Peace Corps life is tough

Well, I'm coming to the end of yet another amazing trip. This one was much more about enjoyment and relaxation than the last, but we still managed to exercise our brains and bodies a little bit.

Ashleigh and I left for Mexico on Monday and made it across the border and over to the town of Palenque with little incident, save the loss of feeling in our glutius maximi from being seated in buses, vans and taxis for the better part of the day. We spent the next day walking around the ruins of Palenque, which were not quite as impressive as Tikal, but amazing all the same. They're situated in a tranquil forrested area and surrounded by waterfalls ... beautiful.

Later that day we hopped on an overnight bus for the 11-hour trip up to Tulum on the Carribean, a few hours south of Cancun. Because it was an overnight bus Ashleigh and I had grand ideas of perhaps getting a slightly-more-comfortable-than-usual bus, maybe equipped with a bathroom? And maybe even, we dared to dream, a TV monitor. Alas, our hopes were dashed when what another passenger described as a converted bread truck pulled up to the station and we were told this would be our mode of transportation for the next half day.

But we hopped aboard not too heart-broken. We had braved the chicken busses of Guatemala, by god, and a little discomfort was not going to stop us. The seats were spaced just far enough apart to allow a cardboard cut-out to slide through and as luck would have it, my seat was directly over the wheel well, leaving zero room for my legs, but by the time the bus dropped us off on the streets of Tulum at 6 in the morning we were so happy to be near the water that all memories of the overnight trip from hell quickly faded away.

None of the hotels were opened yet, so we sat on the beach for a few hours with all our stuff and watched the sun come up. We found a place to stay right on the beach for 200 pesos a night (about 20 bucks). We got our own little cabaña, a bed, a mosquito net, a lock for our door, and ... that was it. But it was truly all we needed. The majority of our time was spent lying on the beach and looking for places to eat and drink that didn't charge tourist-level prices (we were pretty unsuccessful in the second activity). We checked out some ruins that overlook the coast. There wasn't much exciting about the ruins themselves after having been to Tikal and Palenque but the view was ridiculous.

The guy who runs our little cabaña site took us out snorkeling for free yesterday along the world's second-largest reef with a group of French and Brazillian tourists. I think he may have been hoping for a little something in return, but we put an end to those hopes pretty quickly. It was one of the best snorkel sites I've ever been to and our guide was saying it wasn't even a great day because the visibility was pretty low.

Today's our last day here, but the wind is pretty strong and not very conducive to sunbathing, so we're in town charging iPods and preparing for the 20-hour overnight trip back to the Guatemalan border, where I'll have to pay a 25-dollar fee before I can get out of the country ... lame!

That's about it from me. Happy Thanksgiving to all! I'll be missing everyone even more than usual on Thursday, but I hope you all enjoy the day with loved ones and remember how lucky we all are to be from a country like the United States of America.

Peace out, homies!