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Starting with the plane which couldn't take off cos someone forgot to sign the flight log, changing planes to a completely different company, and loosing our luggage in the process... didn't bode well, not to mention Phil suffering from some bad food poisoning. But we rented a car and headed to my cousins place to recuperate... Culture shock... everything costs too much, and where have all the street vendors gone? And where else but Hollywood could you go to try and find medical help for Phil and find the medical centre is being used as a TV set instead... Scrubs!

Universal Studios

Wow, very artificial but somehow still heaps of fun with rides, shows, special effects, giant characters and all.

San Diego Zoo

We took a drive down to San Diego to visit the zoo, and ended up experiencing LA's famous freeways, traffic, and bad driving. We counted 8 lanes in our direction at one point with 6-8 going the other way. Karen felt very nervous with cars zipping by ignoring speed limits, not using indicators and generally driving very agressively...

The zoo was nice, and highlights were the hippos, pandas, polar bears, gorillas, chimps... and some of their impressive enclosures. Think we have to visit the Melbourne zoo again when we get home.

Mexico wrap-up

Back to Mexico City, and time for a visit to the world renowned Anthropological Museum. So we wandered round, absorbing as much as we could, and admiring the numerous large carved stones, pottery, and big olmec heads. Not to mention watching some dudes dangle upside down in a recreation of an ancient ritual.

MEXICO SUMMARY
Food: Chapulines (grasshoppers) and Mole (pronounced Molay, and its a chocolate chilli sauce) are highlights
Ruins: We saw heaps, our favourites are Calakmul and Uxmal, and we couldn't stand Tulum which was overloaded with tourists.
Places: Hard to go past our time and experiences in Oaxaca with the street kids centre, spanish classes, and the ongoing civil unrest. Another favourite was San Cristobal, nice colonial town, good handicrafts and nearby local mayan villages.

3&4 Dec - Taxco, Grutas (caves), and Teotihuacan

Taxco

Taxco is an oh so cute old silver mining town perched amongst the mountains. Now, there's no more mining, but its main drawcard is selling silver to tourists from one of the 400-500 silver shops there! We happened to visit during its annual silver show, so things were a bit busier than usual with concerts etc, yet the place still has a real charm as we discovered when we wandered up cobblestoned alleys, and winding stairways to the large Christ on the hill with the help of a few ragged streetkids and their small kitten.

Grutas de Cacahuamilpa

These are BIG, VERY BIG! Photos really just don't do them justice... they are huge... think of a large cavern up to 80m high, and 120m wide at points, going 2km into the mountain. Lots of huge stalagtites and mites too.

Teotihuacan

No one is quite sure who built this, but they certainly thought big... 2 huge pyramids, and a very impressive avenue of the dead leading through the city. And still heaps left covered, waiting for money to excavate and preserve. It was my second visit, but I appreciated the extra time to explore the museum and some of the excavated ruins I missed last time. They've just recently excavated further under one of the main pyramids and continue to find more bones, offerings, and clues as to the life and death of these people.

02 Dec 06 - Ciudad de Mexico

We finally escaped the Yucatan Peninsula, and arrived in Mexico City (D.F. - Distrito Federal) and were greeted by the smog and the overwhelming mass of humanity that tries to sell you everything ... we mean EVERYTHING. The beggars will even go so far as to bring crushed glass into the train and lie down on their stomachs and backs on half-broken bottles for a couple of pesos!

Xochimilco

Cruising down the canals of Xochimilco in colourful trajineras while Mariachi bands croon from another boat, and corona sellers or photographers vie for your business.... a relaxing day, but still with that Mexico City seething humanity edge to it.

LUCHA LIBRE!!!!!

Mexican Wrestling at its finest... unfortunately no cameras allowed inside... Karen is still not a fan, but Phil recommends it HIGHLY!!! Loads of fun, drop-kicks, flying piledrivers, off-the-top-turnbuckle-fun.... if you´ve seen American Professional Wrestling, and you like mask-wearing lycra-clad men.... you´ll love this!!! We were treated to five tag-team bouts... the first a two-on-two bout, the remainder, 3-on-3 including the infamous Dr. Wagner (that´s his mask I´m wearing!)

02 Dec 06 - Riviera Maya

Cozumel
This is a diving haven. Pure and simple. Every third or fourth shop is a dive store, Phil was in Heaven, Karen was getting whiplash from shaking her head every time Phil walked into a dive shop. We did a couple of drift dives, including Karen´s deepest at 30m. We saw a couple of hawksbill turtles at an arms length feeding on some of the soft corals... oh, to have the underwater camera working again!!

Ever since Jacques Cousteau did a doco in the ´60s, tourism has grown massively...and when the cruise ships discovered it.... the week before we arrived, there was an 18,000 people in a day onslaught purely due to these ¨cruzeros¨. Not only that, we saw the QEII as it was coming in to the island for a day or two. Get off the main strip, literally a couple of streets back, and you´ll find the usual undercurrent of mexican life keeping this island humming under the veneer of the american facade.

