Quiztime!

Okay, our time in Mexico is pretty much over bar some ruins in the rainforest and a river border crossing, sooooooo I thought it was time we did a little quiz to see how much you've been paying attention. We'll be checking your comments for the answers, no peeking at other people's answers before you submit your own. Answers will be posted in about a week, or when we feel like it, or when we feel there's a critical mass of answers from you, our public.

Nice and easy to start with a couple of geography questions...

1. The world's longest peninsula can be found in Mexico, what is it called and which two Mexican States are found on it?

2. Four seas, oceans and gulfs surround Mexico, what are they?

Now for some history...

3. The Mexican flag is a tricolor of green, white and red. What image is in the middle of the flag?

4. True or false? The conquistador, Cortes, managed to prevent attacks by the Aztecs and ultimately defeat them by pretending to be an avenging god king?

5. Four of the following were unknown to the Americas before they were brought over by the Spanish during the conquest of 1521. Which four?
Beards, glass, dogs, horses, small pox, marble, pigs.

6. The Maya, Mexica (Aztecs), Toltecs, Tlaxcalans and many others had erected huge pyramidical temples, and immense city states of stone without the use of which key invention?

7. If, during a war against the Aztecs you were captured, what would be your likely fate?

And now for some present day nonsense...

8. In Mexico, rolling tobacco is
a) Sold by every man, woman and child b) Made from coconut hair c) rare as hens' teeth

9. How do you say 'very naughty' in Spanish?

Happy quizzing!

There was a young lady who swallowed an amoeba

Okay, I've finally worked out why my appetite has absconded and there's been a strange gurgling and rumbling in my tummy for the last fornight. I have amoebic dysentry, hurray! It's gone now so no need to worry, folks that do that sort of thing, and I'm sorry to keep going on about my guts but I wanted to tell you all about what a lovely trip to the doctor I had. I don't know about everyone else but I have found that now that I'm all growed up visiting the doctor isn't what it used to be. They don't use any of their exciting gadgets on you, not even a pen as the prescriptions are done by computer. Not so the esteemed Dr Morales in San Christobal! I quite impressively managed to convey in pidgin Spanish the recent history of my bowel movements and he nodded and listened all the while surrounded by his vast collection of clocks. He has 90 in total apparantly, not fancy carriage clocks or grandfather clocks, just ordinary digital or plastic wall clocks, but a fine collection nevertheless. He then gave me an examination (in a room with his second collection, of mugs) which took me right back to the days of endless trailing to the docotor when you're little for mumps, measles, chickenpox etc etc and in my case tonsilitis, anenoid trouble and so on. He had one of those little light thingummys do you remember? Have to say that I've never had someone look up my nose with one of those before. He listened to my guts with a stethoscpe which was very exciting as the closest I've been to a stethoscope for years is talking to myself through Sarah's. All that was missing was a circular mirror attached to his forehead. He even typed out my prescription on a real typewriter! Anyway, not the most thrilling adventure so far, but it touched me so please excuse me for sharing such silliness.

Standing still

Travel tip no. 2

The effective lifetime of your brand
new Swiss Army penknife corkscrew is maybe 2 or 3 bottles before it snaps off.
Use with caution.

Our southward odyssey hit paydirt about a week ago as we arrived on the Oaxaca (WA-HA-KA) coast, and the little turtle town of Mazunte. We have definitely found the sun, and have the scars to prove it. Apart from vacating a beach cabana that was more romantic in the abstract than the reality of the plumbing and the rats, we have scarcely moved since.

You know that beach lined with quiet, cheap little bars - where you sit out in a baking sun for as long as you can bear before rushing into a cooling sea with waves that wash over you. Well, that´s where we live now. There´s even a great pizzeria. And after all those overnight bus journeys, the warmth and sea are doing wonders for my back.

Until the 90s, Mazunte was dependent on hunting sea turtles and selling their eggs, laid on the local beaches. Since this was outlawed, the town has reinvented itself as an ecotourist centre - focused on conservation and education. The local turtle ´museum´ makes slightly uncomfortable viewing, with these ancient giants of the sea confined to grimy pools. But there are no shows, no riding the turtles. It seems a genuine effort to understand and restore the population of the extraordinary creatures.

We´ve now both been laid low somewhat by stomach bugs. I promise you we are drinking only bottled water and being careful what we eat, but our English stomachs are just not used to this environment. The Mexican style of doctoring seems to be a drop-in clinic attached to a pharmacy, where the consultation fee is not high, but you get quite a bag of prescriptions for your ailment. I think they call it the ´razors and blades´ business model. I like that they can tell what kind of bug you have by poking your guts around and taking your temperature - no need to send samples to the lab like you would back home.

