Itchy Feet

Conkers in the park

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:29:57 GMT

Today was a really good day. A lovely day. A cut it out and put it in your scrap-book day.

September in Ireland is gorgeous when it wants to be. The weather took one of those sudden turns the very day the schools went back and suddenly winter was looming, and then this week was that gorgeous Indian summer stuff that used to drive me crazy when I was in school but is now just gorgeous with no strings attached, because I can get up and take a notebook with me and go and write in the park under a chestnut tree.

Which is what I did.

Iveagh Gardens is one of my favorite places in Dublin, it feels like a secret garden even when it's full of people (as it was today). I didn't plug my ears into my iPod, though I was tempted when a group across the way were talking very loudly about being fined in an airport for excess baggage (we listen and are totally emotionally involved when it's a friend relating an experience like this, but when it's some randomer in the park? Then it's just shutupshutup you silly bitch!)

Anyway. That was a minor quibble of a most quibbly and not very interesting nature. Children came and collected conkers around me while I scribbled obliviously. I tend to think I'm invisible when I'm writing. I don't notice other people, they fade into the background and all that I can really see is the pen and the page in front of my nose, and everything else is noise and shade. And so I wasn't really ready for the three who decided to include me in their little world. They were right on the edge of being teenagers (and really being a teenager is enough to make me dislike a person, so I was inclined to look unfavourably on them) and the girl, a round little thing with a loud voice, had a phone playing something horrible noise that is presumably in the charts. I paused from my conversation with the spider on the end of my pen to realize that they were worried about interrupting me, and smiled a serene and probably quite psychotic smile at them. The girl asked if I minded them looking for conkers, and showed me her two hands full of conkers she had already found.

Now, speech comes hard to me while I'm writing. It takes a while for words to be transmitted back from wherever it is my head has gone to, so I just smiled my daft smile and said something like "Wow. Lovely." And that was that. They went back to gathering conkers. I went back to the spider's little brother on my shoelace and thence to the world of paper and ink. And some time later, one of the little boys came over and showed me his fistfuls of conkers and told me the reason they were so shiny was because they were so fresh out of the husk.

And I don't really know why I got such a warm and fuzzy feeling from the entire encounter, but I did. Partly it was because I expected them to be nasty kids and they were nice kids, and it's always nice to have your prejudices flipped. Partly it was because it was a nice day and I was in a nice place and a nice mood, and partly it was because I'd forgotten just how extraordinarily lovely a double-handful of conkers look when they're shining in a child's hands.

It was also a nice surprise that they decided to include the person sitting under the tree. We're not often allowed into the world of the small people They tend to be different around adults, I think, a little more reserved. But these three were themselves, and didn't seem to want anything of me. Now, it's perfectly possible, and maybe even likely, that they thought I was insane or mentally damaged in some way, since all I could do was smile at them and say "Wow" and "Cool", but that just makes them even nicer.

Job Hunting!

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:10:30 GMT

Well, I had a meeting with Joseba at last, and it wasn't all that encouraging. Well, maybe a bit, but nothing is going to happen at all until the 20th, as all the regional directors of Fe y Alegria are off on a business trip to Buenos Aires until then. So, rather than sit on my hands till then and wait and see if he ever emailed me again, I deided to go look around.

So I did. I applied to some of the English schools in Quito, and almost immediately got asked to come in for an interview with a company called LenguaTec. They mostly cater to business people, all small classes, and are offering about $800 a month (which is about double what I'd need to live on comfortably in Quito). So, I'm all excited. I'm trying not to think like I've already got the job. I did have to go shopping today (nothing decent to wear to an interview after nearly 9 months of living out of a backpack!) I even bought makeup. And new sandals, and a shirt. I already look practically professional. I'm really really hopeful about this, it'd be a great job to get, Quito is a great city and I really want to live here for a while, and on that salary I could even save up money for travelling around South America, when I recharge and want to go travelling again!

So, very excited right now. Have to go shave my legs, pluck my eyebrows, cut my toenails and generally de-scruffy-hippie myself in preparation for presenting an ambitious corporate face tomorrow morning at my interview.

Fingers are firmly crossed.

Quito

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 21:12:52 GMT

So far, not going great here. I got in, got sick and was in bed for nearly a week with flu, and now I'm getting frustrated. I'm trying to get in touch with a guy called Joseba who runs a voluntary organization here, but since I don't have a phone, and I haven't managed to get through to him yet, and I have to keep going to call centres and internet cafes five times a day to repeatedly try and get through to him... it's annoying. I'm pretty sure that as soon as I post this little rant I will get through and we'll meet up and all will be hunky-dory, but at this precise moment in time... ARRRRGHAGJLAKSJDIWKHDNAVLKASJF

Plus it's really really cold.

That said, I like what I've seen of Quito, it's a nice town, good buzz, lots happening, all that jazz. Gonna go try to phone Joseba for the sixth time today. What fun.

Wed, 30 May 2007 12:50:37 GMT

Ahahahaha! Look, look, Im writing here and its all going on facebook too at the same time! HAhahahahah!

I had very little sleep, night bus, air con. This seems way cooler than it actually is.

This is the last stop for me in Central America! Ecuador tomorrow morning! Wahey!

Mon, 21 May 2007 16:29:20 GMT

I´m a bad journal updater these days. I partly blame facebook. It is awesomely addictive and you can message people. Still, there´s not much in the way of a journal-bit.

So, to the news! Panama is where I am now, in a town called Bocas del Toro where there is madness afoot every day (and most of the night). It´s a cool place, and easy to get stuck in. I did have an adventure between arrival in Panama and now, in that I went off into the jungle to do a conservation project for five days - we made maps of the San San Pond Sack national park, made notes on manatee behaviour (when the manatees decided to show up - they look like a cross between a dolphin and a baseball glove. Apparently they are also the basis for the mermaid legend, and all I have to say to that is that those sailors were really really DRUNK). After the mapmaking and manatee spotting we walked all up and down the beach at night looking for leatherback turtles, which are easy to see because they´re freaking huge. People still poach their eggs (they´re a delicacy in the restaurants) so the local volunteers there relocate the nests to where they can keep an eye on them, and we helped. It was all really good except for the mosquitos, chiggers, sand flies and noseeums, which were a little more enthusiastic than I normally like them to be. I seem to be developing an immunity to them though - they still bite me, but it doesn´t itch as much and is usually gone by the next day. Yaay! Not so Charlotte, who got completely eaten.

