Leon, Nicaragua

We avoided San Salvador and hitched all the way to Perquin in the northern mountains near the Honduras border.  This area was a stronghold of the revolutionary FMLN forces during the civil war and is the location of the Museum of the Revolution at the site of one of the old camps.  We were able to camp there at the museum for only a dollar each.  The museum was created in 1992 immediately at the end of the war by some of those who fought in the war and still staff it today.  It receives no state funding at all and it was really interesting chatting with one of the guys there who drew a clear separation between the various guerrila factions united as the FMLN and the political party of the same name formed after the ceasefire (for example, he told us that of the thirteen commanders during the war only two joined the party that formed after the war).  The museum was a modest building and featured many weapons, both those used by guerrillas and those captured from the national forces.  There was the wreckage of the helicopter of the nationalist commander who oversaw the massacre at nearby El Mozote, where the U.S. trained division rounded up, tortured, raped and executed the village's entire population of 900 men, women and children.  The U.S. government at the time said no such thing had taken place and that El Salvador's forces respected human rights.  The local government offered an apology for the massacre last year.  The camp, with its trenches and hidden kitchen and medical tent was still in place as was the local radio station of the FMLN in the area which was a target of the nationalist forces (though how you conflate that with raping children I'm not sure).  Overall it was really interesting and talking to people there really informative.  One person there had also been in Nicaragua during the revolution and the (U.S. created and paid for) insurgency there and he was very scathing of the current president Daniel Ortega, criticising him for living in a palace, and the museum of the revolution in Leon, Nicaragua (more on which later) as little more than "government history".

Mortars at the museum

It was cooler up in the mountains (though not the "very cold" the people of the lowlands insisted it was) and in addition to the museum we wandered around the village, making the most of the delicious pupusas mentioned earlier and found somewhere selling real, strong coffee, which made J very happy.  Contrary to what you might think its not very common.  Coffee is grown in this part of the world and exported and day to day most people drink weak instant.

We set off towards the Rio Sapo that our Couchsurf in Suchitoto had told us about.  After a lift from the local (incredibly bored) cops and a bus down somewhere more gravel hillside than road, we were dropped off and walked 1.5km to a completely empty campsite right on the river.  We tramped to the nearest houses to see if we could buy water or food (which we could and did, thank goodness every second house is a tienda (small store)) and by the time we returned some other people had come for the weekend and the guy who minds the site was back.  There was a pan there as well as matches, so we enjoyed hot meals for dinner and breakfast, as well as swimming in the cold, but clear river.  The landscape was really gorgeous up there, but we didn't take photos as they can't capture the sounds and smells and light that makes somewhere so magical and peaceful.

Deciding to try and make it to Nicaragua by Christmas, we left after just a night at the river and hitched down to the Hondruan border.  We've come to the conclusion that it is quite hard to hitch from border points as buses outnumber cars and people just think you want the bus.  With only about 130km of Honduras to cross we just bussed it, and raced the (ridiculously early) nightfall to make it through and into Leon, Nicaragua by half past eight, even with all the border faff and paperwork.

Our Couchsurf lives 20km out of Leon on the coast and went out there to pitch our tent 50m from the Pacific Ocean.  The water is warm and the waves very powerful and we have dashed ourselves against them several times now.

Our host is really nice and keeper of a fair menagerie of animals including dogs, a horse, chickens, cats and a baby raccoon, who was taken to her by someone who found him abandoned.

His name is Pancho and he is a crazy, never-still, banana-fixated dude.

Christmas day consisted of lots of reading and chilling in hammocks,

drinking from (and then eating the flesh of) fresh coconuts, swimming in the aforementioned warm ocean and a dinner of plantain, yuca and coconut with lime juice!  It was very satisfying overall.

Today we came back into Leon and looked round the museum dedicated to Ruben Dario, the celebrated poet who is buried in the central Cathedral under a very upset looking marble lion.  The cathedral itself is the largest in Central America, built over 113 years.  We also went to the Museum of the Revolution we'd been told about, (apparently also known as Museum of the Treasons, though I imagine not to its face).  Like in El Salvador it was staffed by (and seemed home to) many old veterans of the war.  It is located in an old, crumbling presidential palace.  Also like El Salvador, it received no governmental funding.  However while the one in Perquin seemed glad of this, our guide in Leon simply said the government had other priorities, though it was regrettable.

Tomorrow we are going to slide down a volcano on a giant skateboard.  As you do.  Hopefully we will survive this and let you know how it goes.

Guatemala City and into El Salvador

Our host in Guatemala turned out to be very helpful.  Apart from the fact she put us up and the whole family couldn't stop shoveling yummy food into us, she was keen to show us everything about the area and drove us around for the next couple of days, full of information and recommendations.  This was a life saver as the city itself is huge and the bus system impenetrable, and we would have found it much more difficult to get our head around the place without help.  On Sunday we went out to Antigua, which was the capital before Guate city and is full of beautiful old architecture and looming views of the volcanoes which have leveled the town more than once.

It's pretty expensive though, and also pretty full of tourists who apparently by about nine pm start vomiting drunkenly on nearby culture.  It's a strange atmosphere in places which obviously don't appreciate this kind of behviour, but also continue to encourage people to visit as that is where all the money comes from, and a lot of the history is frozen in time for visitors.

This also makes it expensive, so we escaped and got a delicious lunch elsewhere and then went looking for some ruins, but they turned out to be closed.  How rude.

Monday we went into the city centre.  A lot of people, Guatemalans and travelers, have implied there's nothing there worth seeing.  It's a big modern city but not completely empty or dangerous.  There's a giant relief map of Guatemala that you have to view from a viewing platform (this made C very happy).  The map was made in 1904, prior to use of areoplanes for topography, making it an impressive achievment.  The whole thing was so clearly an expression of ´modern´ Industrial Era Guatemala, with its little model oil rigs and railroads (the latter of which no longer exist).  There is also an ice cream shop which claims to have 1000 flavours and certainly had some weird ones, including beans, gum and beer.

We got a tour around the palace.  Arriving at about one o'clock we were told we would have to wait a little while for the guides to be ready.  We settled down in the sun to watch the world go by, and it was at this point some walking stereotypes appeared.  They were white (turned out to be from LA), middle aged and a couple, and seemed deeply offended that the guards at the palace did not speak english.  Our host, who is Guatemalan, helpfully stepped in to help clarify the situation.  On hearing that we would have to wait for the guides to be ready to work the woman delcared (not for the last time but we'll spare you the repitions) "I´ve never HEARD of such a thing!"

They went on the emit such gems as,
"Gonna have a fiesta and a siesta, huh?  This IS Guatemala."
and
"What if they don't want to work at all?!  What are we supposed to do?"  J could not resist suggesting at this point that we sit in the sun and eat ice cream.  It seemed necessary to difuse the atmosphere of having been kidnapped or something equally terrifying.  Not familiar with sarcasm the woman registered the comment as a suggestion but did not seem comforted.
"We are at their mercy!" she said.

