feliz navidad pepinillos

hi everyone and merry christmas and a bottle of rum pa pa pum pum

i spoke to the pepinillo family on christmas day on skype. they were, as usual, wearing silly hats - it seems to be the christmas tradition now in la casa pepinillo. papa pepinillo had built a santa's grotto in the greenhouse complete with a bmx bike, though i never fully understood the significance of this; helie was wearing a little seal skin hat and looked like a dwarf. it's quite hard having a coherent conversation over skype when there is a 5 second time and picture delay and everyone either all speaks at the same time or then doesn't speak for a while and there is a huge silence plus time delay silence. the first 5 minutes are usually just general hilarity at seeing each other on the screen. anyway we managed to speak for 45 minutes, plus they gave me a virtual tour of the dining room complete with remains of the christmas dinner and fireplace and a party popper going off in real time. this year they had eaten goose for a change, apparently it's all the rage now, did anyone else out there have goose?

me and robert went to a little lodge up the road for the night of christmas eve and had some turkey and cranberries and stuffing for our dinner there. robert has traded some nights and food there for taking the owner for a flight in the ultralight as his wedding present. it's kind of a hostel style lodge in that for dinner you all sit at the same table and you're supposed to talk to each other. so we talked to a family from america for a bit. the dad told me how cranberries are harvested - a machine chops all the cranberries from their branches and then they flood the field so the cranberries float to the top and then helicopters gather them up in big nets and take them off to cranberry factories i suppose.

on christmas day morning we went for a walk to see some waterfalls. we saw a snake on the way, he was all black and running away from us under some twigs. he was called a musurana snake, i looked him up in a book later. robert talked to various people about flying, he likes doing this, and people are very interested and ask lots of questions. i got a very very detailed explanation about how engines work, and how weather works and how thermals make clouds and the birds hover on thermals, and so do hangliders. weather is very complicated, it's all to do with pressure and temperature differences and bits of land that heat up and how the difference between them and the air makes different kinds of weather. i want to make a terrarium which is a little version of planet earth in an enclosed vase and watch this in action. as for the description of engines and how they work and how planes stay in the sky, i need to get this again, and take notes. i got confused about pistons and valves and horses powering things.

we have been on a few flights in the ultralight since last writing. one was a little flight where we went round a big cloud nearby. you can't fly through them in these planes in case you get blown awayby all the weather going on inside them but you can go right up to them. a little circular rainbow appears on the cloud when you have the sun behind you and the cloud infront of you, but we don't know why it happens. it's called a glory. we did another 2 hour flight the other morning, where we flew over the reservoir and dam, where normally there are scarlet macaws flying around, but they had gone away for christmas. a man is coming from the new york times to write about the scarlet macaws, so robert will fly him to where they normally hang out. we hope they will be home by then. we then flew above caracol, the mayan ruin over near the guatemalan border. this was really cool to see from the sky as we had been there last week and seen it from the ground. i will attempt to put a photo on of it that i took from the plane (i have now done this and it should be there above). we had to stop on a little runway as i needed an emergency wee. the clouds were really coming in by then, so taking off again was a bit scary and i thought we were going to get trapped in them, but we flew under and around them so it was all ok. i think professional ultralight pilots don't stop for emergency wees, they do them from the side of the plane or something.

so last weekend we went on a trip to caracol to see the ruins as mentioned above. the road to caracol is very very bumpy and takes a long time to drive along, especially if i am driving as i tend to drive through the holes rather than around them, much to robert's annoyance, but i enjoy it. they are going to pave it in the next few years, it costs 1 million dollars per mile, which the government will pay for. you have to stop at a little military base and are supposed to do the jouney in convey with the military or the forestry yogi bear people, as there has been trouble in the past with guatemalans on the road. the guatemalans are still foresting all the protected land in this area, they are coming over the border sneakily and chopping the trees down, and also doing the same in guatemala on the protected land. belize is much better at protecting all its forests and biosferes and generally being ecological etc. the caracol ruins are really impressive, not as extensive as tikal in guatemala, but what is there is just as big physically. very huge steps which are hard to climb up (though getting easier now i have completely stopped smoking - today is day 11). i think this site was only really discovered and partially excavated in around 1975 by some people from florida university. caracol in spanish means snail, there are lots of little snail shells there. we had a really lovely belizean guide called hugh who told us lots of facts about the mayans. there were some ball courts there where they played some sort of ball game, and he said that the losers got taken up to the top of the buildings and wrapped up in a ball shape and rolled down the buildings again as a punishment. also there were dwarves that worked there in the royal houses, they know this because some of the doorways are very small and they found tiny bones that when they tested them, were not children, but dwarves. plus there are some dwarves depicted on their carvings. there was also a few doorways with very high bits, which was because the royal people had huge headresses so needed extended doorways to make sure their headresses got through them uninjured.

we saw howler monkeys swinging through the treetops just like in the jungle book, and a lovely toucan which was an an aracari toucan - there are 2 other types, an emerald one and another one. we saw a snakeskin from a snake who'd recently shed his skin, and a fat little rodent thing called a gibnut. in the 1980s the queen visited belize and was fed gibnut, as it is a delicacy here, and it also therefore known as royal rat. the national tree of belize is the mahogany tree, which they export a lot of. belize was originally colonised by the british in the 18th century purely for its mahogany, it was like a work camp. there were also some trees called strangler vines which are vines that come and take over other trees and slowly suffocate them and live on with them inside them. very day of the triffids.

all the mayan buildings were originally covered in plaster and painted red and white. red for power. this is one of the theories as to how and why the mayans died out - to produce that much plaster for all those buildings takes up a lot of trees - you burn fresh green wood to very high temperatures and add rock that turns to powder at a certain heat and add it to water. by using so many trees up they overused their resources and had to scatter to new places to survive. the other theories as to their collapse are - politics, ie too many wars going on to sustain their culture, and also a revolution and overthrow of the ruling elite. anyway the mayans were around for 1000 years, until around 860AD. they were very clever, as most ancient cultures were, and knew loads about the stars and the universe. they had lots of different calendars, one of which was in fact a 365 day one, but others were called long count and short count calendars. magic numbers for them were 3, 7, 9 and 13. they believed there were 9 layers of the underworld, and 13 layers of normal world. we don't really learn about the mayans in england, as we have the egyptians and the greeks and the romans as our ancient civilizations, so it's exciting to learn about these interesting people - robert said they do learn about them in america though.

