Well, this will definitely be the first destination featured in this blog you won't be so jealous of?. After travelling to Brazil, Bolivia and Belize, I'm now back in Basingstoke! To be honest with you, I can't believe the time has gone so quickly and that five months have raced by so fast. Still, all good things must come to an end, and I'm going to enjoy catching up with everyone now that I'm home.

However, there's still a few little stories from my last few days in Mexico that are worth sharing? I think the last time I wrote I had just visited Palenque, one of the most beautiful Mayan ruin sites. The following day we visited two more sites at Bonampak and Yaxchilan. After spending a total of over 8 hours on a bus and nearly 2 hours on a boat, these had better have been worth the journey! Although not the most spectacular Mayan ruins, the location of Yaxchilan really made it - set deep in the middle of the jungle, right near the Guatemalan border. You could hear the monkeys screeching around you, and butterflies were everywhere? and there were hardly any other people there at all. Bonampak was a very small site, but the thing that made it unique were the beautiful murals - still perfectly visible in all their colours - around 1,500 years after they were painted. I have not seen anything like this outside of the Egyptian tombs.

After all this, no matter how spectacular the sites, we were definitely all ruined out, so it was on to San Cristobal de las Casas. San Cristobal is a small city in the middle of the Mexican state of Chiapas, perched high in the mountains in some of the most beautiful countryside I have seen. It was a bit of a shock to the system, but it was actually quite cold there, which after a few weeks of temperatures in the 30's (at least) was a bit surprising! The city itself is full of colonial buildings - including about 40 churches and cathedrals - and was a great place to chill out for a couple of days, sitting in coffee shops, getting lost in the side streets and taking in the really laid back atmosphere. After the sun goes down however, San Cristobal has a bit of a personality change - bars and clubs appear from nowhere and the streets are packed with people. Most of the bars have live music, and we found one with a particularly attractive young man singing salsa classics! When the music stopped playing we headed to a night club where all the beautiful people went (obviously we fitted right in!) and danced the rest of the night away.

Just a few miles away is the town of San Juan Chumula, famous for its Pagan church. Before we could even find out why the church was famous we had to get past about 10,000 men packed into the tiny town square. It seemed that they were holding local council elections or something and were parading the candidates in front of the masses on a first floor balcony of what looked like the town hall. Each candidate was introduced to the crowd, and either met with much cheering, clapping and hat-waving, or alternatively had bottles, tomatoes or any other fruit/veg to hand thrown at them - seemingly dependent on their popularity! The tourist office (where we needed to get our 'permit' to visit the church) was rather conveniently located directly under the balcony, so we rather delicately crept in, dodging the projectiles before making a dash for the church. Let me tell you, this church was so fascinating, it was probably the longest time I've spent in a church in twenty years or so! When you walk in, it more or less looks like any other church - except then you look a little closer and certain things are a little out of place. For starters, there are no seats or pews. Instead the marble floor is covered with pine needles. Then there's a distinct lack of crucifixes - despite there being shrines to at least 50 different saints across the alter, and all along both sides of the church. Finally you spot one small crucifix in the corner. The air is thick with incense smoke, and around a dozen families were huddled in small groups around their chosen saint, chanting frantically, lining up about a hundred candles, drinking Coca-Cola and nursing a chicken. I later found out that Coca-Cola is meant to strip the body of evil spirits (well, it will strip your blocked drain, so why not evil spirits?!), and the chicken would later be decapitated so its blood could be offered to the saint as a sacrifice. Despite having witnessed some pretty extraordinary things during my travels, I am fairly glad we decided to leave before this particular event! On leaving the church we noticed that the other events outside seemed to be escalating, so we made a dash for our van, just in time to see about 40 armed police trucks heading into the town. Phew!!

