Well I haven't blogged in way too long, as we've been seeing and doing lots of great things down in Mexico and now Guatemala. I'll run through the highlights and give a few pics.
We left the beach and headed inland to Guadalajara, Mexico's second biggest city. Nice enough place, saw a museum and the city center. The real highlight was finding Levi Type 1 Jeans in the big market!!! My last pair (my favorite jeans ever) were in my car that was stolen 3 year ago, and then they discontinued the line. But they still have them in Mexico! So I'm the proud owner of two new pairs that are only slightly too large. Huzzah... Oh wait, we also saw Chivas the best Mexican football team beat Santos from Brazil in a big match. That might be the highlight. It was a huge (former world cup) stadium, so it wasn't even full, but one section of fans went nuts the entire night, non-stop chanting and jumping up and down in unison. Put American fans to shame. A tight match saw Chivas win 3-2 with a well-placed cross and deadly header early in the 2nd half.
We took off to a little city called Uruapan, and spent two nights there cause our brakes got a little funky and needed some work. Then we went out to a little village called Anghuan (?) and hiked a volcano that buried a couple small villages about 50 years ago. One of the pics is me in front of the only remains of a village, the steeple of the church. Among the toughest actual hiking I've done, but on the way down we could practically ski through some parts because of the loose gravel-like rocks.
From there we did the big city. The driving wasn't great, between one-way streets and others that were blocked off for protests, but otherwise the city was great. We saw some cool museums, and lots of murals by Diego Rivera, a very famous artist who liked to put a lot of anti-capitalist/pro-communist imagery in his work. Neat stuff. Also drank coffee at a cafe, rumored to have been frequented by Fidel and Che as they plotted the takeover of Cuba. Oh, and we got our car towed, not realizing we parked on a street that was night-time parking only, and the car was gone in the morning. Found a friendly English-speaker at our hotel and soon enough we had the car back, with our pockets just 50 bones lighter for it.
Then it was on to Oaxhaca, the capital of the Mexican modern art-scene, as well as their foreign tourist scene apparently. Real-happening place, with all sorts of performances happening in the main plaza. On Friday night me and Jon were walking back to our hostel and we found three different bands playing just off the main plaza, and kids were just grabbing a partner and going nuts dancing in the middle of the city. A little bit later I found myself back at one of the restaurants ringing the main plaza, and Mariachi bands were all around performing until late into the night (at least past 11:30 when I left).
From there we headed towards Guatemala. We've spent two nights here in Antigua, which is the backpacker mecca of the country. I was a little sick the day we arrived, so we took yesterday easy, and today we are off to see an active volcano. Last night I watched most of the Jazz/Rockets playoff game, so I got a bit of a sports fix for now. Of course I'll probably go back to the same place to watch more tonight.
love to all, hope everyone is well - aaron
(well pictures won't work right now for unknown reasons, so I'll put them up later I guess.)