we stayed that night at francis ford coppola's lodge called blancenaux lodge. it has a jacuzzi and is very swanky. there's also a little gift shop where i bought a notebook whose paper you can write on in the rain so you can take it on field trips - useful for making notes about things for my blog i thought. also we got a pen which writes upside down, underwater and on grease. so far this is true, i wonder if it would write in space though, that would be the ultimate test. at blancenaux lodge the phones you have in the rooms are giant shells, they light up if you call reception from them, they call them shell phones which made me laugh. they brought coffee to our room in the morning, it's a very swanky place. as usual robert had done some sort of impressive flying pilot trade off with them. turns out maybe he's quite famous, he was the man in the wrigley's chewing gum adverts, who hanglides off various mountains. he also once went out partying with rod stewart, and with christopher walken, but on different ocassions.

we stayed the next night in a cabin by the river, in a place called san miguel. this belongs to robert's friend amin who owns lots of land and trees and a pine lumber company here. there is a little generator that powers this cabin, so i learnt about how generators generate electricity. it's a really beautiful place right on the river and in the trees, with a little kitchen right out in the open. it seems like there should be bears around the place but i don't think you get them in belize. we walked up the river and looked at some more waterfalls, and took photos of really nice flowers and butterflies. one of these photos i though could win wildlife photographer of the year, it's a spotty butterfly sitting on a flower (see attached at top of blog). but when i looked up wpoftheyear, their photos are much more impressive, like of a frog eating a snake's head, or a puma sitting in a tree, or a bird swooping down and catching a fish. so i don't think i'll bother entering it, or if i do i will pretend i'm only 5 years old and enter it in the precocious children's category.

in other news, i have started running again, and done some swimming and hiking, and today we're going canoing down the river. we went to a christmas party at robert's friends mick and lucy's house, where we sang carols and ate guacamole. last night we went to a christmas day party in the evening where there was no carol singing, but we drank whiskey and danced to non christmassy songs. it hasn't felt at all like christmas over here, despite the advent calendar that mama pepinillo sent over, and the christmas tree with baubles that we got. it's warm and sunny and they don't play christmas songs everywhere when you go to the shops, nobody seems to make that big a deal of it here.

i met somebody who keeps bees in south london, in rotherhithe. she told me that worker bees live for around 6 weeks, so the queen bee of the hive just sits there having more and more baby bees all day to replace the dying ones so the honey factory can continue. a queen bee lives for around 5 years. you can order them on the internet and they post them in a little box through the post. the more you spend the better behaved the queen bee should be, the cheap ones can be aggressive.

on tuesday i head back to mexico to meet sarah bullock for new year's eve and for a 3 week holiday, which rod will join us for too later. this is very exciting, apart from the prospect of the humongous bus ride back to mexico city, though i have my valium and my book to read so it will be ok. need to brush up on my spanish as i haven't done any since being back in belize, and i don't want to disappoint my visitors.

that's all for now hope everyone had a lovely christmas. xx

el viaje largo

hello from belize where i now am once again. and guess what the only rain you see in this part of the world falls mainly in belize. perhaps something to do with it being an ex-english colony, it gets to have english weather too. as i write this i am listening to my new pan pipe south american music cd. it is by a group of mexican musicians who were performing on saturday in oaxaca and i just love andean pan pipe music so i had to buy it. some people think it's cheesy and unsophisticated but i think those people are wrong. it has given me peru and bolivia nostalgia so i am now considering not working in mexico at all but going to south america again soon. on which topic, i have procured a job in a school in oaxaca, starting late january. i wasn't aware i had got the job until i was leaving and she said so we'll see you in january then. and i said oh right ok then. but the problem is you can't wear jeans at that school which although seemingly a minor point, to me is an issue. it is the berlitz language school, as in the people who also make the guide books. quite strict and too many children for my liking, i would rather teach adults in a less formal, ie jeans wearing, scenario. anyway watch this space. nice to know i have the job if i want it.

so friday was dia del virgen de guadalope, the patron saint of mexico. later that day we went back to the church we'd gone to earlier and seen the cute little children with painted moustaches on. there were thousands of people queuing up to go to mass. then there were fireworks and a little band playing. possibly the strangest mexican activity i have yet seen then took place. they had made little papier mache or suchlike sculptures of little bulls which they put on their heads and ran and twizzled around while fireworks on the little bull went off in all directions from their head. not the safest sport, or in fact spectator sport as a bit of firework flew off into the crowd and hit someone. but very amusing. then a huge firework sculpture went off too, with virgen del guadalope written on the top in fireworks. it swizzled around and generally was very entertaining.

saturday i went to some museums and galleries of which there are many in oaxaca. i also acquired some more books, the sandcastle by iris murdoch which is very good so far, and my first ever iris murdoch book. and also a book called the labyrinth of solitude by octavio paz, who is a mexican writer, it is essays on the nature of mexican people and their differences with for example north americans and other people. quite deep and wordy but very interesting. need to apply more than my usual brain power when reading it so consequently not getting through it very fast.

saturday evening me and my classmates milled around looking at various bits of music that were going on, and supposedly more fireworks though they didn't materialise. we watched my pan pipe band again which made me happy. we laughed at a man who was sitting all serious on a bench holding loads of helium balloons. i made jenny take a photo of him, it's on her blog you can go and see it. we wondered how many helium balloons it would take to lift a small child, say of 1 year old, off the ground. and obviously he would have to be attached to the ground at the other end otherwise it could be disastrous. we figured maybe around 1000, or maybe it would be easier instead to just fill the child with helium directly.

