chancellor of the exchequer

we are now in san miguel de allende, an hour north of queretaro where we wrote our last blog from. or rather ghost sarah ghost wrote it. and i was very impressed with it as i hope you all were. one addendum is that my glasses aren't really that straight anymore, they did seem to be for a day or two as we got them straightened in mexico city, but they seem to be wonky again now. i am starting to think it might actually be my whole face, or both my eyes, that are in fact wonky, and not the glasses. another addendum is that i have since found out that sarah also once got stung by a wasp on her back too. i don't think i've met anyone with that many wasp and bee sting stories. i have never been stung by a wasp or a bee, but i did get stung by a jellyfish in los cabos, which i forgot to mention at the time, so now is a good time to mention it. i think it just brushed past me and didn't fully grab me, but nonetheless it hurt a lot, and i'm glad it wasn't so bad that the only remedy would have been weeing on myself, or getting someone else to wee on me. luckily it was on my foot so it wouldn't have been too awful if someone did have to wee on it i suppose. and that someone would have been robert i suppose.

after the ghost blog writing, we had returned home to our bed (and ghost breakfast) after a panini in the square. the panini waiter said i saw you this morning having a crepe for breakfast. he then said ah ha you are from england the land of the rhymes. we looked quizically at him, and he started banging on about having a picture or something. after a while it turned out he was saying a butcher's, as in a butcher's hook, as in a look, as in cockney rhyming slang, and then some apples and pears. it was all ok in the end, but quite strange at the time. after this i got really bad indigestion, i think from all the cheese consumed, but perhaps the panini waiter had put some strange hex on me. we marvelled at how amazingly well folded all our washing was that we had given to the b(&b) to do that morning, and how cheap - 42 pesos to wash, dry and iron and fold it and put it all in a vacuum packed bag for us. that's around 2 pounds.

today we have just been sitting on a rooftop cafe place here in san miguel eating chocolate brownies and drinking a)a cup of tea, and b)a beer, depending if you are a)lucy, or b)sarah. i seem to have become extremely middle-aged since stopping smoking, i hope sarah isn't having the most boringly sedate holiday of her whole life, but i suspect she is. pretty much the craziest thing we've done so far is have 2 quesadillas in one day from the same quesadilla stall, and then feel cheese sick for the rest of the day. bit like a hangover but not quite as rock and roll. we have vowed to make up for this ridiculously well behaved behaviour when rod arrives and we hit the beach next week. perhaps i'll push the boat out and stay awake past 11pm.

so, basically we left queretaro yesterday morning on another amazing mexican bus. we had fruit for breakfast as we didn't want to fill up on mexican food too early in the day. when we got on the bus they give you a little bag with a sandwich in it, and as soon as we sat down i had wolfed my sandwich down. i told sarah she could eat hers too by taking out the ham (she is vegetarian, and it had cheese and ham in). she said that perhaps she would do that at lunch time, and not 5 seconds after breakfast number1. i explained that it was to do with stopping smoking, it makes you really hungry, even for really really crappy wilted ETN bus sandwiches. the ETN bus was really swanky inside, massive reclining seats, and a little tv came down from above and showed a film. we regretted that we were only on the bus for approximately 75 minutes and not a few days.

75 minutes later we got off the ETN bus in san miguel de allende, and got on a local bus which cost 5 whole pesos to take us into el centro. you may think i am being sarcastic but 5 pesos is quite expensive compared to the amazing 2 pesos you pay to travel anywhere at all on the mexico city metro. san miguel is a really pretty, hilly, colourful town, with lots of churches and cobbly streets, and a policeman on a horse and little mariachi men having their shoes polished in the square as nobody wants to hear their mariachi music. lots of very cute children everywhere, and old men in little hats resting in doorways on steep streets. our hostel is called hostel alcatraz and is opposite the local library which is one of the best libraries in mexico i reckon. it has a room with a huge mexican style mural painted all over the whole room.

san miguel is a very popular retirement village for old americans, there is a big american community here. this is neither a good or a bad thing, merely a thing. we went for a coffee and breakfast number2 for sarah, and number3 for lucy, at a cafe next to the library. we met an american man there who asked us where we were going next. we told him acapulco maybe. he vetoed this idea, adding to the even increasing pile of acapulco deniers we keep encountering. we had been feeling bad karma about the fact that we didn't know what to do about the acapulco part of our trip. basically rod wanted to go there so he could sing that going loco down in acapulco song for the whole week in the geographically correct place. the nice american man told us not to go there, but to go to zihuantanejo, which is further north up the coast and much much nicer. so we changed our plans and are going to do that instead. nobody has so far said anything bad about zihuantanejo, except perhaps me but only in relation to it being a very hard word to spell and pronounce.

