Apr 2009

Finally, we are here! We arrived in Mexico City on Monday evening and ordered a "safe" taxi from the airport, I think safe is a pretty loose term in this case as our taxi driver, who was in his late 60's, drove at breakneck speed dodging traffic undertaking and overtaking, making even crazy Korean drivers look like old women dawdling to church on a Sunday morning. We arrived safely at our hostel which was really nice, a big colonial building 30 seconds walk away from the main square of the city.

We got up early the next morning and went for a walk around the main square which was an impressive row of colonial buildings with a giant Cathedral in the middle.

It was all quite peaceful apart from the 100 or so policeman and soldiers standing around, we saw a wide array of killing devices from pump action shot guns to machine guns to standard boring old rifles, all being waved around, often pointing in your face - we just hoped that the safety catches were on and that they hadn't been watching too much Rambo recently. I'm not sure whether the presence of so many military and policemen were meant to make you feel safe, which it did partially, but it also made you wonder exactly how bad the situation was if it needed that many of them in such a small area! Walking around the city there was a policeman on nearly every street corner, there seemed to be almost more policemen than normal people. Luckily we avoided bullets and swine fever which was a great result.

Walking around the streets the first morning a man called us into his restaurant and fed us pig intestine tacos, the first of my brave Mexican gastronomic experiences! It was actually pretty tasty, much better than the dried grasshopper I ate early today which tasted of gone off crispy marmite, niiiiiice.

On our first day we went and looked around the National Palace at the murals by Diego Rivera and around the botanical gardens which they seem to have forgotten to plant any flowers in, but it still had some giant cactuses and trees dotted about the place.

We finished it off with an our first shots of authentic Mexican tequila, which although tasting much better than the normal car brake fluid we get at home, still tasted of tequila which I'm not sure can ever be a good thing after my Stalham Christmas eve experience which I think I will never forget.

The next day we went and comandeered a boat on an ancient canal, it was a bit too relaxing and calm to don my pirate headscarf and patch, but we had a great time floating along in the sunshine with a Corona and some tacos.

After Mexico City we travelled to a nearby city called Puebla which was exactly what we needed after the intense Mexico city experience, the city was really beautiful and had a really relaxed atmosphere about it. Once again the city was based around a Cathedral and central square.

We spent our time walking around looking at all the nice buildings, soaking up the sun and eating lots of Mexican food. On the second day we went into the Cathedral which I think contained the most gold I have ever seen in one place. I couldnt help but think it was almost obscene and so over the top and that if even 1% of the gold was sold they could rehome all beggars around the city in mansions, and probably have enough change to purchase a Premier league football team afterwards.

We were sitting in the main square when a youngish bloke comes over to us and tells us "I had a shower today, I think that makes me handsome", we agreed as any polite English couple would do. He then offered to write us a poem in exchange for some money, he challenged us to think of any topic for this poem, no matter how difficult. So, I asked him to write us a poem about Stephen Hawkins, the legendary astrophysicist. Unfortunately he didn't know who Stephen Hawkins was so we asked him to write us a poem about my big toe (who recently went through a mid life crisis when the nail totally fell off, I was wearing sandals so he could see the toe in question to get some kind of inspiration, and we filled him in with vital information such as the name of the toe, Egor). He agreed to the challenge and wrote possibly one of the worst poems ever heard iof in the history of bad poems, it went like this:

"I write this melancholy to my bare foot,
to the embers of solitude of the broken finger and his light steps of wood and the anarchist theatre,
Egor can fill me with dirtyness,
In this eternal travel in languages and their ultra violet tears of side walks"

We gave him 15 pesos (about 70p) for this work of genius and sent him on his way hoping that he would change career and do something he was a bit better at.

After our relaxing Puebla experience we set off to catch the bus to our next destination, Oaxaca. In order to catch the bus we decided to catch the city bus to the bus station. We got onto the bus after sweating our way over town with my 20kg of backpack and camera equipment and got the bus which was packed full of people, including a blind man playing a harmonic badly. As there was no room we had to stand up and completely filled the space between the seats, holding on for dear life as the driver once again did the manic depressive version of driving seemingly perfected by all Mexicans, alternating between ultra fast and complete stop with very little inbetween. It was taking up pretty much all of my strength to stand upright when the blind man decides he wants to relocate to the front of the bus via us which I would imagine would be quite difficult at the best of times let alone when you have two gringos blocking the way and hanging on to the rails so much that they can't move. Anyway, we eventually got the the bus station in one piece and caught the 5 hour bus to Oaxaca. The journey started off with fairly dull scenery but built up to mountain circuits through cactus forests which was all very spectacular.

We then arrived in Oaxaca last night, home of Mexican art and crafts and funny coloured rugs that Christy loves so much :-)

First thing this morning I spotted 2 hummingbirds outside our room here which can only be a good omen for this place. We spent today walking around the local markets, people spotting and eating a massive steak with tortillas for lunch (which was better than grasshopper and tequilla put together)

We're going to spend the next week or so in Oaxaca relaxing and seeing the sites, and afterwards we're off to the beach on the Pacific Ocean for a spot of surfing, duuuuuude! It's only just sinking in that we've got nothing to do apart from relax and see the sites, filled in with the odd siesta here and there, awesome! It's nice not having anything to rush to and that we can take our time speaking to random people and mooching around, sweeet!

Tomorrow we're going to hire a car and visit the largest tree in the world, a petrified waterfall and a town where they make the colourful rugs. Will add stuff about that soon

Well, we're just 7 days away from setting off on our trip around the world. The map above shows where we're roughly planning to go. It hasn't really sunk in yet with either of us that we're going travelling, maybe it won't sink in until we actually touch down in Mexico and are trying to find our way around a city with 20 million other inhabitants using our more than basic Spanish, "Entiendo?" "No Entiendo!" could be the way it will all go... :P

Even though it hasn't fully sunk in i'm still getting excited about the prospect of seeing so many cool places and doing so many things, in my head the highlights on the trip will be:

- Diving off the East coast of Mexico.
- Climing Tikal to watch a sunset.
- Trekking an alternate route to Macchu Picchu for Christy's birthday.
- Living in the Amazon for a month whilst trying to avoid being infested with skin boring bugs and/ or wrestling with anacondas.
- Trekking the Great Ocean walk in Australia.
- Seeing Komodo dragons and orangutans in Indonesia.
- Spending Christmas and New Year in Thailand.
- Exploring Africa.
- Spending a year with Christy doing hardly any work, and best of all not having to teach any children! :D

I'm sure there will be many many many many more exciting things happening along the way that I can't even imagine yet and I'll keep this blog updated when I can with everything that happens.

The next time I add to this I'll be in Mexico, hasta la vista amigos!