sunday i left my mother teresa house - mother and father teresa had by this point returned from visiting family in puebla. i suppose mother teresa would be mightily relieved at me leaving due to the huge amount of extra work it had created for her. i went to the bus station and got my 9am bus to villahermosa, a 13 hour journey, to the northeast. the first 5 hours or so were up and down mountains on very wiggly roads which made me feel sick. then it straightened out a bit and i managed to read my book for a bit. we stopped at a roadside restaurant where there was a little playground and 2 monkeys in a cage. i managed to look at them without having my usual phobic reaction and going all weird, so perhaps that one is cured now. i talked to a mexican man called tito who spoke very good english and had been hoping i was german so he could practise his german on me. we arrived around 10 and i hung out in villahermosa bus station and ate a sandwich while waiting for my next bus to chetumal on the belizean border. i got chatting to javier, a mexican man from veracruz. he had a bright orange jumper on and a baseball hat, for this reason i had though he was american and had started talking to him in english. he looked after my bags while i bought my sandwich, and helped me find my bus and generally was very sweet. he then took a photo of me with his phone and got my number and said he was now my friend in veracruz. which was nice if a bit over friendly, but this is how mexicans often are. it can be quite disconcerting for us reserved english people.

my next bus was non-eventful, i took some valium and slept soundly until we arrived around 9am. i then sat in chetumal bus station for a few hours and drank a coffee and read an international newspaper i had found. i read about the pound being equal to the euro and realised that the recession is really rather serious. i had thought the pickles household in england was typically over reacting by changing all the lightbulbs to energy efficient ones but it seemed that padre pepinillo was, as ever, one step ahead of the game.

i got my next bus which took me to belize city over the border. i had to pay a departure tax of 40 belize dollars, which is around 10 pounds. the canadian boy i met had only had to pay 20 belize dollars, i don't know why it varies but will investigate, perhaps they are more keen that english people stay so charge them more to leave? turned out the canadian boy's name was nelson lamb, which i think is on a par of funny name-ness with lucy pickles and i told him so. we travelled the last bit of my bus journey together and chatted about mexico and things. he had been studying for 5 months in puebla, and also hadn't seen any mexican wrestling. i finally arrived back in san ignacio at 5.30pm. has to be the longest bus journey i've ever done. which i don't mind too much in itself as it is cheap and in mexico at least, the buses are good quality. i only mind because i now have 4 bags to carry due to my 8kg of english grammar books from guzman. if i could throw these away i would but i will need them at some stage. i managed to throw away a few things i hadn't been using much which was cathartic, but i still definitely have far too much stuff. anyway, my clothes are once again rejoicing at being hung up in robert's house, and it is nice to be back in belize actually, despite the rain. last night we had dinner with marius, a photographer from lithuania who is making a photo book of belize with robert flying him around to take the photos. marius is the rudest person i've ever met and i told him so.

today i washed my clothes and tidied up and am now about to eat some spaghetti and watch a film.

fame on someone else´s blog

my friend jenny in my spanish school is writing a blog and hers has pictures, and now i´m jealous. i appear on her blog in both written and photograph form, you can see it here along with her views on oaxaca so far etc:

http://szabotsang.blogspot.com/

so my new year´s resolution is to add pictures to mine. i know my writing is amazing but apparently a picture speaks 1000 words right, so that will be a lot less writing by that formula. watch this space...

in other news we went to a little chamber music concert last night. it was nice to see some live music, but slightly scratchy and a little off time and out of tune, no offence to the mexican musicians or anything. there was a wobbly paving stone and i worried my chair would fall through it during the concert. today is dia del virgen de guadulope, the patron saint of mexico, we went to a church earlier to see what was happening, it was really busy. the children all dress up in traditional mexican dress, and the boys paint moustaches on their faces as apparently this virgin first appeared to a mexican man with a moustache. then they pose for photos infront of little religious scenic pictures. tonight there are fireworks.

earth horse

today´s title is my chinese year horoscope animal. i am the year of the horse, and specifically the earth horse. you can have water horses, and fire horses, and probably air horses too. this came up in today´s spanish conversation class as there are 2 japanese girls in it too so we were talking about different traditions and religions and superstitions.

my casa here in oaxaca is still lovely, but i am not in it much, just in the morning for breakfast, and when i get home to get in my big bed and do my homework. mother teresa and her husband whose name i don´t know, but he can be father teresa, went to puebla yesterday until friday, but the 3 daughters are in the house and winnie the dog and all the birds. during the nights there are huge dog barking contests on the rooftops, and random fireworks going off, perhaps because it is december. this morning there was a big crash as 2 lorries hit each other on the corner outside. over breakfast yesterday i was chatting to mother teresa, here is our conversation (transcribed from the spanish)

me-do you often have students to stay
mother teresa-no not much
me-oh really why not, do you not like it
mt-no
me-oh.
mt-*silence*
me-oh well i suppose it´s a lot of work
mt-yes for me it is a lot of work

so that was nice. mother teresa by name but not by nature. then she packed up her packed lunch and off they went to puebla. she is, despite this, quite amiable. and i don´t think it is too much work to make me a little breakfast every morning and some juice and a coffee, i´m not a very demanding house guest. i even ate the scrambled eggs she served me which as a rule i don´t normally do.

i have finally bought a new pencil, i was searching alto y bajo for one of those bic ones that you twizzle and the lead comes out, but they don´t have them in mexico. sarah/rod - could you bring some out in january please. i can send a catalogue number if you are unsure which ones i mean.

spanish classes are going well, i did my research on the queen (thanks mum for the info too), and reported back to them today. they asked some more questions, so i made up the answers. i learnt today that japan has an emperor, but he doesn´t really have much power. and that black cats are lucky in most countries, i think they are unlucky though in england, especially if they cross your path. and the number 4 in japan is unlucky as it is the same word as death. and in china, but even more so there, they don´t have 4th floors on hotels for example. and hong kong has it´s own currency, this i don´t understand as it is part of china.