after this we wandered around town, oohing and ahing at how quaint and steep and beautiful it is. it is apparently internationally famous for its quality of light, and it does indeed have very clear lovely blue skies. we walked up to look at the view from the top of a hill at a mirador (viewing area). somehow we managed to not be able to find el mirador which was bizarre as we were right by it. we wandered back down the hill thinking we were heading the right way, but really how could we be when a viewing area technically does have to be at the top of a hill and not at the bottom, but perhaps my nonsense of direction is rubbing off on sarah bullock's innate direction radar, as even she couldn't untangle this pickles induced mess. anyway we passed by a casa de la cultura, where there was an amazing exhibition of handmade rugs. we told the man that made them that they were beautiful, and indeed they were the best rugs i've ever seen. if i ever become a san miguel based american retiree, i will furnish my home here with these rugs. we then watched some girls practising their flamenco moves outside the casa de la cultura.

we found a nice restaurant to eat dinner at whilst watching the sunset over the hills and the town. i had enchiladas with chicken, and sarah bullock had enchiladas with cheese. the day before, whilst spending some of our money on some more coffee and beer, we had figured out our budget for the rest of the trip, based on the credit crunch lack of funds. after factoring in travel and accommodation, we have allowed ourselves 300 pesos as pocket money per day for food and fun. in classic bugetting style, yesterday, day one of budget 2009, my expenditure was 840 pesos. we had found a really nice market and i bought a scarf because it was made of both my favourite colours and was truly exquisite, also 2 pairs of little socks, one with dogs on and the other with pigs, and a new bag. i suppose none of this was what you would term necessary in the true sense of the word. sarah bullock bought a large rug, 2 bags, and a tablecloth. ditto.

i also blew 150 pesos of my 300 peso budget on a cd of a man playing spanish guitar whose concert we went to after our sunset rooftop dinner last night. he was called sergio, and also played some songs on a little harp. sarah bullock found it noteworthy and stunning how much harp music comes from paraguay, as she thought they were all too busy being involved in the narcotics industry to turn their hands to such a delicate profession as harp music composition. i agreed, it is rather strange, and perhaps a front for something much more sinister, perhaps there are subliminal messages in between the innocent arpeggioic harpy notes. anyway, sergio was an amazing musician, especially his flamenco repertoire at the end, how do they do that ripply wibbly flamenco strumming, mum can you do it? mum, also, he played that really nice romance one that you can play the beginning of, except he played the middle bit too, but it does seem like it gets harder, so that's ok, plus the beginning bit is the best bit i think. do you know the one i mean?

after some more trip planning after the concert we mentioned the fact that we are being quite militant in our planning. i thought it would be amusing if somehow we could turn our hostel room into one of those rooms they use in films like downfall where they show hitler doing his war planning, with a huge map of the world (or atleast the battlefield) on a central table and little models of warships and army men, and they push them around with sticks like you get in casinos for pushing all the blackjack tokens around, and the room is quite dark and dingy and they are smoking cigars and looking really stressed because the consequences of pushing the ships and men the wrong ways will be disastrous. we would need army uniforms, moustaches, cigars and guns, but these shouldn't be too hard to procure in mexico. we might add a cactus in the corner to give it that sense of joie de vivre that those rooms seem to lack.

and here is today's activities - we went to some hot springs just outside of town, called la gruta which means the cave. on the leaflet it says you go through a 44 metre tunnel into a cave where hot spring water comes in through the roof. i said there is no way i am going down a water filled 44 metre long tunnel into a cave, i will have a claustrophobic panic attack fit. we couldn't even find the cave for ages, so went back to reception to have a hissy fit at the woman for false advertising. i would have demanded our money back but she showed us a little map and told us how to get to it. as usual all the slagging off of the place we'd engaged in was turned to amazement and wonder as we found la gruta at the end of a not at all scary and very man made and light tunnel, which didn't induce any sort of fear in me at all. people queued up politely to have a go under the hot water pouring through the wall, but you had to be careful the force of it didn't rip your bikini off. then we sat around and had some food and talked about very deep and meaningful things like how stupid most boys are. this has been a large theme of our trip so far, and hopefully we will have got it out of systems by the time rod arrives, and maybe robert a few days later. i think they are already aware of their general stupidity so we shouldn't need to point it out to them too much.

this morning we had had breakfast at the same cafe as yesterday and there were a few ants in my pancakes, which was strange. after some military style investigation i discovered that they were inside the maple syprup bottle.

and here are today's questions:
aquaducts - how do they work?
reagan - was he shot, or is he still alive?
the falkland islands - why does england own them and has argentina ever owned them?