Flamingoes, more ruins and at last, a nightlife

Hammock time
Originally uploaded by Carrie & Eddie.

Mexico is hotting up. Not only are we now firmly ensconced in the tropics (in the Yucatan peninsula, the bit on the east that sticks out and up) but we have finally found a nightlife, not quite the Bacardi advert salsa club we were hoping for, but infinitely better than the last few towns we visited, where if we were lucky there might be another three people in the bar.

We stayed in Merida, a major Mexican city and no great shakes during the day, but it really comes alive at night. There are unbelievable street performers at every turn who leave you in wide-mouthed awe, and bands playing outside every restaurant for the diners filling the tables out on the street and in the gardens. People seem to congregate near the particularly good bands and just start dancing in the street, mostly salsa; these people can really dance! After dinner one night we headed to a salsa club which the guide book said caters to an older crowd till about 10pm then the younger people start pouring in. We got there at 11.30pm and could only assume that if the guide book was correct, the older crowd must have been in their 80s, because we were the youngest in there by at least 20 years. Eventually a few people around our own age arrived, and not longer after the dancefloor was filled with amazingly talented couples effortlessly salsa-ing away. The atmosphere there was fantastic, with the waiters shimmying across the dance floor as they went from one table to another. It was incredible to watch, which we did from a safe distance, reluctant to make fools of ourselves among the Mexicans who, it seems, can salsa before they can walk.

We went to a national park one day where there is a flamingo colony, they are just so pink and pretty and yes, I am just so girly. We followed them around for a while then spent a few hours on the national park's beach, on the Gulf of Mexico. The next day we went to see some more ruins, which is now getting pretty dull, and even went to a sound and light show in the evening which wasn't as tacky as expected but was all in Spanish, and it was raining, so it's not up there as a highlight. But there was a tropical lightning storm at the same time and being outside in the dark by the ruins gave us some amazing views of the fork lightning cutting across the sky, which was a show in itself.