Right so were now in Canada. We have been here for about 3 or 4 days. We are in the beautiful city of Vancouver. We flew from Mexico City where I managed to pick up a stomach bug just before I left. I did find it particularly awesome that I spent 2 months in Central America avoiding stomach bugs then on the day I have to travel I get one. Although I did get a stomach bug in Mexico City I would not let it put me off the food there as you can go to these wicked little Taco bars, they are almost like little kebab shops but sell Tacos. You have a variety of different beef, pork or chicken ones and they are awesome. They cost about 70p each and the beer is about 90p a bottle as well. They also have loads of different salsa’s and chillies and homemade sauces that you can put on your tacos. I think we had Tacos every day for about 3 days. I was happy. If your going to stay in Mexico city I would recommend staying at the Hostel Catedral (Cathedral) right in the centre of town. If your walk out of the Hostel and walk down Tacuba Street for about 5 mins or two blocks you will see this little kebab shop/Taco place on the corner. Go here and eat Tacos they are awesome. I am certain it was not this place that made me ill. There is one type of Taco called Suerado (Spelling might not be quite right) and it is pretty much sliced bits of fatty beef with chopped onion and coriander on top. Soooo good.
By Stuff
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Knitted Character: An introduction
So it has become time to introduce Knitted Character (KC Wooly to his friends). He shot to fame during a British TV show called Harry Hill's TV burp and is now taking a break from stardom to travel with us as mascot. He will be seeing the sites and getting in trouble. As in the TV show he will sometimes be hiding in our photos, so if you spot him leave a comment so we know what he's been up to!!!
Rock on KC
Rock on KC
Here he is at Teotihuacan
Museum of Anthropology
So having successfully navigated the metro we arrived at the Museum of Anthropology. It's a really cool pretty modern place with a huge column water feature in a main square. We got our tickets and check our bag in then got a audio tour doofer in English to share and headed to the first area. The audio tour was really good as most the written information was in Spanish but you could select different sections on the devise and get a little talk about what you were looking at.
The museum is massive, there is so much to see however their 3 main exhibits which are recommended to see are about the ancient tribes found in Mexico like the Teotihuacans, the Aztecs and the Maya, but the bit that interested us the most was a section about the evolution of humans. This included a cool model of what Lucy (Australopithecus) would have looked like (shes considered to be our oldest direct ancestor). They also had remains of mammoths and loads of other really cool stuff.
There was a lot of artifacts from the ancient tribes, including lots of decorative pottery and obsidian arrow heads. The Aztec area housed mostly large stone artifacts including a sacrificial alter which was a huge round carved stone with a dip in the center and a channel running out and a really cool massive circular calender (see photo).
After a few hours we decided to get some lunch before tackling the Maya exhibit. I don't know what it is about museums but they are exhausting. We refueled and soldiered on for a time but I'd hit a wall, I was overloaded with culture and my legs hurt. So having seen all we could take we headed off and to a little park outside to have a sit down.
Weirdly and this sounds like I was dreaming or been slipped some hallucinogenics, in the park were four men hanging upside down on ropes suspended from a spinning maypole. as the pole spun the ropes got longer slowly lowering them to the ground. one was playing a whistle and drums and one looked a lot like he had passed out. we took this in for a few moments, before a man asked for some money for the show. We gave him what change we had seeing as you don't see it everyday.
We headed back to the metro through a large park covered in children (the park that is not us, it was school holidays), and thankfully had a smooth homeward journey to wearily fall in to our hostel.
By Things
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The museum is massive, there is so much to see however their 3 main exhibits which are recommended to see are about the ancient tribes found in Mexico like the Teotihuacans, the Aztecs and the Maya, but the bit that interested us the most was a section about the evolution of humans. This included a cool model of what Lucy (Australopithecus) would have looked like (shes considered to be our oldest direct ancestor). They also had remains of mammoths and loads of other really cool stuff.