Aside from that, we are feeling rested and holidayed and ready for some meatier challenges. We´re nearly done with Mexico and will move on to Guatemala in the next week, hopefully finding a language school to hone our conversational skills. Next stop, rainforest.

Torville and Dean

Didn´t you just love em? I did, I really did and Im reminded of them as i sit here in an internet cafe in La Ciudad de Mexico, city of Peter´s heart, centre of the universe (to the Aztecs anyway), because the guy flogging DVDs on the street outside is obviously also a fan of the wondrous T+D and a mean CD mixer to boot - Ravel´s Bolero mixed with La Bamba. Not sure if it works but it´s certainly special.
So what about this city? It was the place where the prophesised vision of the eagle was seen, standing on a cactus with a serpent in its beak, which became the symbol of the peoples of Mexico from that moment (a very very long time ago!); the centre of the universe to the Aztecs (and they had a big one, no less than 13 heavens and 9 hells - 13 heavens and 9 hells that were balancing on the back of a turtle, no less, I always thought Terry Pratchett was a bit unoriginal, I think it´s the hat that gives him away); Leon Trotsky fled here when the Russian Revolution (am I right students of history? you know which my chosen humanity is..) didn´t go his way and it was here that he was murdered with the ice pick, obviously providing the inspiration forBasic Instinct; Okay,I seem to have mined that vein plenty now, lets just say its a wicked cool city with lots of history and stuff, if you want to know more about all the monuments and stuff you can read a Lonely Planet. I have more personal things to impart such as... the state of my guts! Just a smidgen of gastroentiritis (sounds a bit severe but thats what the doctor wrote down, maybe it´s a generic term here though) . After spending the last five days in possession of the startling ability to sh** though the eye of a needle, my stools are now viable again, hurray!
Okay, back to Mexico DF, city of the stars etc etc. We´ve had a tremendous time here, as with many capital cities (okay, maybe not Dodoma) you could spend a year here and never run out of things to do and we did manage to tick a few things off the list of must-sees. The Anthropology Museum was astounding and we basically walked around slack jawed from start to finish; Diego Rivera´s mural of Mexican life were also wonderful, I especially liked their context in the Education Department. No song and dance, just an ordinary government building with a very small and dark entrance, that just so happens to hold many, many murals by one of the C20th´s most feted artists; Bosque de Chapultepec was beautiful and more than anywhere else reminded us of London; the ancient city of Teotihuacan was also unmissable with its Piramide del Sol (third biggest in the world I think) and Piramide de la Lune, built well over 1500 years ago.

However, by far the most amazing thing about this city has been wandering the streets around the historic heart of the city where national government rubs shoulders with Aztec ruins, devil stick twirlers with international church of christ food stalls. The streets are packed with stalls of a variety i´ve never seen anywhere for instance the order of stalls as you walk down one street may be as follows; massage balls, cheap books, tortillas, batteries, supports for injured knees, elbows, wrists etc, lottery tickets (this week including astrological signs. Though I didn´t go to see the draw, which is open to any old punter who wanders in, I fancy that the Mexican lottery would make Camelot´s look like a tombola at a cricket club fete), orthopaedic shoes, balloons, huge pieces (roughly 40cm x140cm) of roasted pig skin - a scratching lovers´dream - and everything else you could think of.

As you can probably tell from this rambling account, there´s a lot to get your head round in this city (some of it´s bad too, there´s a lot more poverty evident than elsewhere, unsurprisingly, the air is godawful, taxis aren´t too safe, and sometimes it smells of poo - sound familiar, londoners?) but we´ve loved it and are now eager to resume our southwards path. Tonight we are getting the overnight bus to Oaxaca City and may even be on the coast of Oaxaca state by tomorrow afternoon. We´ll probably spend a few days there hopefully helping out a few sea turtles by rescuing, counting, hatching or whatever else needs doing to their eggs (what more do they want, the moon on a stick?) , oh, and getting some sun, sea, snorkelling and sand aswell.

Adios amigos (I´m not leaving you out girls, it´s just that the mixed plural always takes the masculine form, bloody, macho... schnrllscnarl), hope all is happy in your lalalands

Lilbette.xxxxx

P.S. by the way ladies who advised me to get a henna rather than a real tatoo on my neck, look what happened!

