Today we woke up into a really hot day, and didn't exactly feel like doing anything special. After breakfast we shopped some meat and other stuff needed for grilling in the evening, slept for a while and just spent time drinking Cuba Libres on our hostel yard. :)

When the day cooled down Timo flew his kite for a moment, and now after sunset we are preparing our meat on grill..

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Me and Laura spent the afternoon by taking a snorkeling trip out to the reef, while Timo skipped the snorkeling and searched for a place to fly his kite.

The snorkeling trip took a couple of hours, stopping at three locations along the barrier reef. At the first location there were dozens of nurse sharks and stingrays which didn't care much about us, it was even possible to touch them. By the way, a shark doesn't like if you pull it's tail.. :)

Just before leaving the reef we also spotted a big eagle ray. I followed the ray for a while underwater but couldn't catch it, it was way too fast and shy. The ray had two-three meters "wingspan" and 1-1.5 meters long thin tail, and unlike smaller stingrays it was moving differently, flying like a bird in the water. That was fantastic to see.

The reef was beatiful and our newly bought underwater camera worked nicely. The only problem is that suncream does not help when snorkeling, so both me and Laura are slightly red now.. And hungry. :)

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The bus trip to Chetumal took a bit over five hours, but that wasn't too bad as the Mexican buses are really nice, surpassing Finnish long-distance buses in comfortability. Spacious seats, air conditioning and half-way restaurant break made the trip go pretty fast.

After arriving to Chetumal we took a taxi to the main pier and bought tickets to Belize water taxi. 600hp speedboat crossed the sea from Chetumal to Ambergris Caye in Belize in about one and half hours, and after completing Belize's nominal border formalities the boat continued to the smaller island nearby, Caye Caulker.

Caye Caulker was our destination, and it is just as cool as we thought it would be. A surreal paradise island, Caribbean Sea always a couple of meters from us. First night we slept in a randomly selected hotel, and now just moved into Yuma's House hostel which will be our residence on this island for a couple of days. Now to the sea, and later in the afternoon we should go snorkeling a bit with sharks and rays. :)

By the way, there are basically no motorized vehicles on the island, and there are only three unpaved roads. Even the local police uses a golf cart. Not that there probably would be anything for a police to do.. :)

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Today was a lazy day. In the morning we strolled around the city for a couple of hours, looking for decently priced hammocks. After finding such ones we bought two: One for Timo, and one mini-sized for our cats. :)

In the evening after spending the hottest time of the day by the swimming pool me and Timo decided to take a bus to a nearby town, Progreso. Progreso is the closest beach to Merida and we wanted to see if it was any good for swimming or flying a kite. The later worked out just fine, but for swimming the beach was pretty mediocre.. Didn't swim, afterall.

Tomorrow we should have an early morning wakeup and a six hour bus drive down south, to Chetumal. From Chetumal we will catch a water taxi to Caye Caulker, Belize for a couple of days of snorkeling, swimming and just relaxing. Caye Caulker is a small Caribbean island, having all three unpaved roads and a wonderful coral reef next to it.

By the way.. After the flight from Mexico City to Merida Timo is obviously missing a Nikon camera charger.. So, I'm not the only one. Seems like all the criminals in there work at the airport baggage handling.. :P

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Two kilometers of walking in a slowly heating morning and we reached Merida Zoo. The Zoo was relatively small and the cages were old iron cages and fences, bad for photography. Two small jaguar kittens made the morning, though. Most cats sleep during daytime, but these two kittens were well alive and playing. :)

It was only 9:30am when we left the zoo, so we decided to check out a second one, Merida's new wildlife theme park Animaya. Finding a crappy old bus to the park took a moment and some walking, but after a couple of wrong turns we catched the right bus and drove outside the city to the park.

The park is less like a casual zoo, but more like a safari park with really large natural looking enclosures for the animals. Unfortunately the park had only partially been completed, way over half of the park still being under construction. The construction was going on all the time.