So since coming back I have been very very broke, so I decided to advertise my skills as Indian Head Masseusse. Most people charge $15 for a neck and shoulder massage, I charge $5!!! Which means that I now have people lining up outside the hostel, and have made $50 in two days so far (I would have made more but I was afraid my thumbs would fall off if I gave any more massages!) From now on, that sign is going up in every hostel I stay in, anywhere!

So that´s the news. I have to go and find out about my flight now, as I think the airline may have screwed it up (I hope not, or I will have mucho massaging to do to get to Ecuador!)

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 02:38:35 GMT

I believe I made some sort of comment about moving very quickly last time I updated here? Well, no more! I´m still in Nicaragua. 3 weeks on the Little Corn Island, swimming, scuba diving, lounging on the beach, sleeping in a wooden cabaña, trying to keep the rats out of our food... aside from the rats, it was great. Also, I´m now a Rescue Diver. I can do one more course (kind of an internship actually) and be a divemaster and get paid to scuba dive. Rock on! I´m thinking next time I see a dive shop that I like I may just go ahead and do that, and postpone the volunteering. Scuba diving is my new favourite thing to do. The only real obstacle is the eyesight - I brought a month´s supply of daily disposable contact lenses and am down to about a week and a half´s worth. Stupid cripple-eyes.

I´ve been travelling with a very cute couple. She´s from Denmark, he´s from Oklahoma, and they met in Mexico about a year and a half ago and are revisiting old haunts together. They´re on a proper hardcore budget so they´ve been keeping me well-behaved (to an extent). We cooked our own food most of the time and did really well up until when we ran out of cash (there are no banks or ATMs on either island, so that meant credit cards in places that accept credit cards).

I took no photos of Little Corn at all, but now am kinda sorry, it was tropical paradise of the kind that I didn´t think existed outside of movies. And comparatively (well, compared to everywhere else in the Carribean) really undeveloped. It was great. I already miss the coconut bread. We went the cheap way, bus and boat, and it took us two days to get there, and only twenty five and a half hours to get back here to Granada.

Went clothes shopping the other day (I did laundry in a hostel a couple of weeks ago and forgot to get my clothes off the line so lost 3 shirts, pjs, underwear and probably some other stuff that I haven´t noticed is missing again) It doesn´t really count as a splurge when you get a skirt, a really pretty shirt, replacement underwear, replacement pjs (well, vest and boxers) and 3 bras for a total of about 7 dollars. Sometimes Central America rocks.

We´ll all be moving on to Costa Rica in a day or two, hopefully linking up with a girl I met here who does voluntary work there, and then Chris and Barbara will fly off to their respective homes and I´ll go on to Panama, look up some people that I met who are there now, and then finally get myself to Ecuador, (and look up some guys who I met in hostels that are from Quito. Honestly, I could conceivably get all the way to Ecuador without having to sleep in a hostel, if people have couches!)

For now, content to wander Granada again. It´s pretty, and it´s really nice to walk around (though only early in the morning or after sundown as it´s too bloody hot the rest of the time) There´s a pretty good nightlife scene here too, though the most that I experience of that is ordering myself a happy-hour cocktail here and sitting in hammocks chatting to other guests in the hostel (it´s also a restaurant and a bar and an internet café, and the have free coffee, so it´s sometimes hard to leave!)

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:39:51 GMT

Now I'm in Nicaragua. I feel like I'm moving very quickly through countries, but really they're all quite small and close together, so it's probably because I was moving so very very slowly for so long...

Anyway, I'm in Nicaragua and I haven't really done much of anything, except to get a very bad cold which I couldn't shift for over a week, while being in a place that's as hot as anywhere I've ever been, and humid to boot. I'm over the cold now, but still not much to report! I went to another volcanic lagoon, where the water is full of minerals and sulfur and is like swimming in a health spa except for being free. Here's a picture (I'm excited about being able to link pictures to my blog, can you tell?)

I also went to Isla de Ometepe, which is reportedly one of the nicest places in Nica, but I was too sick to do anything except talk to people at my hostel.

Fortunately, some of the people I talked to are going to come to the Corn Islands with me, so I can go overland and not have to pay an arm and a leg for airplane tickets. I didn't want to do the overland route alone as it's long and exhausting, and usually the best time to get all your stuff robbed is when you're alone and exhausted and in some out-of-the-way bus station. We have to get a bus in the evening from Managua, which goes over unpaved roads for about five or six hours, and then get in a boat which goes along the river for another five hours or so, get to Bluefields on the Carribbean coast, spend the day recovering, sleep there, and then get up in time to catch the boat at 6 am from Bluefields to Big Corn, which takes another five hours, and up to ten hours if the weather is bad.

I hope the weather won't be bad.

Once there, well, I haven't talked to anyone who has a bad word to say about Little Corn. I'm going to do some more scuba diving for a fraction of the price of scuba diving elsewhere in the world, and I'm going to sit in a hammock on a beach under palm trees, and relax, and swim in the Carribbean sea, and all that kind of thing. I think it'll be great, and I'll feel like I earned it after that trip!

I've started to meet volunteers. Ever since I left Guatemala actually, and some of them have been giving me information and websites and putting me in touch with their bosses. There are so many projects you can get involved in over here, it's great. I feel like I'll definitely find something I like/am good at.

Beekeeping on a volcano

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 23:33:00 GMT

Yet more volcanoes...

I´m staying in a little white dome on the rim of a volcano crater near Apaneca, El Salvador. It's really very nice. Had the place to myself for the last two nights, with guide to show me to all the lagoons and incredibly steep hills and woods to hike through, and then Alex the black Norweigan (who I met in San Salvador) showed up today.

Here is a picture of where I stayed:

They keep bees here too, have loads of hives, and you can dress up in the big white bee suit and go see what beekeeping is all about. Turns out, it's mostly about bees. But they're cool. You do keep thinking you're going to get stung, and it does feel a little odd to be walking TOWARDS the hive of angry angry bees, but it's all interesting, and most of them get knocked out by smoke anyway. I didn't get stung, in spite of one little buzzer who tried to stay until I took off my bee suit. He got doped up with the smoke, and buzzed off eventually. The honey they get from those hives is amazing, could eat it with a spoon for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

We descended into the crater of the volcano yesterday, it was much less dramatic than one would think, with the absence of molten lava and the presence of a guy cutting down branches to more effectively farm his coffee planatation. Still pretty cool though. I keep taking photos and they keep being not nearly as good as you'd think. I'm sure there's a way of taking a picture that conveys the sense of distance and scope that one gets when one looks out over the volcano crater, sees the trees on the other side, the drop down to the city on the plains below, and the ever more misty and faraway hills beginning to climb upwards again, and the shimmer of barely-there-in-the-mist mountains on the border with Guatemala. That's not a function on my camera though, sadly.

