WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH; THE TOUGH GET GOING!

I'm back in London. I've just returned from the hospital, where the doctor had just confirmed what I already knew. I have a bad infection, which had plagued me for most of my time in Romania. He's put me on a course of anti-biotics and told me to take it easy. I look in the mirror. I look awful. Im still not sleeping well and have bags under my eyes. I have skin like a spotty teenager and I've dropped over half a stone in weight while being away. I'm jobless and have lost my flat, and now, I look at my life piled into boxes, in the room I have rented from a friend for now, until I decide what I'm doing with my life. On top of that, the guy I was dating has been a real jerk, and was dating someone else the whole time. It has left me feeling like an idiot for thinking that he ever liked me in the first place. It's not been the best start to the year. I feel broken: mentally and pyschically. To sum it all up: everything is a bit shit! 

Now there are two options you can take when you feel this way:

OPTION 1

You can sit around feeling sorry for yourself and go "Why me! I don't deserve this!" Bla, bla, bla and be another of life's victims.

OPTION 2

You get can the Hell over yourself and go and find something that makes you happy.

I WOULD CHOOSE OPTION 2 EVERYTIME

I'm on the phone to my friend Lauren. She had rang to see how I was and to let me know she's happy I'm back from Romania. I'm moaning to her on how bad I'm feeling.

"Why don't you come to Mexico with me?" She says

"Don't be silly! I can't come to Mexico!" Is my response 

"Why not!"

"Because your leaving Monday and it's Friday now, and I just can't!"

The next morning I'm surrounded by mess as I try and pull from my storage boxes what is needed for my everyday life. It's freezing and I have a hundred layers on trying to keep warm. I look out the window. It's grey and raining. I get a phone call to say the job I was waiting on has fallen through. After I hang up the phone I look at the screen and begin to text Lauren:

"F**k it! I'm coming to Mexico!"

I'm walking out the airport at Cancun! "Shit! I'm in Mexico!" It all feels a bit surreal. The heat hits me and it feels wonderful, even though I'm wearing a thermal top (not a good look in Mexico)!  I go to find Lauren and her friend Millie who is travelling with her as they were on another flight an hour a head of mine. Funnily enough I find them in the bar sipping on Pina colada's. Lauren is like my baby sister. I met her while she was doing work experience on a film I was doing dailies on a couple of years ago. I instantly liked her (but it's kind of hard not to like Lauren) so then employed her as our trainee on one of my jobs, gave her lots of stick and gave her the nickname Sugar Tits (I treat all my trainees well)!  I've been stuck with her ever since. I'm quite surprised I want to travel with Lauren again though as she seems to bring bad luck with her. She was my side kick on my third trip to India, where I had never got ill. I go away with Lauren to India and in the first week we both come down with E. coli, which can kill you! I must say though, it really cements a friendship if you can still look each other in the eye after you both puked a hundred times in front of each other and have had to drop your pants at the same time, so a heavy handed Indian doctor can inject you in the ass! After that Lauren went to South America where she had her bag stolen in the first week, her leg swelled up so she had to spend a fortune at a hospital getting it checked out only to realise it was the heat, and when I melt her in Rio she had a face like a beetroot because she was covered all over in a rash after having an allergic reaction to some shower gel. I sit next to her in the bar to find her blowing her nose. She is full of cold which she seems to have caught on the plane ride over. The curse continues! Millie, her housemate is a brunette with a sexy, husky voice. I instantly like her as she has got a good sense of humour and she is the same height as me, so I won't feel like some Amazonian freak like the last time I did Mexico, as the average Mexican height is five foot nothing.

Lauren and Millie have booked us into a hotel in Cancun for the first night.

