Waved off by our favourite hostel owner Hector and his lovely mama, we said goodbye to Cancun and headed down route 307 towards Tulum.
While a rather dull and uneventful ride, it was a monumental occasion for us as the first official leg of our Two Up Fifteen Down journey. The BSA ran like a dream and within 2 hours we'd reached our destination. When choosing our bike gear however we had very much been thinking about the cold mountainous regions we would pass through, and hadn't given much consideration to just how hot we would be riding down the Caribbean coast in our full blown biker attire. As always, Tom gets on with it with no complaints while I get all in a tizzy from being so uncomfortably hot. But safety comes first, and it looks like hydration will be key for our onward journey. We arrived at Casa Del Sol in the mid afternoon, which had a perfect courtyard behind a metal door where the bike could be perfectly safe. But no sooner our host tries to close the door behind us, it falls out of its railings on top of him! So then the three of us spend a very sweaty ten minutes (still in our full gear) trying to get the very large metal gate back in position. In the end the iron monger had to be called to finish the job. I hope we don't being destruction with us wherever we go! Highlights of Tulum for us included swimming with turtles and stingrays at Akumal beach, and delicious tacos for just 7 pesos each (that's about 25p... safe to say we had a lot of them). The price it cost us to rent a snorkel shocked us after the cheap food and accommodation we'd found so far (US$10 each) but we had to remember that you'll always pay more for the more touristy activities. And when there was a metre-long turtle swimming 30cm from our faces, $10 suddenly seemed like a ridiculously low price to pay for the experience. Then it was south once more down to the town of Bacalar, nestled on the shore of a beautiful lagoon. Another steady 200km down the 307 with very little to report other than lovely smooth roads. Although, there was a section where we attracted an influx of giant black and blue butterflies, which at the speed we were going seemed to be dive-bombing at us, making us duck our heads to avoid a splattered creature on our visors. Sadly we weren't quick enough for a couple of them! A horse being led by a man on a moped was also an interesting site, and we felt rather bad when it got spooked but the sound of our engine.
In Bacalar we stayed in Green Monkey hostel, which was basic but fantastically located right on the lagoon. We were sleeping in a converted school bus which was an exciting novelty and surprisingly comfortable with the breeze wafting through. We encountered another pair of Brits - Arthur and Alice - with whom we took a boat trip out on the lagoon to see some cenotes (big sink holes) and to witness the lagoon of seven colours up close. The varying blues and greens of the water were breathtakingly beautiful, and we had a lovely half an hour on a sandbank in the middle of the lagoon where we swam and jumped off a big concrete structure like excitable children.
Back at the hostel we took a lot of pride in the amount of attention the bike was drawing, catching many people sneaking up on it, circumnavigating it to get a good look. It seems being a young couple on an old (and pretty good-looking) British bike gets you quite a lot of kudos!
It's up and out early in the morning to cover the short 40km to the Border of Belize, with the plan to head down to Belize City, find somewhere safe for the bike, and jump on a water taxi to Caye Caulker. So stay tuned for a run down of the Mexico - Belize border at Chetumal - hopefully it all goes smoothly!