Mexico!

We were lucky enough to spend nearly 3 weeks in Mexico – the Yucatan Peninsula – this year and I gave my camera a bit of a workout! Just a few words about each of the following galleries which I’ve just added:

Birds and flora
Many of the bird shots were taken in the hotel grounds, as were a number of the flowers. The orchid photographs were taken at Xcaret. There are two dragonfly shots in here: the first dragon very nicely landed right in front of me at Chichen Itza, the second presented itself the following day at Tulum and on both occasions I luckily had a long lens on the camera.

Chichen Itza
This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an absolute must-see. We were lucky that there weren’t too many other tourists there that day (no doubt an advantage of visiting in the ‘quiet’ i.e. hurricane, season!) However, it was incredibly hot (I don’t think I’ve ever drunk as much water in one day as I did in the time we spent here) and exhaustion got the better of us, to the extent that only when we were leaving did we realise that we hadn’t seen the whole site. Oh well, what a good excuse to pay a return visit

Tulum
Tulum is probably the second-best-known Mayan ruins site. Much smaller than Chichen Itza, it’s the most beautiful cliff-edge location and despite being the place where we both acquired more insect bites than I would have thought possible, is also on the “must return” list! The first 7 photos are taken near the ruins site, outside a great little restaurant/hotel called Zamas, where the food is just wonderful.

Xcaret
A totally wonderful nature park! Sadly, my photography was cut short by rain the day we visited. Oh dear, another reason to have to go back to the Mayan Riviera, what a pityYes, there are a lot of pics of monkeys, but they are two separate groups! The last two photos are young turtles in fairly shallow outdoor pools (the park has a breeding programme) which is probably why they look almost unreal.

Iguanas! (and a few other little lizards)
What can I say? I completely fell in love with these creatures (and I’m sure that the fact they tended to remain static and thus made it relatively easy to take photos of them is totally irrelevant) By the end of the holiday my obsession with taking yet another iggy pic was a standing joke.

And, finally, the Hotel and few sunrises.
The gallery starts with the sunrise we saw our first morning (we’d arrived after dark) and concludes with the sunrise we saw on our last full day. I did actually manage to drag myself to the beach before sunrise for some shots: taught me that I really, really need to get more familiar with adjusting the camera controls by touch aloneA few pics here were taken in Playa del Carmen (just before the photos taken in our room). Yes, there are a LOT of images in this gallery, but this one is as much for me and John – to remember a superb hotel and wonderful holiday – as it is for anyone else