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Jason's Journal
Sun Jun 29 23:37:52 2003
I have planned a trip to Mexico. The plan is this: my friend Jason and I pack my 1984 Honda Accord that has 227,000 miles on it and drive straight south from Tucson across the border at Nogles. We'll head toward the coast on the mainland side of the Baja and follow the cost nearly to the Guatemalan border and then go north and west to San Cristobal de las Casas. San Cristobal gets some of the best reviews of any place in Mexico. Moreover, it is a good staging point for journeys to the ruins. After a stay in San Cristobal, I intend to dive in the caribean.
Some people have claimed that this trip will be exciting. Others
ludicrous. I hold with the former. You my dear reader are free to form
your own opinion. Help yourself to what data I provide.
This webpage will serve as my travel diary for the adventure.
Goals
Everyone should have goals. Everything should have goals.* Adventures are no exception. Indiana Jones didn't show up at that temple with the boulder without goals and I am not showing up in Mexico without goals. Here are some goals:
- Hear a howler monkey
- See a shark bigger than me
- Remember my malaria profalaxis
- Smoke a cigar with Zapatistas
- Give other travellers, preferably cute girls or Australians, a ride somewhere
- Survive and return with bragging rights about how great my immune system is.
Okay. I should figure out what to pack.
*This is not an assertion. Rocks don't have goals and I
doubt it makes sense to say that they should. This is hyperbole. Where's your conversational implicature module gone?
Thu Jul 10 12:13:52 2003
I have fewer than 48 hours before I will be in mexico. I still have to finish my grading, buy some water and get Jason from the airport in Pheonix. We hope to leave Saturday morning. And I need to figure out how to get from Tucson to Nogales.
Right now I think it would be great to make it to Mazatlan on day one. Sonora (the mexican state south of Arizona) doesn't have many exceptional sites in the areas that we will be in while headed south. I hope to see bits of Sonora, either on my way back or on a future trip, but on the way down, I want to cruise through and get to the south. There's great pezole in Bucerias and I would like to have some for lunch on Monday or Tuesday.
Sat Jul 12 21:45:05 2003
Zanex, Perkaset, valium...
This is the story of Nogales, Arizonaīs favorite border town. Everyone there wants to tell you about it. I like Nogales and intend
to go back there for a night sometime soon. (This is totally unreleted to the totally unregulated pharmaciuticals there.) Today I just bought antibiotics and picked up a month auto insurance policy.
Crossing the border was easy. I am in Guaymas now. It is a nice little town on the beach about 300 miles from Tucson. I would have liked to go farther but towns between Guaymas and Mazatlan
don't warant a two pages in lonely planet, so we decided to finish this day here. We got up a little late this morning and crossing the border took an hour at least.
My favorite thing i saw on the road: a full sized photograph of a police car designed to make you slow down. It didn't work. By the way, the highway between Nogales and Guaymas is fast. 70 mph except in towns.
Sun Jul 13 01:18:05 2003
Suppose that Guaymas is not the hot dog capitcal of mexico. Then there exists a town in mexico with enough hot dogs to feed a small army for several weeks. It is ten oīclock at night an you can get a hot dog from two different places on every blck without crossing the street. You can get beens with your hot dog if you like. I have never liked hot dogs. I told one of my classes that thy are made from pig lips and anuses, which they thought was very funny. I donīt think it is funny at all--selling pig anuses as comestibles. I can't eat the things, even with beans.
Unfortuately for the residents of Guaymas, thereīs little to do if youīre not interested in a hot dog bing. The nice man at my hotel recommended a place called īVlueī-find out about it yourself at www.vlue.com.mx. The website is a flash extravaganza, much as the place USAmericana extravaganza. Baseball penenants and stuffed sporting paraphrenallia hangin from the ceiling. ITS LOUD THERE: YOU HAVE TO SHOUT. The volume on the music videos is too high.
Tomorrow: Mazatlan.
Sun Jul 13 22:01:11 2003
Weīre in Mazatlan today. The drive was pretty long, we were on the road about ten hours. And it was largely uneventful. Cows are occasionally road kill in mexico.
