Going Christmas Loco

Acupulco! How wierd it is to have christmas here! it must be at least 30 degrees and its very very humid.. i doubt santa would keep his red coat on long. I really did miss the christmas dinner (we had a small steak sort of dinner in the afternoon outside at a restaurant, and taco´s in the evening) but am looking forward to the homecoming xmas dinner in february back in old whitley bay. Yay!! Shhh you shodulnt wish time away should you. I really missed my family yesterday (which is a good thing, isnt it).

Me and Matt jumped in the sea on christmas day afternoon because it was so hot. It looked like evryone had brought their families to spend the day in the bay. How different to being at home with the family? THey had all their gear there and were camped for the day. It was incredible, nice and warm water and much joy and merriment. It was splashing and hand stands and salty water and avoiding boats, and to be in amongst all the fascinating faces in the nice water made the day for me. Later on i think i did some wrestling, but that was a different kind of merriment. We met a small man called Manwell (who had 13 children) and all his family, they treated us to a beer by the water from their cooler box. His grandma was eating a corn on the cob for over an hour, she didnt have any teeth.

Getting to Acupulco was horrid though. We did a 30 hour journey from Mazatlan (which we had thought was going to be 16) in a baking oven of a broken bus. The man next to me did a quick hail mary just as we were setting off, he obviously knew more than I did. I actually was wishing for the driver to crash into the wall at one stage, just so we could stop all the winding and rolling that never seemed to end. If channel 4 did a Top 100 Worst Bus Journeys countdown programme, i think youd have to stay up late to watch the bit about this one. Anyway, somewhere on that journey, we passed a time zone but didnt know it, so we missed our connecting bus today by an hour :( Here there are a million VW beetles acting as taxis, each of them the same blue and white, which add so much to the feel of it. Its a sight to see.

The plan is this- we bus south today for another 7 hours, which will take us to Peurto Escandido (bad spell), and will bike the 700km to guatemala. Ive got my yellow fever shot now, so its all go. By about the 8th of january we should be at the border, and then on the 20th of January ill have to leave everyone and turn back. Thats going to be sad withouta doubt, but i know ive got things to do and if i move the flight once more, ill be in the same situation again. Ho humm.. ill write more on that in a different one. But we musnt think aboiut the end. And i should be quiet about all this bussing around- what wimps!

Went to the cinema back up in Mazatlan, to watch Casino Royale (good film!). There was a Cricket in the cinema somewhere, which added a nice atmosphere to the quiet bits :) Ive bought some rubber clogs which the nasty canadians hate, but i like em.

Weve hot 3 big cities in a row, and its al quiet intense. Right, its nearly time to get back on the hell hound bus again. I feel terrible today, but am getting better. Its boxing day!

Review

A while back, I wrote that I have ups and downs, and that i only write about the ups. Riding along a dead straight 40 mile road on wednesday the 29th of November (there really were no bends at all), there wasnt a right lot to concentrate on (youve seen 10000 cactus, youve seen them all), and so I thought maybe it was time to write about the bad. And why shouldnt it be? A big part of the reson for me being out here at all is the end of 'Annika and Me'. So here it is, in the middle of this hopefully sometimes entertaining blog.

And then I realised almost straight away that this was the first time id chosen/wished to think about her, and it wasnt because I was feeling sad or bitter or lost. When I was last in Sweden in July, after a horrible afternoon of (looking back - Oscar winning scenes and articulate drama) talking, the only thing I wanted to do (or could think of doing) was to go running, just to try and get rid of some energy. Then i collapsed after a mile inbetween two fields and sobbed and said that i felt like i wanted to die. A deer hopped out infront of me and skipped way, but i dont remember thinking that that meant anything. Now that sounds pretty silly and melodramatic, but the good thing now is that that really does feel silly and melodramatic. Life carried on quickly once id returned home and resigned and bought a plane ticket.

Obviously it still hurts to think of what a nice future we could have had and all the things we said we would do in it, but I think now ive realised or remembered that theres a lot of other futures out there, i just have to step back a few paces and find them. Losing my best friend and going right back to the ´drawing board´ are the hardest things to face. JH

John is unemployed and writes for his own column. He doesnt really have any plans yet, but hopes that 'something will come along soon'. He usually writes just using the keyboard, but this piece was written on paper by torch light in his tent. He is not sure where exactly.

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We´ve left Baja and are now on the mainland Mexico. We had some fun buying tickets for the boat to Mazatalan, and ended up having to sail somewhere else and bus down. Ive got my Yellow Fever vaccine now, after a lot of running around. Ive been into more than 6 hospitals and clinics here in Mazatlan and La Paz, miming motions of injecting something into my arm which just prompted concerned looks and shaking heads. It really feels crippling sometimes not being able to speak spanish.

We´re keen to get into central america, so we´re taking a 16hour bus down to Accupulco, where we´ll spend christmas. Oh, and that Four Tops song, Going Loco down in Accupulco means going crazy.

