feliz cumpleanos pepinillo

hello fans
lots to update on as have been out of blogging mode for a while.

last friday we finished our tefl course, it was a relief to finish as it had been hard work. last teaching practice was the wednesday night, a 90 minute class with basic1 class - very hard work, but went ok. then thursday morning was our grammar exam, which obviously i was thoroughly looking forward to. when i got to school that morning however, i was the only one of us 4 to turn up. jayne was still really ill, as was violeta (our fellow mexican student), and skye was in hospital following a car accident the night before. some people will go to such lengths to avoid grammar... so i went back to bed as i was tired too, then did the grammar test later that day, then visited skye in the hospital. she is much better than she was, nothing broken, but hip and knee not great. wrapped in bandages, and had a lot of trouble moving and lots of pain. she stayed in hospital 2 days and is now still in guzman recuperating.

on the friday instead of our planned graduation lunch which didn`t seem appropriate given everyone`s circumstances, we hung out with skye at the hospital and ate cookies and drank water, instead of champagne and mexican food. we got her out of hospital and back home, which was quite something. you have to ring the red cross (cruz roja) to come and get you with an ambulance. we figured this would take a while, then heard there`d been an accident in guzman and the 2 cruz roja ambulances were busy. so it wasn`t until around 1030pm they arrived. they didn`t have any blankets to put on her, so we all put our coats and scarves etc over her while they wheeled her out into the ambulance. lots of speed bumps which wasn`t great either. after all the drama we left her safely in her bed and went for some beers to sort of celebrate her leaving hospital and us finishing our course.

saturday i left guzman for guadalajara airport to meet robert to go to los cabos, in baja california for the week. quite good for my fear of flights to go on a proper aeroplane with robert as he explained what all the funny noises were and how the landing is much more dangerous than the take-off. which was useful to know during the take-off but not so useful during the landing. anyway nothing bad happened, other than the peanuts they gave us were quite weird. we landed in la paz, and went to pick up a 4wheeldrive his friend was lending us. more to follow on that topic....

sunday we wandered around la paz, it`s a nice little town, everything in los cabos is essentially a resort town, full of americans mainly. would be a potentially nice place to live for a while and teach english actually as the beaches are beautiful, and i imagine you would earn a bit more than other places, as cost of living is a bit higher. i was going to investigate english schools in the area but never got round to it. anyway after stocking up with camping equipment and food and beer, we drove down the coast through a little town called las barriles, then on to a random place called el ranchero leonero. this was a beautiful little hotel right on the beach, and with hardly anyone else there. i guess it`s low season. turns out our friend porfi who had met us in la paz with the car and helped us find the shops, had used to work there, but had a fight one day with the manager and then left for la paz. we didn`t get in any fights, it didn`t seem the right time or place really. the restaurant had lots of huge fish on the walls. the sea of cortez has absolutely loads of fish in it, or maybe not so many now some are on their walls. it is very turqouise and quite calm, there were also lots of vultures and pelicans swooping around the place. it`s great fun watching the pelicans dive bombing into the sea and catching fish. also the little sand pipers are really cute, they run right up to the water then scamper off back up the beach when a wave comes near them, then hop back down to the shore when the tide goes out again. they run in such a comical way, their whole bodies don`t move, only their little legs. i took a few videos.

monday we left the lovely ranchero and carried on down the dirt track that is the main road round there, for cabo pulmo, a little fishing village further down the coast. the scenery on this journey is huge deserts full of cactuses, with mountains in the background for miles and miles, and amazing clouds, which turn pink and orange at sunset. very very mexican. the odd group of cows and horses and donkeys appear every now and then to try and block your path. the road is very bumpy and dirty, but fine in a 4wd and you don`t really meet too many cars coming the other way. a lot of the coast line, in fact maybe all of it, is now privately owned which it wasn`t in the past apparently, so you can`t just drive straight on to the beach and camp. so when we arrived in cabo pulmo we investigated and found out there`s a man called ricardo who lives in the house by the cactuses down the road, who has a key to the gate that goes on to the beach. we went to find him and paid 100peso deposit for our key and went through the gate to the beach to set up our campsite. in the meantime we also hired some snorkel gear as the sea is really turquoise and fishy here.

so on to the beach we went in the amazing 4wd ford excursion. robert decided to reverse from the rocky parking spot we`d found to go a bit further on to the beach. disaster struck as we realised the wheels were spinning us deeper in to the sand, and the 4wd wasn`t working at all. (porfi told us when we saw him again at the end of the week that they had lots of trouble with the 4wd and generally it didn`t work.....) we spent the next hour digging out the sand under the tires and finding driftwood to put under them to reverse back onto the higher ground. this was sort of fun, as in it was nice to do some actual physical exercise, and very satisfying when it actually paid off and we were back out of the sand, and it gave robert a chance to show off how strong and manly he is. but it was also quite annoying. we recovered by having an avacado and cheese sandwich from the ice box, and some coronas. some stupid american couple had appeared during this and gone snorkelling on our beach, which i wasn`t happy about. they asked us how we`d opened the gate to the beach to which robert replied i don`t really know i`m quite new to town. they got the message and soon disappeared.