"It's spring break! We should really experience it!" They tell me excitedly. On my last trip to Mexico all I saw of Cancun was the airport and that was fine with me. Cancun is not my type of place when it's normal, but Cancun during spring break: well that's just my worse nightmare! It will be full of drunken students but they will be American which means they will be louder and the behaviour worse, as Americans like to everything bigger and better. It will be full of people called Chad, who have been working out for months for this one moment in time to parade his pumped up body around on a beach, while downing some tequila, in the hope to have sex with as many females as humanly possible in his one week vacation. Yep! Experiencing Spring Break is really not up there on my list of things to do. First we have to get to Cancun. This seems quite an effort due to the fact Lauren and Millie don't seem in that much of a rush as they are drinking Pina colada's. I on the other have to abstain due to being on anti biotics (the horror)! When they eventually do move, Lauren suggests that we walk outside the airport to flag a taxi as it's much cheaper according to her guide book. We drag our luggage in the heat and walk outside the airport to the road. It turns out Lauren's guide book is crap as we cannot flag a single taxi. We then drag our cases back inside the airport and get a bus, which we have to wait an hour for as we have just missed the last one. We eventually get to the hotel. It's is now dark. The hotel is very nice the only problem is, it's in Cancun town. All the parties and nightclubs are along the beaches which we are nowhere near. It's getting late and we are starving so we head round the corner to a restaurant to try and gain some energy. Two margaritas later Lauren is as white as a ghost and nearly face planting the table she is so tired. She hasn't had sleep for over 24 hours due to the fact she thought it would be a good idea to stay up all night before her flight watching Frieda and drinking red wine in bed (the mind boggles)! Millie isn't far behind her either. 

"I think I need to go to bed! Oh my God! This is the worst attempt at doing spring Break ever!" Lauren moans. I have to agree with her it's a pretty dismal attempt. Half an hour later we are all tucked up in bed with massive jet lag.

"What a massive failure. I guess we will never get to see Spring break?" Lauren's yawns.

"Yes it was a massive failure!" I think to myself as I close my eyes, but for once I have never been so happy to fail. 

Next stop Tulum. 

THE SHIT HENDRIK SAYS!

So everyone this is Hendrik aka Monster. Hendrik is the loveliest guy ever and hasn't got a bad bone in his body. He also happens to be the funniest German I have ever met! Hendrik got the nickname Monster from Sean, the Canadian guy he was traveling with, due to the fact that Hendrik over heard two girls on the beach one day saying:
"Look at those clouds. It looks like a monsoon is coming!"
Hendrik misheard what they were saying and said in dismay:
"What! A monster is coming! Where?"
Hence he got stuck with the nick name Monster there after.
Germans are known for their directness, but Hendrik has the ability to be as direct as hell but make it the funniest thing ever.
Me, him and Flo were sat eating waiting for a bus to Playa del Carmen. We were discussing relationships. Flo was saying how he was single for the longest he had been in ages and that it was a good thing. I then said I'd been single for 3 years and that I felt it was good for all people to be able to be on their own at some point in their life. Hendrik's eyes lit up in shock.
"What?" I asked
"No, Carly it's not! I can't do it!"
"But why?" I asked.
"Because I like to f**k!" he replied really loudly. Me and Flo looked at each other and I felt like the whole restaurant had heard.
"Just because I've been single for 3 years, it doesn't necessarily mean I haven't had sex in 3 years" I tell him
"Oh! Well that's OK then!" and he carries on eating his second plate of Tacos.
Hendrik becomes my most constant travel partner on this trip and I grew very fond of him. He takes the piss out of me all the time by calling the British "Island Monkeys"; I tell him to shut up a lot; we spend most the time getting him food as he is always hungry (I've never seen anyone each so much); I tell him to stop making loud weird sex like noises when he wakes up as everyone in the other dorms are going to think we are doing some weird shit; and we jokingly call each other "Mein Schatzi" which means my darling in German.
I became quite protective over Hendrik, I felt like I wanted to look after him, but I think he was the same with me. There were some days when I travelled with him and my head was in another place and I was sad.
"I don't like seeing you sad Carly" he would say. Then he would say some shit and make me laugh again. So this post is dedicated to Hendrik aka Monster, the funniest man in Germany, who always had the ability to make me laugh, when nothing else could. I thank you and it was a pleasure to meet you. You are truly one of life's characters.

TEAM TULUM

Three is a crowd they say. Well not in our case; mine and my housemates; Olex, that is! Though from a outsiders prospective it did look like some strange ménage à trois was going on. One guy in a room with two blondes, who went everywhere together and ate together. In fact when we checked in, the manager asked where the other woman was as well, as my friend Hannah was originally going to stay with us. I think he thought Oli was some kind of pimp. Though I don't think Oli minded? Actually, it didn't help matters when Alex started touching my breasts on the beach, as if to say look at the size on those (I had my Victoria's secret bikini on) and some couple were watching us, looking bemused. Alex then insisted we rub sun oil on each others backs, which we did, just to stir things up more. The thing is we just get on so well. We are more than friends. We are more like family: Oli is like my brother and Alex, well she is like my sister or my mother depending on what mood she is in! Anyway we live together, so traveling together and sharing a room was no big deal. We know each other inside out; warts and all.

