Quito, Ecuador
It was really sad saying goodbye to Caty and Claire yesterday, I'll really miss the two of them and Mexico. I travelled almost the whole day, had to spend a couple of hours in Panama and my flight arrived into Quito at about 9.30 at night. By 11.30 I was already sambaing away with my third rum and coke in hand, still wearing the tracksuit bottoms I wore on the plane. I'm staying in a really friendly hostel called 'el centro del mundo' and there was a party already going on as I walked through the door, there was a big barrel of rum and coke to encourage mingling. There's a great carnival atmosphere in Quito and the whole city is involved in a three week water fight for carnival, we got a drive by supersoaking thismorning on our way to the market. I think I'm going to like it here.

Today is my last day in Mexico, from tomorrow I´ll be all alone, left to discover whatever they have to offer in South America. I can´t believe it has all flown by so fast and that the first leg of my journey is over. Mexico had more than I ever could have imagined, it´s a land of differences, from tropical rainforests to paradise beaches to massive cities. I could have stayed for a year and still not have seen everything but what I did see in my short visit was so awe inspiring that I think I´ll keep coming back here forever. Everything about Mexico is brilliant, the people, the food, the culture and the history. It was so easy to travel around, so easy to meet people and experience places and things that are worlds apart from where I began. It´s a bit scary heading to a new place on my own, but my theory is that the world is round and if you travel in circles you always end up back where you started, it´s what you see along the way that makes life more interesting.

We are in Tulum now, we only spent one night in Palenque. Palenque was beautiful, the ruins in the jungle were spectacular and we even saw the howler monkeys up close ´cause we went to the ruins really early in the morning. The place we were staying in was like some sort of hippy hell, we could smell the patchulia as our taxi pulled up. It was like some sort of hilliday camp for hippies, and you just know that half the 'chilled out' enlightened folk there are really merchant bankers at home. They drowned out the sound of the howler monkeys with their bongo drums and blocked out the sight of the fireflys dancing in the moonlight with their fire on a stick twirling hippy clown antics. Instead of good mexican food they served organic vegitarian slop, our cabana was like a mosquito infested hole in the ground. We got out of there as fast as we could and now we´re in tulum, a virtual paradise with white sand beaches and tourquise waters and hardly an incense stick in sight. Here we can really relax, that´s just what we plan to do for the next few days.