I found out I can reiki my mosquito bites so they don't itch. This would be way way cooler if it didn't take half an hour to do each little one. As it is, it's kind of useless, as by the time I think of it, I've already scratched myself raw. And try getting an uninterrupted half hour to sit on your bunk in a busy hostel and hold your hand over your foot without someone wandering in and wanting to know what you're doing. At least I know there's an alternative to skin grafts and insanity.

I'm going to Santa Ana tomorrow, and doing some more climbing of volcanoes in the national park near there. Alex already did that, says it's good. I'll probably leave El Salvador shortly after that. It's lovely, and people are friendly, but I'm a bit nervous about the whole Semana Santa thing, and I want to be settled in somewhere in Nicaragua well before that madness begins, to avoid sleeping on a street or being charged three times what I should be charged to stay somewhere. I feel like I should be excited about this, as it's a whole big Latin American thing, and lots of people do get excited about it, but I just really don't care at this point. I think I'll try and be somewhere a bit out of the way for Semana Santa, like Isla de Ometepe, which is a national park in Nica, with yet another volcano to climb (I think this whole climbing volcanoes thing could become a bit addictive, you do one, and then you start seeing opportunities to do it again every time you go past a volcano. Which is often, in this part of the world).

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:06:52 GMT

I'm having city time. It's good to be in big cities, with shopping centres and cinemas and nice food and lots of people in the hostels. City time will most likely cease... sometime tomorrow, at which time I'll head for one of the very many and very lovely national parks in El Salvador. For now, though, it's nice to have actual cinemas, and supermarkets where you can buy anything you want, and all those little luxuries we take for granted. Actually, if anyone's interested, there's a site called Global Rich List which tells you how wealthy you are compared to the rest of the planet. Based on my earnings at Amazon, I was in the top 10%! It's an eyeopener. www.globalrichlist.com

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:55:48 GMT

Well, my grandad is dead. Nobody will call me Sarah Buttons ever again. He slipped away in his sleep last night, and I got the email this morning. Spoke to everyone at home, which was good. It's shitty to not be able to be there.

Goodbye, grandad. I miss you.

Silence

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 19:34:25 GMT

Oh well. I was hoping to speak to the folks at home, or to have a couple of emails to reply to today, purely because it's my last day of being able to communicate with anybody. I'm starting the final phase of the pyramid retreat this evening - no food (well, ideally, but Chanti did say to eat a little soup if you start feeling dizzy), and, more importantly, no talking. It's all about internal journeying, communing with the subconscious (appropriate, since I've also been learning how to use Tarot cards).

Got good news about the travels ahead too - Edith is leaving to go to Peru next Wednesday and asked me if I'd like to travel with her. Which is extremely cool. So I now have a departure date, hopefully Cathy will return before then and pay me back the 400-odd Euro she owes me before I leave.

The future's all looking nice and bright. I'm finishing my Indian Head Massage course today. Julie is going to give me my first Reiki attunement at the full moon, and I have five days to do nothing but think about life, the universe, and everything.

>Om

Indian Head

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:20:44 GMT

Since yoga, meditation, lucid dreaming, astral travelling, learning about kaballah and tarot and numerology and all that jazz wasn't quite filling up every single hour of every day, me, Julie, Cocinelle and Adam have started an Indian Head Massage course. It's a technique where you take a little wooden figurine of an Indian, dip its head in oil, and rub it all over people. Seriously, though, it's good fun and we get to practice on each other, so my trapeziods have never been more relaxed. Our teacher, Nadia, is into acupressure too, so some of that is incorporated. Kills the thumbs when you're massaging someone, feels like heaven when you're on the receiving end!

Yoga is yoga-tastic. I have to try and keep this up after the course finishes. We often do fire-breathing in the mornings, gets you good and high before breakfast!

Scuba diving and pyramid power

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:19:18 GMT

So, we went to Honduras. Julie, friend to the Hector beast, looked after the house while we sallied forth to learn how to scuba dive in the Bay Islands. The scuba was great, I'll be having some more of that I think, and the Bay Islands were beautiful. We spent the Sunday after we finished our course on Water Cay, a sandbar with palm trees, and several dozen people with barbecues and hammocks strung up on the palm trees, and lots and lots of beer. Turns out you get a tan in the shade in the Carribbean. Or sunburn, if you're Cathy. We sat in two feet of shallow water and drank beer when we got too hot from all that sitting in the shade. Nice way to spend a sunday in January!

Back in San Marcos, I really didn't feel like doing more sitting around, so I gave myself a week, maybe two, to see everyone and say goodbye and head off South. Julie told me about a yoga and meditation course she was starting in Las Piramides, and I came along to be her interpreter. And then I decided to do the course too. I'm random that way. I live in a pyramid, meditate in a bigger pyramid, and get up at ridiculously early hours to do yoga in a big... well, guess what shape it is...

We also have a pyramid shaped sauna. These people found their theme and really ran with it.

I'll probably be here for a month, if I don't achieve enlightenment from sitting in pyramids all day first.

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 21:51:08 GMT

So much has been happening since Christmas I don't know where to start!

We remain in San Marcos, though there were a couple of times when we thought we had Hector's house rented and could sally forth with all our jewellery to make tons of money... sadly, it has not happened yet. However, I've found plenty to distract myself! Hector's friend Terry lives in a village called Tzununá and farms and talks to Mayans and reads Ken Wilber books and is trying to get investors to help him buy a coffee plantation so he can make it fair trade and make a business that will make money for his neighbours, so I've been up there taking photos, emailing the person who designs his website, sending missives home to try and get some investors (a fair few are interested so far) and generally keeping myself amused and interested.

Cathy and I attempted to do the 10-day fruit-and-veg detox, but were derailed on day 2 by the arrival of Hector's Canadian friend and set off up into the mountains to sit by a waterfall and revel in the gorgeousness of nature (in case anyone's wondering, the Canadian supplied the chemicals necessary for one to climb a mountain on an empty stomach!) Cathy then overdid it a bit by going to San Pedro on day 4 and partying it up in a nightclub (I stayed home and talked to the cats) so she got sick.

Ak, there's loads I could write about what we did on New Years and the seemingly endless stream of men in San Marcos who are interested in me but who, while interesting people, I am not even remotely attracted to, but it'd take all day to say everything, and I am busy busy busy! Have to write stuff for the website and then go selling jewellery and I'm thinking I should probably phone home before it gets too late over there... so much to do, so little time!