Cancun
There are hotels here. Lots of hotels. Think of a Mexican Surfers Paradise, and you´ll be about 20% of the way there to the corniness, utter soullessness and depravity that surrounds this place. (Hence, we visited Isla Mujeres, see below). There is a nice beach, if you can get to it through the hotels. The only public access to the beach is a couple of kilometres apart, otherwise you have to act like you are a guest at the hotel, hide your non-existent ID bracelets, and walk purposefully through the lobby.

One piece of advice when dealing with souvenir sellers (tiburones) or officious hoteleros in Cancun was provided to us by a local restauranteur... say to them ¨Chinga su Madre!¨ (this is what you think it is... maybe the guy wanted to see us get beaten up?)

Isla Mujeres
About 15min off Cancun, is this little island which has a little of the american facade of Cancun, but no resorts and a life all it´s own... predominantly mexican. This is a backpackers hangout... primarily cause it´s cheaper than Cancun. We saw a local turtle farm which breeds and releases turtles back to the wild (good), this makes up for all the turtle shell souvenirs you find in Cancun. We also saw a water cage with about 3-4 nurse sharks which are periodically manhandled by tourists out of the water for photo opps (bad).

22 November - The Yucatan

Howdy,

We´re now in Cancun, and are counting down to our flight over to Mexico City on 30 Nov... then from Mexico to LA on the 06 Dec, then HOME!!! (That´s on the 10th, arriving on the 12th Dec).

Things we´ve done in the Yucatan Peninsula...

Tulum

Diving/Snorkelling in the Cenotes. For those of you who don´t know, ¨snotties¨ as we´ve taken to calling them, are waterfilled caves or sinkholes in the limestone of the Yucatan. The diving is cavern diving so there is natural light filtering into the water giving it a real (as Rob called it) an ¨Alice in Wonderland¨ feel to them. Swimming through stalagmites and stalagtites...

Lazing on the beach...Tulums beach has nice white sand but resorts line the beachfront. The ruins overlooked the sea and may have been nice if they weren´t sooooo covered with tourists.

Chichen Itza
Famous ruins but oh... the crowds!! We also stumbled on a Mexican Independence day parade (20 Nov), with all the kids in fancy dress of historical significance.

Celestun

Played a game of ¨Spot the Flamingo¨and found a few thousand! The waters run almost red with the krill which the flamingos feed on, giving them their pink colour. Phil went a bit mental with the telephoto lens, trying to capture flamingos with their heads above water.

Uxmal

Enjoyed some rather unique ruins. The pyramid in the background is rounded and a lot of people think its just been reconstructed wrongly. Quadrangles and palaces were impressive with their detailed facades.

16 Nov - Barmy (and Balmy) Belize

We crossed the border to find ourselves back in a mainly english speaking world...but no, wait... was that chinese we just heard? Or some German from the Memonites?(A religious group-more later) Or a bit of creole, which is basically warped english.

Orange Walk (weird name hey!)

We stayed here for a few days so that we could take a boat tour down the river and have a look at the Mayan ruins at Lamanai. We`re a bit ruined out, but our guide was quite good and there was a quite impressive stone relief of a ruler. There was more... but things have been re-buried for preservation.

The first impression of the town was a local woman throwing up in the middle of the central park, followed by a hell of a lot of chinese restaurants, this was quickly proceeded by the mennonites... a bible based community who are a more integrated form of Amish... so they´re big in Pennsylvania, USA, Bolivia and in a town called Shipyard, a boat ride away from Orange Walk in an isolated village...check the photo for the clothing!

Caye Caulker
Expensive is a good summarizing word for Caye Caulker, so is hot. This place grows on you, we had a good dive guide one day who showed us all the local species and taught us some Creole as well... e.g. Tek Kyer (take care), Anda da wata (under the water)... you get the picture, try saying it with a Jamaican accent, and you can speak Creole! This day we also went snorkelling the famed SharkRay Alley... yes, there were both Sharks and Rays!

On Day 2 here, Phil went diving the famed Blue Hole, a 125m deep, 318m wide perfectly circular hole in the reef a couple of hours out of the Caye. Karen, for fear of seasickness, chose instead to go snorkelling more locally, and was treated to a guided tour inclusive of fighting moray eels!

Crossed the border back to Old Me´ico...
We´re now back in Mexico, Tulum and in the midst of loads of gringos... off to go cavern diving tomorrow in the Cenotes (caves in the area formed mysteriously).... let you know more soon!

