joy with “Customer Services” I turned on the loudspeaker on my phone … “PUT THAT DOWN!!” another GNER employee behind the counter shouted. I don’t think that I have ever, in my life, been shouted at in such a way by someone who purports to be in the service industry. I went over to him to ask him for his name, to which he replied “I’m not telling you“.

I started to read his name badge, which he quickly covered up with his arm. This was getting weird – it was like being at school. He began to write down a blatantly fictional name on a piece of paper – I know that whatever he had written down wasn’t his name as I’d already managed to get down the first few letters from his name badge, and they just didn’t match.

It was then we just decided to give up and get on the train without any tickets. Good move; we sat in 1st class, and when the inspector came around to check tickets he just took our names down. [edit: I’ve since received a letter saying we owe over £200 for travelling without tickets - I still have the tickets so they can write letters for as long as they want]

Thankfully, anyway, that was the end of our GNE-Arse experience, and I’m sat here now, writing this on the plane to NYC listening to Bowie on my ipod. Everything turned out alright in the end. I really hope the rest of the trip goes better than it did today!

I was thinking about this for most of today, and decided that they probably didn’t. I assume that if an animal is able to have any concept of ending its own life, it must first have a concept of life and death itself – self preservation, maybe; but almost certainly not a life it perceives as comprising a beginning, middle and end and having any way of realising it actually has any sort of choice in deciding when the end bit happens. I also can’t imagine any animal getting so depressed that it thinks to itself “I’ve had enough of this, where’s the rope?”.

Imagine if a cat wanted to end it all. It’d take them ages!