Christmas in Guatemala

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 19:19:11 GMT

My very first Christmas away from home has passed, and we're coming up to the four-months-away mark. I was talking to Cathy about that: four months has flown by, that's practically six months, and that's a third of the time we'd planned on being away for! We're still in Hector's house in San Marcos, and we had our own kind of Christmas celebration. People came up to the house a few nights before, we made dinner (no easy feat to cater for a dinner party with only two rings of a gas cooker working, no electricity and consequently no light except that provided by candles and the ends of people's cigarettes, but we managed it!) and people came. We had Olivier, that's our French friend with whom we attempted to make and sell candles (the making went well, the selling not so much), Edith, an Austrian woman who's kinda semi-going out with Olivier and is a shaman and a really interesting and very nice person, Govinda, a friend of Hector's who is a yoga fanatic and can be a bit annoying on the whole "sugar is poison" thing, but is all in all a nice guy. Myself, Edith and Cathy sang songs, Hector played his flute, Govinda drummed, it was all very musical and creative, except nobody knew any of the same songs and most of us couldn't remember all the words of the ones we did "know". Us three girls ended up sitting on the edge of the cliff across the road, looking out at the stars and talking about Tantra (Edith did a year-long course in Tantra, it's interesting stuff and also you have a lot of sex).

I was sick coming up to Christmas, and Govinda needed a place to stay, so after our epic shopping trip when me and Cathy bought all the chocolates in Panajachel and half the crappy toys, I treated myself to the luxury of a hotel room in Hotel Quetzal. It's a great spot, and one we are already very familiar with as most of the people in town treat it as a sort of giant communal living room, and you can have a hot shower there for the equivalent of 50 cents. What I hadn't known was that they also had a bath... bliss!

We all exchanged our gifts on Christmas morning, and breakfasted on a box of chocolates (we found a shop in Panajachel that makes chocolate that's actually good, if slightly too sweet, and went a bit mad buying loads of it!). Olivier's house was where the party was happening: people from all over the world uniting and bringing food with them. I made colcannon. It was an exercise in frustration as there was no pot big enough to cook all the ingredients, but it was an eventual success. I spent most of the time talking to a friend of Hector's, a really cool guy called Terry, who lives up in the mountains near a little Mayan village, on his own farm, and runs sort of eco-tourism, sustainable agriculture programmes, and reads Ken Wilber. Actually, I could see the huge disadvantage to his way of life, in that he'd found a Ken Wilber book a few months ago in the philosophy section of a second-hand bookshop, read it, loved it and then had absolutely nobody to discuss it with. I was happy to fill in that gap! I actually think this man is my father in a parallel universe, in some odd sort of way. If Tony Hegarty had been born in Canada instead of Ireland, and had found his way to Latin America, I could see him very happily living Terry's life! This suspicion was confirmed when he played "The Tale of Pancho and Lefty" on his guitar. Cathy and I sang a passably good version of "Fairytale of New York", among other things (we decided it was our mission to bring that song to people outside of Ireland, and had been going around singing it for days before I got my sore throat). I got to talk to my parents on the phone, but not for very long, and we all staggered up the gigantic hill to Hector's house to sleep.

Since then, we've been learning how to make jewellery. I designed and made my first silver pendant the other day, and got Hector to show me how to make macrame bracelets out of hemp with beads strung on them. See, the money we two intrepid travellers brought with us is nowhere near enough to last another year and a bit, but it's quite possible to make enough of a living off jewellery and handicrafts and that sort of stuff to get us from A to B and feed us along the way. Hector is planning on going South with us, and is looking for someone to rent out his house, I'm planning on squeezing as much information out of him as possible in case they break up! That sounds very cynical, I know, but still. Olivier travelled all over South America a couple of years ago by selling friendship bracelets. Here's hoping!

chillin in san marcos

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 22:29:28 GMT

this will be a post without capital letters. much as that usually annoys the hell out of me, the shift key on this keyboard getting constantly stuck annoys me even more.

i´m in san marcos, a little village on the shores of lago de atitlán. it´s a lake that does not mess around. a large body of fresh water, large enough that you probably wouldn´t be able to see the opposite shore if the opposite shore were not made of a giant smoking volcano. i shit you not. there´s five of them, in a ring, and, ok, only one of them glows and smokes, but one´s enough, don´t you think? san marcos was probably a mud-hut type place until it got invaded by wave after wave of hippies. there are sort of two permanent communities here, along with the travellers that come and go: there´s the hippie/alternative lifestyle/open relationship/pot smoking/jewellery making crowd (of which we are now kind of a part, thanks to Hector), and there´s the Mayan villagers who have lived in a way that has been pretty much unchanged for centuries. Hector told us before we arrived here that all foreigners are gringos to the people here, including him. I had a weird conversation with a woman called maria, who Hector hires to do a bit of housework for him (not much, given there´s three whole rooms in his house!). she was under the impression that Ireland was a part of Mexico, since we were staying with hector, and he´s from mexico. it´s pretty pointless trying to explain Europe to someone who´s probably never been, or never will be, anywhere farther away than she can get on a boat on the lake. it´s a culture gap that i´m still trying to wrap my brain around.

Hector´s house is way up on a hillside - I´m staying on a couch in the kitchen/living room, there's a dining room, and a bedroom upstairs shared by Cathy, Hector, Saki and Benito (the last two are cats), and several other dogs and cats seem to have a casual attachment to the place, wandering in and out and getting fed or chased away on whim.

Not sure how long we´re going to stay here. Cathy had started making candles (both to light Hector´s house and with intent to sell) before she came to flores to meet me, with a french guy called Olivier, so we´re going to try and get enough stock to maybe make a bit of cash. The plan is to stay here till after Christmas and then head on south. Hector wants to go to Costa Rica, because people there will buy his jewellery, and some friends of his might be travelling in the new year too, so he´s talking about getting a group together. i´m being entirely noncommittal about that plan, as i may well decide to bugger off by myself again, especially if the lovebirds start bickering.

Photos

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 21:39:45 GMT

The Guatemala ones will be going here:
http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y145/sorochah/Guatemala/
These include some truly funny ones of us in Tikal off our heads! :D

The Mexico ones all went on here:
http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y145/sorochah/Mexico/

Tripping in Tikal

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:57:19 GMT

*Warning - this entry will be insane because my brain is still a bit bendy - read with caution. Not suitable for minors. No really, it´s got drugs in it and stuff*

Cathy and Hector arrived in Flores at last, and we all met up and all was happy-crappy. Hector is one of these people who seems to know everybody, and have connections everywhere, and sure enough he met a buddy of his who is a tour guide in Tikal. Little Caesar, "La Zorra", does dawn tours of the site most mornings, and gave us a nice big discount. This involved getting up at 3.30 in the morning to get a minibus to Tikal, which is one of the major Mayan sites of Guatemala, deep in the jungle, three majorly huge pyramids, lots of smaller ones, surrounded by monkeys and toucans and all sorts of strange creatures.

