After the overnight bus from Palenque I found myself in Campeche. Campeche is a strange place, unlike any of the other Mexican cities I´d been to. Apparently back in the day it was repeatedly destroyed by pirates so the city centre was walled and rebuilt. The result is a perfectly clean and uniform centre, while just metres outside the wallls its dirty, loud and like any other Mexican city.

The strangest thing was that the people in the centre seemed different too. There were all extremely polite, relaxed and there wasn´t the same hustle and bustle like there was outside the walls. It was almost like they were caught in this perfect little walled world and were unaware of anything outside it. It may well be that i´ve just seen to many films, but the whole situation was very ´truman show´ meets ´the stepford wives.´ It was all quite sinister so I was already considering packing up and leaving before the townspeople performed some kind of lobotomy when I was asleep.

The final straw however came on only my 2nd day in town. I went for an all you can eat Chinese buffet and was asked to leave after only an hour for eating too much! I hadn´t even reached the pudding cart so was more than a tad peeved so decided to leave Campeche in protest.

Not getting any cake was, to be fair only half the reason for wanting to leave Campeche. The main reason was because I was really itching to get to the beach. So I took the bus to Playa Del Carmen, a major pitstop for American cruises.

The fact that the town was swamped on a daily basis with well-off Americans meant that the place was extremely touristy, but the beach was awesome and the caribbean was ridiculously blue so I didn´t mind at all. Playa certainly wasnt a cultural hotspot so I spent the days lazing on the beach and swimming before everyone staying at the hostel regrouped in the evening to head down to one of the many beachside discotheques to party the night away.

Though the beach was brilliant, my favourite pastime in Playa was wandering down to the expensive main street to watch the Yanks from the boats come ashore. You were guaranteed to hear some brilliantly stupid quotes within a matter of minutes. Here´s my top 3:

3. "Haagen Dazs, They´re either Italian or European."

2. (Husband to wife after being served dinner) "You can´t expect much more from a 3rd world country. I think they´re 3rd world anyway, they may be 4th. I know were 5th anyway."

1. (Husband to wife after less than a minute ashore) "OK, lets get a burger and a gatorade and head back to the ship."

The whole relaxed atmosphere of the town, the awesome people from the hostel, the beach and the constant stream of fantastic quotes all made Palya very difficult to leave but I finally built up the energy to get the old backpack back on again and hit the road. Though the only reason I managed that was because I was only heading slightly further down the Coast to Tullum, another beachside town.