From San Francisco we flew to Mexico where we had arranged to stay with some friends of Bryan's friend. I had been warned of the dangers of travelling to Mexico and I was putting my trust in complete strangers which made me nervous. My nerves were not calmed when we arrived at the airport and no one was there to pick us up. However, it was just a simple misunderstanding as Malena (Mali) had arrived to pick us up but was at the wrong terminal. She had even written our names in a Welsh flag so we would know who she was when we arrived! It's a shame she was at the wrong terminal because I've always wanted to get off a plane and have someone standing there holding my name up! Mali was really chatty and we got on great from the start. We took the bus to Cuernavaca where we were welcomed by her sister Lupita and family for a breakfast of quesadillas and sopas. When she made us a lunch of green enchiladas we knew we were going to enjoy Mexico and quite possibly get fat!

We were actually staying at Mary's house, Mali's other sister's house so we took a taxi there in the evening. Here one of the sons, Adrian, was having a party because he was leaving soon for university in USA. I was a little overwhelmed because the house was beautiful and had a swimming pool in the garden and Adrian's friends consisted of about 10 beautifully made up girls. There we were still in our airplane clothes looking a bit worse for wear having only had about 3 hours sleep the night before and not yet showered. Nobody seemed to notice and all greeted us with a kiss on the cheek and a glass of wine. We got to know our hosts Willy and Mary over dinner before eventually getting to bed at around 1am extremely exhausted!

We eventually woke up the next day and were made quesadillas by the housekeeper. Adrian drove us to the town centre along with his brother Ricky and Malena. It was great to finally see some of Mexico and the town centre (which they call zocalo) was quite a lively place. We looked around the Cortez Palace museum and had a Raspado at the central square. Raspado consists of shavings of ice that the guy scrapes off of a massive block of ice he has and then drowned in condensed milk and a choice of various syrups poured on top. A bit like a slush puppy. It was great!

Mary and Willy have a gorgeous weekend apartment on a golf course with a communal swimming pool and tennis court. They kindly offered for us to spend one morning there and it was so relaxing. I tried to teach Mali how to play tennis but I think she needed practice! I then played with Bryan but I was hopeless and it was too hot so we jumped in the pool and spent the rest of the morning there. Willy picked us up from work around lunch time so we could go back and watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Unfortunately we missed the first 40 minutes of it but it was still great having a takeaway pizza and getting a reminder of home. Unfortunately the commentary was all in Spanish though. That same evening the family invited us out to an Italian restaurant for dinner which was nice and they refused to let us pay for it. In fact is was very difficult to get them to allow us to pay for anything so our budget was going well. But we promised to take them out for a meal another time on us.

Mali took a day trip with us to a nearby town called Tepoztlan. It's a really picturesque town with cobbled streets and brightly coloured houses, exactly what I had pictured for Mexico. When we got off the bus Mali pointed out a tiny blob in the distance right up the top of a huge hill and said that was the pyramid we were going to climb up to. I thought she was kidding but she wasn't! The climb was supposed to take 45 minutes but it took us a gruelling hour and a half up very steep and never ending stone steps that had been cut into the mountain (although Bryan seemed to do it with ease even in his stereotypical Mexican hat!) The worst part was that it was all covered in trees and went around corners so you couldn't see the top to gauge how far was left. We asked some people coming down how far we had left to go and they said it was just around the corner. They lied! But eventually we made it to the pyramid with some good views over the town. Then it poured with rain so we took shelter to wait for it to slow down before climbing the pyramid which in itself wasn't too impressive but it was cool watching people summoning energy from the sun with their arms outstretched to the sky. The descent was obviously a lot quicker but took a lot of concentration because it was now slippery from the rain as well as steep. Once at the bottom the heavens decided to truly rip apart and we sheltered inside a food market for some tacos. The tarpaulins that had been tied together struggled to hold the weight of water that was gushing down and broke just above one poor person enjoying her meal. Fortunately we stayed relatively dry.

We returned to Tepoztlan about a week later with Mali's friend who offered to drive us there. This time it was dry and we were able to explore the town a little more. We declined the offer to hike back up to the pyramid despite Mali's friend claiming she can get up there in 35 minutes! It struck me as quite a bohemian town with lots of stalls selling trinkets and alternative/organic products. We watched people playing, singing and dancing along to Brazilian music and to our surprise an old woman of about 80 joined in wiggling her hips better than I could do! We ate elote (which I had nicknamed lolita because I kept forgetting what it was called) which is corn on the cob boiled and covered in mayo, cheese and chilli. We also had typical ice cream that they make in big vats of ice and keep stirring until it becomes solid.

