Dear The Austins

Since we have been in Mexico, we have been experiencing severe electrical malfunctions to speakers, cameras, laptops and tablets. You name it, nothing is working like it should be. I wonder if it is some old Mayan curse, or maybe we have just been lucky up until now. To this extent, I am writing this blog on Donna's laptop, which has a broken Wi-Fi connection so I have no idea when I will be able to upload this onto the Internet. You may not be reading this until long after we are back in England if our current luck continues.

We spent the money that you very kindly gave as a wedding gift on a trip to see the Mayan ruins, Coba. This entailed another stupidly early start before the sun rose. However, we could console ourselves that at least it was a private tour so we could insist on stopping for a McDonalds breakfast, a habit we had been missing since it was our staple in New Zealand. How shocked and disappointed we were to discover that the McDonalds wasn't open at seven in the morning. What is that all about? Do Mexicans not need their Sausage and Egg McMuffin first thing in the morning like the rest of us? I was quite liking Mexico up until that point but I feel it will now suffer in the voting our Top Ten list of favourite countries. Mexico, you only have yourself to blame.

And so we had to settle for a Starbucks bagel. Having never bought anything in a Starbucks before, it was a shame to break my duck now but despite my reservations, the bagel was ok. They do this thing where they have both cream cheese and marmalade on it, which actually goes together rather well. I could become a fan.

So anyway, Coba. Coba is a woodland area containing a number of Mayan ruins. It used to be a big city a thousand years ago until the Spanish turned up, bringing smallpox with them and wiping out ninety percent of the population (I was listening on this tour). It has now been overrun by the jungle with just a few temples, some ball game pitches and a palace remaining. If you are not sure what a Mayan ruin looks like, imagine the Yavin base in the first Star Wars movie where they all hang out while Luke goes off to blow up the Death Star. That was filmed at the Mayan ruins at Tikal in Guatemala. They are pretty cool.

We picked Coba (which means lots of water in Mayan by the way) over the more famous ones because it is more spread out across the jungle. While you may think this would make it less Donna friendly, the reverse was actually true because we got to hire a bicycle rickshaw to drive us from place to place. While I am very cultural and was very interested in learning more about Mayan society, Donna just really enjoyed being driven around by our increasingly exhausted looking driver. I kindly offered to take over and let him sit in the passenger seat for a bit but that was before I climbed hundreds of steep steps to the top of the main temple in the sweltering heat. After that, there was no way I was going to give up my comfortable seat in the front.

It was worth the climb though, as the view across the green sea of trees as far as the eye could see was incredibly impressive. When the Mayans lived here, the only people allowed to climb to the very top were the priests and the human sacrifices they brought up to cut out their hearts. At least those sacrifices had a good view before they had their hearts ripped out.

The other nice thing about visiting the temple was that it is in the middle of the jungle with lots of jungle animals. I saw a squirrel and Donna took hundreds of photos of a nest of Mayan bees. For all those people who keep asking for more photos of our trip, be careful of what you wish for.

We then went for a lovely buffet lunch at a traditional Mayan restaurant overlooking a big crocodile infested lake. Apparently, if a crocodile eats an antelope then it doesn't have to eat again for a year. That nugget of information came from the small boy sitting next to us rather than our tour guide who knew lots and lots about Mayan culture but didn't have much to add on the dietary requirements of large reptiles. We didn't see any crocodiles but we did get to swim in a beautiful pool of water in a big underground cave full of stalactites and catfish, which was a nice way to end the day.

Lots of love

Jim and Donna