There was a lot of artifacts from the ancient tribes, including lots of decorative pottery and obsidian arrow heads. The Aztec area housed mostly large stone artifacts including a sacrificial alter which was a huge round carved stone with a dip in the center and a channel running out and a really cool massive circular calender (see photo).
After a few hours we decided to get some lunch before tackling the Maya exhibit. I don't know what it is about museums but they are exhausting. We refueled and soldiered on for a time but I'd hit a wall, I was overloaded with culture and my legs hurt. So having seen all we could take we headed off and to a little park outside to have a sit down.
Weirdly and this sounds like I was dreaming or been slipped some hallucinogenics, in the park were four men hanging upside down on ropes suspended from a spinning maypole. as the pole spun the ropes got longer slowly lowering them to the ground. one was playing a whistle and drums and one looked a lot like he had passed out. we took this in for a few moments, before a man asked for some money for the show. We gave him what change we had seeing as you don't see it everyday.
We headed back to the metro through a large park covered in children (the park that is not us, it was school holidays), and thankfully had a smooth homeward journey to wearily fall in to our hostel.
By Things
Photos of the Aztec calender and an upside down spinning man.
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Mexico Metro
Right so more culture was needed and we had only heard good things about the museum of Anthropology so that was next on the list. We decided that we would take the metro as it is called in this part of the world. I do not like the tube in London not sure why I just don’t dig it that much. The tube in Mexico city is super cheap we had to go about 7 stops on one line and 3 on another and it only cost us 6 pesos which is 15p each!!! So cheap!! The tube is crowded but I think that is like any city, it runs on time and it was clean. It did make me think I should right a letter to Boris Johnson informing him how shit the tube in London is and perhaps he should take a trip to Mexico to check theirs out. The most interesting thing about the tube in Mexico is the variety of sales people that you find on the trains. This also includes singers and beggars. We discovered that you can buy torches, razors, CD’s with the picture of naked women on the front, the guy selling the CD’s had a speaker strapped to his chest and was belting out the tunes he was selling. You could also buy sponges, chewing gum, sweets all sorts really, even donate to the blind dwarf guy who was singing some crazy song. There was also 2 little kids who must have been brothers, one about 8 and the other about 3 or 4 and they would hand out bits of paper as they didn't speak Spanish and it obviously asked for cash as they would then return collecting the bits of paper from people and small change. It was really sad to see. That was the tube experience, crazy but good.
By Stuff
By Stuff
Monday, July 22, 2013
Teotihuacan
Next stop was a village near Teotihuacan where we had a presentation on uses of cactus and obsidian in ancient and modern Mexico. We had some lunch that was super tasty, tried some booze that was made from cactus and then hopped on the bus to Teotihuacan. We arrived at Teotihuacan and were advised to buy ponchos as it might rain in a bit. So we did and it promptly pissed it down on us. We went to the temple of the moon and climbed as far as you‘re allowed. Pictures better describe this so check them out below (Check out knitted character for you Harry Hill nerds). This site was occupied by the Aztecs but it was actually built by an earlier culture The Teotihuacans. They occupied it from about 2000BC to 400BC, but had died out and moved on when the Aztecs rocked up to find a ready made city, with sacrificial stones and pyramids ready made, what more could you ask for. They named it Teotihuacan meaning City of Gods as they assumed it had been built by Gods.
From the Temple of the moon we walked down the avenue of death, so named as it has lines of smaller pyramids on one of which every 20 days some one was sacrificed marking the calendar. It was later used as an area for the people to pay their taxes so kept its name! On the avenue there are many small stalls selling what can only really be described as tat, awesome tat!!!!!! We could only resist for so long until we caved and purchased an eagle whistle. What is an eagle whistle I here you say, well it is a whistle shaped like an eagle that when you blow through it sounds exactly like a eagle!!! It is now Stuffs most prise position, he has taken to wearing it round his neck and blowing it when least expected, has not got old yet but we’ll see. It took all of our combined will power to not buy a jaguar whistle, this we still regret!