Given the time of day and the fact that when our guide did appear he was very friendly, patient and helpful indeed, we suspected he was actually grabbing a coffee and a sandwich rather than trying to emotionally humiliate us.  His spanish was very slow and clear and both of us managed to understand the whole tour and help with translation for the Californians.  They had attached themselves to our host announcing that they would 'stick with her' despite her not actually having offered to translate everything into what is her second (if completely fluent) language.  We saw the official 'point zero' of all Guatemala's major highways, beautiful architecture and stained glass

and the murals of the country's history.  Our guide compared them to Rivera's work in Mexico City, and they are indeed big stylised historical murals, but there the resemblance ends.  The context in which they were painted, the governments in charge, and the different artistic styles give them quite another bent.  Rivera's images of rape, in-fighting and political unrest are in Guate replaced with conquistadors shaking hands with Mayan women, big white chargers and bolts of lightning, and an indigenous population made up of 6'4'' broad shouldered men and slim waisted, tall women, half dressed and being mystical.  It was interesting to see the contrast.

As we left, the couple did better than ever.  They asked our host the way to McDonalds as it was "the safest place for them to eat".  Thankfully it was in the opposite direction so they couldn´t see us laughing.

The next morning we hitched off towards El Salvador.  Guatemala continued to be the best place we've ever hitched and though none of our lifts were going very far at a time we made it to the border easily and then on to Santa Ana.  We were planning to get across to Suchitoto where our next Couchsurf was waiting, but the roads between the two were dead quiet and buses stop surprisingly early.  We ended up staying in Santa Ana, munching pupusas which are a big traditional food here and REALLY GOOD.  The next morning was C's birthday so we had a decent breakfast before bussing to Suchitoto.  We had to go to San Salvador (the capital).  All bus routes go there and people aren't even sure other roads exist.  We shouldn't have to go back with the route we have planned but may get sucked in again...

Here our host runs a hostel and lets Couchsurfs have a couple of free nights.  There's also a restaurant so we had some dinner there after a walk to the nearby lake, and then relaxed in the hammocks.  Today we explored the town and market in the morning (more pupusas for breakfast and the necessary papaya which is still plentiful) and then took a hike up the river to a set of two magical little pools where we went swimming.

We couldn't find the bottom, and we'd only recently seen an advert for a hotel with an 'infinity pool' and been wondering what it was, so concluded they must mean this.  It's warm enough that we just dried in the sun while we picnicked.

We move on tomorrow, hopefully not back to San Salvador, but will have to let you know...

Chico Mendes

During our time in Xela we had been told by three seperate groups of people about a mythical bakery of surpassing excellence.  A Mennonite bakery no less.  There were delicious Anabaptist treats to be had, but no one actually knew where the bakery was, only that it existed.  When we announced at Quetzaltrekkers we intended to find it, one person claimed knowledge of its location.  Four more claimed to have money for various orders(1). The person who 'knew' where it was placed four crosses on our map numbered by likelyhood of location.  C nobly resisted the urge to saddle J(2) or call her 'Sancho Panza' as we tilted off on our quest(3).  Minute after minute of walking followed, location 1 on our map was a blank brick wall.  If the magical bakery appears here it was not today.  Eventually we found, down an allyway and under a stairwell,

The Bake Shop!  You don't even have to spin round three times and say the password, but it DOES give the impression if you try and go back it won't be there.  Like all quests, the rewards were some 'phat loot'(4) indeed.  Large fresh baked donuts with hefty fresh fruit filling, strawberry, peach, fig.  Pumpkin pies and cinnamon rolls.  We collected people's orders and settled on one each for ourselves. The fig donut actually tasted like fig the fruit, not fig the brown stuff in fig rolls.  Back at the Quetzaltrekkers office, in return for a custard-filled, chocolate-coated donut, C got a much needed haircut. 

With a ample supply of cinnamon buns,(5) we set off to another project.  The Chico Mendes Reforestation Project, named after this guy who is very interesting himself, was recommended to us by several people in Arizona(6) and we, in turn, cannot recommend it enough to anyone who is spending any time in Southern Mexico or Guatemala.  Although it doesn´t seem to have its own website the link above is a good account of the project.  We spent a week there, helping organise and sort lots of tiny trees that will eventually be planted on public land to help reforest areas stripped bare during the difficult(7) times the local population faced in the 70's and 80's.  There are several different kinds of trees from pines and cypress to some we don't know the English name for, which thrive at different altitudes and encourage biodiversity.

Armando, who runs the project, welcomed us into his home and we had many chats with all his lovely family over very tasty meals.  There was a wedding on the weekend we arrived and we also got help with preparation and consumption(8) of tasty wedding food, such as spiced meat stuffed tamales, hot chocolate with sweet bread (though after Oaxaca, most hot chocolate anywhere else tastes too sugary) and of course pollo(9)!

We also got to help with the maize harvest, which is collected from the fields and laid out in the sun for 20 days to a month to dry.

After this, the maize is put into a machine (this is the part we helped with)

 which separates the kernals from the husk and the kernals are bagged up. Some of these will be sold, but mostly it will provide the year's supply of cornflour for tortillas, tamales and other Central American food staples.  Being from the UK, we were really curious about all the different colours of corn, from pale white to a rich yellow which look already cooked and covered in butter.  Some were red, black, purple or a mixture of colours.  They had different textures too, from big knobbly kernals to ones that were spiky.  Apparently they all taste much the same however.(10)
          

While working we met with various other nice volunteers from numerous different places (Australia to Finland).  There are exciting plans to build some cabins in the nearby forest and expand the project to include education on local Maya traditions and history amongst other ideas(11).  Our time there passed almost too quickly and we were sad to leave.  But after a week of constructive, useful labour the road was calling(12) and we could spread the word after all.  Despite some warnings about hitching, the hitch-hiking (called jalón (spelling unsure) here) was in line with our previous Guatemalan experience and we easily cruised into Guatemala City.  One lift even bought us lunch of delicious local chorizo and quesadillas, which hasn't happened in a while.

A lot of people asked us if we were here for 'the end of the world'.  For those who don't know, this is a theory currently going wild in white hippy circles about ancient Mayans predicting the end of the world at some point this month.  Given that we are clearly young, white, and hippies by a lot of people's standards, its a fair question.  But it's actually a weird phenomenon.  For one thing, as you may have guessed, no ancient Mayan predictions mention the end of the world.  Its just the end of one large calendar made out of stone and the start of another.  But for another thing, no one who actually follows Mayan traditions or has Mayan heritage is paying attention to this.  And there are actually still a lot of these people living in Mexico and Guatemala.  For the trendy alternative crowd to ignore this is as insulting as when the conquistadors first arrived and decided a mythical race of gods must have built the Mayan temples because the people they met were simply too small and the wrong colour.  We haven't been able to visit any Mayan historical sites, which is definitely a shame, time and money and all that.  We would have liked to.  And you can't deny that there's a difference between the ancient cities and how people have lived since the combinations of different social problems drove them out of the cities and back into forests and smaller pueblos.  Of course its interesting.  But having been to Monte Albán and Teotihuacan we're not too sorry it was Tikal and Palenque (Mayan) that we had to miss.  The large crowds of white people telling you nonsense about things they don't understand would have been pretty hard to handle.  And we have met a few actual Mayan people.  One of them taught us Spanish for a week.  She was very nice and didn't once suggest we don't bother buying Christmas presents because the world will end before then.

