By winding road I mean I’m stuck in the back of a crowded and overheated bus willing myself not to throw up as we careen along this extremely bumpy (mexico loves speed bumps EVERYWHERE), curvy road through the mountains. Not a pleasant experience.

Travel the last couple of weeks has been difficult. The teacher strikes are blocking roads all over the country, preventing travel and stopping things like petrol and food being distributed across the country. Everywhere we see people lining up for more than 12hrs to buy dwindling supplies of petrol which in turn is impacting available buses to where we want to go. Given this, and advice from other travellers and expats, we have opted to fly a couple of legs of the journey, interspersed with jumping in with the locals on their minibuses between towns.

So after Oaxaca we caught the bus into the mountains to stay at San Jose del Pacifico. We had to walk through a few blockades and swap buses to get past road blocks and men with machetes, then walk the last couple of km’s but it was well worth it.

We spent two days here, hanging out with people in the hostel and eating the local delicacies then walking in the mountains. The town is high up in the mountains and the clouds continue to roll in and cover us up in impenetrable white before suddenly clearing to breathtaking vistas of the valley and other mountains.

We then bussed it out of the cold and down to the coast for some searing heat and fish tacos at the beach. The swell was picking up and coincided with the Puerto Escondido Big Wave Challenge surf comp. The waves didn’t look that big from the beach until the surfer dropped in on the standard 30ft sets and looked like a tiny dot on the face of heaving water.

Finished at the beach and took a plane/bus/taxi/van/walked to San Cristobal. Lovely town, it’s a pity I spent a couple of days sick here so only got two of the four days out of the hostel. Met up with some friends and carved up the dance floor to some awesome reggae band while getting plied with tequila. It was probably the tequila that made me think I was busting out some good dance moves. We also took a day trip to Canyon del Sumidero which was awesome.

Next we braved it and navigated ourselves to the town of Palenque and found a hotel so we could visit the ruins the next day. The ruins were impressive but the highlight was seeing a family of howler monkeys in the trees, complete with big heffas and little babies jumping from branch to branch.

We are now in Cancun, relaxing after some pancakes for breakfast and booking our whale shark swim tour for tomorrow. Yippee can’t wait!