yesterday evening me and jenny from my course (who is also writing a blog of her trip) went to see breakfast at tiffany´s at the free little cinema at the top of town. it´s a little room under some arches, and they project the films from a computer onto the wall. it´s free, and this month´s theme is food and film, so on friday they are showing 2 buñuel films - el angel exterminador, and el discreto encanto de burgouises, which i will try to see as they are brilliant. he was a friend of salvador dali and other such nonsense surrealists, and he lived the last part of his life in mexico. oaxaca is generally a very cool place, there are loads of galleries, museums, churches, things going on. tomorrow there is a chamber orchestra concert, it´s also free so i´m dragging people to that too whether they like it or not. this is another ´first since leaving england´ event for me. perhaps i´ll take a clothes hanger with me as a surrealist token of my affection.

today i went to an english school to ask about jobs. seemed nice and informal, and hopeful. they are having trouble with mexican immigration who are insisting that as of january they have to have only 10% of the staff non-mexican. i guess this is because oaxaca has unemployment issues, it is not a nationwide policy i don´t think, as the school in guzman was mainly american teachers. anyway, richard, who i spoke to there - the first thing he said was my boss said we should hire you based on your name alone. i said well it´s good to know it´s good for something. this is why if i ever get married i won´t change it. i didn´t tell him that, that would have been a bit too much to say at a first meeting. he had long grey hair and a picture of some native mexicans on his wall, and also one of john lennon.

i have also been in touch with some other schools and hope to visit them tomorrow and friday.

this afternoon we went on a trip to a hotel which was previously a convent and was built in the 16th century. we saw a very old bedroom with furniture from the 16th century. there are lots of ghosts in the hotel and we kept trying to get our guide to tell us ghost stories, but he didn´t want to sully the reputation of the hotel so only told us one, and it was pretty lame. there are underground tunnels linking all the churches and old convents in oaxaca so in the past the monks could move from one to another without getting caught. there must be more of a story to that story because i don´t know why they couldn´t just take the bus.

today´s things i have to research for friday´s conversation class are
where are blueberries from
what is the biggest city in the world (size and population wise)
when was buddha´s birthday
why is the number 13 unlucky

i also have to get my degree certificate apostilled. this sounds like some religious process. i will investigate.

adios x

clothes hangers

hello from oaxaca my esteemed readers (of which i hope there are some left somewhere in the universe)

today i hung all my clothes up for the first time since the 24th july 2008. this was very very exciting, and i will never take wardrobes and clothes hangers for granted ever again, i had forgotten they existed. quel luxury! how strange to be so enamoured by clothes hangers but i really am. no more the scrumpled up creases in my trousers. once more into the breach my friends. i think the excitement has intoxicated me.

another first today was i just had a moka frio - also known as a cold coffee. i`m not sure how i feel about them, for now i will give it 65% as an experience, but it was a bit too chocolatey for my liking, which made it lose 30% and the other 5% it lost for having too much whipped cream and therefore being bad for my arteries. whilst partaking of said coffee, the waiter asked me where i was from, and when i explained what i was doing here - planning to teach english - he asked if he could learn with me, as it is very important to learn english etc etc. so perhaps he will be my first student when i return in el ano nuevo.

whilst rating my coffee i made a list of strange things i have noticed the mexicans do:
put chili on everything and i mean everything
get themselves crucified during semana santa, so they can share jesus`s pain
drink coffee through very thin little straws
have an obsession with soap operas
celebrate day of the postman
make huge bizarre animals from the pulp of a certain type of tree and wheel them through mexico city in a big parade called desfile de las alebrijes (written about in a previous blog)

i will keep updating this list as i go along but that`s it for now.

on saturday i finished reading middlesex while eating my hostel breakfast. a very good book, i give it 96%. i felt it was almost too dense (not meaning stupid) in parts, and also there could have been more dialogue perchance, but an amazing story and so well told. has anyone read the virgin suicides which he wrote previous to this? is it the same as the film of the same name? i am now trying to exchange middlesex for another good book but no luck as yet- the last hostel had such literary gems as jeffrey archer and stephen king to offer. have started reading remains of the day, by kazuo ishiguro which so far is typically very impressive.

***stop press - i have decided to ban my usage of the word nice from my blog as on reading it back i realised i use it far too much***

after my breakfast i ventured into the cold of mexico city with scarf and new school uniform cardigan to keep me warm. i went first to el museo de la ciudad de mexico. the actual permanent exhibition was closed, the one about the history of the city of mexico, but there was a really amazing exhibition of luis barragan, a mexican architect who hung out with david hockney (he was in a photo with him at one point anyway), and designed a house in napa valley, california for francis ford coppola but this house never got built. it was pink and purple and had an observatory. you can read more about him here if you like, his house in mexico city is a unesco world heritage site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Barragan
dad, have you heard of him? he only died in 1988.

the next exhibition was of la lucha libre - mexican wrestling. lots of wrestling masks and great photos and film footage of crazy wrestling matches. i couldn`t work out if it is a bit like the wwf in that do they just pretend and act it all up a bit, but i think it`s fairly real, there`s real blood and they seem to take it quite seriously, though i don`t know how they can when they`re all dressed up like big nancies.

then there was an exhibition of photos of day of the dead altars from various parts of mexico, mainly from michoachan, where they make a very big deal of it. this mainly just reminded me that i don`t have a camera at the moment. and also does anyone else when they go to art galleries, instead of looking at the actual art just look at your own reflection in the glass of the frame? i suppose it`s an interesting philosophical comment on how art is a reflection of life. or perhaps it`s just a really stupid comment from someone that can`t be bothered to properly appreciate art.

i recovered by having a tuna sandwich and looking at some book shops, this always renews me when i`m tired. then i carried on along avenida hidalgo (miguel hidalgo was the founder of the mexican revolution and lots of streets are named after him) to museo nacional del arte. lots of great bits of art by diego rivera, clemente orozco, david siqueiros, and jose velasco gomez. my feet were hurting by now so i went to sit down outside the palacio de bellas artes, then moved to have a nap in the park nearby. as i was wandering in the square later on the way back to my hostel a random mexican came up with some postcards and i had to tell him which were my favourite 3. sadly he didn`t want me to give them all percentages, which i would have been happy to do. then on one of them i had to write something inspirational, for which i couldn`t think of anything (how could this be from such an amazing writer as you lucy i hear you cry), so i plagiarised a line from max ehrman`s desiderata ha. then he said they send the postcards to people, and i get an email but i`m not sure exactly why or when or how. i gave some money to the organ grinder man who was grinding his organ (oo er) nearby, mainly because they must never get any money from anyone and i was feeling sympathetic. then i did some more wandering, and bought a sudoku book because i am middle aged. nothing else of note happened that day. the strange metallurgist from montreal i had met the previous night while eating my free spaghetti was nowhere to be seen which was a relief as he was quite strange in a napoleon dynamite way but without the coolness. he had regaled me over the spaghetti with a very detailed and boring tale of how he had nearly lost his shoe on the metro in rush hour that afternoon.

