Mérida was my last destination in the Yucatán and I chose to spend my last day in México swimming in more cenotes (water caverns essentially). I had already visited two cenotes outside of Valladolid, but every one is different and incredibly fascinating, so I opted for more swimming holes rather than visiting the Uxmal ruins for my last Mexican experience. No regrets. The cenotes outside Mérida were by far the best yet. Adding to the experience, was the horse cart transportation that takes you from site to site.

I must admit that I was nervious about my week and a half traveling alone, but I had forgotten that there are always loads of interesting folks who are on a similar journey as yourself. One man that I met in particular had a great load of stories and wisdom to share. He is a retired Canadian school teacher named Dale. Dale is the kind of guy who bought a VW bus and traveled Europe for years at a time in the 70′s. He caught the travel bug early on and has been constantly traveling since. When I met him in Merida it was his 20th-something time. I have been thinking about going back to school to teacher languages, and it is people like Dale that make that more and more possible…I mean, we are given summer breaks for the first 20 years of our lives and they expect us to just give that up? I don’t think so.

(on an unrelated note Dale has met on seperate occasions Elton John, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Pink Floyd…I was half waiting for him to tell me that Almost Famous is based on his life…)

From Mérida I flew to Lima, Peru to rendezvous with Pepe where will start a little South American journey for X amount of time.