When we got into the city we were immedietly struck by the return to a vast, sprawling mess of humanity and concrete, every square metre covered in advertisments for everything from soda that could 'refresh your world' to a chicken that was 'more chicken than a chicken' selling electronics.  On our bus to the centre of town we smashed a lorry's wing mirror and a clown who borded the bus to yell at us stopped because there was already a preacher doing so, so our bus already had its component of madmen.

We are off to meet our host here soon and then will explore the city some more.

------------------------

Footnotes

1 -  Including one person who slapped 20Q down and wanted "as much as this will buy!"
2 -  What with her ankle/knee issues.
3 - Windmills are often linked with bakeries.  See? Method in the madness.
4 - C would like to make it clear he has no issues differenciating video games and real life.  He just prefers video games.
5 - Which lasted all of twenty minutes.
6 - See our 'No More Deaths' post for more on the project where people told us about this project.
7 - Read 'racist and muderous'
8 - One of which we were better at than the other.
9 - Proper fried chicken, the kind of which Pollo Campero (see last post) is only a poor imatation.
10 - With slight differences. Armando told us the black corn made slightly better tortillas.  C wasn't sure of this, but his inner goth loved the black food anyway.
11 - Maya, because the people here are Mayan (see later in post)
12 - And our return to being drifting drains upon society.

Xela

You'll all be pleased to hear that we are now officially in the country, and also have officially exited Mexico (though never entered it which really is very impressive).  Once J was more mobile, we moved from our Couchsurf host's sofa where we had been enjoying some very nice food, and trundled back to the border to set things straight.  We had to pay Mexico a bit to get it all worked out, but the whole operation was an experience  We wandered, confused and fairly freely, between the two countries, presenting guards with stories like 'We just need to nip into your country for some money, we're coming right back' which, despite being true sounds rather weak and would not convince anyone.  Meanwhile under the bridge in plain view dozens of people (those without any kind of passport or our privileged treatment as obvious tourists) walk the river, packs held high on their backs.  The guards don't react or even watch- there's no way to make a quick quetzal or peso in it for them most likely.  Certainly this was all the Guatemalan woman who tried to charge us imaginary fees for entering her country seemed interested in (we avoided them by very convincingly appearing very stupid).

Things shut early in Guatemala and we missed the last bus back to Quetzaltenango (hereafter referred to as Xela.  The names are interchangeable and Xela- pronounced Shayla- is easier to type), but found a very cheap hotel and were back the next day just in time to get pounced on in the street by our Arizona friends.  We had known they were in town but hadn't been able to meet up.  It was a lucky chance encounter as we were able to spend the evening with them before some more sad goodbyes as they head back north, a direction we try to avoid.

Mexico is famously more rich and 'developed' (whatever that really means.  Same as richest perhaps?) than Central America.  You actually do see it, at least in this part of Guatemala, though it starts north of the border in Chiapas and Oaxaca.  The state of the roads, the amount of children working or begging, the way the ayudantes (conductors/shouters/loaders on the most common form of public transport, converted USA school buses known as Chicken Buses) play an even more enthusiastic game of human Tetris and of convincing you that you REALLY want to go the way they are going.

J no longer limping, we had arranged a 45km trek from Xela to Lake Atitlan, with Quetzaltrekkers.  We knew the profits go to local kids, but the organisation is really worth a mention.  They fund a school, with dormitories for those who live further out of town, and were only started as a way to do this (rather than the charity being tacked on as a second thought once someone is making a profit).  They're also totally volunteer run and non-hierarchically organised, the guides volunteering at the time making all the decisions.  We'd recommend them to anyone interested in hiking trips in this part of the world, or those who are into hiking already and want to volunteer somewhere that sounds like a lot of fun.  Even if you don't have great spanish, if you have a bit of money and time this is no problem in Guatemala.  The country has really made a name for itself as a great place to learn spanish and schools are everywhere, of every shape size and level of cost.  Xela in particular is full of them, and other volunteer organisations.  A lot of international travelers are here and getting involved.  It's a city full of people from all round the world (including someone we already knew, from London, proving that world is small).  In some ways its like a giant hostel, and whilst its nice for a change we're glad we don't always travel this way as it can get oddly samey no matter where you are and it gets too easy to just spend time with other young English-speakers.  But its also full of energy for genuinely interesting projects like Quetzaltrekkers or PLQ language school and very lovely people full of ideas.

Ruminating all this (and some slightly suspect hot sandwiches, which was not pleasant) we set forth with our two guides and small band of co-hikers.  We covered 20km the first day, past fields of corn

bamboo forests and gorgeous views.  The trek price includes all food and accomodation, and we picnicked in the hills before staying that night in a municipal building in an almost deserted village.  Hurricane Mitch hit the town and caused half the population to leave, destroying buildings and infrastructure in the process.  What remains is like a ghost town, made all the more eerie by the fact some people still live there.  But some of them run a temazcal sauna, traditional Mayan steam baths, and we all got to take one that evening.  It was amazingly cleansing and felt very good on the day's aches and pains although we were very scared of burning ourselves on the low tin roof.

The next day we set off early and covered another 20km.  Almost needless to say, the views remained spectacular

and the hike was challenging but satisfying.

That night we stayed with a local family, who have been housing Quetzaltrekkers Trekkers for seven years.  They made us amazingly welcome, with a delicious meal, smoothies and a song and dance show by the kids of both local and popular songs, which could not have been cuter.  There was also a cat, which always makes C happy.  We also toasted marshmallows on a fire and the family were playing some Christmas songs.  The whole evening was very cosy and everyone discussed Christmas in their country.  Did you know the traditional Czech Christmas dinner is deep fried carp?  (Though our Czech guide is not a fan...)  Or that in the States they have one TV channel playing nothing for weeks but a picture of a Yule Log fire so that if you don't have one you can watch it on TV instead?

Here in Guatemala, Christmas is in full swing, much more than in Mexico.  There are lights and decorations everywhere and at least one huge tree in every town, though because they are mostly sponsored by the beer company which has almost total monopoly here and is called Gallo ('rooster'), they are mostly topped by a gigantic rotating chicken.

This is actually rather appropriate.  As far as we can tell, chicken is the national religion.  When they're not being eaten (and they do not have a lot of spare time from that) they are advertising other products (the beer a case in point, also seen on electronics stores...) and appearing in lots of imagery (one pueblo even had a statue, there was one of Jesus but it was much smaller and hidden away).  When a Guatemalan chicken fast food place opened in Los Angeles, ex-pat Guatemalans from across the States queued around the block.  We tried it tonight but don't have much to report that you couldn't guess about fast food chicken.

After the kids at our host family had taught J a dance, we took an early night as we were up at 4am.  This was to hike the short distance to a viewpoint to watch the sun rise over Lake Atitlan.

