We had decided to don the roles of intrepid explorers again today. We had heard their were more Mayan Ruins that we could get to on local transport. We weren't in any rush so we took our time over breakfast and also booked a late sitting for the Mexican dinner which meant that we didn't need to be back until around 8.30pm.

Donning our cameras. suncream and hats, we headed off to the bus station at Playa Del Carmen. It is quite difficult ensuring that you are getting on the right bus when you don't speak the lingo, and there are a variety of people who look like they know what they are doing but apparently dont!.

Fortunately we had driven past Tulum on our previous excursion so we realised that the journey was about an hour (otherwise we would have both been panicking about whether we had missed the stop). For some reason there was a film showing on the coach which seemed to be Alladin, Bollywood style made in English and dubbed in Mexican. Despite not really understanding any of it at times it was hard to ignore.

On alighting from the coach we ran the gauntlet of people trying to sell us tours and headed on down to the ticket office. Deciding that we would explore the site ourselves we declined the generous offer of expensive tour guides and purchased ourselves from the only open booth - which did mean the queue was quite long.

Tulum was a major port serving Coba. There were more pyramids, examples of Mayan fresco's and some protected beach (seemingly hatching sites for turtles). There were also dozens of lizards and Iguana's basking on the rocks around the ruins, in some cases it was as if they were guarding them.

As we headed out of the archeological park we found a little bar on the beach where we sat and watched the world go by.

Deciding to head for the town of Tulum we began strolling along the beach. After a while we turned inland, declining the over enthusiastic taxi driver and began walking along the road - confirming with a local policeman that we were heading in the right direction.

After about 20mins we felt that we were beginning to worry that we weren't getting closer to the town, the persistent taxi driver had come along the road to ask us again if we wanted a taxi (which we declined). But when we reached a hotel we asked one of the many taxi drivers how far it was to the town - 8-9km in the afternoon sunshine was much further than these intrepid explorers wanted to walk so we hopped in and headed off to Tulum.

Tulum town seems like an ordinary town with one long main street (although we weren't there for long so that might be quite a wrong assumption). We wandered down the street and found a lovely open air bar and had nacho's and guacamole with beer - there is a slight irony about having the best guacamole we had both tasted in an Argentinian bar but hey!

It was time for the intrepid explorers to head back to the hotel. We had been told about a form of transport that the locals use called a collectivo (it did take quite some time to learn the name). These are like minibuses that run almost every minute up and down the main road between Tulum and Cancun. A trip from Tulum to Playa del Carmen costs a total of 30 pesos. The collectivos are used as much to transport locals to and from all the hotels along the highway as they are to transport tourists around.

We were back at the hotel quite early with time for a spot of vegging out. We were planning to head back into Playa del Carmen to see the local show at 6pm. This show consisted of 5 men dressed in traditional mayan costume climbing to the top of a very high pole. One of them sat on the top and played a whistle and the other four tied themselves to pieces of rope and hung upside down as the pole spun around and the ropes got long until they were all back on the ground. Apparently this is called Danza de los Voladores 'The Dance of the Fliers'.

Immediately after the fliers reached the ground a conch was blow to attract the crowd closer to the beach, under a contemporary sculpture of the mayan ball game (or game of ball). Then the drumming began - along with the most elaborate costumed characters performing an Aztec fire dance. Loud, vibrant, agressive, exciting each dance includes one of the performers demonstrating their ability to be touched by fire and feel pain.

A gentle stroll along fifth avenue and Chris saw a dress she liked (and bought). Then we settled at a bar for more beer and guacamole until it was time to head back to the hotel for our Mexican meal.

The mexican meal was not exactly the highlight of our holiday, but at least we gave it a go.