sunday i got a minibus shuttle bus from the hostel all the way to oaxaca - this was very handy as if this didn`t exist i would have had to lug all my bags to the bus station in a taxi and get on a proper big bus. there was me and 3 australian girls on the minibus, and the driver ricardo. i acted as translator as they had no spanish and i have a little and ricardo only had a little english. we stopped off to see various cactuses of note along the way, one that was 500 years old. ricardo also pointed out other interesting varieties of plants, and told us that 60% of all cactus varieties in the world exist in mexico. you can imagine my delight at hearing a percentage fact, so i noted it down at once. we (or rather they) took photos of the big panoramic views from the tops of the curvy roads, and ricardo told us that these mountains (the sierra madre occidental) were formed when the tectonic plates of the pacific and the sea on the other side (um i can`t remember its name) crashed together. he pointed out different colours of rocks and told us what minerals they contained to make them those colours. he pointed out all the smog above mexico city when we were leaving, and told us it wasn`t smog or pollution, but steam. he said the same as we approached oaxaca. i`m not sure i believe him. he was a nice man, and knew a lot of things, and i wouldn`t want to argue with a mexican about his own country, but i have to disagree on this one fact. how and why would mexico city be covered in a layer of steam? they don`t even have kettles here. but they do have a lot of pollutant rich cars. hmmmm. the plot thickens.

we stopped at a little restaurant for lunch and read the menu and asked lots of questions about it for some time, then i ordered queso fundido. this is essentially a big lump of melted cheese, with a few bits of chorizo and mushroom with it, that you put in a tortilla. it was filling, but not very exciting. the australian girls were very amiable (note non-usage of the word nice) and i have since updated my stereotype image of australian travellers, as i had also met a nice one in my hostel in mexico city, and met 2 more later in my hostel in oaxaca. i thought the first one must have been a glitch in the matrix, but 6 nice ones in 2 days was too much to be a coincidence, so they have gone up on the virtual percentage scale considerably.

another thing we saw on our journey in the little shuttle bus was lots of men running with a torch at the side of the road, then passing the torch on to the next man who then starts running, and a little lorry follows infront of them, which they run on to once they have run their little bit of the running. we found out that this is all to do with the celebrations of the virgen de guadalupe, which happen on 12th december, which is this friday. they are basically doing a sort of pilgrimage in honour of the virgen, and this all culminates in big fiestas and ceremonies on friday, which will be interesting to see in oaxaca. the mexicans are very fanatical catholics, there are images of el virgen everywhere, she is more important in catholicism than jesus i believe. every house or shop you go to or taxi you get in is usually full of very religious iconography, and there are loads of churches everywhere, and shrines by the side of roads etc. i think by the end of my time in mexico i will be a devout catholic. mexico is around 85% catholic, there also exists judaism, christianity, mormons. it is interesting that it is so hugely popular and strong when it was a religion enforced on them by the conquistadors when they invaded. anyone got any suggestions? semana santa (easter week) is obviously the most important, but more on that later (ie in march or april).

we got to oaxaca sunday early evening. ricardo took me to the house i am staying at, but there was nobody there, and nobody answering the mobile phone, so i went to hostel paulina on the other side of town. it was very clean and comfy, and i met the 2 aforementioned nice australians, and a girl from denmark called cristal. reminded me of crystal tips, a book i used to read when i was younger. we went for a walk around el zocalo (the main square, what in europe would be la plaza mayor). my new mexican mother, who is called teresa, and who will therefore be referred to from now on as mother teresa, then called me as i had left her a note, to ask me what happened etc. it is hard to figure out in a foreign language on a mobile phone if someone is cross with you or not. she had gone to the bus station to pick me up while i was at her house ringing the door bell. this was a misunderstanding, i had mentioned in a previous email that i would probably arrive at 4pm but would ring to confirm. and i hadn`t, so i am prepared to take 50% of the blame. after this i ate a sandwich and some crisps and slept deeply and homelessly.

today - monday. i went to my spanish school which i am doing for the week. we had 2 hours of grammar with judith, who has very long hair and looks like she`s probably an artist too in the afternoons. we did the subjunctive mainly. then we had 2 hours of conversation with nora who had a blue headband on. we talked about christmas and religion, and superstitions and the queen. there`s 2 of us in this class, me and jenny who is from california. in the grammar class there is also a girl called laura who is from america but has a polish surname and a mexican boyfriend. again my lack of knowledge about the country i am from was highlighted - can anyone inform me re the queen - is she just a public figure, tourist attraction, or does she have a lot of actual power, eg political, governmental? then i went to my house and finally met mother teresa. she is short and round and friendly, and has a beautiful house. which brings me full circle to my clothes hangers. there are also lots of canaries, like in rosa`s house, and a little dog called winnie. he is noisy and playful and has long hair over his eyes. if i knew more about dogs i`d tell you what type of dog he is, but i don`t. i have a double bed, a wardrobe with clothes hangers as you know, some tables, and my own bathroom with really hot shower. there is a a roof terrace too. i could barely bring myself to leave the room to go and wander round town as i was so overwhelmed at having all this space to myself. in the end i left and here i am now. i have been carrying my dirty washing round town all evening as i couldn`t find a laundry. now i`m going to go home to mi casa bonita and do my homework for tomorrow.

bonus points if you read this far, you get a free mexican fact of the day. nora told us that here they don`t believe in santa claus, but in the three wise men, it is them that bring presents to children in mexico. and also that to expel evil spirits here they wave an egg infront of you because an egg is neutral and therefore absorbs all the bad energies from your body. then you break the egg in a bowl and it changes colour infront of your very eyes. nora had done this and it is really true.