Mazatlan is home of one of lonely planetīs top ten places to have a drink in Mexico. This is another test for Lonely Planet. So far it hasnīt let me down. I have paid less than five dollars a night for lodging in one and a half repectable places. I have to admit last nightīs accomodation was a bit dodgy. Still, at 4.50 a night I canīt complain. I woke several times in the night looking to see whether it was morning so I could leave that sweat locker of a hotel room. It was the loudest sweat locker or hotel room I have ever been in.
Tue Jul 15 14:58:43 2003
I will say that the laz in Mazatlan listed as one of the best place in Mexico for a drink gets high marks. We ate an inexpensive dinner there that was delicious. Taco, Enchilada, Tostada. I love that mexican hard tacos fold the meat in side, fry the tortilla shut and put the topping on the outside so you have to eat them sideways. The best part of the dinner was a broth that we were instructed to pure over our food. I suspect that it was beef and tomato seasone with oregano. Watever the hell it was, it was delicious. What really made the experience charming is that I was soaked. Gentle hot rain was comming down and we were just tucked under the cover of a tree. There was something chaming about that whole experience.
We had a drink, several actually, in an open air building that was home of a small lizard that roamed the ceiling. The propriato, Angel, was a drunk man who didn't seem very nice to the help but was exceptionally good at recommending tequila. El Mante isn't great, but it is aņejo. He was also good at spilling the tequila, not charging us for half of what we drank and charging less than the menu rate for what we did drink. He told us that we could grab ass all night at a club called valentino's. We didn't.
The drive from Mazatlan to Tepic, and from Tepic to Puerto Vallarta rivals some of the best I have ever experienced. Tepic lies five thousand o so feet above sea level, in a cool green jungle. The roads are windy and crazy. Every fiteen minutes or so the truck in front of you is going fifteen miles an hour, the traffic backs up and you can watch crazy mexicans play chicken with oncomming traffic in (often vain) attempts at returning to the proper velocity.
Tue Jul 15 15:01:19 2003
Dinner was in Bucerias, a small town north of Vallarta. It consisted of Pezole. Excellent and cheap.
We arived in Puerto Vallarta and proceeded to El Nido, the rooftop bar at the Los Cuatro Vientos Hotel. I've been there before and I haven't gotten tired of the sunsets overlooking Vallarta Bay. (www.cuatrovientos.com is the website for the place. If you are ever in Vallarta, go there, you won't be disappointed and the gy the is clearly struggling to get business at his out of the way hotel and restaurant. He encouraged me to sell his place as best I could. I hope he isn't disappointed.)
About five minutes after we got inside a differet Vallarta bar, whose name I forget, the sky tore open and dumped rain. This forced me not to overstay my welcome and buy a bucket of five beers (at a dollar fifty each.) Needless to say, we woke up late this morning. (We went to a few other bars as well. We drank and danced but the music at mexican clubs leaves a bit to be desired. The DJ was technically proficient and owned a lousy box of records.)
We won't leave the Puerto Vallarta area until tomorrow.
Wed Jul 16 22:09:34 2003
Just when I thought there weren't anymore topes:
"TOPE!"
Attempt to stop. Wet street. Brakes lock. Skid. Bump. Tope. Here are some things to know about driving in mexico:
- There are speed limits. How fast one drives is a function of the capacity of the vehicle can go and what the road permits. The result is that mexican drivers will, if possible, exceed speedlimits by as much as 60km per hour. Failure to go twenty faster is a sign of a weak vehicle or cowardice.
- There are animals in the road. Pigs, cows, roosters, children.
- Hence Topes. Topes are lumps of asphalt or concrete in the street. These are a way of making people slow down on behalf of their pigs and children. They are meant to be there. There are two independent features of topes. First some are drivable. Drivable topes are topes that you can drive over without hearing the tope molest your car. Some topes are visible. These topes are painted yellow are have a sign indicating their presence. The other features of topes are the logical compliments of the first two: undrivable and invisible. (Hence, there are a total of four kinds of topes: visble drivable, invisable drivable, visble and undrivable, invisible undrivable.)