After ducking and diving the many kindly merchants desperate for us to buy more cheap tacky awesomeness we made it to the temple of the sun, and made for the summit. This was beautiful and the rain even stopped with a hint of sun on the descent. Very wearily, but triumphantly adorned with and eagle whistle we made our way to the meeting point for the coach to make our way home.
By Stuff and Things
From the Temple of the moon we walked down the avenue of death, so named as it has lines of smaller pyramids on one of which every 20 days some one was sacrificed marking the calendar. It was later used as an area for the people to pay their taxes so kept its name! On the avenue there are many small stalls selling what can only really be described as tat, awesome tat!!!!!! We could only resist for so long until we caved and purchased an eagle whistle. What is an eagle whistle I here you say, well it is a whistle shaped like an eagle that when you blow through it sounds exactly like a eagle!!! It is now Stuffs most prise position, he has taken to wearing it round his neck and blowing it when least expected, has not got old yet but we’ll see. It took all of our combined will power to not buy a jaguar whistle, this we still regret!
After ducking and diving the many kindly merchants desperate for us to buy more cheap tacky awesomeness we made it to the temple of the sun, and made for the summit. This was beautiful and the rain even stopped with a hint of sun on the descent. Very wearily, but triumphantly adorned with and eagle whistle we made our way to the meeting point for the coach to make our way home.
By Stuff and Things
Photos of a moody pyramid of the moon and KC up the pyramid of the moon showing the pyramid of the sun and avenue of death in the background.
The Road to Teotihuacan
We decided to go to Mexico City to do some cultural/educational stuff. As our friends already know we are the intellectual type of traveller always spending our time visiting museums, historical monuments, archaeological sites and never just hanging out at the beach surfing eating tasty food and loafing. So first thing we did was book ourselves onto the Teotihuacan tour.
This tours first stop is at a site in Mexico city called Tlatelolco which is the twin city of Tenochtitlan the Capital of the Aztecs. This is where Hernan Cortez who was a conquistador defeated the Aztecs and built a church using the remains of the Aztec pyramid he knocked down. This is considered the difficult birth of modern Mexico as it was this point onwards where the Spanish and Indian cultures really started to mix. It was also the site of a massacre of protesters by the military prior to the Mexican Olympics and one of the worst hit areas during the 1985 Mexico City Earthquake. Sensing the bad jue jue, we hoped we wouldn't be hanging around too long. We wondered around here for about 30-40 mins and we had a cool tour guide called Fernando who spoke good English so we knew what was going on. We saw the remains of the Aztec temple where they would cut people hearts out and show it to them, pretty brutal I thought, but it was considered an honour apparently. We then went into the big church was built in honour of Santiago who is the patron saint of killing Moors but in this Church he is depicted killing Indians. Cortez built the church in tribute to Santiago. This was the start of the conversion of the Aztecs and the rest of the Central American cultures.
We then hopped in the bus and went to the next stop which was the Church of the Virgin of Guadalupe (VOG). This church is in tribute to VOG as she was the main reason the Aztecs were converted to Christianity. The Aztecs were not really that keen on Christianity (partly due to them not being down with crucifixion) until the VOG appeared to a local peasant on a hill and then made flowers appear that only grow in Spain and appeared on a rug or something. This hill was already important to the Aztecs and this allowed the VOG to be a bridge between the cultures and the conversion of the Aztecs to Christianity. In this region the VOG is still considered more important than Jesus, girl power baby!! Also at this site is newer church, The Basillica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, that was built in the 1970’s and is the second most important Catholic pilgrimage site after the Vatican in Rome. Despite being really 70’s (in the ugly way as opposed to the cool way). It did however have a very impressive organ and to prevent people loitering (worshiping) too long in front of a super important image of the virgin it has a conveyor belt system, so everyone can see it, kind of a good idea but a bit weird.