We breakfasted on porridge and coffee and relaxed for a while watching the views until descending the hills to the towns which surround the lake.  Some of it is beautiful to look at, but the sight of the rising waters engulfing peoples' homes and livelihoods is horrible.

Not surprisingly, this is most likely due to human society.  Lake Atitlan has no overground entrances or exits for water, only submerged tunnels which were once lava flows when it was a super volcano.  Pollution is not only causing the layers of thick algae, but probably clogging these tunnels and thus raising the water level.

We passed a lot of coffee plants and people picking them.  Maybe we're especially ignorant, but we never knew a coffee bean growing looks like this:

and is juicy, almost like a grape though not that soft.  They start green and then turn this red by the time they are picked.  It's weird how little you know about things you use all the time.

Several resort towns edge the lake (hotels and bars of course safely higher up than low income farms) and our trek finished with lunch in one of these, before we wished everyone goodbye and good luck on their varied and exciting travels and jumped on a Chicken Bus back to Xela (after J had got her papaya fix.  It's turning into a worse problem than the iced coffee).  Sadly, our bus was not a happy bus.  It broke down three times and we ended up squashed into a minibus (C not so squashed but clinging onto the back) and almost two hours late back.  We are here though, and taking a night and morning off before joining another interesting-sounding project in the area.  More on that next week...

On the road again

To say goodbye to Oaxaca, where we had stayed longer than either of us have stayed anywhere at one time in many months, longer than we have been travelling, we trekked up a hill on one of our last days that had some amazing views over the city.

And on our last night, which was a wonderfully Mexican experience, we went out to a restaurant which said Vegetarian on it, foolishly assuming it would be a vegetarian restaurant.  The steaks and 'pork spread' on the menu soon dissuaded us of this.  But we managed to find food everyone could eat and had a lovely evening before some very sad goodbyes the next day.

Y and L heading for adventures in Mexico City, Puebla and beyond, C and J struck south again over the mountains.  On Wednesday, during a couple of days hitching which involved a lot of free rides on public transport from kindly drivers rolling their eyes, we hit the point again where we are further south than we had yet been and nothing but the road was in front of us.  The uplifting feeling this gives carried us all the way over the Guatemalan border (though not officially.  This was due again to confusingly wandering through not really finding customs and will be sorted in a couple of days.  No, we really mean it this time.  No further south until passports are stamped.)

We have now arrived in Quetzaltenango, where we have a lot of exciting plans involving hiking and getting involved in projects.  J has put a spanner in a lot of these ideas by turning over her somewhat infamous ankle.  However our Couchsurf here is very nice and allowing lots of space to recuperate so we should be able to get going soon.

Just a short message to update on the geography really.  We're very sorry to say goodbye to Y and L, and anyone who knows her can imagine J's frustration at being laid up for a couple of days, but really everything shakes down once you're on the move again.  In fact, in what is pretty much our only souvenir purchase so far, J liked a t-shirt in Oaxaca so much she bought it and it says: La vida is como montar en bicicleta; para mantener equilibrio hay que seguir pedaleando.

Life is like riding a bike; to keep balance you must keep pedaling.

Monte Albán and other stories

After blogging last week we caught some short films at the Oaxaca Film Festival.  They were aimed at children but we all had not problem enjoying them quite a lot, especially Flawless Life and No Playground For Little Cowboys.  Some of the others were a bit strange but only added to it being an amusingly surreal evening.

The next day we ventured out all together on a group trip to Monte Albán.  This was the Zapotec's largest city for over 1000 years.  What remains of the temples and buildings are beautiful and interesting, and the walk up there (because we took a 5 peso local bus and a walk rather than a 40 peso tour bus) allowed for some amazing views over the city and valley:

But perhaps most interesting about the place is how they changed the landscape.  They created huge areas flat enough for agriculture in the sides and tops of the mountain.  The main area of the city used to be the peak of a hill but since the Zapotecs remade their immediate world will always look like this:

We spent a whole day there, maintaining a properly respectful attitude apart from one brief game of tackle tag in some ruins but we're sure they wouldn't mind.

The next couple of days consisted of more cantina visits, group meals and the selling of flowers in the square (or giving them away to particularly cute dirty children).  We met a few more travelers who play music and hopefully L and Y can meet up with them more in Chiapas.

J would also like to take this opportunity to recommend The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver to anyone interested.  It's an amazingly lifelike slice of Mexican and American history and an interesting tale.  As part of our more relaxing month we've all been reading a lot and trading books (though C's habit of reading The Economist aloud to anyone who sits still long enough does not always go down well...).

Our Arizona friends left on Saturday, which is very sad not only because we enjoyed their brief stay but because they cook very nice food.  But hopefully we will meet them again on our travels.  The same day C, J and Y hitched up to San Jose del Pacifico, a tiny mountain town famous for clouds and fungi, for a change of scenery and some fresh air and peace.  We arrived there in style:

and the views from our little cabin (incredibly cheap and run by a lovely woman) were literally breath-taking and almost impossible to capture on camera.  Course, J tried:

 

Back in Oaxaca, Y and L report that for Dia de la Revolución yesterday they did indeed see small children running round with mustaches, which seems to be the main attraction of the day.

With various bits of life bureaucracy to complete this week and goodbyes to say, we hope to have enough time to drink a lot more hot chocolate and keep up the economy by buying Oaxaca cheese.  Then we all go our separate ways.

We've been on the road now for almost six months, and have another six to go.  We've traveled three countries so far, including one of the most underpopulated in the world and one of the most naturally diverse (the USA was also present).  We've made about 7500 miles (only roughly, as we've done a lot of wiggling about).  The vast majority of this has been done on the kindness of strangers, little interjections into hundreds of other people's lives.  We have over 6,000 miles still to go though doubtless we will manage to make it longer.  Google maps 'cannot calculate' where we're going as it does not all involve roads.  But difficult (though not impossible) though it is to thumb a lift on a boat, we'll figure it out.

See you in Guatemala!

Beaches and birthdays

We split up a little over the last week, J and L setting off on a hitch-hiking adventure down to the coast.  It turned into more of an adventure, and a more amusing experience, than we'd expected.  A couple of lifts in, in a beautiful small town high in the mountains, we met in with two women from Basque country, a Portuguese guy and a guy from Guadalajara, all traveling together.  Mexican hitch-hiking being the wonderful experience that it is, we all got picked up by the same pick up and for the next several hours bounced down the mountains together, conversing in rudimentary forms of each others languages and getting soaked by the mysterious fog that coats everything at that altitude.

By the time we reached the bottom of the mountains we were still quite far from the town we'd planned to camp in, and it was beginning to get dark.  With our gang still six strong, L and J were unsure of our chances of getting another lift, but one of our Basque friends was far less daunted.  As a lorry full of 'colchones' drove past she bounded after the cab and persuaded them that if one of us sat in the front the rest of us could ride in the back of the lorry.  On top of the colchones.  Which, as anyone with google translate may have found out, means mattresses.  It was one of the most surreal but also comfortable rides any of us had ever had.

