We were headed for Akumal with Aude today, a short drive south from Playa, to dive and snorkel with turtles. Apparently the name of the place is derived from the Mayan words - Aku 'turtle' and Mal ' the place of'. The foreshore is a feeding ground for the turtles and the nearby reef is used as a resting station after feeding - we were guaranteed to see a turtle. Maria snorkeled from the beach but due to the swell and number of inexperienced snorkelers thrashing...

David was awake early again - it was still dark at 5am but he decided that it would be a great opportunity to get up and walk down to the beach to watch the sunrise. Maria reluctantly dragged herself out of bed but was not disappointed with the early morning show. The moon was full in the darkened sky of the west with wisps of high cloud tinged red streaking across the sky above our heads. The sun eventually popped from the horizon just before 6am casting a bronz...

David's jet lag kicked in again and, as usual, he was awake at 4am. It was a few hours before the rest of Playa Del Carmen woke up and opened their cafes for 'desayuno' - breakfast. We ate at a small Spanish comedor, a kind of a cafe, next to our hotel. David had been thinking of Huevos Rancheros since waking up 3 hours earlier and wasn't disappointed. The coffee was served with sugar & cinnamon - no idea if that's a Mexican or Spanish way of doing things bu...

Being close to the airport and having checked in online, we figured we could sleep a little longer in the morning and still make the bag drop before it closed. Timing turned out to be more or less perfect, with only enough time to get some travel reading before boarding the British Airways flight to Cancun. For us being used to flying between New Zealand and Europe the 11 hour trans-Atlantic flight seemed to have just enough time for only a couple of new release ...

After a day of laundry, paperwork, packing and re-packing, we finally managed to sit down to a glass of wine and relax about midnight. In the morning, we drove up to Edinburgh for our flight to Gatwick. Despite the cheap tickets, it was a surprise that British Airways still has a free full bar service on board...and the wine is not too bad either. If it wasn't for the ferocious tail wind hurtling us towards the airport in record time, we might have had time for...