Lucha Libre

We have now been in Mexico City for four or five days, and it's been fantastic. Miles upon miles of street markets, street food that even vegetarians can enjoy, music everywhere and the most hustly bustle I've ever seen. We're staying in the historical centre, near the Zocalo - a plaza that seems to be the equivalent of Leicester Square plonked in the middle of Westminster. Surrounded by government buildings, the square fills with Aztec dancers, vendors of miscellaneous tat and political protestors targeting the presidential offices.
Lizzie is in a slightly sorry state today. She has succumbed to our first bout of food poisoning - nothing serious, but I've left her dozing with several gallons of water and coke to keep her company. Meanwhile, I thought I'd fill you in on one of my personal highlights to date - Mexican wrestling.
I've been interested in professional wrestling for years, since the early 90s when Sky started showing the WWF. This was when Hulk Hogan still ruled the roost, and the shows were cartoon-like and simple to follow - but the feuds were compelling. Faces (good guys) would be locked in a vendetta with heels (the bad guys). Not that I knew the terminology back then, I just enjoyed the drama and the atheleticism. Sure, it didn't quite seem like a real sport - it was better than that.
Years later, I started idly surfing the internet to find out what this show was really all about. I discovered sites full of backstage gossip, explaining who was playing politics to win or keep the championship, why the writers were all morons, and the real reasons performers would leave (storyline: suspension. real reason: making movies). The last 10 years were momentous in the wrestling world. The rise of the internet had lifted the curtain, and no-one but a few old-timers would even pretend that it was on the level. The WWF had even started a Pop Idol style contest to find new wrestlers, revealing the tricks of the trade to an MTV audience.
I kept looking, and discovered a community of old-school wrestling fans. These guys hate the WWF, and look back to their childhood viewing in the 50s and 60s and 70s, and even further back. I learnt that professional (i.e. fake, though they don't like that word) wrestling dates backs over a century, to travelling carnivals where two wrestlers would put on a show every night. They had to fake it. First, there was no way that their bodies could stand up the punishment of a true contest on a nightly basis. Second, true shootfighting is very slow and dull to watch. It could go on for hours, with two men laying on the ground and hardly twitching.
But these guys could really fight too. Part of the show would be for an audience member to challenge one of the wrestlers for prize money, and of course it wouldn't do for a punter to walk away with the purse.
Different territories around the US emerged over time, each running their own shows with their own local heros. A national champion would go from area to area defending his title - this guy also had to be the real thing, as local tough guys were liable to try it on and steal the championship given half a chance. More and more showbiz crept in. By the 1980s, Vince McMahon expanded his New York promotion to a national spectacle with Wrestlemania, putting most of the other groups out of business and eventually creating an international presence.
I haven't actually watched much wrestling in years, but the world of it fascinates me. Somewhere between sport, circus and theatre, it's like nothing else. Or perhaps, everything else. Once you understand the concept of Kayfabe - the pretence that this is all real, though everyone kind of knows it's a show - it gives you a new perspective on politics and all aspects of society. You start seeing George Bush 'cut a promo' on Saddam rather than give a speech about Iraq. You start seeing Question Time as the equivalent of Smackdown, with the on-screen opponents playing carefully rehearsed parts and giving away nothing of their backstage relationships.
But wrestling is not confined to America, and it isn't all in the WWF mould. Lucha Libre (free fighting) is a huge sport here - second only to football. And it's a much simpler style. Most of the wrestlers wear masks. There are no chairs or weapons, a great deal of high-flying atheleticism, and a large element of comedy. It's not particularly realistic, but it's a lot of fun and the crowds lose themselves in it week after week.
I'd never seen a live show before, and figured Mexico would be a good place to start. I turned up at the Arena Coliseo for the Sunday show - having gathered that this was the top place to see the stars. My cheap Balcon ticket bought me a seat on a concrete step in a tatty arena, alive with candyfloss hawkers and tooting horns. There was a wire mesh between us and the ring, presumably to catch projectiles. There were probably 1500 people there, a near-full house in any case. The show was being filmed for TV, and consisted mostly of trios - tag teams with 3 on each side. In theory, I believe only two guys should be in the ring at the same time. But this was rarely observed, and the two referees appear to be both ineffectual and rather dense. All part of the show.
I was nervous beforehand, about the violence, about the crowd. But the whole thing was incredibly good natured. The crowd smiled as they booed, laughed as a fat comic wrestler did his shtick, being thrown out of the ring and falling onto the poor punters in the front row. They roared as one heel would hold a face down to be attacked, only for the face to escape at the last minute leaving the two villains to collide. They booed and barracked as one wrestler was carried out on a stretcher, and his opponent kicked him off. And at the end, everyone left satisfied.
It was more like Panto than sport, but the acrobatics were impressive, and every match had both comedy and drama. I didn't know who anyone was, or anything about the backstage politics. It was just a wrestling show, and it reminded me how to enjoy that.
To end, a few shots of Mexico city. Then I'd best be off to check on the wife. Next stop, Oaxaca and - we hope - a nice tranquil beach cabana to read and write and think in.