By Stuff and Things
This tours first stop is at a site in Mexico city called Tlatelolco which is the twin city of Tenochtitlan the Capital of the Aztecs. This is where Hernan Cortez who was a conquistador defeated the Aztecs and built a church using the remains of the Aztec pyramid he knocked down. This is considered the difficult birth of modern Mexico as it was this point onwards where the Spanish and Indian cultures really started to mix. It was also the site of a massacre of protesters by the military prior to the Mexican Olympics and one of the worst hit areas during the 1985 Mexico City Earthquake. Sensing the bad jue jue, we hoped we wouldn't be hanging around too long. We wondered around here for about 30-40 mins and we had a cool tour guide called Fernando who spoke good English so we knew what was going on. We saw the remains of the Aztec temple where they would cut people hearts out and show it to them, pretty brutal I thought, but it was considered an honour apparently. We then went into the big church was built in honour of Santiago who is the patron saint of killing Moors but in this Church he is depicted killing Indians. Cortez built the church in tribute to Santiago. This was the start of the conversion of the Aztecs and the rest of the Central American cultures.
We then hopped in the bus and went to the next stop which was the Church of the Virgin of Guadalupe (VOG). This church is in tribute to VOG as she was the main reason the Aztecs were converted to Christianity. The Aztecs were not really that keen on Christianity (partly due to them not being down with crucifixion) until the VOG appeared to a local peasant on a hill and then made flowers appear that only grow in Spain and appeared on a rug or something. This hill was already important to the Aztecs and this allowed the VOG to be a bridge between the cultures and the conversion of the Aztecs to Christianity. In this region the VOG is still considered more important than Jesus, girl power baby!! Also at this site is newer church, The Basillica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, that was built in the 1970’s and is the second most important Catholic pilgrimage site after the Vatican in Rome. Despite being really 70’s (in the ugly way as opposed to the cool way). It did however have a very impressive organ and to prevent people loitering (worshiping) too long in front of a super important image of the virgin it has a conveyor belt system, so everyone can see it, kind of a good idea but a bit weird.
By Stuff and Things
Photos of stuff with the church of Santiago and the ugly popular 70's Church (The Basillica of Our Lady of Guadalupe).
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The Big Smoke
After some difficulty arranging a train, plan or automobile out of Peurto Escondido, we settled on the night bus which we took last night at 19:40 and arrived in Mexico City this morning around 7:30. The night bus was pretty nice, very comfy recliney seats, weirdly our seats got changed and we think we may have been a little jipped as we ended up right by the toilets, but still it was the best bus we've had so far. Despite this sleep did not come easily partly because the driver was attempting to hit warp 10, often over speed bumps and we had the in ride entertainment of what we believed to be Sister Act 34 dubbed in Spanish followed by The Office dubbed in Spanish. I can't imagine The Office translates that well but good to see it travels.
We arrived safe and sound and following a slightly grumpy almost very unhelpful taxi driver made it to our hostel, which seems really nice. We have done a little exploring and on a whim we decided to go round the Spanish Inquisition Museum of Torture, it was an odd whim. We have also booked a tour to the slightly less grizzly Pyramid of the sun tomorrow, although it is Pre-Inka so will probably have some sacrifice involved somewhere!!!
That's it for now, off to the roof terrace bar to get our bearings!
By Things
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Fishing Mexico
OK so forgive us the uber bloging marathon of today but we had to catch up, I blame Stuff!!
So my lovely man made friends in the water with a nice local dude called Miguel (more and I mean much more, painfully more detail in Stuffs Mexican surf blog to follow). It turns out Miguel runs fishing charters and we have been itching to go fishing for weeks so after some fairly tenuous justifications to each other we decided to go for it.