10th Nov - On the Mayan Road Again

We caught an overnight bus to San Cristobal de las Casas, which is a nice colonial town in the highlands of Mexico. We´ve seen heaps of colonial towns by now though, so we were more impressed by the nearby Mayan village of San Juan Chamula... With its pagan church with pineneedles spread across the floor, people lighting candles, chanting and waving eggs around in the hope of curing sickness. We met kids who couldn`t speak a word of Spanish, only the local mayan dialect of Tzotzil.... and yet we met a Mayan guy who knew the Cazador de Cocodrillos (Crocodile Hunter) because he watches him every Saturday at 6:30. We also went a bit mad at the markets... our bags are pretty full again!

Palenque.
The single most touristed Mayan ruins we`ve visited yet. Oh, my god. There were more orange-hat wearing dutch, bad spanish-speaking Americans and Germans... it was the biggest population this side of some big German city somewhere in Germany.

The ruins however, were in pretty good nick, and highly impressive. The number of carvings was impressive, and our guide managed to furnish us with explanations of the inherent egyptian, greek and chinese influences all readily seen within the artwork, apparently. He was a guide with 40 years experience, so we`d hoped he had some tales to tell, turns out they were tall tales.

Xpujil and Ruins

In the middle of the Yucatan Peninsula. We visited four sites in the middle of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. This is one hard to get to region.... required hiring a taxi for the day and have him wait for us while we walked around.

1. Calakmul

Incredible views. One of the tallest pyramids in Mexico. Quite a big complex overall and a historic rival of the Society in Tikal, Guatemala across the border.

2. Balamku

We were surprised when we were invited to enter one of the pyramids and saw an amazing stone/stucco frieze still with some of its original colour that was buried under an outer layer of pyramid, when remodelled by a later dynasty... this frieze was discovered only in 1993. And with the 3 pyramids next to it, we`re betting that once the Mexican govt finds more money, they`ll find more inside the adjacent pyramids.

3. Chicanna

Called the ¨Mouth of the Serpent¨, this site was dominated by the huge monster mouth doorway.

4. Xpujil

Dominant aspect was a huge 3-towered structure with a hidden staircase. This is an after-and-before photo.

We`re now in Chetumal, and just visited the Mayan museum and learnt how to add and subtract with Mayan numbers. On to Belize tomorrow.

1 Nov 06 - Day of the Dead

Hi all,
Oaxaca is changing daily. Now the federal police (about 4,500) have moved in and helped to start cleaning up the town following the riots. The town is looking cleaner but there are still sporadic protests to their occupation and the teachers have moved camp from the centre plaza to elsewhere in town.
The town now is getting geared up for tomorrow - The Day of the Dead.

There are skeletons in the windows and more plastic vampire, werewolf and scary masks on every other corner for sale. Last night we went to the Xoxo cemetery where locals were elaborately decorating graves of their dear departed with marigolds and gladiolas and many with coloured sands in the image of Jesus and Mary, and candles everywhere. Of course the obligatory trick-or-treaters were out in force as well last night.

Last weekend we managed to be out of town, down on the coastal town of Puerto Escondido... a good place to be while there was trouble in town. A surfing paradise, built for tourists, and yep, we went diving.

Oaxaca - A town in trouble

Hi all,
An interesting entry. At time of writing my last entry (5pm Friday), the streets were eerily empty, no traffic and fewer people. We`ve since found out that at the time I was typing, 4 people were killed including an american photographer ... see BBC World. For those with Spanish, BBC Mundo has a Spanish language version with some more detail.

We are actually now in Puerto Escondido on the Pacific coast, and both well. We have found out that during our trip down, six plane loads of federal agents have been sent in to Oaxaca to keep the peace and hopefully dismantle a few of the blockades still in force around the city. We will be heading back to Oaxaca on Tuesday morning, to enjoy the Day of the Dead festival (which is definitely going ahead) and then on Thursday likely to head to the Yucatan Peninsula for the downhill leg of our journey.

Talk to you soon
P & K

Images of Oaxaca

One of the many torched utes that serves as a roadblock... on the side you can make out ¨Fuera URO¨ meaning... ¨Get Out Ulises R.O. (I forget his surname)¨ Right now there are loads of domestic buses parked all over the roads and other car tyres etc doing a similar job... (note the heat melted the traffic lights too)

Bryan and Jennifer - been hanging out with these two heaps... a comment for Nick... Bryan is a fan of your ¨Money Train¨ system of evaluating movies... see more at Nicks Film and Book Reviews



A couple of photos from the ruins of Yagul...Mayan´s can certainly choose great locations for building cities.... good views, close to the main highway and utilities, drainage and power close at hand... those Mayans and Zapotecs were way ahead of their time!


These are a mineral rock formation known as Hierve El Agua. They´ve formed a petrified waterfall effect, and nearby natural springs have created pools for swimming at the top of a cliff made of the same white mineral. Nice place... a long hike on a small road with a VW though!


Our teachers from the Becari Spanish School... (L-to-R) Javier, Carina, Isis and Manuel.