UnorthodoxY Archive It's wasn't what you thought

I’ve never considered myself to be a ‘sit on the beach holiday’ person but, in truth, I’ve never tried it.

So today is my chance as it should, all being well, find me on the Caribbean island of Caye Caulker in Belize. Hopefully I’m going to sit on the beach, with a book and drink something suitably tropical. Of course it might decide to rain all the time I’m here, in which case I’ll just have to find a bar to sit in instead. And considering it’s possible to walk round the island in an hour or two I should be able to thoroughly explore and still spend most of the day relaxing.

I might even overcome my general dislike of water and go snorkeling.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted to visit rainforests, jungles, ancient buildings covered with green, exotic noises all that business.

This should be my first taste of it, I’m in Chiapas near Palenque, it’s not the Amazon but does look like it’ll have some of what I want. I did a bit of searching and just look at what I can expect, this:

or this

(from magnusvk‘s flickr Mexico Set.).

’nuff said.

We’ll see if my pictures compare when I get back.

Only a few minutes to spare but time for a quick update. The wedding was excellent, everyone had a great time and I enjoyed myself throughly. Hopefully more about that when I get back or when I have more time.

And so now I’ve joined my tour group, already it’s clear that this will be no VodkaTrain. Things started with breakfast at 7AM (which I skipped in my Tequila induced slumber). It may all be a bit more organised and respectable than I’m used to.

It seems a nice enough group, only one American — I expected more, but it does skew towards the older end of the spectrum. There are a handful of younger poeple, but just a handful so it may be everyone early to bed and early to rise. I’m told that that’s what the VodkaTrainers thought I’d be like at first, so we will have to see. I wanted to post this now so that I can be proved wrong or right later, I intend to enjoy myself anyway, even if I get frowned upon.

There are a fair few solo travellers, all older, comparing which tours they’d been on and which coutries they’d visited. I can’t decide it that’s a bad thing or not …

At the moment it kinda puts me off doing more of these tours because it makes me wonder if that’s what I’ll be like if I do. Just early musings, we’ll see how it goes, journey of discovery, etc, etc.

Normally I preface these posts with words to the effect of “everything going well I should be in …” but this time I can say that barring complete disaster I’ll be in Mexico City. Why? Because this trip has been arranged around Mexico City so that I can attend a wedding on the 3rd and I’ve allowed a fair amount of wiggle room if something goes wrong.

The wedding should be … interesting … considering I speak very little Spanish and I’m not sure who else is making the journey from the UK. But I was invited, and I was very flattered to be invited, so I’m going. By the now the wedding will be over, hopefully I’ll have recovered and I’ll have joined a tour of Mexico and nearby countries with will take up the next few weeks.

Aside from that I’m not planning the rest of my free time in Mexico City in advance, I’ve got a guidebook and I’m sure I’ll find something to fill me time with.

I was trying to decide between a couple of different itineraries for this trip and while I was looking online I found that around half of all the comments about Tijuana were along the lines of “Don’t go, it’s a shithole.”

Regardless, Tijuana is where I am, hopefully not being shot at, mugged, kidnapped, scammed or any of the other bad things that apparently happen here. Frankly I don’t think it’s going to be that bad, you need to experience these things once in your lifetime and it seemed a shame not to visit when I’m so close and it’s on my way (kind of) to where I’m going next. Plus it gives me the chance to cross an international border on foot, which I don’t think I’ve done before.

What to do in Tijuana? I’ve no idea. I’m barely here for 24 hours so I think I’ll just wander around, see what the place is like and try not to look too much like a tourist. I’m spending the next few weeks in Mexico so it’ll be interesting to see the comparison between the tourist trap places like Tijuana and the more off the beaten track parts of the country.

Yay, it’s the return of the pre-written autoposts. A month with guaranteed almost regular posts hopefully reflecting something close to the reality of my holiday.

So today should see me heading from Los Angeles to San Diego. Hopefully I’ve not been broken (either physically or with stupendous amounts of booze) by Marc while he’s been showing me his pad. I might even have managed to get up a not pre-written post.

I’m only here for a couple of days and, to be honest, I’m probably going to do very little. When I’m on holiday I always feel like I should be out doing something but to be honest the two weeks leading up to this holiday have been beyond hectic and I’m going to need to recharge before the wedding next weekend and the tour afterwards.

So I’m going to do a little shopping, find some good booze and decent food and maybe go to the zoo if I fancy a busy day.

Edit: 10amWell I’m almost certainly not heading to San Diego today, I’ll probably head down early tomorrow.