The price was for the boat so cost us the same regardless of participants, because of this we invited our new friend Nick. Nick is really lovely, he is one of those really impressive motivated people that do really cool travelling and knows lots about lots. He is currently travelling Central America via bike, that’s right peddle bike, with a small trailer for stuff that includes a spear gun, a surf board and a tent. He camps most places for free but luckily for us is paying a little to camp on the grounds of our hostel so we get to hang out, this is the most recent in many of these trips he’s undertaken. He also has a background in linguistic and nuclear engineering, so random, but cool!! He brought the snacks and tunes for fishing and is cooking us our fish tonight!
So 7am came around and the three of us met Miguel outside our hostel for a lift to his boat. The lift was on a quad bike, and was much fun as it was a short distance and there were 4 of us. We got to the 25 foot boat and set off from Peurto Angelito. It was a beautiful morning with some big swell running. We soon started to spot turtles on the surface of the water, soon followed by a pair of turtles, that made us feel a little uncomfortable for watching, if you know what I mean (photo below).
We were fishing for sailfish and saw a fin which was very exciting, however the hours passed and we had a few nibbles and even a proper strike but the fish managed to escape due to some impressive acrobatics. We had started to loose heart particularly due to mine and Stuffs poor fishing record. Thankfully an insane amount of dolphins rocked up to bow ride followed by more and more, these would move off and others would porpoise in from a distance, it was breathtaking. We started with what we think were Common, then they moved on some more joined us that we think maybe Spinner Dolphins, we could basically reach down off the bow and touch them and could hear them talking, AMAZING!!!!
Now pretty satisfied that even if we caught nothing we’d had an awesome time we relaxed a little, however Miguel had other plans, we ended up staying out longer for free just to increase our chances and finally on the way in….
A bite, fish on…. Miguel and his brother both had something on, Stuff took over one rod and fought a small Darado almost to the boat which managed to get away. However mean while Miguel had something bigger on the line!!! Stuff took over and with an awesome feet of strength and stamina hauled it in. To begin with we thought he was being weak and it was a tiddler but to his credit it was a bueat!!!! Not as big as they come by any means but a stunning sailfish. We did think of letting it go but the meat would pay for some of the trip and feed us for days (weeks if we took it all eating it every day). So we kept him, well we took half and gave the rest to the crew for a tip. Happy people all round, besides the fish.
Stuff has more thoughts on this to follow, photos below.
By things
So my lovely man made friends in the water with a nice local dude called Miguel (more and I mean much more, painfully more detail in Stuffs Mexican surf blog to follow). It turns out Miguel runs fishing charters and we have been itching to go fishing for weeks so after some fairly tenuous justifications to each other we decided to go for it.
The price was for the boat so cost us the same regardless of participants, because of this we invited our new friend Nick. Nick is really lovely, he is one of those really impressive motivated people that do really cool travelling and knows lots about lots. He is currently travelling Central America via bike, that’s right peddle bike, with a small trailer for stuff that includes a spear gun, a surf board and a tent. He camps most places for free but luckily for us is paying a little to camp on the grounds of our hostel so we get to hang out, this is the most recent in many of these trips he’s undertaken. He also has a background in linguistic and nuclear engineering, so random, but cool!! He brought the snacks and tunes for fishing and is cooking us our fish tonight!
So 7am came around and the three of us met Miguel outside our hostel for a lift to his boat. The lift was on a quad bike, and was much fun as it was a short distance and there were 4 of us. We got to the 25 foot boat and set off from Peurto Angelito. It was a beautiful morning with some big swell running. We soon started to spot turtles on the surface of the water, soon followed by a pair of turtles, that made us feel a little uncomfortable for watching, if you know what I mean (photo below).
We were fishing for sailfish and saw a fin which was very exciting, however the hours passed and we had a few nibbles and even a proper strike but the fish managed to escape due to some impressive acrobatics. We had started to loose heart particularly due to mine and Stuffs poor fishing record. Thankfully an insane amount of dolphins rocked up to bow ride followed by more and more, these would move off and others would porpoise in from a distance, it was breathtaking. We started with what we think were Common, then they moved on some more joined us that we think maybe Spinner Dolphins, we could basically reach down off the bow and touch them and could hear them talking, AMAZING!!!!