After all this excitement, we slowed the pace slightly in Veracruz - the Mexican equivalent of Portsmouth (only slightly more glamorous!). It felt good to be in a small city again, and like every other Latin American city it seemed to have a main square, together with a cathedral and local government building, with lots of restaurants, bars and cafes around the edge - perfect for an evening spent people-watching! If the people-watching wasn't entertaining enough, you could always take a stroll along the quay where about a dozen Mexican Navy ships were berthed, or alternatively hit the shops?. No prizes for guessing that I did the latter, armed with my credit card! After 5 months of visiting cities with great shopping, and holding back because I couldn't carry any extra clothes or shoes, with only a few days left and the prospect of being allowed 46 kgs of check-in luggage on the flight home I went a bit mad!

We left Veracruz after a couple of days and headed through more beautiful scenery to the final archaeological site of the trip - Teotihuacan. This site is around 2,500 years old, and is home to the third largest pyramid in the world - only bettered by the two in Egypt. The site actually has two large pyramids, as well as the two-mile 'Avenue of the Dead', a host of painted murals, public plazas and living quarters. Little is known about the people who built the city, except that most civilisations since then used it and updated it as they went along.

Before long we were headed to my last port of call - Mexico City. Having been to Mexico City before and loved it, I was very excited to be going back to this sprawling, smoggy, busy, noisy, dirty metropolis that around 25 million people call home. Despite it sounding like a horrible place to be, the reasons I love Mexico City so much are exactly because of these things, together with its energy, history, architecture, bustling streets, and its personality. A couple of days of culture were called for, so I filled my days visiting the Diego Rivera murals at the presidential palace and at his museum, seeing the Ballet Folklorico at the Palacio de Belles Artes (the equivalent of the Opera House), visiting Frida Kahlo's house and museum, eating in pavement cafes - oh, and shopping! I chose a fantastic place to end my travels.

So, here I am now, back in England. After 5 months away, what have I learnt? Who knows? it's certainly going to take another few months for everything to sink in. I do know however that I want to carry on learning Spanish - hopefully to use it again in the future. It's also taught me that if I put my mind to something, I can definitely achieve it, no matter how scary it seems at the time. I have done things I never thought I would (or could) and feel certain that the experiences I have had have changed me.

Everyone I have spoken to so far has asked me about my favourite part of the trip, and to be truthful there are just too many to single out just one. Where is the first place I'll go back to? Ecuador - no doubt - I just didn't see enough of the place, which was so beautiful, and the people were amazing there. Highlights of the trip - in no particular order, here are just a few of the best feelings in the world:

• Sitting at the top of Wayna Picchu, the big mountain at Machu Picchu, Peru, looking down on the site, having just completed the Inca Trail.
• The strange feeling I had, just after I was cleansed and blessed by the local indigenous shaman in Tena, Ecuador.
• Taking off my hiking boots after trekking for 9 hours to the Greys Glacier in the Torres del Paine National Park, Chile.
• Spending a birthday to remember in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Feeling the spray on your face from the Iguazu Falls in both Brazil and Argentina.
• Tasting the beer in the bar at the bottom of the Death Road in La Paz, Bolivia after getting down on a mountain bike - in one piece!
• The very serene feeling of calm watching the sunrise over the Tikal pyramids in Guatemala.
• 'Hugging' a stingray and snorkelling with nurse sharks in Caye Caulker, Belize.
• Watching the earth race towards you at 130 mph after just jumping out of a plane in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
• Meeting some amazing people - both those that I travelled with, and those locals who I struck up conversations with on the bus, in shops, in bars, etc.
• Looking at a globe and realising how much ground I've covered and being thankful for the opportunity.

I'd better stop now before I get too emotional about the whole thing! Reality is certainly hitting hard - I'm now starting my search for a job (if anyone hears of anything interesting let me know!!!), getting used to the rubbish climate and dreaming about my next trip?.!

I've still got some photos to upload, which I'll do in the next few days. I'm also looking forward to catching up with everyone now that I'm home.

Thank you so much for your messages of encouragement while I've been gone. They have meant a lot to me.

Lots of love
Nikki xxxxx