Thursday 12th May
Mainland Mexico is a completely different place to Baja. We're in a university town called Moralia, which has a lovely feel to it.We went for a walk to find some cash, and there was a square with people ballroom dancing to a band. People just doing what Mexicans do of an evening. We were doing what we normally do - arguing.

Four prickly things in a row.

Friday 13th May
On our way to Mexico City, we've paid about 60-quid for tolls in the last 600 miles which isn't bad really. Today though we got stopped by the "State Police" who proceeded to extort 100-quid out of us, which was most of the cash we had. I know we should just deal with it, but it rankles and makes you angry that they can get away with it, and that you can't argue with a man in uniform and a gun. It soured the day. Friday the 13th indeed.

Saturday 14th May
Today we visited an incredible site called Teotihuacan, City of the Gods, with some beautiful constructions and pyramids. We went early, which was a cracking idea, and walked up to the top of both the pyramid of the Sun and the pyramid of the Moon. Absolutely spectacular.

Stunning Teotihuacan from top of Sun pyramid.

We stayed at a lovely hotel in the nearby village that had shiny sparkly bunting strewn across every street and which was a really quiet little place - until we tried to go to sleep! There was music and singing until about 4 in the morning, people obviously getting very drunk, and loud irregular firework noises. Add that to the cockerel that started to crow at about 5, and the odd rumble of thunder all night, and it all added up to a very restless night. The young girl at the hotel told us that it was the village community's annual St. Martine festival, so we couldn't really complain.

Lovely village

Monday 16th May
If our travels have taught us anything in the last few years, it's that plans often go out of the window. That's why you need to be flexible and roll with the punches:
We didn't expect my email to become unuseable just because I was using a different computer to normal.
We didn't expect the April earthquake in Ecuador.
We didn't expect Venezuela and Colombia to close the border between the two countries.
We didn't expect the border between Panama and Colombia to be closed in places.
We didn't expect the volcano in Costa Rica to explode covering everything in ash.
We didn't expect the email from the Foreign Office telling us that right-hand drive vehicles were now being refused entry to Costa Rica.

All of this meant that we had to decide whether to risk turning up at a border only to be refused entry, or whether we tried to ship Foxtrot over the troublesome countries and fly separately, or whether to come up with yet another plan.
Financially, yet another shipping cost could mean an early end to our trip, given that the original UK to New York doubled in price from the original estimate.
So we spent long hours contemplating together, getting as much information as we could from the unreliable Internet connection. We came up with Plan F Revision 17 which is to carry on south in Mexico and then look at situation again once everyone has replied to our emails.
Bugger.

Wednesday 18th May
Today was another Mayan 'ruins' day - we went to Chichen Itza early-doors. It was very hot and definitely atmospheric - apparently it's one of the Seven Wonders of the New World. It was impressive anyway.

Chichen Itza

And again.

Sunday 22nd May
We've made the difficult decision to return north back to USA, visit the bits we missed out on earlier, (and again 5 years ago) and then see if we can get into Canada and travel around there instead.
It was the only decision we could make, given the problems we would likely encounter, so we're both relieved to come up with the same thoughts.

Yet more ruins - this time at El Tajin. They're much less "reconstructed" than the others we've seen - probably as they're not as popular, but no less impressive.

El Tajin

And again.

Tuesday 24th May
Back to the Mexico/U.S. border at Matamoros/Brownsville (Texas). We had a bit of paperwork to complete, to allow us to leave Mexico with Foxtrot, and to get our deposit back for the Temporary Vehicle Import Permit, and to return our Tourist Cards. We left Mexico and when we tried to get into America, they said we didn't have the correct stamp in our passports and we were only allowed to go out of the US for 2 weeks, instead of the 3 weeks that we'd been in Mexico.
We finally were allowed back in by Immigration after explaining the shenanigans of the last few weeks to them.

Now we just need to prepare a route to the places we missed, and look for places to go in Canada - assuming of course we can meet the criteria for importing Foxtrot. Fingers crossed for Plan G Revision 1.