Now pretty satisfied that even if we caught nothing we’d had an awesome time we relaxed a little, however Miguel had other plans, we ended up staying out longer for free just to increase our chances and finally on the way in….
A bite, fish on…. Miguel and his brother both had something on, Stuff took over one rod and fought a small Darado almost to the boat which managed to get away. However mean while Miguel had something bigger on the line!!! Stuff took over and with an awesome feet of strength and stamina hauled it in. To begin with we thought he was being weak and it was a tiddler but to his credit it was a bueat!!!! Not as big as they come by any means but a stunning sailfish. We did think of letting it go but the meat would pay for some of the trip and feed us for days (weeks if we took it all eating it every day). So we kept him, well we took half and gave the rest to the crew for a tip. Happy people all round, besides the fish.
Stuff has more thoughts on this to follow, photos below.
By things
Turtle power
Gay Shark
Biggles goes fishing
Monday, July 8, 2013
Barter Town - Leg two to Mexico
After driving a tanker full of sand out of an oil refinery compound with people dressed in Ice Hockey gear, I found myself wondering through the desert towards a town ruled by Tina Turner…. Oh wait that’s Mad Max (II & III) not my life….
Right so we’ve spent about 9 hours on the crappy bus or King Quality as it is advertised . Driver was a legend bus was shite. We know we are getting close to Tapachula and we are getting pretty excited. We go round this corner and down into this valley into this small crazily busy little town. The driver tells us to get out as this is Immigration., well everyone bundled out of the bus and when I asked drives what was going on he pointed to the immigration sign. We dutifully listen to drives and jump out with our passports. We are met by about 25 Guatemalan guys who are shouting and waving wads of pesos in our faces and asking if we want to change dollars to pesos. We decline and line up at the immigration window, as we do, we turn round to see our coach disappear. Now we had no idea if this Tapachula or Mexico or what was going on. We stuck our head against the window used our pigeon Spanish paid some money and then legged in the general direction of the bus. We saw our bus about 200m up the road and Drives unloading our stuff. We were thinking, are we here? What the f**k is going on? Drives informed us that we had to carry our stuff across the border. When I say informed he pointed in the general direction said something in Spanish that neither of us understood. We still did not know if this was Tapachula or not. We head towards the border with all these kids trying to blag money off us for carrying our stuff. Well being the international savvy traveller I am I leave my bags with the street urchins pay 50c thinking that my bags will be safe as houses!! And to be fair the bags were safe and it went smooth, but the whole time we had to fill out our forms I had visions of kilos of cocaine being rapidly stuffed into my board bag, it wasn’t. So we grab our bags from the honest street urchins and head through the border, now this part of crossing borders in Central America is great, you all line up and get to press a button as you go over the border, if it goes green your home free, if it goes red you get your bags emptied out and stuff rummaged through.. We’ve been green every time!!
Right ok im waffling now, the rest of the journey is arriving at Tapachula, drinking for 5 hours and eating spicy beef and beans (bad idea ahead of 13 hours on a bus), then on another bus for 13 hours over night to Peurto Escondido, multiple stops and being searched by army people, then arriving in peurto Escondido….