Aftera picnic together and a night on the beach in Puerto Escondido, we parted ways with our companions and hitched out to Mazunte, a very small and quiet beach town famous for turtles.  We only saw dead ones, which was quite sad, and makes you wish they spent a bit more tourist money on conservation.  But the town was beautiful.  We paid a restaurant to put up our tent on on their roof terrace, with a gorgeous view of the ocean.

We spent much of the next two days getting pounded by waves and leaping about like ungainly seals in the bay.  J's 24th birthday (the actual one) passed under a clear starry sky with a trusty mp3 player and not even much in the way of hangovers.

On Friday we began our hitch back to Oaxaca, intending to take a couple of days to do so.  Our second ride immediately declared that he owned a hotel and we should come there and eat and drink whatever we wanted.  Although we were a little hesitant and careful, he turned out to just be the friendly kind of mad, buying us huge amounts of quesadillas and beans for lunch and then leaving us by the pool (which was full of screaming teenagers, only adding to how odd this afternoon was getting), his barmen with instructions to give us as whatever we wanted.  He did tell us he only inherited the hotel two months ago and we are not at all sure how long he's going to stay in business.

As it was still early in the day we continued (perhaps a fraction unsteadily), and it turned out to be a day for free things as we were later presented with a coconut all of our own.  We carried on into the mountains on winding roads in the backs of more pick ups, the sun going down over beautiful views.

After a night in the very pretty and friendly Santa Catarina we arrived back in our Oaxaca abode.  Meanwhile Y and C had been exploring a lot of churches and watching movies at the film festival, and also picking up more smelly travelers from the streets.  These ones turned out of course to be friends we made in Arizona.  It's great to see them again and even though the flat is now a bit of a squash we're having a lot of fun together, including impromptu dance workshops that are probably best not delved into.

We'd saved official celebrations of J's birthday for when everyone arrived, obviously as you do in these situations yesterday Y spent much of the day building this:

which is a rabbit made of mashed potato with convincing spaghetti innards.  There is a reason for this, involving vegans eating tofu shaped like animals and J recently raising the point that this is a bit weird when you think about it.  Despite the rabbit being an attempt to undercut this point, one vegetarian present did get genuinely upset which seems only to confirm it ;).

Whilst this creation and C's contribution of an enormous pie cunningly fashioned into the shape of an enormous pie were being made, J and the Arizona folk retreated to a cantina, an experience which really deserves comment.  The drinks are not exceptionally cheap but the idea is you get food with them, and in Mexico they really go all out.  We ordered three bottles of beer and got this:

Better than dubious peanuts eh?

So with much food, beer, merriment and dancing J is now 24 twice and feeling pretty sure of it.

Oaxaca (the beginning)

Our flat has continued to be full of things like showers and opportunities to actually cook our own food which is something we really miss when on the road.  So that's good.  In the time we have not been in it, in J's case getting wildly excited whilst reading The Hunger Games (which everyone should be doing), we've been exploring Oaxaca and selling more flowers made of cans.

Thursday and Friday were the Days of the Dead.  We didn't have the best knowledge or timing with finding the bigger parades and things, and also some very smelly hitch-hikers showed up on the first night and demanded feeding and inordinate amounts of coffee.  But we explored the fair, oogled costumes and walked round the graveyard, an incredible, sprawling place again strangely (for us) imbued with life.

The hitch-hikers (our very lovely UK friends Y and L) are of course still around, though very confused about how and why they got here, and are often startled to find themselves in Mexico.  Last time J persuaded Y to go somewhere for no apparent reason it was only Ghent, which is not nearly as impressive.  As we are all good friends we have of course been having many serious discussions on philosophy, ecumenical matters, and classical literature.

The classical literature part is true if you count The Hunger Games.

In other news, Oaxaca is the home of chocolate.  And by chocolate we do not mean the mix of sugar and milk we were presented with as children.  We're talking CHOCOLATE.  Chocolate shops that make an entire street smell of the rich, bitter, spiced stuff.  Huge swirly willy wonka machines with mole pouring out of them.  Mole is the local delicacy, a savoury chocolate and chilli sauce.  Our neighbour brought us some homemade on Dia de los Muertos and it was incredible.  And hot chocolate that looks like this:

You find flakes of pure cacao in the dregs.  It's an understatement to say its like a meal.  It's more like a religious experience.

Oaxaca is also home of the world's fattest (not tallest, just biggest around) tree.  We were too tight-fisted to pay the ten pesos to get into its enclosure but the thing about big trees is, you can see them from quite far away.

Father (both of you), stop fantasising about chainsaws

Of Zapatistas and Zorrillos

We left Mexico City on the Friday morning so as to increase our chances of reaching San Cristobal by Sunday lunch-time (as it's 570 miles or 917 km).  The first day we got all the way to Coatzacoalcos through many dramatic showers and lightning storms, in the back of several more pick-ups which is a pretty common way to travel in Mexico.

 We spent a lovely evening with our couchsurf there, where she and J traded hola-hoop for juggling lessons.  J wants to get one when she returns and, incidentally, is still also keen to learn to play the harmonica, possibly both at the same time.  C seems unimpressed (can't imagine why... - J).

By the next evening we were in Tuxtla Gutiérrez.  Aside from being awash in posters of the new governor gushing over his victory in the July election (at an unknown cost to taxpayers for the advertisements or even if it was solely from party funds, denial of advertising space for anyone besides him), it was nice but like a lot of cities that mostly exist from the latter half of the 20th century, a bit of a generic, industrial spawl.  We set off early again but unable to escape the taxi swarm (a continuing problem hitching on the edges of cities, involving frantically signalling to them that we don´t have money for them, whilst other drivers assume it is a taxi we want) we caught a cheap coach to San Cristobal and eventually worked out how to get out to the school at Oventic, which was another hour or so out into the stunning Chiapas mountain, up where the mist forever lurks and many of the maize fields are nearly vertical.

Wall of our classroom

What can we say about the school?  For those who aren't familiar with the Zapatista struggle, the Wiki overview is here.  But it is much more than another 'People's Front of Revolutionary Liberated People' that plagued the world 40 years ago(1).  It's about community building, and developing true direct democracy and autonomy for communities that have been ignored and denied access to state resources when they haven't been outright repressed and attacked.  The school is situated with several other projects, co-operatives, governance centres and educational resources that have been built on practically no resources.

So, we were going to learn both Spanish and about the organization of the communities and of similar struggles in Mexico.  And we learnt a lot about both, the practice of just talking in Spanish and not even being allowed (although one of the promotores running our classes spoke English) to ask for help in English, for hours each day, being really good or using more more of the language.  We shared a lot of ideas and talked politics and organisation with very interesting people- albeit in imperfect Spanish (J even had to try and explain her education in Spanish at one stage, not always easy even in English).  There was also an amazing library and film collection to bury ourselves in.

The two weeks over, and the only problem a couple of bouts of what might have been salmonella and certainly wasn't a giggle, but only lasted a day, we descended the hills again, feeling like we were emerging from a dream into the real world.  In reality, it's more like the other way around.