distancia

i have an answer to my own question
the distance to mexico city from london is 5557 miles (8943 kilometres, or 4829 nautical miles)

homenaje a cielo

i think the title of today`s blog means homage to sky, but i haven`t got the brain power to bother checking in my spanish dictionary.

we left guzman this morning and i am now in mexico city, and skye will be in the sky somewhere. nacho (the owner of ictc where we did our tefl course, mentioned in previous blog as it was he who lent me la bicibura, and also who picked me up from the bus station on my first day in guzman 2 hours late due to a time change - but now that i know him a bit better i can accuse him of it being due to his having a hangover that morning which is indeed the truth) picked us up from our houses and took us to his house in guzman where we were transferred to his dad who drove us to guadalajara, which was very nice of him, otherwise we would have had to take the bus, and that would have been stressful, though we would have got a free can of mango juice on it. nacho used to be the number 1 tennis player in mexico, but doesn`t play anymore. they have a very big house with a library, can you believe. which tangentially reminds me that this week in guadalajara it is the international festival of books - bizarre that it happens here when in mexico the national average of book-reading is half a book a year. nacho said it`s so that the world has the impression that mexico is into reading books. how mexican of them, i like it. the featured country this year is italy, which would explain the italian art exhibition me jen and joe stumbled on last weekend in gdl. when we got to skye`s house i noticed after a while that nacho wouldn`t actually come in past the tiny little dog who was growling and barking madly at him, which really made me laugh. he said once a dog had bitten him. the dog then ran up on the roof and carried on barking like a mad dog.

anyway i digress. so mr nacho senior got us to gdl safely, not sure skye enjoyed being in a car too much and she was in quite a lot of pain. we stopped off to see some friends of hers, i went and got a chocolate brownie as was flagging a bit, and also slightly distressed to be in gdl after planning on not visiting it again so soon. the sun was shining so it wasn`t too bad and there was a nice fountain to look at while i ate my brownie, how superficial of me. then we got a taxi to the airport, the taxi driver was listening to opera excerpts, so obviously scored 100% on my approval scale. i like to rate everything i do with a %, it makes things much easier to understand and compare and contrast. for example, right now i`m 0% hungry (i just ate free hostel spaghetti), and 80% tired, 90% hoping i am still awake enough to finish reading my book tonight, and only 20ish% travelling wall-ed.

a nice lady at the check-in in gdl brought us a wheelchair and i pushed skye around in it, a la andy and lou of little britain. we even started calling each other andy and lou. i was lou. skye managed to carry off the greasy hair and headband look quite convincingly as andy. we got priority boarding on to our flight which was exciting as it was a busy flight. there was a blind man too, i offered to carry his bag but perhaps he was deaf too. i managed to not be scared on the flight, which was a major achievement for me, i looked out of the window at take-off and landing and even at one point when we were inside a cloud. i had a whiskey too, because it was free, not because i`m an alcoholic. mexico city airport is massive, and we had to get a taxi to a different terminal, me with the luggage trolley and skye in her wheelchair with an airport man pushing her. we had a lot of luggage between us, mainly lots of grammar text books we picked up on the course, some of which skye had to remove from her luggage as it was 2kg overweight. the check-in lady wasn`t very helpful and probably wouldn`t have cared if we tried to explain that the extra weight was grammar. then another man appeared to push skye around into the business class lounge and that was that, and i went off to join a long taxi queue. so skye i hope that you recover fully in the probably much safer medical care of england (no offence mexico but you know what i mean), and with your family looking after you, and i hope to see you back here very soon with both legs working properly.

my taxi driver was nice - people in mexico city are much friendlier than in gdl i`m sure - and he talked to me about mexican stuff, and what oaxaca is like - he said it was nice. i am staying at the hostel catedral in the centre behind the cathedral, i came here last time i was in mex city and saw a really good band playing. so i asked the guy at reception if there was some music again and he pointed to a sign on the wall that said suspension de actividades, and explained that just that morning the council had come in wanting to shut the whole hostel down. they wanted all the guests to get out right there and then, and to close the whole place down. apparently there had been a complaint from next door which is a nightclub, so i guess it`s because the hostel are taking business away from the club. the guy in the hostel said probably they just have to give them a big enough bribe and all will be ok because this is mexico. i hope so as me and sarah bullock are supposed to be staying here for new year`s eve, so if it doesn`t exist that will be a problem. i got free spaghetti for dinner, it`s included as is breakfast, which is really exciting when you`re counting every peso.

other than today`s adventures which i will soon go and recover from by sleeping a lot, the last few days in guzman were fairly non eventful, which was just what i needed. wandered around the town, got some photos developed from the crap disposable camera i had to buy in baja last week due to my broken one - all the photos have my finger over the lens pretty much, and the quality is quite bad, but it`s always exciting going to pick up photos from having them developed - so old fashioned. we did some wheelchair trips out, i pushed skye into a hole one day - the pavements here are really not designed for wheelchairs, especially ones being pushed by partially sighted people, ie me. we tried to watch some dvds but they were all in spanish. i bought a new cardigan from a school uniform shop. we had our last guzman don rigo hamburger from the best hamburger stall in all of mexico. i saw a big spider in my bathroom (at rosa`s where i stayed again). we found a good place for chips so ate quite a lot of chips one evening.

there is a big ice rink in the square in mex city just where i`m staying, and loads of christmas lights up. weird being christmassy where the weather is still summery, quite disorientating. hope you are all enjoying the snow and rain in england, that`s all for today.