Theres an overwhelming charm to things here now- the general state of disrepair to everything makes all things more human. Ive seen potholes in the pavements that would go up to my shoulders if i fell in. But its the "we can do it, Si Si!! No Problem!" attitide that really hits. Whatever you need to do. Theres whole families that all pile into the back of an open flatbed truck and whizz all around, cars that look like a speedbump would knock the roof off. I watched two work men hoist up a heavy illumninated billboard up 10 meters with just a single rope tied round the waist of one guy and the other was using a ladder with a load of missing rungs that was just leaning against their van, they were laughing and drinking beers. We needed our bikes onto a bus, but it had no roof rack. He just waved wildly, opened the back door and jammed them all in. No silly rules and regulations to work inside of. A small thing like that would never ever happen in england, and its whats making us all enjoy Mexico so much.

Happy christmas everyone! I miss you all!

Out of the Frying pan and into.... the other one?

No is hasnt been that bad... maybe its just my arse and legs getting tired? who can tell. We met a fantastic Australian couple, Ben and Corrine in Guerrero Negro, which is where i wrote the last blog entry. Theyve been treating us to some lovely cooking, Sea Bass and Clams, which theyve been catching. Wow that was 12 days ago... we}ve been leapfrogging each other since then. They are in a Van. We are not that fast. But slow and steady wins the race, yes?

Next town stop was San Ignacio, 2 days after leaving. This was written up as "An Oasis in the desert". It wasnt bad though.. it had palm trees, and thinsg were becoming much more lush and green. Ben and Corrine had beat us there, and found a kooky little family run place that would get us in for $10 US a room with 3 beds, which was a good deal hu. We had a lovely meal in their little restaurant. The husband ran out to get the ingredients. Mine was a beef stew and it was great. At 2am i was sick like a fire hydrant. As it was shooting out i thought "All that nice food!" but it didnt look as good the second time around. I felt much better. I think they were keeping cockroaches in a pipe that came out of the ground too. They brought their whole family around the next morning to meet us. We said Hello, they said Hello, then we looked at each other for a bit. It was nice.

One of the nicest moments was playing football in the street with a bunch of kids who laughed a lot and it was just magic. Then i felt ill again. Hoo Hey.

Curtis}s birthday was up next, and we wanted to get to the east coast to swim in the postcard Sea of Cortez. We got there, but the hurricane we didnt know about had washed up a world of crap all over the place, so no swimming there. We met a cheery Wolfgang who waves at the camera here on the way in to town where we ate tacos together at Pepe's. He was heading north on his bike, presumably up Devils Mouth which we had just rode all the way down. Sucker!! Ups and downs ay. The next day I met Hugo & Hugo in a bar, they were a Father and Son super team and were BIG pink floyd fans. They ran me back to the hotel to meet everyone else. It turned out they could get you anything you wanted and it was all pretty wierd. THey hung about with us for 3 days, and i kept dissapointing Hugo Jnr by forgetting the words to Wish You Were Here over and over while he smiled and played it on guitar. Im quite good at shotgunning a beer now, ill teach you. Curtis had a good birthday and it was time to get back on the saddle.

South to Mulege, and there was more beaches that looked more Post Apocalyptic than Tropical, but we kept going and eventually found some nice ones. Ben and Corrine were with us still and its been great to spend time with them. We loafed about, swam, played basket ball with our new neighbour Barry and brothers Gent & Luke from Canada. I found a pair of goggles for 15 pesos, which is about a pound, and did some night swimming to see the phosphorescent glow of... well im not sure what it is- i need to read up on that, but its a glowing of organisms in the water when you disturb them. You can see it if its dark enough, and it feels a lot like swimming in space. WOO! Like a 1960s special effect, its pretty magical. Then i got scared, thought about jelly fish and got out quick.

Last night i saw three shooting stars, but they werent nearly as bright at that first one i saw back by the shipwreck. I wonder what that means?? Youre right, Nothing. I should mention the sky though. The stars are incredible. Every night is a clear view of the Milky Way stretching all the way across, and ever since I lost the roof of the tent back in california, ive never looked back.

We stopped at a place to eat yesterday, and saw this man there who was chopping up the side of beef here. We wondered if it were like the cows we've seen with Vultures sat on top. Mine was nice though. And I like this photo!

Matt and Curtis have stayed back at Cyote Beach with Ben and Corrine, while the remaining 3 of us were feeling a bit too lazy and so have continued alone to meet them in La Paz, which is the southern most point we will get to in Baja, where we'll take the ferry from, across to the main land.



The rest of this bunch of photos are in here: http://www.afilmcalleddads.com/photos/set12

And finally i managed to get some video off the camera from yesterday... it should hopefully play, but you will probably have to right click on it and choose Save Target As or someting similar. Now you can pretend you too are riding through mexico with socks that can kill a cyote!! Get it here: http://www.afilmcalleddads.com/photos/set12/MVI_0082.AVI

Adios Amigos