We stayed with the same host again back in Tuxtla, who is very lovely, and the next day went to the zoo.  It's more interesting than most because all of the animals in it are native to Chiapas, so its got a much more real and regional feel to it.  Also some of them, like this guy:

are just roaming around loose.  Not this guy though but he doesn't seem to mind:

We're not sure tapirs can mind anything.

On Sunday we hit the road again

I'm currently a big nerd about evening light and pictures of roads- J

for a lengthy hitch- google maps claims it is seven hours from Tuxtla to Oaxaca City and it takes longer because of windy mountain roads.  We made it though, including a ride with a family of fourteen crammed into a pick up and a car (it got even more crammed when we and our huge bags joined them), and a lot of nonchalant whistling as we cruised through some immigration and military checkpoints (2).

Yesterday lunchtime we picked up the keys for the flat we're staying in for the next month.  This came about because it was cheaper to get it for a month than to get a 'vacation home' for a week or two.  With at least two if not more friends joining us soon Couch Surfing would be very tricky and it's nice to have a base for a while.  It feels dead luxurious with a shower and a ceiling fan and bedsheets and everything.

We're off to explore a little of Oaxaca today having stocked up on food we can cook yesterday and in J's case become wildly excited over the amazing chocolate you can get here.

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(1)  And like anything that constantly repeats certain credentials  (our 'free' market anyone, which the 2007 crisis and forced bail-out demonstrates is't free in any sense of the word) usually is the opposite of what it says.

(2) Those with good memories will recall we were officially advised to remain 'illegal'.  But we're not convinced a checkpoint is going to believe that.  

Ciudad de Mexico

It's confusing, you see.  There are three things people might mean when they say Mexico.  Mexico the country, Mexico the state, and Mexico the city.  So since Guadalajara there have been signs for 'Mexico'.  Which was a bit disorientating as we could have sworn we were already there.  But given we usually lack a coherent plan and have ended up all kinds of places so far we couldn't be totally sure.

This week, after hitching with a trucker who turned out to be going to Mexico State (luckily its around the city), but dropped us off at a bus, we have definitely been in Mexico City.  Which is also in Mexico, so we've been there too.  But not Mexico state.

As long as that's all clear.

Mexico city is big.  And it's busy and fast paced.  It's the only capital city we've visited so far and definitely one of the largest.  We're back in a world of crowds, a big underground metro, markets you could lose an elephant in, political graffiti, and a huge variety of people (with a tendancy towards loads of goths.  This actually makes sense when you consider the catholocism, which mixed with indigenous beliefs has created such a death-oriented society.  Add to that rebellion through fashion and consumption and the post-everything apathy of big cosmopolitian cities.  So they're everywhere, and it is far too hot for so much black, thick make-up and layers of metal and leather jewelry.  Yes, we both spent years in crowds of teenagers who didn't look so different.  It's not that we dislike it.  That's just it- they're ADORABLE.)

Also, the whole place is VERY slowly sinking, because it used to be a lake and has been filled in but then drained leaving insecure silt.  The cathedral is visibly wonky.

On our first night here our hosts took us out for some pulque, which is a fermented cactus drink that was invented by the Aztecs.  Except you weren't supposed to drink more than one cup or the god of four hundred rabbits possessed you and you went bonkers.  Ignoring this warning, we enjoyed several.  It has to be consumed within 24 hours of brewing or it goes off, so really we were doing the bar a favour.

Split between the next day and Tuesday we went on a mural hunt.  As we've said, they're a huge art form here and they're really amazing and interesting.  The Nacional Palace and Palace of Fine Arts are both free, and so is the Colegio del san Ildefonso on Tuesdays.  There are lots of artists but two big names are Orozco-

and Riviera (Frida Kahlo's fella)

that picture may not be totally clear, but thats because I had to use the Landscape setting and still didn't get it all in.  I just wanted to give an idea of the SIZE of the thing.  It's in the National Palace and is about the history of Mexico from prehispanic times to the 30s.  It's interesting that it's in no way slavishly devoted to Mexico, and there don't appear to be many good guys.  It's hard to imagine the UK allowing something criticising the wealthy of the country and the church and showing rape and murder of indigenous people to be up in such an important building for the state.  It's kind of strange, as it's not like the Mexican state has been any different in its actions to many others.  But it seems they have much less idyllic view of their history.  Perhaps its because at the time it was a very socialist country, and socialist art is different?  We certainly like how realistic and literal Riviera's pieces are (though still very aesthetically driven).  Orozco's need a little more context and some of the others stray a bit into the abstract for our liking.

On Sunday we also explored the Museo de la Revolución, which is under the big monument to said revolution.  It was going to be a gigantic palace for someone with lots of money and power but they only got as far as one big dome before the revolution happened, which was a bit awkward for a while until someone thought of turning it into a monument.  It was free on Sundays (some things are free only for residents or Mexicans, which we understand but means we had to skip a few things) and the info in there is really detailed.

On Monday, we visited Teotihuacán (the challenge is pronouncing it after a few pulques).  It was one of the first big urban and religious centres in mesoamerica, a contemporary of Ancient Rome and bigger than it was at the time.  The people there had no writing so we know little about them.  Yes, its completely stunning, and we're basically only looking at foundations and ruins.  It was deserted (lots of theories and most of them involve politcal unrest and some kind of uprising involving the burning of rich powerful men's houses, hooray) five hundred years before the Aztecs showed up the area, before the heyday of the Maya away in Chiapas.

We spent the whole day there and there was plenty to see, and a lot of walking.  It's so hard to know anything for sure about the place.  For hundreds of years the biggest temple has been called the Temple of the Sun, but now the theory is its much more likely to have been a storm and water god, and the Aztecs assumed it was the Sun God just because they were big on him.  How would it really have felt to be there?  Even if we knew the history better like we do in some other cities, you never really know.  In a hundred years if anyone digs up London they'll assume Starbucks was essential to government, we worshipped a God called Gap and everyone thought the Shard skyscraper was dead important to their daily lives (anyone heard of it and not lived in London?  Didn't think so.).  You get a sense of the majesty and size of everything, and a powerful sense of the years.  Even thinking about how little we do know seems important.

Wednesday, at the Museo de Anthropologia, it was information overload.  It's an amazing place.  It starts with the evolution of mankind as a species, introduces anthropology, and then talks about all the different peoples of prehispanic Mexico up until the invasion by the Spanish.  Upstairs there are just as many sections on where the peoples of modern Mexico are now and how they live.  We spent six and a half hours there and did not see it all properly by a long chalk.  It's interesting to see how eurocentric our education always is about these things.  Not that the museum has escaped its own social context, but they have made a real effort to explore so many different groups.  In Europe, you hear a lot about the Aztecs, but they were only around, mostly killing other people, for about two hundred years before the Spanish showed up.  South of them the Zapotec had huge cities lasting twice as long as that and the Mixtec developed metallurgy.

