“Welcome to Mexico Amigo” – friendly taxi guy at airport
entrance
It seems so long since my last night in England, the night
of November the 21st. It was
a sleepless night. I had packed and
repacked my bag at least three times but I was adamant that I was forgetting
something. But how could I forget
anything when I practically packed the entire contents of my room into a bag? It is surprising how much you can cram into a
60 litre bag.
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| Sammi wanted to come with me. |
The journey to the airport, going through customs and the 8 hour
flight to Cancun all seems like a blur now.
I guess sleep deprivation will do that to you, though I vividly remember
saying goodbye to my family. It is not
the first time I have said goodbye to them at an airport, last time was when I
was about to fly off to Australia on a yearlong working holiday visa*. It was very hard to say goodbye to my family
and girlfriend at the time back then.
The look she had on her face whilst I was leaving still guilts me today.
The good news is this time I am only going to be away from
home for a maximum of 4 months. Compared
to a whole year down under this felt more like a mere holiday.
I had a simple plan with this trip; start in Cancun, travel
along the south coast as far as Panama City and loop back round along the
Caribbean coast back to Cancun. This
would take me around the whole of Central America in an anti-clockwise pattern.
* I do plan to finally finish my Australia blog when I get
back from Central America, the last few months I spent in Australia were
definitely the most interesting and worth a good read.
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| A desperately crude map of my journey, I will make a better one soon I promise. |
Amigos
Arriving in Cancun the first thing that hit me was the heat,
stepping off the plane was like that rush of hot air you get when you open an
oven door. After getting my passport
stamped I headed to the exit of the airport.
Here groups of taxi drivers try to herd confused tourists into their
taxis with the promise of cheap fares.
I
was under strict instructions from my friend who had already been in Mexico for
a few days to turn down all offers and to find the bus depot near the
airport. It is easy to get ripped off at
the airport as being new to the country most people don’t have an idea of what
is cheap and what is expensive. Taxi
drivers at the airport know this fact all too well.
After wondering around for 20 minutes trying to find the bus
depot I was crammed into a small minibus with three huge American couples. I had forgotten how big some American people
can get. With my face pressed against
the minibus window I got my first glimpse of Cancun. The horizon was crammed with hotels, all of
them ugly monstrosities with their 64 floors and dull marble cladding. Cancun is a popular holiday destination for
North Americans and Canadians and considering the size of the hotels they must
flock here in there thousands.
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| My first photo from Latin America, nothing special just tourist and taxi drivers. |
Mutual Respect
After getting off the bus I had the good fortune of bumping
into my friend Myles who had been in Cancun for a few days already. Myles and I would be travelling together for
a while.
Arriving at the hostel brought back vivid memories of the
life I lived in Australia. There is a
certain atmosphere you get only in hostels (decent ones at least) and it is the
same in any hostel throughout the world.
It is a feeling of mutual respect.
Regardless of lifestyle or country of origin everyone in a hostel is a
fellow traveller and you immediately have a lot in common. Everyone was on their own journey and this
was the start of mine. “A journey of a
thousand miles begins with a single step” - Laozi
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