Anyone for piña colada chicken?

Swimming with turtles

My first night in Playa del Carmen left me feeling like a true traveller - I´d been attacked by an onslaught of mossies. No doubt this is just a taste of what´s to come over the next few months! Better keep the DEET on hand at all times...

Playa has a beautiful beach but is another town that suffers from an excess of tourists and associated tat. So, after some obligatory strolling around the town on my first day, I decided to leave the city on my second to go back to nature. So I jumped in a collectivo (dirt cheap taxi-type mini bus used by locals) and went snorkelling for the first time. Following a recommendation by my hostel owner, I went to Akumal beach, famed for its giant turtles and coral reef. After a bit of haggeling I managed to get an hour and a half of one-on-one snorkeling for around 30 pounds - it was one of the best things I´ve ever done! I saw loads of giant turtles, exotic phospholuminescent fishes and even stingreys. It left me questionning why I didn`t become a marine biologist?!

Leaving Playa, I made my way on the bus to Tulum. Now, apparently Tulum beach frequently features very high up on "Top 10 beaches of the world" lists. And it really was stunning. Not only was the beach a mini paradise, it is juxtaposed next a collection of excellently preserved Mayan ruins known as the city of Zuma (city of dawn) because they face the sunrise. The Mayans couldn`t have picked a more idillic location.

Piña colada chicken

After a couple of consecutive days of lunch and dinner at restrurants, some of us at the hostel decided to make use of the BBQ and cook up something special. Meet and fish are incredibly cheap in Mexico so we trotted off to the supermarket and bought steak, chicken and giant prawns. With a craving for coconut one girl and I decided to cook a chicken and prawn coconut curry. After 20 minutes of hunting every corner of the shop for coconut milk, we gave up and used our broken Spanish to corner a sales assistant who kindly found it for us. Getting back, we fired up the BBQ, cooked the meat and made the sauce adding corriander and lime to the coconut milk (like professionals). The meal looked fab, but something about it didn`t taste quite right, it was ever so slightly sweet...

...Maybe it was a bad idea to buy coconut milk from the booze section!! On the plus slide, we invented piña colada chicken (minus the piña)