While the standard image of a busload of people piling out at some location, followed by a guide who gathers them up like ducklings and marches them off after a quick head count, umbrella in hand to help lead the way, is likely to be the type of tour you end up on if you ever decide to go with some sort of official tour group, they don’t always need to come in this variety. And even if it does, these tours also have a number of pros to them, …

Chichen Itza is in fact the first Heritage Site that Nicole and I visited together thanks to her parents, who organized a family trip down to Mexico for Christmas a few years back.
Perhaps one of the greatest Mayan sacred sites on the Yucatan peninsula, the fusion of Mayan and Toltec civilizations from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries certainly makes it the most important example of this union, found upon almost every inch of the monuments and artistry that comprise the grounds of Chichen Itza.
And even though climbing the Castillo …

Given the tendency of societies to build upon previous settlements, older cities have a great wealth of history and can reach much further in the past than we might even expect.

In Cancun for example we discovered this ruin dating from the pre-Columbian Maya civilization within the Hotel Zone, and in our case a close enough walk to the resort that we didn’t even need to take the bus.

This is in fact one of the larger ruins located on Cancun Island and is said to be a contemporary of the more …

Natalie – @nearafar on Twitter – is asking a travel question every Wednesday, and this week was ‘What’s your favourite island?’.  Gary and I visited Isla Mujeres with my Dad in 2004, and it’s remained high on our ‘must return to’ list.  We spent our day at the Turtle Farm, visiting sea turtles, at Playa Tiburón for a beer or two and then on to the Playa Norte for some swimming.  Just a 20 minute ferry ride from Cancun, it feels like a world away, relaxed and laid back, with …

Now that the blog is back up and running – who would have thought an upgrade could be so buggy ;) – I thought I’d drop a quick post, though we do promise to have some cruise posts for the upcoming week.
While reading through a backlog of blogs, Nic and I have been flipping around TV watching whatever catches our interest. CBC was airing a documentary on the 2012 Apocalypse, a subject I’ve been considering using for a LARP, and so clearly something I have …

One of our early trips together was a Christmas trip to Cancun we took in 2004 with my parents, my brother, and Kate, who would eventually be my sister-in-law.  As Gary and I are both usually all about ruins, I lobbied hard for a trip to Chichen Itza – and everyone actually agreed.  We had an excellent Russian-turned-Mexican driver who took us out there, to a nearby cenote and to Valladolid, which is a long day, and not nearly enough time in the town… but you do what you can.
Gary …