The park with only a couple of animals doesn't seem to attract too much visitors yet, or then it was just the fact that we were there on a working day. There was probably no more than 20 other guests. By the way, entrance to both zoos was free, just like Mexico Zoo.

On the way back from Animaya we stopped by a local shopping mall, shopping some swimming pants, shorts and just cooling off in air-conditioned supermarket. Another crappy bus took us to our hostel, where we could spend some time by the swimming pool.

I guess we should go find Timo a hammock now. Merida is famous for good quality hammocks and it just makes a good souvenir. Too bad we don't have any place to put one.. Maybe our office, my new work seat. :P

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We woke up around 6am today, in purpose of going to the zoo early in morning when the air is relatively cool. Mornings here are kinda beatiful with millions of birds singing all around. :)

Now to the zoo, after a cup of morning coffee..

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In the morning it was time to leave Mexico City and take a flight to Merida. We were flying on Interjet, a Mexican semi-lowcost airline. Interjet has been getting good ratings on airline rating websites, and their quality seemed to be up to our expectations. Standard economy class seats in a brand-new Airbus A321 were perfectly comfortable with businessclass-like legroom. Everything worked just fine, so Interjet is definitely a recommended airline for Mexican domestic flights. :)

Merida is one of the hottest cities in Mexico, and that could be felt.. Over 10 degrees higher temperature compared to Mexico City, not to mention high humidity due to nearby coastline kinda divided our opinions. Timo was happy of the warmness, I could have liked a couple of degrees less and Laura was totally cooking and annoyed. :P

We took an old bus from the airport to the city and walked a bit over 2 kilometers in the scorching heat to our hostel. Luckily the hostel has a swimming pool, which made the heat way easier to cope with.

Actually laying on a hammock above a swimming pool really feels like being on vacation... :)

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Before the trip we were talking about it on an IRC channel, #valokuvaus and found out that one of the guys in there was also going to Mexico City for a work trip during the same days as we were. Wasn't a difficult decision to organize an IRC meeting totally on the different side of the world

Vaizki booked us a table on a local cantina which offered 1kg of grilled meat and 20 beers in a basket for a decent price. Unfortunately it was Monday and the cantina was totally empty, but one of those baskets kept us well entertained for a night. :)

Tomorrow we should be flying to Merida, so this will be a bit shorter night..

By the way, now I have a charger for my 5Dmk2. :)

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So far we have just been walking around the city, checking out camera stores in hopes of finding the Panasonic LX5 battery charger. No luck so far, seems that the camera is way too new model and Panasonic just changed charger type in that model. There are dozens of camera repair shops with shelves full of different kinds of (probably used) chargers, but none of them are compatible.

Well, we still ended up buying a waterproof pocket camera for later use, a 80€ el cheapo Olympus and a memory card reader. Seems like nobody is selling Sigma lenses either, so no 70-200/2.8 for me..

On the way back to our hostel we found an interesting show. It was probably a mixture of a riot and a ceremony related to anniversary day of Cuauhtémoc, an Aztec rules. Indians performing their ritual dances and loads of pretty relaxed looking riot policemen keeping an eye on them.

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Yesterday after receiving our hostel room (which by the way is pretty nice for 10€/person/night, a spacious private room with 2 double beds) we went to check out the city zoo.

Once again we selected the worst possible day, as it was Sunday and everybody in Mexico City takes their kids to Chapultepec park and the zoo. It was almost impossible to even walk around, not to even mention seeing any animals.. Well, I guess we will take a new try with the zoo later on.

After zoo some Mexican food in a taco restaurant and back to the hostel for 12 hours of sleep.. Yep, we kinda passed out, as we didn't have much change to sleep on the previous night. :P

Today we are already way more alive and woke up at 8am local time. I filed an insurance claim for the stolen items and sent some email about them to Iberia also.. And now I guess we should head out to the city, seeing if we could find new chargers or the lens in one of the city's camera shops.

One guy from Finland is coming to Mexico today, and he happened to have a Canon 5Dmk2 charger which is is bringing to me. That resolves at least half of the charger problem and guarantees we are getting some pictures. :)

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