We stumbled through the misty dark along narrow paths through dense undergrowth, surrounded by the chirping and whirring and weird cries of jungle things, and made our way to the first of the pyramids, which we climbed up to wait for dawn. Caesar invited Hector to play his flute as the sun came up, and it wove in and out of the jungle noises, the howler monkey roaring off in the distance, the birdcalls, the insect chirps and whirrs. Hector´d gotten some acid from a friend of his not long before, so we each partook as the sun tinted the clouds in pastel colours. I sat there, grinning, not knowing why, and watching the trees start to sway and feeling my whole body tingle and stretch. Walking down from the pyramid, me and Hector were gripped by an uncontrollable fit of the giggles. Cathy was feeling nothing, thinking she´d gotten a dud. Realizing that we probably looked a bit odd, wetting ourselves laughing at nothing at all, I decided on the perfect cover: "Cathy, quick. Pretend you´re funny!"

The ground started glowing where the green touched it, beautiful and eerie. Cathy´d told me before about the entoptic phenomena that comes with taking hallucenogens, hallucinations of geometric patterns and swirls rising up off the ground. She´d read about it during her thesis - the similarity between the types of sacred decorations in different ancient shamanic socities being one of the things that allow archaeologists to come to conclusions about the use of substances in religious ceremones. It was like a mist at first, swirling and shifting, and forming and reforming into patterns, like line drawings of men turning into lizards turning into spirals turning into swirls. "Why the hell are they called entoptic phenomena anyway?" I demanded of Cathy, standing at the edge of our tour group and staring intently at nothing real.

She and I climbed another pyramid, exulting in the feeling of the stretch and contraction of muscles as they moved. It was like a really good yoga stretch, when you really feel that tingle in your body, but you realise that every movement you ever make stretches some part of you in that way, and you FEEL it, so intensely and perfectly. At the top, looking into the jungle, I saw beautiful birds with black bodies and white bellies. Everything was so sharp and clear, and there were no entoptic patterns in the leaves of the trees, only in the stones or on the ground. A swarm of mosquitos were rising up out of the misty jungle in a great black cloud. I wandered over to Cathy to check if they were real or not. "Oh good, I can start swatting them now."

As we climbed down, Cathy started to feel the effects. We agreed that it would be a very very bad idea to jump down, though the green of the jungle looked solid enough to support us. We pretty much slid down on our bums, as slowly as possible, getting lost every now and again in the beauty of the details around us. Last ones down and starting to feel a bit self-conscious, we were amazed at Hector´s ability to apparently function like a normal person. Until he saw us, anyway, and dissolved again into bright yellow giggles.

We followed the group, staying on the outside. Little Caesar was so nice to us, letting us know it was ok for us to be off our heads while at the same time diverting everyone else´s attention away from us. We followed them at first, as Tikal is in the middle of a biosphere reserve, a joint project between Mexico, Belize and Guatemala to set aside a Mayan nature reserve the size of the country of El Salvador. Not a great idea to get lost in there, then!

Into the acropolis, surrounded on all sides by ancient buildings, we climbed another pyramid. Some people were filming a documentary of sorts, and we didn´t want to draw attention to ourselves. Me and Cathy gripped the wood of the railings, looking out at the energy lines pulsing through the ground below, leading people, glowing gold around the temples that seemed to be alive, to be breathing. Words were deserting me in the sensory overload and I found myself resorting to stupid hippie clichés. Hector lay back and laughed at us, long and loud. So did everyone else on top of the pyramid. "When I come back down, I´m going to give myself a good talking to," I muttered, frustrated at my inability to articulate anything adequately.

Words truly did desert us all for a while, as all the fliters in our minds that usually stop human beings from being so inundated by sensation that they lose their ability to process, to rationalise, were washed away. We were washed away. We found our spot at the back of another of the pyramids, surrounded by deep jungle, with rooms and passages just for us. There we could melt into walls, and I could dissolve in a bee-buzz in the flower-loud colourscape of the dense, intense of the green with the leaves back and back and crystal-sharp all the way to the end of the universe, and the way the pattern of light and shadow moved and became a spider monkey swinging, or a woodpecker stading out so bright against the bright beesong that wove in and out of me in yellow light-spark-shower.

People started to arrive and we put our shoes back on, after letting ourselves melt into stone and earth and mud and grass. Hector led us through the jungle paths, he knows Tikal well, away from people where we could be in the trees and the loud silence of nature. Pyramid 5, the tallest of all the ones I´ve seen yet, rose upsteep out of the jungle canopy. Cathy and I climbed, and Hector´s laugh climbed up with us as he stayed behind to turn into a tree. At the top, the jungle was alive below us. That intensity of focus made it all so beautiful. You could see each indidvidual leaf for miles and miles. Then I realised that the different colours were jumping out, leaping and vibrant. Think "yellow" and the ends of the leaves where the yellow colour is suddenly shine at you. Think "red" and those tiny tiny flowers on that tree miles away dance for you like sparks. "I have to say it, Cathy. I´m sorry, but 'Wow, man, the colours!'" I was dissolved in my own laughter even as the words tried to tumble out. I played with my hands, loving the way the tops of my fingernails couldn´t quite catch up with the rest of my hands, which were covered in entoptic lizard-patterns too, in the texture of the pink-and-white of the palms.

We started coming back to reality, and got ourselves sorted out with a place to sleep. Ten hours later, we were all still tripping slightly, and took some MDMA to ease the transition back to normality. It kept us awake so we didn´t have to try to fight exhaustion while still seeing things that weren´t there, and it gave us back our words to talk about what happened. Hector made friends with a Chilean couple in the campsite, Cathy and me sat and stared into each other´s panther-eyes and talked and talked in a liquid silver spark-stream, about our families, our friends, the way they light us up. We went walking under an almost-full moon that made the night so very very bright. I slept in my hammock, looking out past the edge of the palapas at the moonlit jungle leaves and the silver clouds, and hearing the rainforest rain hammer down all around.