By Stuff
Right so we’ve spent about 9 hours on the crappy bus or King Quality as it is advertised . Driver was a legend bus was shite. We know we are getting close to Tapachula and we are getting pretty excited. We go round this corner and down into this valley into this small crazily busy little town. The driver tells us to get out as this is Immigration., well everyone bundled out of the bus and when I asked drives what was going on he pointed to the immigration sign. We dutifully listen to drives and jump out with our passports. We are met by about 25 Guatemalan guys who are shouting and waving wads of pesos in our faces and asking if we want to change dollars to pesos. We decline and line up at the immigration window, as we do, we turn round to see our coach disappear. Now we had no idea if this Tapachula or Mexico or what was going on. We stuck our head against the window used our pigeon Spanish paid some money and then legged in the general direction of the bus. We saw our bus about 200m up the road and Drives unloading our stuff. We were thinking, are we here? What the f**k is going on? Drives informed us that we had to carry our stuff across the border. When I say informed he pointed in the general direction said something in Spanish that neither of us understood. We still did not know if this was Tapachula or not. We head towards the border with all these kids trying to blag money off us for carrying our stuff. Well being the international savvy traveller I am I leave my bags with the street urchins pay 50c thinking that my bags will be safe as houses!! And to be fair the bags were safe and it went smooth, but the whole time we had to fill out our forms I had visions of kilos of cocaine being rapidly stuffed into my board bag, it wasn’t. So we grab our bags from the honest street urchins and head through the border, now this part of crossing borders in Central America is great, you all line up and get to press a button as you go over the border, if it goes green your home free, if it goes red you get your bags emptied out and stuff rummaged through.. We’ve been green every time!!
Right ok im waffling now, the rest of the journey is arriving at Tapachula, drinking for 5 hours and eating spicy beef and beans (bad idea ahead of 13 hours on a bus), then on another bus for 13 hours over night to Peurto Escondido, multiple stops and being searched by army people, then arriving in peurto Escondido….
By Stuff
San Salvador to Tapachula, Mexico - day bus
So very kindly, Tom of Ttortuga Verde gave us a lift all the way back to San Salvador, as he was going anyway but he also helped us sort out our bus tickets and dropped us off at a good cheap hostel he knew. We arranged a taxi to get us to the bus terminal for 5 the next morning, so had dinner and an early night.
Morning came and we where up and at them, the taxi was on time and after some inventive seat jiggling to fit Stuffs boards in we were off. We got to the bus station early and brought our tickets, we were going with a company called King Quality and the buses looked awesome, double decker, swanky, boasting WiFi, TV etc etc, literally the best bus I've ever seen, so we started getting fairly excited about the 10 hour trip. We were due to leave at 6am and at five to the bus fired up its engines and we started to gather only to watch the nice bus pull out and be replaced by a fairly roapy looking coach. Hearts sank and faces dropped, and crest fallen we handed over our bags and got on still in shock and wondering what we did wrong to scare off the nice bus. Never felt so jipped!!!!!
In very British fashion we sucked up the very obvious disappointment and took our seats which to be fair reclined a good distance and were pretty comfy, the shock still apparent as all we could do is look at one another and laugh to save from crying for the next 10 mins. The music playing did not warm us to this impostor bus, i imagine it was titled death by xylophone, and i quickly realised 10 hours of it may make me in to a serial killer and Stuff a rocking, dribbling shell of a man. Fortunately due to it leading to the end of the music, about 20 mins in the smell of diesel fumes spread through the bus, this got increasing worse, which is when the comedy value evaporated, until basically on mass we petitioned the driver to please pull over and do something.
He did, we pulled over on the side of a busy highway and all got out to stand about attracting a police presence whilst Drive rolled up his sleeves and dutifully got completely covered in oil. Whatever he did worked and we got back in and underway, narrowly avoiding a sense of humour failure, the fumes dissipated fairly quickly and thankfully the music did not return.
The rest of the trip to the Guatemalan: Mexico boarder was fairly uneventful, including crossing from El Salvador to Guatemala, besides some very brave (scary) bus driving and some seemingly shady stops to offload weird looking packages from the bus into waiting 4x4s.
Fortunately because we didn't know what to expect we had ordered a take away pizza the night before to bring with us as the refreshments were not in large supply, although we managed to get hold of a chicken tortilla around lunch time.