- Topes is spanish for 'bump.'
The drive from near Playa Azul to Zihuateneho is frought with topes.
I lied about staying in Puetro Vallarta. That town is pricy and we didn't
find sufficiently inexpensive lodging as the hostel whose address we could
find was closed for renovation.
So we set ourselves on a short drive to Barra de Navidad. Barra de
Navidad is a great place to loose about three weeks of your life. A broad
peninsula sand bar extends south into the Pacific ocean about three and a
half hours drive from Puerto Vallarta. Barra de Navidad is the town
there. You should sip margartitas while you watch the sun set from a
thatch hut restaurant. Mexicans either don't know about or know better
than margaritta mix. The tortilla soup at Popeye's is delicious. The
beers sell for about $US1.20. Bring ear plugs as the town is loud at
night, at least from the sweltering room I failed to sleep in last night.
The drive to Zihuatenejo from Barra de Navidad is ardous and long.
Mexican highway 200 doesn't go in one direction for more than about 50
meters. If you are behind a slow truck, which inevitably you will be,
you will find yourself cursing the mountainous mexican pacific coast for
the step, emerald hills for which you praised it before. You can't pass
and you can't go more than twenty five km/h. I cursed. I got over it.
We got hungry. We pulled of in Barra de Nexpa for a late lunch. Barra de
Nexpa is a row of palapa huts and cabaņas, some of which serve food and
some of which house surfers. The remainder are empty. A guy there told me
that there is alot to do besides surf. Imagine my surprise when the one
thing that be mentioned was pot and that he had some "really good
stuff" if we wanted to buy a bit. I didn't ever hear about what else there
is to do in Barra de Navidad. I think that guy had a plan of getting a
shitload of wed and living on the mexican coast to surf by selling it off
gradually. I suspect that he's smoked most of it himself. Good thing it
is really good.
We gave another guy there a ride to town. He surmised after reading my
bumper stickers "So you guys are anti-government." Yes, thank you. We
are. And don't mess with Texas. Oh well. The guy spent four years in
Costa Rica surfing. And he goes to school in San Diego because he can do
"both things" there. (Viz. School and Surf.) Nice enough. He seemed a
little out of it.
Tomorrow I roam Zihuatenejo.
Thu Jul 17 12:23:42 2003
I set out with the goal of of giing someone, somewhere a ride some where. I think I've accomplished that goal. (Surfers in Barra de Nexpa don't count.) Last night a group of people were sitting on the door step to our hostel and we invited them to have a drink with us next door. We nearly gave up on them, as they took awhile to join us. But Jason's suggestion that we have one last beer paid off. They showed up. We offer them a ride to Puerto Escondido. Three british girls, Michelle, Lisa and Rosie.
I am a bit tired of writting and this keyboard is horrible.
Sat Jul 19 19:00:29 2003
Our Birtish friends turned out to be lovely traveling comapanions. For one, they made me feel cool because they listen to rock music. I listen to rock 'n roll and had thought that such peoople were now in the uncool bin. But young brits like rock. Maybe we could have another british invasion or something. (Have you seen Almost Famous? "They made you feel cool didn't they? I've met you man:you are not cool.")
Another reason that they were good travelling companions is that they didn't complain about being cramped in the back of my '84 Accord, about not getting to Puerto Escondido in a day, about anything. I felt guilty for not having made it from Zihuatenejo to Puerto Escondido in a day but the drive turned out to be long. That isn't entirely my fault as the reference I have on driving time had thus far been quite accurate, and failed me only after I had promised to drive someone from Zihuatenejo to Puerto Escondido in a day.
And they were cool people. I think. I suspect that I am not cool, and I don't know to what degree uncool people are allowed to make asessments of cool. I am pretty sure I am right on this one.
Sat Jul 19 19:15:30 2003
We dedidcated our day in Zihuatenejo to the beach. Having heard good reports about Las Gatas, a beach on the opposite shore of the bay on which Zihuatenejo rests, we decided go there. That didn't work at first, because misinterpretation of our information cased us to climb over some large rocks on the beach near Zihuatenejo centro. These turned into cliffs, and we had to turn around. No loss, except is smelled a little marshy.
