More beautiful beaches, more heat, and lots more insects. We had an interesting journey from Puerto. We travelled by local bus to Pochula, a journey of only one hour. We then took a camionette to Puerto Angel on the coast. A camionette is a pick-up type jeep, which farmers might use in the UK to transport sheep between fields. In this area the driver puts a tarp over the back and passengers pay to sit or crouch in the back. Needless to say the roads are pretty bumpy and standard of driving generally low!!

From Puerto Angel a short taxi ride to Manzute where we were dropped off next to the beach. We stayed in a cabana next to the beautiful beach - we thought it ideal for early morning and late evening swimming.

That was, until I went into the sea. I stayed in for about 4 minutes before beating a hasty retreat. I´m generally quite water confident, but the waves and currents were too much. I think the beaches we´ve visited on the Pacific coast are generally very steep, and this makes them quite unsafe. Another young lady was with 2 chaps in the water, and they were egging each other on. A few minutes later she was under water and in difficulties, but managed to get out herself. She´d swallowed too much water and it took her a while to recover. The guide book actually recommends this beach for swimming!

Being in the tropics the heat was incredible. To do anything you had to be out in the very early morning (6am) before the heat. We had to dress in long trousers and long sleeved shirts to protect our skins, alas no sun bathing - I now sympathise a bit more, JG!

While in Manzute we visited a brackish lagoon, an ecological reseerve. It is operated and owned as a cooperative and all the profits are ploughed back into the facilities and the environment. We had a Mexican / English guide, he´s spent 22 years living in Exeter!! We walked with him to the lagoon, just the other side of the beach from the sea, and the outline of the crocodiles were already visible. In all we probably saw 9 crocs over 3 metres long as we were paddled (in an wooden canoe) around the reserve. This alone made the 2 and half hour walk to get to the reserve worth it, but when we got back to the beach we were treated to another turtle liberation.

We have now released Olive Redleys, Black Turtles and Green Turltes. The ecological reserve guides are convinced the measures put in place to help these turtles are benefiting the populations, but they can not be sure as they take so long to reach breeding age, and return to the beaches. However, with the Loggerhead Turtle the story is sad. They take 15 years to reach breeding age. The protections were put in place less than 15 years ago...and our guide thought that it would not be long before the end of the Loggerhead Turtle, the largest of them all. The other problem is with the law. The law forbids the eating or stealing of the eggs. However, it is fairly easy to pass a law in Mexico, far harder to enforce it. Locals have traditionally eaten the eggs and continue to do so. Troops are deployed on beaches with large numbers of nests, but the plundering still goes on. We saw some evidence of this, and in PEscondido, M and S even saw a dead turtle on the beach that had been killed while in the process of laying the eggs. All the conservation efforts are absolutely vital to help these great creatures.

Our nightly routine of scanning the cabana found a small scorpion in the floor, and a possible scorp in the leaves of the roof. We crawled carefully into the mosquito net, and into our sleeping bag liners, with vivid immagination of the bugs and insects invading the room in the night. The following day we realized that the rooms must be treated with insecticide. The scorp was still there in prone position, but with no others. This was our first experience of the ´wildlife´ in the tropics, and I must admit, I was quite scared when one simply fell out of a tree where we were standing. Despite all efforts with our own insect repellant, I still had a few bites, ON MY EAR, of all places, which swelled up into blisters. Oh this travelling life!

We will remember Zipolite as a surfing beach, a strip of cabanas behind a long thin strip of sand. Again, it wasn´t a swimming beach, but it is famous for hippies and surfers. We also spent time at Puerto Angel (on the way back to Pochula). A nice sleepy bay, again with a traditional fishing industry. I rather liked the place, and we spent a couple of hours (sheltering from the sun), brushing up on our Spainish with a waitress. We went for a swim in the clear, warm waters in the late afternoon, while keeping a close eye on our clothes.

We weren´t afraid of theft, but there was danger from a pack of dogs. The area has many stray and wild dogs all over, and I wondered where they got their water from, as it doesn´t rain and there are no streams. There were 5 wild dogs on the beach, and it appeared the female was in season, being pursued by the other 4. She was running, burying herself in the sand and trying to avoid contact with her unsavoury suitors. This went on for a considerable time, and we ended up feeling very sorry for the female dog. How was she going to avoid this asault? A bit more swimming - we did not want to be too interested....and when we turned back, the pack had turned on the little white dog, and he now was the focus of their interest. That was never going to work! Even though members of a dog friendly nation, there is really a case in this area for the stray dogs to be ´removed´.

We returned to get our bus from Pochula (not a very interesting place), and spent an extra day in Pochula due to illness Jim had got. The sympotoms were like nothing we´d seen before, so an emergency visit to a doctor was in order. - I was niave enough to ask the man at the bus station to call a doctor for us. Of course in rural areas they have neither ambulances or doctors that do house calls. A night of rest and a few pills to sort out the fever, and he was thankfully back on his feet again. Dengue is prevalent in the area, so again our imaginations were getting carried away!

We got a night bus on to San Cristobel, back into the mountains and back to a reasonable climate, without the constant oppressive heat. A rather mixed experience in Manzute, Zipolite and Puerto Angel...