We are happy in our own company and each others, well me and Oli are anyway. The thing is Alex has this problem of not being able to sit still for more than two seconds, (she also has a problem of not being able to cover up, which turned out to be a bit of a nightmare when they went on a trip to India a couple of years back)! To be fair to her, she did very well for the first two days, as me and Oli are quite happy to sit around reading our books, not saying a lot, but by New Years Eve we could see her chomping at the bit; she couldn't sit still and she was being erratic. She basically needed to socialise and go wild!

Luckily Team Tulum was in town. When Olex had got off the bus in Tulum they bumped into one of Oli's old work colleagues, Charlie and her boyfriend Hills. After a few Margarita's we formed a plan, to all meet up and celebrate new year together as, Charlie also had three friends in town as well. Now I wasn't to sure about this as her friends were called Pippa, Petra and Lucienne, so this made me think that the cast from Made in Chelsea were going to turn up. Charlie had booked us a posh restaurant a long the beach, which we turned up to late as the dam taxi driver didn't speak any English and I missed a letter out when I was trying to spell it to him in Spanish and he had dropped us in the wrong place, so we had to walk for twenty minutes. Though can I add, I do not think this was entirely my fault as the restaurant he dropped off at had done of the letters I spelt to him, which I did try to point out before we got out of the cab. Anyway moving on. We eventually got to the restaurant and my fears of Made in Chelsea are quickly lifted as Charlie's friends turn out to be cool. Alex gets very excited that she actually has other people to talk to other than me and Oli and goes into hyper over drive. Soon the wine and the Margarita's are flowing, and for people that have just met we all get on like a house on fire (not like Alcohol has anything to do with it)? Soon we become so loud, it seems like the whole restaurant is looking at us (which they are)! Not like we care at all by then. We make a toast:
"To Team Tulum. Cheers!"
After Alex has done a Russian dance with a Mariachi band; we have taken lots of stupid pictures of ourselves with stupid spectacles; and I have to have my picture taken with the Rico Sauve waiter, we stumble out of the restaurant and decide to head to Charlie's fancy Eco resort where she is staying, as they are having a big party.

Rather than pay top wack for drinks, we decide to sneak in a bottle of Tequila and some shot glasses (not sure where they came from?) and do crafty shots. It was a good job we did this due to the fact we get even more drunk, and so are just about able to cope with the rest of the people at this party, who all turn out to be rude, obnoxious, wankers! They included the international clubbers, an English actress talking shit who both me and Oli have worked with (Alex got very excited about this and wanted us to go and say hi and network. We refused as one: she wouldn't remember us and two: she was an idiot!); the boho, hippy types; and the gay mafia. The more drunk we got, the more opinionated about the resort and its clientele, with Charlie even have a drunken rant to the management about the place. After enduring enough, we found ourselves at a beachside bar in the early hours of the morning swigging beer and strangely watching people being thrown off a bucking bronco. By this stage after consuming enough alcohol between us to fill a brewery, we had lost the power of speech and all sat there in some half coma state. It was time to call it a night, and thus saw the end of another New Year seen in, in the only style we know how: Drunkenly!

The next morning with sore heads and me and Oli realising that you can get Margaritas downers, we dragged ourselves to the beach again, to sunbathe and see the last dregs of the hardcore revellers stagger home after the previous nights proceedings. That night we meet up with Team Tulum again, and again drank to many Margaritas (Don't we ever learn)? In no time we are all well on our way (No appears we don't learn at all)! We had gone for drinks way down the beach which is miles long. It being New Years day there was not a taxi in sight. It looked like we were going have to walk the whole way back which was going to take over 2 hours, when Alex managed to hitch hike us a lift on the back of a pick up truck. Good times.

The next day it was time to leave Tulum. I can't say I didn't enjoy it (we did have the best Ceviche here ever!), but it was far too big, spread out and full of idiots for me. We packed our bags. Our next stop: Belize!

THE GIRL JUST CAN'T HELP IT!