Another day trip we took was with Willy, Mary and family to a town called Taxco. Again this was a pretty typically Mexican town which used to mine silver. The mines have now closed but it is still a very cheap place to buy silver jewellery because the inhabitants make it themselves. This is where we discovered that Mary loves shopping. We went into countless shops to look at jewellery which was basically torture for me because I can't carry expensive jewellery around with me in my backpack so I was only able to lust after it. I was, however, able to eat the local ice cream and we had a meal on the rooftop of a restaurant which finally we were able to pay for. The restaurant had excellent views over Taxco and the surrounding mountains.

You may have noticed that Mexico had become centred around food for us. It's a good job we didn't stay longer than 2 weeks because we would have been enormous! Bryan's favourite meal was cooked by Mali and Mary's mother. It is called chilacilis and is very spicy. She also cooked mole (not the rodent!) and a desert as well as did our laundry and looked after me because I was feeling ill. All this for 2 strangers she had never met before it was extraordinarily kind. Mali also cooked a lot for us, the best one being chilli rayan which is a large chilli like a sweet chilli stuffed with cheese covered in sauce. It was very good. Of course I wanted to do something for the family so I cooked them all the only recipe I could remember off the top of my head which was chicken tarragon. This is normally very simple but in Mexico it was tricky because ingredients such as Dijon mustard are not readily available. We also forgot to buy chicken stock and the lemons were way stronger than in UK so it was a bit of a disaster although they politely said it was tasty. I did cook some chocolate brownies which Willy said he missed from living in UK and they seemed to go down well, especially with Ricky who had 2 portions a day.

Apparently it was a crime that we hasn't visited the cathedral the first time we went to the town centre so we went back to see it. While we were there we visited the water gardens which used to belong to someone rich although they weren't a patch on the Chinese gardens we had seen. We stopped for lunch (the biggest meal of the day in Mexico) at a small but very busy local restaurant where we had a 3 course meal and pitcher of fruit water for less than £2 and it was very tasty! We went back to the central square and there was a band playing and elderly people dancing their feet off and having a great time! Another time in town we went to a bar where Bryan was able to have a huge glass of beer and the rim of the glass was covered in chilli salt which is a custom here.

For our last meal out Mali took us to a restaurant/bar where again we had a humongous 3 course meal as well as snacks and 3 drinks each included in the price. There was a rather large Mexican lady who was singing for entertainment and seemed to take a shining to Bryan. She came around and chatted to him over the mic even though he had no idea what she was saying! On a table nearby someone had a birthday drink called a headbanger. This involves quite a brutal ritual of putting a helmet on the person then smashing tequila and apple drink on their head before they have to down the drink. They are then blindfolding and their head is swung round and round whilst being prodded by a large foam penis! It was extremely odd! At the end of her birthday shot she has to nominate someone else to have it so of course she chose Bryan who loved every minute of it! Later in the day a band came on stage and it was as if everyone was just waiting for an excuse to dance because as soon as the music started up they were all up and salsa dancing the night away. They were all, regardless if they were young and old, brilliant dancers and looked as if they were professionals which put us off getting up to dance! However, during a break for the band they played some more of our kind of UK club music and Mali managed to drag both of us up for a little dance around.

On our final full day in Mexico we decided to take a day trip to Mexico City to look at the archeological site there called Titihaecen and climb some more pyramids. This was our first time travelling in Mexico on our own (although Mali did put us in the bus and give us a packed lunch!) and we managed it alright. It involved about 6 hours travelling (including a tram ride which ran over a police officer on a motorbike!) in total to do it so it was a lot of effort not really but Bryan really wanted to see the pyramids. There was the sun pyramid and the smaller moon pyramid. It was very hot and quite busy climbing them but they really are an awesome site.

So fortunately my previous doubts about visiting Mexico were misguided. I still wouldn't say Mexico is perfectly safe. You can tell by the police trucks that patrol around the streets with teams of officers in the back holding huge guns and the comments of residents saying they can't own a nice car for fear of being kidnapped. But of course no where is as safe as the UK but no where is as boring and miserable as the UK either. You just need to us common sense and research where are the dangerous areas and what you can and can't do and it shouldn't be too much of a risk. Mexico is well worth a visit and even though 2 weeks is the longest time we have spent in one place throughout our travels, we were sad to leave the great food, luxury accommodation and of course the good friends we had made. It was emotional saying goodbye to Mali who had been so great to us and barely left our side for the whole time. We were so fortunate to have had great people looking after us and showing us around. We would love to visit them again and also hope one day we can go and visit the south east to Cancun and the surrounding area which we couldn't afford to do this time. Despite being upset about leaving Mexico we were very much looking forward our South American adventure.