We ended up driving near Las Gatas. One of the beauty's of Las Gatas is that you can't get there by car. The beach to the east of there is accessible by car. You have to go over some non-cliffs that are rocks to get there from the beach west. This is how we ended up near cliffs before. We went to the wrong rocks. Anyway, Las Gatas has pale blue water and a decent crowd.
Mexicans are full of scams. Two dollars were extorted from me when I parked to go to Las Gatas. The guy there said it was 20 pesos a day to park. That couldn{t be as no one else seemed to be paying him. "Por que?" I asked. "For the protection of the car."
I also paid my first bribe on the way out of Zihuatanejo. I went the
wrong way down a one way street. (This is easy to do as the streets are two lanes wide, deserted, and bear no indication of being one way.) The officer said that we had to pay at the police station. So, with the help of Rosie the spanish speaking british girl, I found out that I could just pay him 180 pesos instead. He decided that 170 was enough. I suspect that this is because he didn't want our coins.
Sat Jul 19 19:27:36 2003
I am in Puerto Escondido now. I love our place, which is a little cabin made of sticks across the street from the beach. $6.50. Supposedly one of the best surf spots in mexico, this town boasts a sizable population of very laid back americans who make a living offering surf lessions and running surf shops.
We went boogie boarding. The waves are huge. We went to the spot where they are smaller. That did not make them little.
We got here this morning around 11am. We had to spend the night in Pinotepa Nacional. It reminded me of Limerick Ireland. The Irish call Limerick "Stab City." It isn't that bad but the place we stayed was. The bedding wasn't proper bedding but platic and coarse. The pillow weighed five pounds. There was a dead scorpion, recently killed, on the reception desk. You can see why I felt guilty for landing those nice British girls short of Puerto Escondido last night.
Tiempo para una cerveza o margarita.
Sat Jul 19 19:32:00 2003
One more thing: Jason is bloging this trip as well. See it at here.
Sun Jul 20 23:41:17 2003
I thought that we would probably not see our British frineds again. I was
wrong. W went out with them last night, along with a motely assortment of other people. Orlando, a crazy mexican who was carrying a guitar when I met him. A bunch of other mexicans. Rosie speaks spanish and Mexicans love her, or at least a sizable number of them do. Three other British girls from our cabaņa set up (i.e. three none of which were identical with Rosie or Michelle or Lisa) were also with us.
We went to hear an excellent band at a place called Tres Diablos (Three Devils) that is reminicent of Chapel Hillīs Hell. The band that played did some of the best cover work Iīve ever heard. They even cover covers. At one point in the night our entire table was yell-crooning a la Axel Rose "Knock Knock Knocking on heaven's door-or-or." We heard Nirvana's Come as You Are, Sabbath's Paranoid, The Doors... I canīt even remember it all. This all sounds like the shit your rock band friends subjected you to when you were in High School. The differene is that that these guys were techinical better musicaians than Nirvana. (To their credit, they didnīt even try to flaunt this with self-indulgent moments.)And we were taught mexican curses. People who really dislike other people use "Cabron." I learned some new British slang too. "Minging" means manky. Same usage and everything; it isn't a particile or a gerund; it's an adjective. I love the term manky. Manky things are things dirty like dreadlocks.
Jason and I were playing catch up for much of the night. The way that
some of the Mexicans who were hanging out met up with us was by passing
the remainder of a bottle of tequila to the brits. I am told that they
drank it on the beach. If we were racing, they were a lap ahead of us.
I've been up this game for seven years, since they were like twelve, and
I swear they did better than keep up all night. I swear that they had a
drink to every one of mine all night long. Americans simply lack the constitution of our European forefathers.
After running to two clubs besides
besides Tres Diablos, (We left the second one without ever going inside.
It was bad. Long story short--we ended up in the back of a truck with
rails that dragged usoff and we didn't even know where we were going.) I
said goodbye to Michelle, Rosie and Lisa while they watched the stars on
the beach.
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