The driver did an awesome job fixing the bus and drove like a demon, but I would not recommend King Quality for this leg as you get the crapy bus. Apparently the plush bus is used for shorter trips like to central Guatemala, as the fuel consumption is high. Tika bus are very slightly cheaper and the buses look better for this trip but they were full so we found the alternative and it did get us there.
The next excitement was the boarder crossing into Mexico.....
By Things
King Quality?
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Always Drunk, Always Gay!!
On a side note we went drinking in this bar next to Tortuga verde as we wanted to drink and eat in some other places to mix up. Ok the beer was cheaper. There is not hardly any other places to drink or eat around La Tortuga Verde and this was 5 mins up the road. And when I say bar I mean shack on the side of dirt road. We drove past the bar earlier in the day and Tom said “yeah that’s a bar, the guys always drunk and always gay” so we laughed and thought that was an odd way to describe a bar. So we thought fuck it we’ll go for a drink there… We turned up at the bar and instantly knew what Tom was talking about this really camp, really gay guy who was really drunk, now I mean really drunk, he had totally blood shot eyes and struggled to stand. We instantly knew this was the right bar. We tried to explain that we only had a $20 note and wanted some beers, the beers cost a $1 and we knew getting change would be an issue. This caused all sorts of confusion and we started to think we weren’t gonna get beer. Luckily this other guy called Ever as far as we could tell stepped in and communicated that we wanted beer but had no change. Basically he told the really drunk, really gay guy to and sit down and he would sort this out. We got the beer and ended up chatting to this Ever guy for about 2 hours. Now when I say chatted, he spoke sentences in half Spanish half English and we responded in half English half Spanish… This interspersed with Ever smacking himself in the head and saying fuck if he couldn’t remember the word in English. It should be noted that Things was awesome as she understands a lot more Spanish than I. It should also be noted here that Ever had drunk about 18 beers so was struggling to make sense. We covered a lot of topics from farming as Ever had 2 fields of maize, to me being asked if I liked to cook, it actually transpired that Ever was not talking about cooking but was offering me coke (Cocaine)!! I politely declined but thanked him for the offer of drugs. There is a lot of drugs in Central America, I have lost count of the number of times I have been offered cocaine or marijuana since being here. My advice to anyone travelling here would be to politely decline. The locals are not offended and everything is cool. The conversation moved on we found out Ever used to be a commando in the El Salvordrian army fighting alongside American troops and that he has 10 brothers and 1 sister. We also saw Ever's mum who comes to this bar as well and as far as we could make out she either gets really drunk and has to go to bed or Ever gets really drunk and she has to put him to bed. All in all it was good couple of hours and we went back to La Tortuga Verde for a few more beers and a massive fish supper. Good night, drinking with a crazy local, then fish dinner…..
By Stuff
By Stuff
The following animals sighted at La Cuco beach are Always Drunk and Always Gay!
Photos by Things
Friday, July 5, 2013
Surfing Near El Coco Beach
As you know we were staying at La Tortuga Verde which is a pretty cool place and has a beach break out front, it is not of the highest quality but it does get better towards high tide and you can get the odd decent one. It is also has a zero crowd factor which is always nice. The main event at in this part of El Salvador is a point break near El Coco Beach, now this is an awesome wave. When we were there the swell was not epic but it was pretty much at least head high the whole time and the wave is great. It is a right hand point break. It is a rocky point covered with sand so super friendly. You take off in front of the point and if you get one that links up you can go all the way to the beach. It has two or three sections so you can do turns but it also gets racy a one point and we have been informed that it barrels on this section when the swell is better. We surfed this most days for a week and I loved it as you actually have time to practice your turns!! It was busy some of the time but you can usually sit a little on the inside and pick off a few waves easily, as people try to make it round the racy section and mess it up, or try a big manoeuvre and mess it up leaving the wave free for you. If travelling in this area you should definitely surf this wave. It is easily found.
By Stuff
Photos of the point breaking and Stuff on a wave - By Things
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