we put up the tent in a derelict old building that looked like it was supposed to be a bar at one point, but maybe they`d run out of money and abandoned it. there was also an old school whose roof had blown off. all a little bit creepy if you`re that way inclined. which i am, and consequently didn`t sleep well that night. the waves seemed to get very loud during the night and i worried they`d wash the ford excursion into the sea, which to be honest after all the trouble it had been wouldn`t be such a bad thing. when we returned the camping key to ricardo we asked him about the properties, he said he owned all the land and it was for sale for 200 million pesos, for about 20 hectares or acres or something. we thought about buying it and said we`d be in touch.

the next day - tuesday - was my birthday. nice place to spend it waking up on a beach in mexico. there was an amazing sunrise and a fisherman. he had caught 2 little fish when we saw him going home. we drove down to cabo san lucas after packing up the campsite. cabo is a bigger town, very touristy and resorty. lots of lovely hotels, one of which we stayed in, called the finisterre. robert used to live down there a while ago and go hangliding off the cliffs. i had a cold and felt ill for most of the day, which suited me fine as i don`t like making a big deal of my birthdays, especially not this one. we sat on the balcony and watched the sea and saw some people flying in ultralights, then went for dinner, then a drink at a little bar by the road. and that was that.

wednesday we went to look at some very expensive houses on a hill in cabo san lucas called the pedregal. we pretended we were visiting friends who lived there otherwise maybe we couldn`t have gone up there. the houses are amazing, it`s like something out of james bond, huge concrete and glass mansions overlooking the ocean, painted all nice colours, with perfect little gardens and cobbly streets. but it`s not real life, not my sort of real life anyway, so we left and carried on to todos santos which is back round the other side of the peninsula on the pacific coast rather than the sea of cortez coast. todos santos is a lovely little town, very much american as well, but not a resort town. there are lots of new mexicans and californians, lots of artists and sculptors and things like that, and little galleries. we found a really nice place to stay called las casitas, owned by a canadian jewellery maker called wendy. we went to see the beach. by this time, i forgot to mention, both mine and robert`s cameras had broken which was quite a tragedy given the amazing scenery coming along the coast and on the beaches etc. we decided we weren`t allowed to mention the c-word though as it would only upset us. we had some tacos from a roadside stall that night for dinner.

thursday we wandered around looking at the little galleries and doing other touristy things like going in the markets and asking the prices of things, and then not buying them, but it becomes so hard to leave as they have engaged you in a big bartering conversation. found a nice english book shop and bought a map of mexico. had a coffee to recover from the stress of shopping. then we went out for thanksgiving dinner, as it was indeed thanksgiving, to the hotel california of eagles fame. they had in fact stayed there and written their song about it. it is now owned by canadians and is very nice. we had turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce and all the trimmings - i even got a sprout! what a treat. was so stuffed after all that that i couldn`t even manage the pumpkin pie. a man played violin and guitar while we ate - he played a violin version of hotel california. we stayed thursday night in todos santos too as we liked it a lot.

in the middle of the night in todos santos at around 5.45am, i woke up to hear some really surreal singing, led by a person (the priest?) with a loud speaker, and some chanting too. i thought at first i was having a really strange dream, so i got up to look out of the door. across the street was a group of people with candles all singing and having what seemed like a religious service. i don`t like being woken up at any time of day, let alone 5.45am, so i was quite outraged at this. i thought maybe it was some funeral rite or something so decided not to go over and vent my rage on them, but put my earplugs in and went back to sleep, a bit spooked. we asked wendy what it was the next day, she said oh isn`t it beautiful, they are going round praying for peace, each morning on a different street in the town. how sweet indeed, and how ironic to pray for peace by waking the whole town up out of their sleep... she assured us we wouldn`t hear it again as it would be on a different street the next day. but they had only moved to the next street along by the next night, so the same thing happened, only this time accompanied by a choir of local dogs barking for about an hour.

friday was the end of the holiday so we drove back to la paz, gave porfi the car back and went to the airport. i met my friends jen and jo, from america for the weekend in guadalajara where i am now, and robert went on to belize, potentially via cancun. i will write about guadalajara another day as i have written lots today. so far it seems nice, very fountainous (if mountainous is a word i decided that fountainous could be too).

i still haven`t found a job, but have applied for some, and am thinking of living and working in oaxaca in southern central mexico. if anyone has any information or advice or words of wisdom about oaxaca i would love to hear them.