Dear Val and Tony

Thank you for kindly buying us a Queenstown Adventure as part of our wedding gift. The idea of this was to use it on one of the many high adrenaline activities on offer when we were in Queenstown, supposedly the adventure capital of the world. Because most of these involved jumping off something very high with nothing to stop us splattering on the very hard floor except a glorified elastic band, we decided wisely that we were not brave enough to do any of them and so decided to use the money to go to another adventure park in Mexico instead.

This one was called Xplor. No one has yet explained why all the theme parks in Mexico all have to begin with X yet but we are working on that. The concept of Xplor was based around a series of beautiful underground caves full of stalagmites and mites and other things. Someone thought it was a good idea to turn these underground caves, some of which had rivers flowing through them, into a theme park with lots of activities to do. What sort of activities can you organise around a series of caves to justify calling it a theme park? Well you can have people swim through them for one. And then you can have people rafting through them for another. And then, you could have them drive through them in go-kart/jeep car things. And then, well, you have sort of run out of ideas so throw in a couple of zipline courses, an open buffet restaurant, a dubious caveman theme throughout and cross your fingers that no one will notice its all a bit random.

The day didn't start too well for Donna when a friendly bird decided to poo on her. The day before, a bird had decided to poo on her as well. I tried to point out to her that a bird pooing on you is very lucky and so to have two poo on you in two days makes her the luckiest person alive and she should immediately go and buy a lottery ticket. Donna pointed out that she was covered in bird poo.

That is now two theme parks we have been to in Mexico, both of which have had amazing free buffets full of any food you could possibly imagine or want. It is a sad indication of me that my entire diet for visiting those two parks has consisted of eating four hot dogs and a hamburger. In my defence, they did taste very very good.

My favourite bit of the park was the zipline course, especially the ziplines that ended by dunking you in water. It was really cool zooming along at thirty miles an hour and then at the last minute lifting your legs so you bounced along the top of the water before making a giant splash. It reminded me very much of that bit in the Krypton Factor obstacle course where they slide down into the mud. As I was doing it, I was imagining Gordon Burns commenting that 'we really need to see a good landing here'. All the contestants always seemed to end up face first in the mud so I never worked out what old Gordon meant by a good landing. Yet I still think the imaginary Gordon Burns in my head was impressed with how big a splash I managed to make.

The theme park ticket included free transport. Given that the park was only ten minutes away from Playa Del Carmen, this involved some genius organisational skills to stretch the journey out to an hour and a half. This involved us walk one block south of our apartment to meet a minivan that then drove us one block north where we had to wait around for half an hour until a completely different bus turned us to take us to another hotel to pick up some more people and then pulled up by a roadside where the bus driver got out for another half an hour for an unspecified reason. Sometimes, it would have been quicker to walk.

But you have to love the Mexicans, despite their interesting organizational skills. For one thing, they are the most attractive nationality that we have come across on our travels. From their cute children to their beautiful women and their men with impressive mustaches to their loveable roguish (yet stylish) old folk who engage you in conversation despite not being able to speak English. Our Spanish vocabulary now consists of 'Hola', 'Salut' and 'Gracias'; a big improvement on what we started with but it still quickly runs out when trying to discuss the Champion League fortunes of Manchester City.

Here is a poem about Mexicans

All of the Thais have a sty in their eyes
While the Balinese have swollen knees
People of Australia catch diseases from their bacchanalia*
All those Kiwis are riddled with herpes
If you come from Fiji you have trouble when you wee wee
While those unfortunate Yanks are just firing blanks
So stick with people of Mexico as they have a healthy glow

*bacchanalia means a promiscuous party in Greek. I had to look it up.

We have made two big breakthroughs in the last few days. Firstly, we have finally got the hang of how much a peso is worth. This was particularly difficult as for ages we were having to convert it first to US dollars before working out how much that was in pounds. This has meant that we now know how much we are spending, which is a good thing.

The second achievement was in working out how to use the beach. This might sound simple but, in fact, was a lot more difficult than the pesos conundrum. This was due to the entire beach area being owned by various large hotels who don't let you anywhere near their stretch of beach if you aren't at the hotel, even if you are willing to use their bar. Luckily, the helpful receptionist girl at our apartments told us about a nicer hotel that would let us use their sunbeds in exchange for spending money at their bar and even kindly gave us some vouchers to discount it. This has increased the number of places that we can lounge around in the sun, doing nothing by about 100% from one to two and so has led us to consider staying in Mexico even longer than first planned.

This has meant that we have now completed the ocean set. On this trip we have swam in the Indian, the Pacific and now the Atlantic oceans. Given how inaccessible the Arctic and the Southern oceans are, I consider this a good achievement. More importantly, I have weed in every single ocean of the world. I am pleased that I am sharing myself with the whole world.

Being able to lounge about in the sunshine is a good thing. Not least because of the intense competition Donna and I are in. In the spirit of the most well documented trip in the world ever, we have been making a note of the books that we have read on this trip. This has led to the obvious challenge of who has read more. I am currently two ahead which is why I can take time out from reading to write this blog. This has led to the slightly ill-conceived notion that we are now reading books not based on their quality but on their length. I was rather overjoyed yesterday when I came across two rubbish EBooks in my collection that were under 100 pages apiece. I have a leaflet on tourist attractions which I may have to claim counts if Donna starts picking up her game. This is even more indication if needed that after seven months away, we are completely unsuited to being able to readjust to normal life.

Lots of love

Jim and Donna