Where to begin with my trip to Mexico? Shall I begin with catching the wrong number coach from Trumpington Park and Ride and hoping I would still end up at Heathrow Terminal 5 in time for the connecting coach to Gatwick South Terminal?. No the beginning is before that. It's before the packing the day before, or trying to find my glasses in a last minute panic before Virginia took me to Trumpington Park & Ride. It's before arranging the holiday with Audley Travel and deciding what places to include and what places to miss out.

If there is a beginning it's playing computer games like Atlantis 2 and Aztec: The Curse in the Heart of the City of Gold which made me almost nostalgic for the cultures of Central and South America. A National Geographic TV series on how advanced and big the Maya were helped cement a yearning.

But back to that awful coach trip down to Gatwick. The Cambridge to Heathrow leg was bad enough with warnings of 45 minutes delays on sections of the M4, sluggishness on the M25 carpark, and someone managing to get stuck in the toilet. The coach was hot and stuffy, perhaps preparing me for the Yucatan. Having reached Heathrow things got worse. I was unable to find out information about the coach I was due to catch to Gatwick - National Express had closed for the day, their info points only wanted to sell tickets, the Terminal 5 information desk just referred me to National Express.

It was only by chance by checking other National Express coaches that I discovered my coach had been cancelled. A kindly driver let me and others on board a different coach even though National Express would have us buy new tickets first. So in the darkness following the clock change we sailed off to be held up by a crash on the M25. The extended journey let me appreciate having fellow passengers coughing like they had TB even more. At this stage I really was giving up on reaching the Gatwick Travelodge in time for a bite to eat. To even more discourage me the driver elected to go to the North Terminal not the South Terminal I was after first.

We did reach the South Terminal at Gatwick eventually and I managed to jump on a Gatwick Hoppa (which went to the North Terminal first!) which delivered me to the Travelodge with seconds to spare to order a pizza from the Bar area. I waited even more ages and was about to give up when a large brown box arrived with a decent massive pizza in it. I had consumed two cereal bars on the way down but had room. And so concluded the first day of this Mexican odyssey.