pepinillo cansada x

la silla de ruedas

so i seem to have hit a metaphorical travelling wall, rather like the marathon wall you apparently hit around 20 miles. i still want to be here, but it is tiring - on friday night i plan on leaving guzman where i returned to on monday, for oaxaca, to check it out for jobs, and to do another week of spanish lessons. this is all good and will be useful, especially the job hunting, but it is essentially more of the same - getting on a bus, getting to a hostel, having the same old chat with the same old travellers, then doing another homestay with another mexican family and still not having my own place to stay with my own stuff in it and my own bathroom and my own meal times, and maybe radio 4 to wake me up in the mornings. i know that i wanted to get away from having my own stuff and the materiality of london life, but after 4 months of moving around it would be nice if i could teleport back in time for a while to my own bed and my bike and my routine. i keep hearing about the snow in england - i love those crispy blue sky mornings with frost and everyone`s wearing scarves and hats and gloves. i know the reality of being there is not the rose tinted vision i have of it from here in my travelling wall state, the grass is always greener, the snow is always whiter etc. anyway, that is just a small insight into my psychological state today.

to continue the ongoing saga of pickles in south america (slightly wrong title in fact as mexico is not in south america, but anyway).

last friday i arrived in guadalajara and met up with my friend jen and her fiance joe. i spelt his name without an e in a previous blog, which apparently makes him a girl, which he isn`t - sorry joe. jen and joe live in california, they like riding motorbikes, and would like to also open a restaurant called jjs. joe works for google which is very interesting. he is very clever and knows the answer to lots of random question we thought were answerless, like what would you do if you were driving in a horse and cart and you got a flat tire? they are such big tires that you can`t carry a spare on the roof. he explained it would most likely be the spoke that broke as they are wooden, but if the actual iron wheel broke you could staple it back together and do other technical things that made sense when he explained them but i can`t remember them now. he is from detroit which is also interesting as i am still reading middlesex which is mainly set there. i also learnt about what the dust bowl was in america - it was when a huge cloud of dust blew over loads of the southern states because they had been trying to grow too much wheat due to the depression and the soil wasn`t good enough and too shallow, and it all blew away. and apparently you won`t be able to plant anything there for another 1000 years or so. jen works in recruitment in california but doesn`t like it as her boss makes her hand write christmas and labour day and thanksgiving cards to their clients all the time. they have 2 cats who get on well.

so they had done the sensible thing and booked a nice hotel in the centre of downtown guadalajara (which i will refer to as gdl from now on as it far too long and stupid a word to keep typing). i on the other hand had booked a hostel a bit out of downtown gdl. i am so over hostels..... when i got back there around 1230 on friday night after dinner and drinks, there was a huge party going on in the hostel garden, and i had to have a top bunk which i don`t like - it makes me feel ungrounded. so i put my ear plugs in and read my book and felt really middle aged but also didn`t really care because i suppose i am now middle aged. the next day - saturday - we went for breakfast then did some good middle aged sightseeing and museums etc. gdl is quite grotty and i didn`t exactly fall in love with it, the way i did with most of peru and bolivia. the people are not as friendly as in other parts of mexico, but that is inevitable with any big city. the taxi drivers don`t have a clue where anything is - whenever i had to get a taxi from downtown to my hostel, i had to show them my map, which they studied for quite a while, then kept asking other taxi driver on the way if they knew where my street was. they obviously don`t make them do the knowledge like in london. i know that things happen differently (ie slower and bit more confusingly) in mexico, and that`s fine, but even when i asked to be taken to the bus station i had to show him where it was on a map.... it could i suppose be my still crap spanish that is the problem.

we went to see the palacio gobierno, which has a very famous orozco mural, called the liberation. orozco was in fact from guzman, my little town, but moved around a lot and did murals all over mexico, and also in california i think. his most famous one is called hombre de fuego, i think we saw that too but i can`t remember. the other famous mexican muralist is diego rivera, who was married to frida kahlo. i saw some of his murals in mexico city and they are much more detailed and precise - he shows whole massive histories all in one mural, a bit like those where`s wally pictures. then a strange man called xiao lin who was a volunteer guide there asked us if we`d seen the other mural there, we hadn`t so he took us to it. then he sat us down and barked at us that he was fluent in 8 languages, and was from mexico (i don`t believe him with a name like that, plus he looked like mr miyagi from karate kid), and that everyone except him was stupid, especially that group of school students and their teachers over there, who were trying to understand the mural from their guidebook. nobody can learn anything from books he said. he then said he had learnt all he knows from books, especially all his 8 languages. when i told him i was from england, he asked me if i knew what was written on the queen`s crown. not really no. apparently it`s a french motto (one of his 8 languages). finally he explained some things about the mural, which were, despite his madness, quite interesting and helpful. they depict things like the revolution and the fight with the french (they invaded in the early 19th century), the fight for independence from the americans etc. benito juarez was on a lot of them, he was the country`s first indigenous president and did a lot of good things. hernando cortes was the leader of the spanish conquistadors and appeared on some of them, as did mussolini and karl marx in one about communism and fascism. as you can probably tell i don`t yet have a full grasp on mexican history.

after this we went to a photography exhibition by edward curtis, who was an american who took amazing photos of the native american indians around the year 1900. there was a copy of a letter to him from president roosevelt who had written to him to tell him how important his photos were in documenting the fast decreasing native american tribes. they were decreasing because the americans were trying to buy all their land from them. mexico used to comprise the now american states of california, new mexico, and texas. here is a website about edward curtis, it is probably more historically informative and accurate than my ramblings
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ienhtml/curthome.html

and here you can see the speech that gran jefe sioux de seattle sent to el presidente de estados unidos when asked if they would sell them their land. i tried to read most of it in the museum, it`s all in spanish so couldn`t fully understand it, but it seems very moving
http://www.forovegetariano.org/foro/archive/index.php/t-1096.html

we also went to see some more murals at a place called el hospicio de cabanas, which also had an italian design exhibition on. joe told us some things about the drainage system in the hospicio which was interesting. we thought we could hear the sea but it must have been a fountain. gdl has absolutely loads of fountains. one had a particularly impressive fountain show on with lots of different fountain bits that kept changing direction and speed. just needed some jean michel jarre music and it would have been complete. i tried to look for a new camera but couldn`t bring myself to commit to buying one as am still in denial that mine has broken after only having it for 4 months.

