Eager to keep up my good record of not missing my transports, especially since I´d already paid for the this particular one, from Caye Culker to Chetumal and Mexico, I got up in good time and had my breakfast at the pier, joined by a couple of Belizian guys on their way back from a moist night at the split, and a beautiful sunset. Karen had also gotten her ticket and was strolling around in one of the many streets, in total two, of Caye Culker, looking for an open store to buy some food for the road. A bit short on water I joined in on the search and trusted her ability to keep track of time since I haven´t been blessed with the possibilty to check the time after my watch and phone mysteriously disappeared. That turned out to be a bad idea. When we finally got back to the pier, the boat was 100m on its way to Mexico and all the shouting, jumping and waving in the world couldn´t hold it back. Mierda.. A bit stressed out and unkeen on spending another 35 usd on a ticket we had a stressfull 15min trying to find some help somewhere. Luckily, the Belizian people are about as relaxed on the issue of keeping timetables as the worst/best parts of Suriname, and the captain didn´t mind waiting in San Pedro, a nearby port about 40 min away. So we got in a water-taxi some 40min later and were finally on our way to Mexico! In San Pedro they rushed us through immigration and the exit-formalities to decrease the waiting time. As it turned out, the avarage tourist doesn´t share the Belizian concept of time and we were actually boooed(!) when we got on the boat. I tried in wain to appologize, but quickly decided to just shut up, read my book and avoid eye - contact the next 2 hours.
In Chetumal we were met by a overly happy drug- sniffing dog who seemed to enjoy jumping around on the pier way more than looking for drugs in our packs and pockets. And that´s pretty much all I saw of the city. We teamed up with a hooneymooning couple from the states and rushed to Tulum in a car.

The desicion to go to Mexico was pretty much made out of two reasons: diving in cenotes, cave-systems that are unique for the Yucatan region in Mexico, and taking advantage of the fact that it was the peak of the Whale-shark season of Isla Mujeres. Practically enough, Karen has a friend who works as a dive-instructor in Tulum, so acchieving purpose #1 became very, very easy. We sat up a plan, going to the 40m deep halocline cenote called Angelita on sunday and the massive cave - system called Los Dos Ojos on monday. This excellent plan gave us plenty of time sunday morning to see Chelsea´s opening premier-league match and check out the infamous beaches of Tulum.
Sunday morning lurked up on me after a night out at a salsa bar in Tulum and I dragged my tired body up at 0730 to watch my blue heroes kick some Stoke ass. As expected I was the only one of the 4 people who vowed to catch the game who actually got up. Probably thanks to the extreme morning-person genes passed to me by my father. Unfortunately, no ass-kicking occoured, and the game ended a goal-less draw. But on the other hand, the day at the beach fulfilled all my expectations and more. Crystal clear blue-green water, inviting and extrovert mexicans playing football on the beach and my wrestling-book at hand was doomed to be a great succes, even though my participitation in the beach-soccer ended in a draw and me realising that you actually need to exercise to maintain your physical condition..
Because of some useless divers trying to do their open water sertificates, our dive-master, Kay, was held up and we had to postpone our trip to Angelita. It turned out great as we instead spent the rest of the day eating the best ceviche (south - American seafood dish) I´ve ever had and having beers, delicious coronas, with the other travellers at the hostel.
Monday morning, and finally time to dive Angelita. The site is basically a 50m deep perfect whole in the middle of a densly forested area. The first 30m consist of crystal clear freshwater, whilst the bottom part holds saltwater. The halocline, the visible line seperating the two parts, is a yellow cloud of sulfur gas about 1.5m broad. It´s very hard to explain how special this scenery, and the dive, is, but I´ll give it a go anyways. We dove down to the sulfur cloud and had a look around before we turned our lights on and went down, through the cloud. When in the cloud, all sence of direction, up and down goes blank, so you´re left trusting gravity to do all the work for you. And lucky as I usually am, gravity was working perfectly at the time and we found ourselves in the putch black cave at about 40m depth. Because of the depth it´s only possible to stay down there for 8min on one tank of air. The scenery on this side of the cloud was very different from what we saw above. Shining the torch around, swimming in between all the trees that have fallen down to the dark bottom of this strange formation felt pretty strange. But not nearly as strange, nor amazing as going back up through the sulfur cloud. Being in absolute darkness for 8min really dialates your pupils, this makes all the light that is forcing its way down through the water and to the cloud more vivid and it looks absolutely amazing. Also a pretty surreal sight watching my two fellow divers going up and down from the cloud. All in all an absolutely amazing dive! After the dive I was given me a sertification as a PADI - adventure - diver, free! That means I now am sertified to dive the deep dives, which I´ve already been doing anyways, shipwrecks and things like that. Thank you Karen and Kay :)

The second dive of the day was in "Los Dos Ojos". A very different cenote close to Tulum. The dive is basically an underwater tour around a massive system of caves filled with water as clear as air. I don´t have a proper camera for underwater use, but I saw this guy who had professional equipment swimming around. After the dive I tracket him down and paid him a couple of pesos to burn the photos he had from Los Dos Ojos onto a CD for me. Since it´s undoubtfully impossible to explain it with words, I´ll leave it with this and just upload some of the photos he gave me.

Had a great time in Tulum with Karen. Filled with Ceviche, cervezas, diving and beach-life. Next stop, whale-sharks in Isla Mujeres!

By the way, neither of the divers on the underwater photos are me. Will be uploading more photos when I get the rest in a couple of days :)