Tulum didn't feel like a beach paradise so much as a velvet rope strung across anything pretty or interesting. The downtown areas of Cancun and Tulum were pleasant as brief basecamps for Chicen Itza and beyond, but the resort-heavy beach zones offered little adventure that wasn’t being throttled behind a paywall. I was told (rather smugly) by other travellers that I had not been to the real Mexico. In fact, I was warned of this so many times I started to wonder if the blue waters of Bacalar were...

I love the part of travelling where your international tour meets somebody else’s staycation. On the beaches of Santa Marta, Colombian hen-do’s sipped from coolers, and extended families fried fish around barbeque pits. Arriving in the heat of a Colombian Christmas, it was obvious that the other guests in our apartment building were on a Latino Devon/Cornwall getaway. Perhaps not as glamorous as a weekend in Cartagena or the South of France, but wholesome, slightly forced, family fun in a beachy...

One of the worst nights of Phoebe’s life happened in a budget hotel in Panama City.Her and our mutual friend, who had been travelling together (almost) harmoniously for two months, had a drunken argument that led to a door closing on a friendship forever.It was perhaps a case of pot boiling over. Of not having the right conversations when it mattered, of being anxious and tired and losing track of who owed who thirty quid.It was the hardest way she has ever learnt that when you are moving – thro...