This is the first RV park that we have ever stayed in so far on this journey. Not the first time that we’ve paid money – that has happened to thingy’s mother for a place in her front garden in Irkutsk and again in Seoul at the World Cup Stadium car park which was pure tarmac heaven but the toilet did have heated seats that squirt water up your bum.

So we’re a little green with the trailer park etiquette – do you leave the lights on in the toilets at night? – Is it OK to run power tools on the hook-up? Is it OK to empty the contents of the van out onto the pristine grass and cause a right old rag and bone mess by day that is only superficially tidied up as the sun goes down but manages to get away with it cos, well, Los Cocos RV Park is a well cool and chilled out place.

I’d like to state here that I think it’s OK to arrive in a tropical paradise and then spend the next five days building cupboards, painting rubberized coatings on the undercarriage, fixing fans, etc. My essential point is that I’d rather do them here, with pleasant weather, dog walks on the beach and cheap tacos everywhere, than, say, rainy old Czech Republic or housed in a gloomy warehouse under imminent eviction from the London Olympics Force. Some people must think it’s sad but, possibly, their only experience of tropical paradise is the expensive ten days book-ended by Heathrow Airport that demands no work and all play. But this trip is, of course, fundamentally different – we are looking at the next six months at least in the Tropics and we feel we need working fans, rubberized undercarriages and cupboards in order to make the most of that time.

Next week I’m going to justify why I like to spend my days staring in a computer screen even though I’m at a surfer’s beach internet caff sipping an ice coffee or was it fresh coconut and rum?