We have spent 4 wonderful days in the lovely, small town of Loreto on the coast north of La Paz. This has been one of our favourite places of the last 3 months.

It feels very Mexican here. It is green and hot. The garden of the beautiful Damiana Hotel is full of fruit trees and butterflies and a hummingbird.

Everything is colourful and the people are lovely. We have lain in hammocks and chilled out and I have done a lot of work on my thesis. It is very easy to think here.

The hotel is really a special place. We have a gorgeous casita in the garden which the owners have given us for a reduced price. We were even welcomed with a free bottle of cold beer each when we arrived hot and tired.

It is quiet as it is the low season and we almost have the place to ourselves.

We can cook in the wonderful outdoor kitchen on the 1953 vintage stove.

Shopping for food is not as easy as we hoped. It is actually hard to get good quality vegetables and the sourcing tinned beans is very difficult, unless they are refried in lard. I guess most Mexicans cook their beans from dried. Avocados are also sold unripe for you to ripen at home. The town is really cute with a few craft shops and plenty of restaurants and an old mission from 1679.

And some odd shops. Notice no apostrophe.

It will be very hard to leave but we are heading for La Paz tomorrow, after I do a Skype interview with a school in Brazil in the morning!