Being Sociable

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:44:16 GMT

Too much living in my own head makes me a bit loopy. I decided to move to a hostel where there are people around - turns out Cathy isn't going to be here till Thursday, and Hector decided to come with her. Not sure I'm entirely happy about that bit - she's made it up with him and is all happy and loved-up again, but the last time I saw him he was calling her a whore and shaking her by the shoulders. While she may have forgiven him for that little episode, I fucking haven't. He was a shit to her and I'm still angry with him. Didn't really realise that until I heard he was coming and had a while to figure out why that made me extra-tense. Going to have to have a discussion about that when they arrive. It's hard to figure out how to approach it though: I don't want her to think she has to choose between him & me, and I don't want him to think he can't be with his girlfriend, but I do want him to know that I'm not going to be his buddy, at least not immediately and unconditionally. Also, the whole freedom of travelling alone will be utterly, completely gone. Hector knows the people, knows the area, knows where the good places are and how to get to them, and has a tendency to be a bit controlling, so that pretty much means following him wherever. In one way, it's good to have an insider to show you around, in another, it means I feel I won't get any say at all in what we'll be doing or where we'll be going. Add to that the whole "you were an asshole to my friend and I'm much less forgiving than her" bit, and this is going to be... not much fun.

Ah well, I've a day to figure out how to go about raising the subject with the two of them - either at the same time or separately - so hopefully inspiration will hit me.

Writing like a mad thing...

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 18:23:00 GMT

Best to pick up where I left off, as I haven´t updated in a while. Tulum continued to be fantastic. Met up with Hannah and Daniel there - we´d been hanging out with them and the San Fransican rappers in San Christobal. Hannah was coming to the end of her trip and we had some good times sitting by bonfires and toasting marshmallows (and me and Freya got creative and cooked soup. Hard to do if you have no pots, pans, spoons, bowls or, indeed, anything but the soup tin and the fire, but not impossible!) Bonfires on the beach are always a good thing.

We left Tulum, though it was hard to do. Really really hard. The place has a kind of energy that´s difficult to describe. Daniel called it a dangerous place: "When you´re happy, it´s really really good, but when you´re not it can be very bad". I can see the sense to that. Everything seemed more intense, especially at the ruins. Freya sketched, and I meditated (I never frickin meditate!). It sounds a bit mental, but I thought about doing a chakra-opening exercise and was afraid to. It´s like the air is super-charged. People come there and stay and do yoga and turn into freaky hippies... it could have happened to me!

Anyway, after extracting ourselves from that mystical snare, we journeyed to a place called Laguna Bakalar. Daniel recommended it (he´s from Mexico, living in Mérida, and knows the whole area really well). It´s also known as the lake of seven colours, apparently. We got to a camp-ground and slung up our hammocks in palapas by the lakeshore. Bloody freezing at night. I didn´t sleep a wink the first night (not enough clothes, too cold to go look for more), which had the pleasant side-effect of my being awake for the sunrise. Words can´t describe. The water of the lake is perfectly clear, and the bottom white sand, so the light must have been reflecting off the bottom as well as the surface of the water - that´s the only way I can account for the colours! Tendrils of mist were rising from the surface and set on fire by the sun.

I did a lot of writing that day - got most of my book planned out (in chapters, characters, character development, plot, all that stuff. Now I´m writing the individual scenes that´ll all stick together to make a book. I blame Tulum. All that energy swimming around the place super-charged my creative batteries!)

I decided to go straight to Guatemala, not wanting overly to see Northern Belize (very touristy, and very expensive), so I got up early to get one of the 5 daily busses to Flores in Northern Guatemala, which turned out to be once daily, at 6 a.m. Thank you Lonely Planet. Had to stay an unscheduled night in Chetumal, in a really grim youth hostel. (On the plus side, I got a dorm room all to myself). Next morning having awoken at four to get a taxi to the terminal, I found another bus company who did the same run at 5.30 in the morning, for nearly 200 pesos less. I figured the lack of reclining seats wouldn´t be a big deal. I was wrong, but hey, it´s a learning curve! 9 hours on a bus, with stops at borders (Mexico to Belize, Belize to Guatemala, and you have to pay the Belizan government $15 US for the privelege of sitting on a bus through part of their country. Well, you have to pay it when you leave the country anyway, no matter how long you´ve been there. Backstards.) I arrived in Flores at around 2 in the afternoon, sleep-deprived and starving (I cunningly forgot to bring any food with me for the 9 hour bus ride, and had no Belizan currency on me when we stopped off there with which to purchase nourishment. Oh yes, I am so very very clever and bright). Flores is lovely, though. It´s actually on an island in the middle of Lago de Peten Itza, connected to the mainland by a causeway. The Maya held out here for years after the conquest, but sadly the Spaniards completely levelled the place when they finally took over, so not a stone of it remains today. Eejits. What is here is a pretty pretty town with little buildings which all seem to have red roofs, and narrow cobbled streets, and views of the lake if you can afford that sort of hotel room, and views of the rooftops if you can´t (guess which kind I´m in!).

Guatemala is cheap compared to Mexico. I´m still trying to get my head around the currency (pesos are easy - divide by 10 and that´s the price in US dollars, but Quetzals are annoying: 7 to the US dollar. I never did learn my multiplication tables in primary school. It would have made life so much easier). Even with the standing still for five minutes at a time, squinting into the middle distance while I count on my fingers to do simple revision, things here be very very cheap. I´m getting nice-in-a-restaurant type meals for the price you´d pay in Mexico for grotty-in-a-corner-of-a-market-that-isn´t-cleaned-very-often meals.

Cathy emailed on Friday to say she´d be coming here to meet me in four days, so I´m assuming that means Tuesday. Cue me having lots of time for more writing, and plenty of chilling out. Cos I´m just so tense after all those idyllic beaches and beautiful lakeshores, I think I need time to unwind. Oh yes.

Beach bum

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 21:15:07 GMT

I´m now in Tulum - Mayan ruins on a perfect Caribbean beach, complete with sugar-fine white sand and azure oceans. Staying in a cabaña with a girl I met in Valladolid - Freya´s from London, is an artist, very very nice and really easy company. She appreciates being silent, which is nice!

Making friends with loads of random people on the beach. The guy who rents the cabañas is called Reyes; he´s a Mayan and very very proud of it (most Mexicans with indigenous blood try and hide it). Apparently, the Mayan way is to treat women like queens - that´s what he does anyway! Really nice guy, though, and not at all sleazy the way a lot of Mexican men are.

One of the beach bars had a DJ last night, we went along with two Americans we´d met earlier on, Dave and Mark. Mark is a bit strange, and Dave winds him up constantly, so they were entertaining company, if a bit odd. The music was really really good dance music, the kind that you can lose yourself in. The stars were bright above, and the night was going great, when out came these fire-jugglers and capoieria (sp?) dancers in silver masks and chain mail shirts, and astonished everyone with movement. Men on stilts, swirling silver flags over the heads of the crowd... it was really amazing.

