Puerto Vallarta is 8 hours up the Pacific coast of Mexico so arrived after another night on the bus. I've really managed to master the sleeping techniques for bus travel after so much practice, tucking myself up in a well-rehearsed ball and effortlessly finding the groove on the armrest for my head. It's a true art that I am very proud of. Puerto Vallarta is known for being another party town for American tourists, a mini-Cancun but with a lot more tact and s...

If you've ever seen 'the Shawshank redemption,' Zihuatanejo is the town where Andy and Red end up at the end of the film. The last scene in the film shows a beautiful, long and quiet beach and I was extremely excited to see it in person as I sat on the bus from Acapulco. After arriving I found a hostel run by a Canadian man and his Mexican wife and immediately asked them where to find the beach from the film. It was obviously not the first time they had Been ...

I had so many awesome ideas and images of Acapulco before I arrived; Loud shirts, cocktails, banana boats and a young Elvis diving off the cliffs. I hummed 'going loco down in Acapulco,' the entire bus journey up from Puerto Escondido. The bus stopped at a polluted, dirty and very old looking bus station which I presumed would be the last stop to pick up party-goers on the way to Acapulco. It was only when the bus emptied completely I realised this was Acapu...

After Guatemala, Mexico seemed cleaner and more organized than it had done before. After the briefest of stops in San Cristobal again I was on a bus heading to Puerto Escondido. By the time our bus strolled into the town on the Pacific coast early the following morning I had been on the road for close to 30 hours from leaving Xela so I quickly found a cheap hammock and collapsed for the best part of the day. Puerto Escondido is a surfers town with Massive wav...

On the short drive between PLaya Del Carmen and Tulum, I took a short break in order to visit a cenote for some snorkelling. Basically, it´s a half flooded cave with amazing underwater stalegtites and stalegmites. Snorkelling at the cenotes must be about as close as you can come to being on some distant, and probably alien infested, other world. Since some of the caves have no natural light, my guide gave me a torch and it was while he was explaining the impor...