Mérida is a great city and we had a lot of fun there. When Helena and I arrived in the early evening, after eight and a half hours on the bus from Palenque, we were starving so we went straight out for tacos washed down with Corona beers. The town seemed eerily deserted and most places were closed but when we came back later the main square was packed with people - they must come out late at night.

We went to a cool bar where we could sit outside, which was good because the weather was veeeery hot. The waiters brought us huge sombreros that we could wear to take photos Later we went to a club where Helena and I were the only gringos in the whole place! We were like a freak-show attraction - everybody wanted to talk to us and dance with us. We were bought loads of tequilas and the crazy DJ came down to chat to us - I got him to play Llamado de Emergencia for us It was such a fun night and we didn't get home until 5:30am!

After the big night out, I had a lie-in and a lazy day, just wandering around town. It was Palm Sunday and there were some celebrations with singing and dancing in the main square and people selling little Easter gifts.

In the evening I met up with Helena again - she had been off to swim in cenotes (flooded caves/wells). We went for dinner with Andrew from Dublin, who Helena had met on the cenote trip. We met a crazy Swiss-Sri Lankan guy in a bar and we were all united in trying to get away from a creepy local guy who wouldn't leave us alone. We went back to the club we'd been to the night before and had another hilarious night, dancing like fools.

We ended up going to another bar afterwards where we sat out in the back garden area while someone played guitar. A Mexican guy that I was sitting with said he was a palm-reader, that it was a special ability that ran in his family, so I asked him to read mine - the things he said about my past weren't very accurate and the things he said about my future weren't very nice - it freaked me out a little bit but I didn't take it too seriously. A guy that Helena had been chatting to the night before tracked us down and we hung with him and his friends for a while. Another late night and we had to be up very early the next morning to catch the bus to Chichén Itzá...