we then went to el parque agua azul, in the south of downtown. there was an aviary and a butterfly house and an orchid house there. not many of these were open, mainly because this is mexico and that`s how it is. we did however see lots of girls in large ball gowns having their photos taken, and a few wedding couples too. we figured it must be quincineras for the girls - this is the big celebration they have at turning 15 - it`s a really big deal here and in other parts of central america. there are whole streets dedicated to quincinera dress shops. jen and joe posed for some similar type photos by the little lake too and generally it was all quite surreal. we then got a bus back to our part of town, which we forgot to get off in the right place so stayed on for quite a few blocks in the wrong direction. we got a bus back the right way, and a spaceman got on it at one stop. he was dressed in like a star wars storm tropper outfit, all white plastic, with a little purple cape too. he had to stand as the bus was busy, which was probably good because i don`t know how you`d sit down in one of those outfits. i guess he must have been doing some promotional work or something. everyone was giggling at him, but he kept a very straight face, you get used to it i suppose. he spent the next ten minutes wiring up his mobile phone headset, which made it even more amusing.

we hung out at jen and joe`s hotel for a bit to recover from our sightseeing fatigue. there was a very helpful man there who answered all the questions we had. i made a mental note to mention him on my blog - his name was merced. he told me that huarache is a fried tortilla with meat on it, peinecillo is a particular cut of beef, as is arrachera and tampiquena, sope is like a mixture between a huarache and a sandwich, huevos divorciados (literally divorced eggs) is 2 fried eggs, one with red sauce and one with green sauce, mollete is a type of bread. he told us a nice restaurant to eat at which we did the next night. that night we ate at sirloin steakhouse, a sort of buffet place - i had a burger. when we went in and the woman on the desk realised we weren`t mexican she sent a tannoy announcement around to get someone to come and help her who could speak english. while we were eating we kept hearing the tannoy and wondering if it meant help me with these stupid foreigners, every time.

sunday we got the bus to tlaquepaque (which i will shorten to tlq as it is equally ridiculous to write). tlq is a little town a few miles south of gdl, it is very artistic and ceramic, and clean and tidy and nothing like gdl. i had in fact applied for a job here, but didn`t find the school i`d applied to, plus had decided by this point i wanted to live in oaxaca so wasn`t quite as bothered. there are some nice churches, and museums and artisan type shops, and a good book shop. we went for some lunch, we ordered nachos, they brought some nachos anyway as a free starter, so we had lots of nachos, then they brought our quesadillas which had more nachos with them, then they brought our side order of guacamole which was in fact nachos with guacamole. we felt sick after this.

we went to plaza de mariachi later back in gdl downtown. it`s a grotty little street where mariachi men in their cute little uniforms hang out. i can`t work out if it`s part of the mariachi style to play out of tune and out of time, or whether they were just despondent and old. joe didn`t like them, so we said no to their offer of music, but after a while they started playing at the table next to us. we looked over and saw that they were playing for just one sad old cowboy complete with cowboy hat and bottle of corona. this was quite amusing and bizarre - cowboy looked really glum, i was trying to work out what could have made him come to that street and ask for a few mariachi songs all on his own, not as a tourist or anything - perhaps he used to be a musician, or maybe he`d just had his heart broken (that`s what all the songs are about). jen by this point was crying with laughter. i had ordered a coffee from the bar we were at, the man said they didn`t have them, but then when i looked crestfallen he went to some coffee shop round the corner to get one from there, then brought it to me as though it was from his own bar. i asked if he had any milk. no he said. mexico is so funny.

we went to the recommended restaurant later that night, which was really nice. i was convinced it was full of drug cartel mafia men as there were lots of groups of well-dressed men having their dinner there and smoking cigarettes and looking serious and businesslike. there was a saxophone player who wandered round playing his saxophone all around the restaurant. i don`t think it was kenny g but it could have been.

on sundays they close a lot of the streets in gdl for cyclists and runners which is nice, but not enough of an incentive to get me to live there. other than this the traffic is crazy, you would not want to cycle there. the people are not friendly enough for my standards - especially at the bus station, the taxi drivers may as well be from another planet the amount they don`t know, and there aren`t enough coffee shops. other than that, gdl is an ok city, and i had a nice time with jen and joe, but was glad to leave on monday afternoon for guzman again. especially after jen found a big bug in her tortilla soup - the kitchen staff`s reaction was one that implied this happened often.

i got the bus to guzman which took around 4 hours as it was the slow bus from the old bus station not the fast one i`d taken to get there originally. nice scenery once we were out of the city, mountains and the odd lake and flocks of birds. i met up with skye and her housemates marie, manu and helen, and we went for sushi. skye is a lot better but not fully mobile, she can walk with crutches, and is planning on flying back to england on saturday if all goes according to plan.

yesterday - tuesday - i did some freaking out at how much stuff i seem to have acquired, and how seriously it is not going to fit in my bag. then i accompanied skye and her mexican mum gina to her hospital check up appointment. we waited 2.5 hours (this is mexico), ate some biscuits, drank some coffee, then saw dr torres. dr torres is the mexican real life equivalent of the doctor in the simpsons. i always expect him to say skye you will never walk again, and then guffaw with laughter. when we finally went into his office he was chatting away about a madonna concert, and guffawing about something. his office is decorated as it should be with plastic moulds of various different parts of the body, some with ligaments too and posters of muscles and veins. he didn`t actually check up how skye`s leg was, but discussed insurance and that yes she should go home if she can etc etc. he then printed her out a letter for insurance purposes with details of her accident and treatment. there ensued a farcical 10 minutes of both him and skye signing the letters but realising the details were slightly wrong, so reprinting them with the right name but wrong age, then vice versa, then signing them anyway then tearing them up, then also tearing up the correct ones that he printed out. i suppose this made up for the 3 hour wait.

and today i`m going in a minute to push skye around town in her wheelchair, in a little britain type way. i will leave you with some comments and questions

where do cows and horses come from originally - ie the cows and horses over here are they originally from europe, and if so how did they get here?

how many miles is mexico from england?

i keep hearing about pirate attacks on ships in somalia, does anyone else?

i got in the national newspaper in belize - when robert´s friend mick took the photos of the flooding in belize last month, we put the photos on cd with mine and robert`s names on, and these then went to the paper, so underneath the photos they published it says photo taken by robert combs and lucy pickles. my fake moment of fame ha ha.