The days are lazy here, sun bright in the mornings, clouding over a bit in the afternoon, so it never gets too hot. We´re spending the days on the beach, and seeing where the nights take us. Our little cabaña has two sisal hammocks in it, and not much else! No electricity, no running water (though there´s a shower and bathroom a few doors down), only candles to light our way at night, sand floor, and not a single stick in the walls that doesn´t have a gap between it and the next one! Either the mosquitos are getting less fond of me, or I´m getting better at outwitting the evil little buggers, because I´m not getting half as many bites as I was at the start.

On my own again!

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 19:08:49 GMT

After San Christobal, we got ourselves to Palenque, Cathy getting steadily worse with an apparent flu. I still wasn´t 100% (still amn´t, to be honest!), so finding a hotel was fun! We splurged (sort of) on a place with two beds and an ensuite bathroom, as we were going to be spending a lot of time there while being miserable!

Sickness aside, we went around the Palenque ruins, which are stunning. Deep in the jungle, surrounded by a nature reserve. The more popular (and bigger) ruins were quite crowded (Well-heeled German tour-groups giving us filthy looks as we ruined their camcorder shots with our unkemptness and general air of ill health!), but there are smaller, more out-of-the-way places that really feel like you´re the first person there in a thousand years, all vine-draped, with parrotts and monkeys going ballistic a couple of trees over. Waterfalls, too, looking divine and spectacular and splashing down next to ruined temples... I liked it. Cathy wasn´t too happy about not being in full health and able to clamber over everything in her usual impersonation of a mountain-goat. I liked it anyway!

We parted ways the next day- Cathy and Hector aparently got on better than one might have supposed the last time they spoke - she´s decided to go and see him in Guatemala. I´m not sure that isn´t a fucking stupid thing to do, frankly, but there you go. I´m keeping an eye on the emails in case she sends out an SOS. Not that I know what I´d do if she did as she´s taken my Central America guide and I don´t know how to get to where she is... Silly girl.

I wasn´t going to miss the Yucatan peninsula for anybody anyway. So far, I´ve been to Campeche, which sits on the Gulf of Mexico surrounded by ruined colonial forts and with houses that are all painted pastel shades. It´s really pretty and chilled out, as well as being the most apparently healty of Mexican towns that I´ve seen so far - people out jogging by the waterfront, dances, marching bands, tae kwan do clubs... I feel right at home. Lazing around, surrounded by active nutters!

I´ve been really looking forward to this part of Mexico - the ruins of Chichin Itza are supposed to be some of the best, and the lagoons of Valladolid were featured on the Planet Earth programme (if anyone remembers the Fresh Water episode). Cathy reckons she´ll come and meet up with me before I hit Belize, so I´ve got a week or so to explore by myself. Yay! I´d forgotten how much I enjoyed travelling alone. Not that I´ve spent much time alone so far, but you don´t have to worry about anyone else, or ask them what they want to do today, you can just do whatever comes into your own head, whenever you like. People tend to adopt you, too, which is nice! I hadn´t really thought about it before, but Cathy has never travelled alone, and I don´t think she´s going to be comfortable with that idea for a long time, if ever. She´s ok with going from me to someone else, but if I were to suggest we go different routes for a few weeks, I don´t think she´d be too thrilled. So I´m relishing this opportunity while I have it!

Day of the dead, and other stuff

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 22:53:43 GMT

Where to start?

Stuff happened in San Christobal, not all of it good. I was feeling a bit rough the first day (comes of trying to sleep on the back of a pickup truck, getting down and trying to sleep in a puddle of freezing water on the floor. Nice). Hung out at the market, think that`s when I posted on here last, hung out with John and Mario and Hannah and Daniel, Hector was apparently going to go sell jewellery in one of the markets but then didn't, and that night he and Cathy had a massive fight. They were staying in a room with all of our stuff in it, I got a bed in a dorm full of Rasta-heads (annoying, annoying people. Smoking pot all fucking day does not make you insightful, it just makes you think you´re insightful. They talked shite long into the night.) John and Mario were in a tent in the courtyard. I remained utterly oblivious to the screaming, shouting, and hullabaloo that ensued when the two lovebirds stopped being lovebirds, as Cathy didn´t know which bed I was in. She ended up crawling into the tent with John and Mario. Next morning, Hector decided he needed the room for making jewellery, and dumped all our stuff out of it. Lovely bloke.

Well, we found a hostel that was actually really nice, and got Cathy drunk that evening. I´m losing track of days now, so I can´t remember if that was Day of the Dead or not, but for Day of the Dead we got a collectivo (kind of minibus/taxi) to a Mayan village. Beautiful colours. They ring the church bells for two days continuously to call the dead. All the local men, dressed in traditional costume (white shirt, white pants, white headdress tied with red rope and a sheepskin waistcoat over it all) took turns to pull the bell cords. It seemed to be one of those macho things - who can keep going the longest? The ground was covered in long pine needles, sacred for the Day of the Dead celebrations, and the church... words fail! Dozens and dozens of plaster saints, each upright in a glass box, line the walls. Christmas-tree lights and neon bulbs, candles everywhere. Each saint has a cult, and they take the saint out on his or her feast days. There are about a dozen different Virgin Marys, all with their own attributes and their own advocates. A weird mix of Mayan and Christian, all very confusing. We walked out to the cemetary, where the locals had covered the grave mounds of their ancestors in bright yellow flowers. Whole families were there, eating, drinking, playing music, just plain playing. There was some real grief too, one woman was doubled over a recent grave, piled high with flowers. I don´t know who she lost, but it was so clearly still a fresh pain for her. For the most part, things were celebratory. The children dress up (or not, as the case may be) and beg candies and pesos in the shops and restraunts all around town.

The next couple of days in San Christobal were a blast. In a concerted effort to keep Cathy distracted and happy, we poured copious amounts of alcohol down her throat. John and Mario are gems. We even taught Mario a passable Dublin accent. It was hilarious. Cathy and I post-mortemed everything at every opportunity.

