Tulum

I´m still in Tulum, but now I´m bright red - I got sunburnt while looking round the ruined city. In a way I´m quite pleased, after all I am English and the only people who burn more spectacularly than us are the Scots, but they lost the Battle of Culloden and consider shortbread a treat, so what do they know? Tulum was, I think, just a taster of the ancient wonders to come. It was built quite late in the Mayan civilisation and architecturally is not exceptional. What makes it worth a visit is its location, perched on a clifftop over the azure sea. The original name of the city was Zamas, which means ´dawn´. I suppose this reflects the fact that it was at the Eastern-most extremity of the Mayan empire. Also, perhaps coincidentally, it was sacred to the planet Venus, or ´the morning star´ as it is also known. I´ve done two nights now in a hammock and am facing a third before I move on tomorrow. Don´t let anyone fool you - they are truly monstrous contraptions. On the first night in particular I kept awaking to find myself wrapped up like an unfortunate fly in a giant cobweb. God knows how, but I must have been rotating in my sleep like a roasting pig. How I managed this without falling out will forever remain a mystery I think. Yesterday was exciting; at about two o´clock the sky went black and a howling wind started blowing along the beach. I really thought it was going to pick up my cabin and transport it bodily (complete with me trussed up in my chrysalis) to some far-off land. Disappointingly it just blew off some of the thatch, which let in the rain to soak all my stuff. By way of consolation the wind and rain took the top layer off the beach, and while I was walking along looking at all the detergent bottles, flip-flops and broken dolls (why do they always wash up on beaches?) I found an old coin. I suppose this will be my lucky decision maker now, but instead of ´heads or tails´ I´ll have to ask ´sea-monster-devouring-two-headed-snake or calendar-wheel´. I´ve spent much of the morning searching for a birthday present for Mum, but everything on offer here is also available in a pound shop near you. The only difference is that the shopkeepers here want $40 for everything. Eventually they´ll come down to $10, but none of it is worth more than a quid. And it´s all ghastly. Who really buys brightly-painted ashtrays in the shape of sombreros or tablecothes depicting the thirteen levels of hell? Tomorrow I´m going to Coba, which is a Mayan city deep in the jungle about 50 miles inland. Apparently there are 6,500 buildings there that are totally unexcavated and largely unexplored. The various parts of the city are joined by causeways across a crocodile-infested lake. I´m not sure if I´ll have internet access for the next couple of days, but I´ll be in touch soon.