Tomorrow, we're leaving and headed for Chiapas, to study Spanish at the Zapatista-run language school (our classes start on Monday but we're still hitching so its better to be in plenty time).  We may not update for a couple of weeks.  This language school was a major part of our planning the trip and we're very excited to experience the home of one of the most inspiring groups in the world, and improve our Spanish while we're at it.  Wish us luck and we will see you in Oaxaca, where some friends are joining us for a bit of a change of pace :)

Guanajuato State

The city of Guanajuato itself is located in a ravine.  This means it is very vertically built, with lots of little winding alley-ways and tunnels for the cars.  The disadvantages of living here would be high rent, lots of tourists clogging the streets and no parking.  However as a visitor it was gorgeous though it looked straight out of Castille or Italy.  The network of tunnels snaking through the town and allowing access to the outside world were different though and definitely enhanced the idea of being transported to somewhere different.

Of course there was the very pretty and unreasonably numerous collection of churches, which seemed to have one cathedral per architectural fad.  As the location of the Cervantino, there is a definite Don Quixote theme; statues, T-shirts, bumper stickers, murals.  There is also a museum of Don Quixote iconography from paintings by Picasso and Dali, to pottery, chess sets (which J loved) and statues.  There were hundreds of them, from all over the world and all different cultures.  Some had replaced the windmill with a mushroom cloud, in one he led the refugees of the Spanish Civil War seeking a home.  It was amazing how big a symbol he has been to so many people.  And while the literature that Cervantes was satirising has largely not survived (at least not for popular audiences) Don Quixote has and has transcended that simple understanding to be reworked as a character and set of values in times and cultures far beyond the text.  Also it was free as it was Tuesday so that was great too.

In the evening our couchsurf offered to take us to Leon which is a much larger city nearby, and where he had lived until recently.  He had a friend we could stay with who was coming back to Guanajuato on Thursday.  He felt we had missed several things in Leon so we set off there.  We met his friend, who although she spoke a little bit of English, it was a great chance (and easier) for J to speak Spanish.  This was great as we are trying to learn Spanish and when people speak fluent English it's just much easier to do so, so these opportunities are a good thing.  Also, she (well, her dog) currently has a litter of ADORABLE puppies.

In the morning we wandered around the downtown of Leon, where there was a really cool art centre running all sorts of open classes and hosting local exhibits.  We also went the University Library, which while very large, had surprisingly few books in it given the space available.  But libraries don't hold books these days, they are rather Institute status symbols.

However there was a really good museum nearby, which had lots of interesting bits from the importance of food in Meso-American cultures, to mining in the region (Guanajuato supplied a third of the world's silver in the 18th century), to showing local examples of the architecture of different political periods (Colonial to Independence to Revolution).  During our walking around, we crossed a bridge over the large motorway running through Leon, where there's a cute local thing of couples putting their names on padlocks and attaching it to chains that run along the top of the walkway.  There were scores of them all the way along.

Thursday we knuckled down the difficult and serious task our couchsurf (back in Guanajuato) had set us; that is, of eating lots of tasty local food.  So we had bombas, which are diced pineapple and cucumber and jicama (which is very juicy and tasty), along with lots of fresh lime juice, (optional) dash of chilli powder and crisps and cheese on top.  This was followed by tequila ice-cream for J and rumpope (an egg-nog-like drink apparently drank on Day of the Dead) ice-cream for C.  Yay-ness all round.  We returned back to Guanajuato in the evening and chilled out in one of the squares, people watching and making flowers.  There was much to see as the city is heaving for the festival with all kinds of street theatre and music on each corner.  We chatted for a while with a guy from Honduras, who possessed a fine looking drum.  He told us we'd love Honduras as it is very pretty.  Also that many people there watch the Scottish football league as two of Celtic's players are Honduran.  Apparently this will assure us of a warm welcome.       

Today was another sunny day so we went out for a hike in the surrounding hills.  It was beautiful and the air was noticably cleaner than it has been in the cities, over the last week or so, we've both felt like we are getting the start of a cold a lot of the time and our mucus has been a little bit on the bloody side.  Locals tell us this is normal.  In Leon especially the massive factories are a somewhat obvious suspect, people telling us about the very nasty chemicals they have had to work with right in the heart of the city.  Since Mexico City is quite famous for it's pollution we'll see what that's like.

After our hike we went to the Museum of the Mummies, where the dry atmosphere and mineral-rich soil had caused very rapid natural mummification of some of the bodies buried here.  They're pretty interesting and creepy to look at, including little children, often ornately dressed up to give them into the care of particular saints.  Often the mummies have little stories told in the first person on their display case- kind of creepy and playful at the same time.  Mexico is famously cultural obsessed with death, and the museum and the huge, ornate, busy, slightly chaotic cemetery behind it seem to fit in with this.

There's a sense of life and continuance around the cemetery that we've never experienced in Europe.  People here who have also lived in the states say they have definitely noticed a difference too.  Like Europe, America hides the dead and dying and fears them, often culturally killing the old by cutting them out of their lives long before they actually die.  Here, you don't get a chance to do that among all the ceremonies, books, art and brightly painted dancing skeletons.

Guadalajara

We trundled out on Tuesday morning with no concrete plan other than to find pretty, old stuff, proving as the day progressed that if you set your goals at nice manageable levels you will not be disappointed.  Guadalajara is full of beautiful churches, theatres and monuments.  As the capital of Jalisco it is also home of tequila, mariachis, and charros (Mexico rodeo cowboys): lots of those ´what you think of when you think of Mexico´ things all in one place.

Some of our favourite spots were the weird melty steampunky statues/benches in one big square

and the murals by Orozco in the government building

Murals are a big thing in Mexico and there´s lots to be found- lots of famous ones were commissioned after the Revolution, but its also just a much more common art form at all levels.

We learnt a lot about the tequila that evening, as our host has several different kinds and introduced us to them over a nice dinner we made with our co-surfer (1).  In order to drink it properly you should just sip it neat, apparently.  J is in favour of this and decided it would be culturally appropriate to sip a lot of it.  Having said that you couldn´t do it with what you actually get in the UK, as it´s totally different and the method is usually to drink it so fast you can´t taste it.

On Wednesday, surprisingly devoid of headaches (must be the quality) we went to Guadalajara´s Museo Palentologica.  There was a special exhibition on about corn, which at first glance sounds very boring, but when you remember how completely integral to all the agriculture and human culture of the area it is it makes it really interesting in context.

On Thursday we went to ask immigration what we should do about not officially being here (in the Federal government buildin we dubbed the Kafkaquarium).  We could wait three weeks and pay 1,250 pesos which we should have paid on the border (if we´d personally hunted down the border guard from wherever he was(2)), and is included in your flight if you fly here, and get a tourist form.  Or we´ll be fined on the border when we leave.  How much? we naturally inquire.  She reckons its about 290 pesos and basically officially advises us to go for that.  Seems like they WANT you to not be official.

That evening we went to the oldest cantina (bar) in Guadalajara with our host and a whole crowd of couch-surfing friends and contacts of his.  A couple of guys from Japan (3) are also on a round the world trip.  Look how much more professional and shiny they are than us.

After a quiet Friday as J wasn´t feeling great (not enough tequila) we explored the Tiangus Cultural alternative market on Saturday (some good stuff from the local area, but a lot very similar to alternative markets the world over.  Plus the group of people doing some traditional native dances from the area being next to a larger group watching people play Guitar Hero was FUNNY- C.