Sadly, the lads had to leave and head on to Guatemala. We saw them off with sighs of regret, all our new gang gone at once: John, Mario, Hannah and Daniel, all piled into the same pickup truck, but this time our seats were usurped by a pair of German surfers. Damn them. I bet they´re not nearly as much fun as us. They couldn´t name John´s three children before they were born like us!!(In case you´re interested, they were Taj Mahal Dublin, Kremlin Mowgli and Milloginous)

We hung around that day, as Cathy had run into Hector and he wanted to talk things over with her. They did, and they got along ok. Left things on an OK note, anyway, so when we are in Guatemala we might even hang out with the guy, instead of avioding at all costs. I got sick, the second tummy bug I´ve had in Mexico, so we had to stay yet another day. We finally moved to Palenque the day before yesterday, me getting slightly better, Cathy coming down with flu. What fun. Yesterday was spent in our hotel room, both of us wanting to die. Today, rather than spend another day in that oven, we took ourselves to the Palenque ruins. Now that´s something to see. Dozens, hundreds when the excavate it all, of Mayan ruins sitting in the middle of a jungle, rising up out of the trees like one of those old movies about searching for lost treasure. We staggered through, pale under our new tans, sweating copiously in the hot humid air. When it started to rain and everyone else ran for cover, we were at our liveliest! It was truly beautiful, in spite of our state of health. Cathy kept bewailing the fact that she would have enjoyed it more if she wasn´t sick. I hadn´t the energy to complain, and just looked and tried to soak as much of it in as possible (and tried to ignore the filthy looks we were getting from a tour-bus load of well-heeled, middle-aged Germans with Camcorders. I think we were ruining the ambience with our general air of unkempt scruffiness. Damn tourists!)

We´re thinking of shoving off tomorrow, just not sure where! For once, the prospect of several hours on a bus, doing nothing but stare out the window seems attractive. Well, considering the alternative is sitting in our hotel room doing nothing but stare out the window. At least on busses, the scenery changes.

Never ride in the back of a pickup truck without a cushion

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 21:02:11 GMT

Cathy and Hector arrived in Mazunte on Sunday, along with two San Franciscans (John and Mario) who are driving a pickup truck all the way to Nicaragua to link up with Mario's extended family there. They gave our two a lift to Mazunte for petrol money, and we stayed there another two nights, going back to Punta Cometa to watch the sunset. I slept in my hammock twice, got bitten by mosquitos a lot despite covering myself in repellent and having no gaps in the damn net. Otherwise surprisingly comfortable, though.

Tom and Jess headed off on the night bus on Sunday night to get to San Christobal by Monday, and the rest of us decided to leave on Monday morning with John and Mario and save money on the bus fare. Also travelling were Daniel and Hannah, who they met in Puerto Escondido after I'd left. So that was essentially what yesterday consisted of: four people in the back of a pickup truck trying to get comfortable amidst the enormous amount of luggage, the guitar that nobody can play, the surf board that has never seen water, and the football that no-one can play with because of all the mosquito bites on their feet (these lads came prepared. I'm not exactly sure what they came prepared FOR though)

The first part of the day was Daniel, Cathy, Hector and I in the back. The scenery was beautiful, but the billowing dust and the blazing sun less so. I was wrapped in my sarong, Daniel stuck a sheet over his head and appeared to go to sleep. Cathy wrapped her bandana around her, Hector was annoyingly cheerful about it all.

We were making great time all morning, until we discovered that the road on the map to San Christobal had not in fact been built yet, even though we'd paid a toll on it, and that the only other road we could take was closed by protesters until 6pm. (There's ongoing hassle happening in Oaxaca, pretty much all of it is concentrated in the centre of Oaxaca city, and that was the first sign of a disturbance we've seen in all of Oaxaca province so far, but the military had just occupied Oaxaca city centre after an American journalist was killed, and the general feeling here is that people wouldn't put it past the government to have orchestrated the murder so that they had an excuse to impose martial law. All a bit messy, hence the steering well clear of Oaxaca city!)

We had to stop, partly because of the road, partly because those in the back could no longer feel our behinds. As sometimes happens in these situations, the town we ended up in was gorgeous. Flower markets with bright bright beautiful blooms, pretty buildings, everyone wearing bright patterned clothes. I really enjoyed being stuck there for a couple of hours!

We did a little reshuffle before we set off again, Hector and Cathy to the front, Hannah and Mario in the back, and the bags arranged more comfortably. The sun set behind us in a blaze of glory, the heat died down, the dust still billowed, but most of it went over our heads. I lay back with the iPod on and watched the colours bleed out of the sky and the perfect half moon get brighter and brighter and the first of the stars began to come out, then constellations. The moon was skimming through the clouds, but so bright that it looked like it was flying under them instead of above them.

The magic was dampened somewhat by the fact that it then proceeded to get really, really cold. And then colder. And then a little colder still. And then the dew fell, so we were cold and wet. You can try to wrap up when in the back of a pickup truck, you can put layers on, blankets over, shawls around... but it doesn't really help that much when the wind is cold as a knife's edge and seeks out every cranny.

Ah well, we survived. Hector knows a lot of people around here, and brought us to a hotel run by a friend of his. It's not really a hotel any more, as they don't have a licence, so they can't charge proper hotel prices. We only have to pay about the equivalent of 2.50 Euro a night.

San Christobal seems really cool, me and Cathy have been wandering around the market for a while. Gorgeous textiles, blankets, skirts, tops, handbags... well, everything really! I got myself a coloured handbag. I love it.

That's all for now, we're here till the Day of the Dead! Woo hoo!

Some more stuff we´ve done in Mazunte

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 17:38:09 GMT

Cathy´s getting here today, and I have lots to tell her, so I´m putting it up here too! In the last couple of days in Mazunte, we have:

- made friends with 4 Mexican girls who drew pictures for me in my notebook and spent ages playing with my camera

- taken a boatride to swim with sea turtles and dolphins, snorkelled on the way back, passed a bird sanctuary on a rock in the middle of the sea where there are albatrosses (that was this morning)

- cooked in the kitchen of a 4 star hotel on the side of a mountain (twice) and eaten on the terrace overlooking the bay.

- gone swimming in somebody´s swimming pool by moonlight (they weren´t there, but two little frogs had made it their home and weren´t too impressed with us)

- drunk mescal, the one with the worm in the bottle.

- heard about the Mayan calendar from several people (the world as we know it is going to end in almost exactly 5 years according to this calendar, either it´ll all blow up or human beings will be elevated to a higher state of consciousness, depending on how optimistic you are)

- climbed out to Punta Cometa in the middle of the night to look at the stars, later finding out that you can see more sky from there than from anywhere else around here, because the oceacn surrounds it, and that Punta Cometa is the southernmost part of the continent of North America - it sticks out into the Pacific farther south than the Guatemalan border is everywhere else. I thought that was pretty cool.

- slept in hammocks

- found out that aloe vera is the best thing to heal bug bites: you break off a leaf, mush up the clear inside, and smear it all over your skin. It also works on sunburn, cuts, rashes, burns, acne... heck, everything! and you get this yellow sap when you first break the branch that seals wounds immediately. We tried this. It´s true. Aloe is made of magic.