Isla Mujeres is a beautiful little island in the bright turquoise Caribbean Sea. It is a very touristy place.

We had to stop overnight in Cancún because that is where the boats depart for Isla Mujeres. Helena was convinced there were bedbugs in our hostel in Cancún and she didn't sleep a wink for worrying about them but I was so tired after the two big nights out in Mérida and a long day walking around Chichén Itzá in the heat that I was out for the count straight away. We didn't seem to have been bitten when we left to get the boat in the morning so thought nothing of it until later in the day when hundreds of swollen itchy red bites started to appear all over our arms, legs and necks... It was disgusting and quite upsetting - I had never had bedbug bites before! The annoying thing was that there was another girl in our dorm in Cancún who said she was going to cut short her trip and fly home to the US because she had had an itchy rash since she arrived there - she was obviously just being bitten by the bedbugs - if she has realised and said something to the hostel staff we might have avoided the same fate!

So when we arrived at Isla Mujeres we had to empty our entire backpacks and lay all our clothes out in the sun to make sure any bedbugs that might have creeped in were killed (the other people in the hostel thought we were odd). When I was emptying my backpack a big cockroach crawled out of it - aghhh, yuk!!! I had to go and get antihistamines and hydrocortisone cream to stop the itching - it took a couple of weeks for the bites to fully heal. It was a nasty experience but I suppose that, given I had stayed in hundreds of different beds over the course of a year's travelling, I was lucky not to have encountered them more often.

Our first day on Isla Mujeres was cold and windy, which was not much fun, and we were nursing our bites and generally feeling sorry for ourselves. This was not helped by the fact that the hostel we were staying in was a real party place so we couldn't sleep with music playing and people coming and going all night (I sound very old and boring now! I guess I wasn't in the mood for it at that point...). On the upside, this gave me time to arrange what I was going to do next - to book flights to Cusco and accommodation and Spanish classes there.

Happily, the next day the weather was gorgeous. We went snorkelling and saw lots of interesting and colourful fish including a couple of big barracudas and the biggest fish I've ever seen in the wild - it must have been a metre long and 50cm high, dark purple with brightly coloured patches - absolutely amazing (unfortunately I don't know the name of it).

The beaches on the main strip were jam-packed with tourists so we took a taxi out to the secluded Playa Lancheros where we had lunch and sunbathed in the blissful peace and quiet - it was beautiful.

The following day we visited the 'Tortugranja', a turtle farm and one of Isla Mujeres's prime tourist attractions. It was fun - there were several different species of turtles from babies to adults plus tanks of tropical fish, seahorses, lobsters and more. I particularly loved the seahorses and watched them for a long time - amazed by the way they link tails and float around in pairs. Outside, just offshore, was a shark enclosure with two big sharks. The Tortugranja is a strange facility - I didn't see any explanation of what it was actually for - rescuing animals, breeding, research or what.

After that we had time for a last little bit of sunbathing on Playa Norte before taking the boat back to the mainland. I managed to fit in a pedicure before heading to Cancún airport That's when I had to say a sad farewell to Helena as she went to meet her friend and travel on to Belize while I headed for Peruuu.