On several evenings we made more tin-can flowers and chilled in squares (not at Tiangus Cultural though because there were much better tin-can things there).  It´s a really nice way of interacting with a new space.  You´re not demanding people watch you like busking, and you can still people watch.  But lots of different sorts of people come over and chat or want to buy them, and as they cost us nothing but rather enjoyable time we just sell them for whatever people want to give.

Sunday we went to see a charro competition.  Lots of pretty horses

and impressive tricks

and it´s pretty cheap and full of locals, obviously something people actually go to in the area.

Yesterday we hitched easily to Guanajauto, Guanajauto (so pretty they named it twice).  The majority of the journey we made in a big yellow school bus (minus children).  Our lifts had just appropriated it in Guadalajara and were driving ten hours back to Monterrey for reasons they did not elaborate on.  Such is life (which is still a famous saying among bush rangers)

Our host here showed us round last night and today we´re off to explore and find out what events are on at this month´s Cervantino Festival.


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(1) Our co-surfer was a very nice guy from Australia, but left a couple of days early because he paid to go and stay in a hostel where he could be sure of getting internet to watch the Aussie Football League finals.  Heh.  Australians.

(2) It´s not that Mexican customs doesn´t exist.  It´s all available and there for you to find, just like local bypass schemes

(3) Did anyone know in Japan you get vending machines with booze in them?!?! Really!  But apparently underage drinking isn´t a problem, which, combined with our very British and Aussie excited reactions to this news probably explains culturally why Japan is allowed that privilege and we´re not.

Mexico's Pacific Coast

We'd been together in Mexico for almost exactly 24 hours before we ended up on the business side of a police cordon with or faces painted strange colours surrounded by anti-government banners.  This kind of thing happens to everyone, right?

Our couchsurf host in Hermosillo was a really interesting guy we´d have loved to spend more time with, and took us to a response to the Independence Day celebrations from Yo Soy 132, a democracy focused human rights group in Mexico.  It was staged as a 'funeral for democracy', complete with coffin and stilt walkers, which is why everyone was wearing black and painted like Eric Draven from The Crow.  In general, they're a very cool group worth looking into, and it was really interesting to learn more about activism in Mexico.  The local chapter we got to meet do a huge range of different things, from symbolic marches to direct actions such as lifting the barriers on toll roads.

A good chunk of the journey we've made over the last week (and there's been quite a lot of it so bear with us) has involved drivers choosing between two roads.  It seems pretty common in Mexico to have a toll road and a free one running almost exactly the same route.  And the tolls are VERY expensive.  The free roads are much more scenic and from our point of view great as they're much better for being nosey, but if you needed to travel it could be very frustrating as they take a lot longer and the 'cuota' roads are not something most people can afford most of the time.

Our little funeral never actually got into the main square where the celebrations were going on, due to a large group of police with black masks and guns telling us with impressively straight faces that we might intimidate people.  And in doing so presumably take their job.

There have been police everywhere.  Columns of vehicles, with maskedf and armed cops hanging off the back.  And that's when it's not actual army troops clogging up the roads, in numbers sufficient to invade a small city.  It's not just at the border where you kind of expect it, while passing through the little state of Nayarit, we were confronted with billboards such as this everywhere;

I mean, just LOOK at it.  It says "For the first time in history, a police commited to Nayarit" (that's a google translate translation I will stress).  But look at them.  It screams 'we are the baddies'.  You know when film and game dystopias have police state propaganda on the walls, it looks like this.  Even the Greece's Golden Dawn would probably think it was coming on a little strong.  The little tank thing in the left of the poster is called "The Rock" by the way.  To the left of this poster federal cops dressed exactly as in the posters were molesting drivers and when I lowered the camera, a fully loaded army jeep went by.  And this is the non-dangerous bit.  The whole state had the creepy feeling of the sound of marching jackboots being just on the edge of hearing. - C


Off we hitched on Monday, and made it to Los Mochis that night.  We'd hoped to take the copper canyon railway from here, but would have had to have waited several days a combination of that and cost made us decide against it so after exploring the town which doesn't have a lot of unique parts to it apart from being where the railway goes from we set off again.

One guy did pull over by the side of the road to point out the exact spot where bodies were found, as part of telling us to be careful.  But they were cops, which is slightly different (regardless of how you feel about cops, they're in more danger from drug cartels than most people).  In general, we got picked up by a lot of families and small pick ups, and learned that you don't need fluent Spanish to be able to understand the lecture about how you shouldn't be hitch-hiking because there's a lot of bad people in world and the lecturer in question has kids your age, because its the same in every language.  But everyone has been really nice and we're south of Sinaloa now anyway, and the atmosphere is much more safe and comfortable.

That night after Los Mochis we enjoyed roast chicken (pollo stands are ubiquitous here) and endless fresh salad and stayed in a truck with a driver we'd made friends with the day before.  We ended up waiting most of Wednesday in the loading yard he was at as it took hours for his truck to get loaded.

We were both feeling ready to leave the states and its great to be in a place so completely different, where you can just wander round and talk to people and learn so much.  There's also amazing street food on pretty much every corner which is always a bonus.

Our trucker friend left us in Mazatlan, which was the first proper resort town we'd been to.  Immigrants from the US are a much higher population there (easily recognised by the golf-carts decked out in varying styles of cool.  No really.), and although the town was beautiful and the sea warm it was kind of weird to have two types of buses in the town, some with air conditioning and more expensive running from the big hotels to the historic centre and then normal ones locals actually use to get around.  The migrant women running the English/Spanish library were very nice and helpful though and helped us get our bearings.  We ate more great food, watched weird arty films in the main square in the evening, and hiked back off to another layby the next morning.

Santiago Ixcuintla was our next stop, and it's a bewitching town.  Wonky buildings all squished together and small houses right in the centre of town next to restaurants and yet more cheap, fresh, friendly food stalls.  The light and atmosphere are hard to describe.

There's a cultural centre there for the native people from the surrounding area, the Huichol.  The project is a grand attempt to empower oppressed groups and promote native art.  There are various venues linked to it, but the centre in Santiago Ixcuintla is a pretty run down house without a big sign and most people in the town don't seem to know what or where it is (and instead directed us to the nearest source of Huichol Hot Sauce).  Which is only indicative of some of the problems indigenous people face the world over, of course.

From Santiago Ixcuintla we also took an afternoon trip out to Mexcaltitan, a tiny circular village on a man-made island that's only accessible by boat.  It's possibly Aztlan, the place the Aztecs originally came from.  Also, we saw herons and iguanas and weird cows.

That evening we sat in the square, C teaching J how to make the little flowers from drink cans, selling them for whatever people wanted to give.  We were surrounded by children in no time, one of whom was working selling toys and things in the square and we taught him how to make the flowers too, which made him very happy.

Quick and easy hitching got us to Guadalajara yesterday and we're staying with another couch surf and just heading out to explore the city.  And hopefully resolve the little question of still not officially being in Mexico...