Barranca del Cobre

Travel Tip no. 1 (in an occasional series)

If you find yourself sitting near the rear of a coach with a stinking chemical toilet, for 12 hours or so, a dab of camphor lip-balm under the nose will help to mask the offensive odour.

So this is our progress to date. We last left you in La Paz, which was the first really warm place we managed to get to, and a great place to spend a couple of days chilling out on white sand/turquoise ocean beaches. But if your eyesight is good enough, you should be able to see how far we have managed to come since then.

Taking a detour from our urge to travel South, we headed over to the mainland and took the famous Copper Canyon railway to Creel. This was something special - 20 canyons carved by 6 rivers, collectively dwarfing the Grand one. And they built a railway over the top of it - now largely used by tourists like us, and running to a very approximate timetable.

The most awesome view was probably our first glimpse of the hidden depths. We had departed at 6am, on a scratch of sleep, and the journey so far was interesting if not stunning. Giant cacti, numerous shacks and savannah-style landscapes. Suddenly, the rocky wall to our right fell away, revealing a glorious shimmering lake several hundred metres below, surrounded by greenery. Two flocks of bird chose that moment to take flight over the water, conjuring a breathtaking hidden world beneath us. So we took a picture of it.

Unfortunately, the windows were both dirty and reflective, and you cant capture that kind of thing. Still, you get the idea. We passed another 5 or 6 hours enjoying this kind of splendour, before stopping in the mountain town of Creel.

Creel is a popular stop-off for travellers, and we had a lovely time staying in a Cabana and cooking our evening meals on a wood-fired oven. Baked potatos and onions, with cream cheese and salad. Yum.

Since then we have mostly been travelling - had a cup of coffee in Chihuahua and then overnighted to the mining town of Zacetacas, which is where we now find ourselves. Next stop Mexico city.

Thanks for all your comments and good wishes. We are missing home, and are occasionally weary of Quesedillas and Cervezas. But we are also having a wonderful time. We still feel a little like tourists doing tourist things, but as we travel south and hit the likes of Guatemala (hopefully by riverboat) and Ecuador, this should start to feel more like the adventure we came here for. The graduation from the safety of Seattle, to the US-dominated Baja California, and now to the heart of Mexico has been tangible, and welcome.

Whale Whatching (sic)

We left Ensenada, and the security of Frances and her rental car, on a comfortable bus, which was just as well as we were on a 10-hour overnight journey to Guerrero Negro. We arrived at 6am at this dusty town in the middle of nowhere - but it´s still early enough in our trip for that to be quite fun. Waking up took some time - coffee at the bus station, a reviving shower at the Motel Ballenas which wonderfully let us check in at abut 8am, and hot cakes (pancakes) at a local restaurant. At this point we were ready to think about what had brought us here.
There were two reasons we had come to Guerrero Negro - probably the same two reasons any tourist comes here. The first is that it is a convenient midway point between the north tip and south tip of the Baja peninsular. The second may already be apparent to any Spanish speakers reading - ballenas is Spanish for whales.
Guerrero Negro is a town built on salt. As we drove out of town, there was nothing but great piles of salt and shallow seawater lakes drying in the sun. Quite spectacular in its way, almost like an arctic landscape.
But we hadn´t come here for salt. We had come to see the hundreds of grey whales gathered to breed in the local lagoon. They come down from Alaska during a six month migration cycle each year. Having fed themselves silly on the icy fish they seek out the warmth of Mexico to breed.
Whale gestation takes just over a year, we were told. They breed one year, calve the next, and the cycle continues throughout their lifetime.
The boat trip was extraordinary - we saw dozens of whales - mothers and calves, males competing for a mate, dolphins and whales playing together. And there was no doubt whose neighbourhood we were in.
Now, we know that wildlife photography is a specialist field. But we nevertheless filled half a camera card with pictures that mostly turned out to be mostly open water. Still, we got a few, and they are ours. So here are our greatest hits.
We´re now at the bottom of Baja, enjoying the beaches of La Paz before heading to the mainland and the Copper Canyon Railway.