¡Hola!Hope you are all well....We have been up to so much in the past couple of weeks that we thought we should update the blog before we forget it...!Ok so, after the butterfy reserve we spent a couple of days in Oaxaca City, it was pretty enough but absolutely packed with tourists for Xmas hols so we weren't keen to stay too long... While we were there we saw some more ruins, called Monte Alban, they were pretty cool and had amazing mountain views. Then we went and saw the 'biggest tree in the world'.... which was erm.. a big tree... we weren't particularly impressed (guess we are getting hard to please already!!)After that it was time to hit the beach for New Year... We took a seven hour mini bus ride to a beach town called Puerto Escondido. Despite being one of our shorter journeys, it was pretty much one long bendy mountain road and by the end we both felt pretty ropey!!! Still it was worth it for the fab views and to see the ocean at the end!!!Puerto Escondido is a surfer town and is famous for the 'Mexican pipeline' i.e MASSIVE waves... I almost drowned a few times...! We spent New Years on the beach with some cool people we met in the hostel, there were fireworks and it was chilled and fun. One of the guys in our dorm was a skydiver, he was basically at the beach to do as many jumps as possible each day, as were a lot of other people and they landed on the beach where we sat, they are professionals so didn't slow down until about 5 metres from the ground, was awesome to see!We intended to leave after NY but all the buses were full so we had to hang out on the beach for 3 more days, shame eh? We managed to get up early one morning to go on a boat trip and we saw a pod of about 200 dolphins, lots of giant turtles and a huge whale! Our boat driver was a nutcase, we were sailing along and we spotted a turtle so he pulled along side it (we presumed for photos) and then all of a sudden he hurled himself off the side of the boat onto the back of the turtle!!! He tied a rope around it's arm and towed it in, then somehow managed to get it onto the boat (these things are massive and very heavy!) so we could touch it and get photos, in the process he got covered in turtle parasites and stung by jellyfish (which he seemed to find quite amusing weirldy!) Very funny and cool to see it so close.The next day we went to a turtle beach where they let us help release hundreds of baby turtles, they were sooo cute and it was amazing!!! Check out the pics!After that we got a nightbus to a place called San Cristobal, in the state of Chiapas. This is a very pretty town in the mountains, and Chiapas is one of the few places left where people still practice the Mayan way of life so it was a real cultural experience. We took a tour out to some Mayan villages and saw their way of life, was very interesting to see their clothes and religious ceremonies. The Mayans believe that photos take your soul so there arent many pics I'm afraid!The next day we went to a canyon for a boat trip, this was amazing and so beautiful. Some of the canyon walls are over 1 km high! We saw crocodiles, monkeys, iguanas and turtles (so we had a wildlife filled week!)After that we went to a Mayan medicine musuem which was really interesting, we learnt about all the different rituals they do and apparently when a women is giving birth they hold hens, eggs and bottles of pepsi above the woman to ward off evil spirits (they used to use some type of sacred liquor called Posh but then apparently Pepsi is cheaper and easier to get hold of.....hmmm).The next morning we got an early bus to Palenque, a small town in the mountains to see some Mayan ruins. These ones are set in a jungle so very different to the others we'd seen, plus we were allowed to go inside these ones which was very cool!The next morning we got a 5.45am bus to the border of Mexico and Guatemala, we were slightly nervous as our visas had expired so we were actually in Mexico illegally, oopsie! Was all ok though, in typical Mexican style the guy didn't even look at our passports and we got on a boat to Bethal in Guatemala.... Following the most friendly immigration ever (basically a little man in his house who stamped our passports and said "bienvenidos Sarah & David!) while his wife fed the cows in the garden - no joke) we got a bus to a town called Flores.Flores is on a lake so is very pretty but it was cold and rainy when we arrived so we went straight to bed! The next day we got up at 4.15am (!) to go to Tikal, the biggest of all the Mayan ruins, which was amazing. It's huge (13,000 structures) and the tour was about 5 hours, we saw monkeys and parrots and climbed up some very, very high (and ridiculously unsafe) temples, fun!! It was awesome and the most impressive of the ruins we have seen. Really cool to sit on top of some of the structures and all you can see in front of you is jungle and a few other temples poking out of the trees.Today we are having our first lazy day for a while (we're writing this in a café on the lake, half filled with people and half roosters!) and then heading south to a place called Lake Atitlan before we start our Spanish course in Antigua next Monday... exciting! This town is very strange, they appear to have been celebrating something for 3 days.... constant fireworks all day and night, different parades everyday and we have no idea what for! Maybe it is always like this... who knows!Anyway, hope you are all safe and enjoying the snow...Speak soon,Sar & DavyXxx