Ah bien It has been a mixed beginning to our holiday. We are on the Rivieria Maya in the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula off the Caribbean Sea and we chose this spot because of how 'easy' it was to get to from Bermuda, and sure enough it was, although immigration at Cancun Airport frustratingly took longer than the flight from Miami!

We picked this hotel in Mayakoba because it would provide a good base for us and the baby, and so it does and the property is beautiful. However selfishly we also picked this area because it's near to the historic Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, but when I say near I mean a 3-hour drive. What has become abundantly clear to us in the three days we have all been here is that a 3-hour drive, remembering Bermuda is 21 miles long, is not near and then add to this the 90-degree heat and our 6-month old getting heat rash as soon as we go outside, then we have learnt some valuable lessons already about picking future vacation destinations.

We were due to drive to Chichen Itza tomorrow but we have abandoned our plans and will take it easy by the shaded pool instead. We do hope to visit Tulum on Thursday though, which is less than an hour south of us and also one of the 3,000 Cenotes in the Peninsula, the magical and sacred underground sinkholes.

Our perspective was not helped at all by us spending 3 hours roped stupidly into a 'presentation' at a Private Residences resort nearby on Monday. I am normally so savvy of these scams that I have a good radar for avoidance but like an idiot I/we got reeled in at the car hire place at Cancun Airport and thus we, baby and all, spent most of the afternoon yesterday at the Grand Mayan resort being aggressively sold a 'holiday home' that we had no intention of buying.

In my experience nice does not cut it in these situations so after approaching three hours in a oxygen filled room with the utter lowest of the low 'salesmen' I turned it nasty and we pretty much got thrown out, but not after another 3 or 4 wankers tried to downsell us as we seeked the exit door. We were then left stranded outside in the heat, but I wasn't going to leave without our promised goodies (one of which was free entrance to Chichen Itza!) and made sure we at least left with more (not less) money in our wallets.

Please don't let me see that very nice Mexican lady at the car rental office when we take the car back on Sunday because that experience will stay with me for a while. "Can we not just draw a line underneath it," says other-half. Hmmm. Anyway another lesson learnt and it came as no surprise that googling Grupo Mayan earlier brought up dozens of websites such as this one citing complaints.

Meanwhile I notice that the Swindon away tickets went like hotcakes, which is obviously fantastic but I wonder why the club didn't offer priority to regular travellers as they have done most of the season? Friends have also told me of many an hour sat in front of their PC's trying to book home-leg tickets. One can rely of course on Charlton cocking up ticketing for big games. It reminded me of a Sunday night spent outside The Valley for the remaining few hundred Old Trafford cup tickets that went on sale on a Monday morning in 1984. The club had put the entire allocation (15,000) on sale Saturday morning with no restrictions but some of us were following the team at Bolton and only found out when we got back to London that they had almost sold the entire lot!

Anyway my laptop is working and the direction our new lazy holiday is taking should include an afternoon sat by the computer on Friday afternoon. I was thinking today that I was also away for the play-off semi-finals in 1998. Different woman, different continent but let's hope for the same outcome. Buenas noches.  ¶ 11:59