So people I am writing you this post, sat on the concrete floor (Oh the glamour!) outside Cancun airport, Mexico, drinking my first of what I feel could be many Margaritas to come, as I'm going to be sat here for the next 2 hours waiting for a bus! Not like it bothers me ( God though it's bothering most of the Americans here, who are screaming at the poor little Mexican guy who sells the tickets and are demanding to know why the buses are sold out and why there are not more)! Actually this is why I come traveling; the chaos; the non routine; the not knowing what's going to happen next. God I love it! In fact I'm addicted! Totally and utterly! And it seems to be getting worse. Even though I've spent more time out of the country this year than in it, I had a couple of weeks back in London, I got bored with life; the winter set in and I got itchy feet. I found myself in WH Smith or waterstones again looking at traveling guides longer than I should; I was reading the Guardians travel pull out section with excitement and I was trying to convince my friends on a trip abroad that I knew they would never do! After many failed plans of departing, I had almost given up, when Oli and Alex ( or as they are now known Olex!) my housemates announced they were going to Mexico for a couple of weeks, and did I want to join them? Dam right I do! Besides Olex are completely mad so I knew it would be quite an experience, no matter what.

Now your probably going to find this slightly strange due to the amount of traveling I do, but I'm actually scared of flying, especially landing and take off. I'm convinced every time I get on a plane it's going to crash! Now the Aussie Dingo's introduced me to Valium in the Colombian jungle and I found it an amazing experience. Since then I learnt that Angus and Oli have a supply and now and again I pop one when I am full of cold and can't sleep (bliss)! Oli informed me he had some for the trip. Due to the fact that I was getting myself into a state, thinking about things I shouldn't be thinking about again (story of my life) and the fact that I'm getting on on a flight, I board the plane a complete anxious mess!
"Oli give me a valium now!"
The next thing I know I wake up God knows how long later, with a woman sat next to me who wasn't there when we took off and a tray of congealed food in front of me. I'm completely spaced out and I'm not really sure what's going on, buts that OK, because my anxiety has completely gone. I'm just sat there with this warm relaxed feeling in my head, though Olex said they just kept turning around in their seats seeing me looking into space like a zombie!
Now we got cheap flights because we had to have a lay over in Minneapolis. Now I don't know much about the place, so I could be being unfair here but one word I would use to describe Minneapolis is, grey. Then the next word I would use to describe it is? Grey. And then after that the next word I would use to describe it is? Yes that's right; Grey! It's so depressing, it makes Warrington look like Saint Tropez! The one good thing though about the place is, it does have the biggest mall in America! And yes what does mean? Victoria's Secrets! Remember my time in Miami? How I found VS and how it changed my life by giving me breasts for the first time in my life in a bikini! We don't have VS in the UK, so this was my chance! Me and Alex raced into the shop.
Shop Assistant: Hi there, can I help you?
Me: Yes, can you tell me where the bikini's are?
SA: I'm afraid we don't have any bikini's yet.
Me: What!
AS: It's December. We don't get them until the summer starts.
Me: Really! But I'm going to Mexico tomorrow and I need one!
AS: I'm sorry.
Me: Well Top Shop do swimwear all year round. Do you have Top Shop here?
AS: Sorry I don't know what Top Shop is. I've never heard of it.
What, she doesn't know what Top Shop is. Never heard of it! Don't have it. What kind of civilisation is this? We spend the rest of our time at the mall a little down beat and trying not to let Alex make rude comments about fat people (she has a thing about fat people)!
Olex got an earlier flight to Cancun than me and so this how I find myself a lone at the airport, waiting for a bus to try and meet them in Tulum, waiting for my Mexican adventure to begin, but if I'm truthful on an adventure I can't really afford, but hey the girl just can't help it.

After I wrote the above and as I am now sober this is what followed:
I had more Margaritas; got very drunk; met some cool girl called Jet who own's a hotel out here and said I could stay there; met some American hippies who hoola hooped while waiting for the bus; got the bus; had to change buses; had to wait again; started on the Corona's; got some muscly young Mexican guys to open them with their lighters; got chatting to some old Mexican dude who was trying to teach me Mayan; got to Tulum; my phoned died of battery; tried too drunkenly get my charger out of my rucksack and that's when Alex found me a little worse for wear, but that's OK because so was she, as she and Oli had been on the Margarita's too, as they had bumped into Oli's friend from England (small world); so we all went and had more Margaritas together and have called ourselves team Tulum! The end! No its not! It's only the beginning. Ha ha!