Nicaragua

We arrived in bustling Leon in western Nicaragua around 3pm after a no-sleep-dirty-hangover bus ride from San Salvador. Being in no mood to take crap from anyone we got in an argument with our taxi driver over whether it was €1 each or €1 in total. We threw him a single and walked away into the Big Foot hostel, satisfied that we hadn't been ripped off, victorious.



We checked in, I emptied my entire bag into a laundry sack (things were getting a little grim on that front) and headed back to reception. There at the door, finger pointed right at me, was our taxi driver and a cop straight out of a 70's show, tache proudly tickling his nose. A quick check with the receptionist confirmed that we had in fact ripped off the taxi driver and now he was back, bullied kid with headmaster style, to collect his dues. Not wanting a night in a cell I threw him the extra cash, mumbled an apology in pigeon Spanish, and retreated to the safety of the dorm.

That was pretty much the highlight of leon, we wandered around a bit, checked out the huge cathedral, ate fried chicken and slept.


Next day we were off to Laguna Opoyo, a volcanic crater lake near Granada. This place was paradise with the dorm in an old boat shed looking out on the thermally warmed laguna. After a day and a half of kayaking, tubing and swimming we figured every day here would be identical to the last so moved on.

Granada was next, yet another colonial town where I said goodbye to Mark from Canada and Charlotte from Minnesota.

It was here I first saw the Virgin Mary.

There she was on a float surrounded by palm leaves and cherubic angels spouting water followed by a generator and a band. They sure love the virgin in these parts as I was to find out in San Juan del sur where she was paraded around incessantly with an entourage of big band playing, firework shooting devotees.

The preferred way of honouring the virgin appeared to be to make as loud an explosion as possible. Some of these bombs shook windows and reverberated around the town and they kept going all night. Not quite the relaxed beach atmosphere I'd expected.

A few days of lazing on the beach and a bit too much time online made me sick of the place so I hopped on a chicken bus to la frontera. Dodging ox and carts, chickens roosting in trees and roadside stalls we hoofed it to the border which we were warned was super hectic.

In fact it was a great border. That may have been because I hadn't had much sleep or appetite in the previous few days and was also slightly hungover which fostered a mild delirium where everything was amusing. After a bit of banter with the cambiomen I paid my dollar to get through the small gate which signifies the end of Nicaragua.

After persuading the emigration man to stamp my passport I walked the 10mins to costa rica, found the immigration office tucked behiind the restaurant and got my bus ticket to the capital, San juan.

San juan is a bustling place that looks like it was built in the 50's using the post war brutalist school of thought so popular in the bombed cities if the south of England. Avoiding the over pushy taxi men I decided to risk a walk through town to get to my hostel. It was just like any depressed high street, full of tacky shops, interesting people and litter.

After 20mins I checked into the aptly named hostel tranquilo, parted with my $8, had a freezing shower, hit burger king and went to bed. Up at 6am on account of the early night I set out to discover the historic heart of San jose. Not finding one I headed back to the hostel for the free DIY pancake breakfast. After frying up what was more like a loaf of bread than a pancake and laughing with the other hostellers over their equally inept efforts it was time to walk to the bus station and get the bus to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast near the panama border. So I'm on the bus, iTouch in hand, listening to Damien Rice, admiring the hilly jungle-esque interior of costa rica and hoping it's not raining on the coast.

El Salvador to Nicaragua

The trip to playa el tunco, el Salvador came off the back of a fun party weekend in Antigua. I was ready for some daytime beach chilling followed by a few nighttime beers, perhaps even some exercise in the form of a boogie or whatever the kids call it these days. To quote Mick jagger: you can't always get what you want but if you try sometimes you get what you need.

To get to el tunco I first had to negociate myself out of bed. A tough call after my first night of couchsurfing. Valerie (see pic above) had promised a quiet night in, it was a Tuesday after all. What I got was a night out with the elite of San Salvador. Carlos picked us up in his super charged 4x4 tank resplendznt with sword on the back seat ("a Halloween prop..."). First stop was the GranVia, a new outdoor mall that was fancier than any I had seem in north America. Typically we went to the only Irish restaurant, Bannigans, for dinner (are there any "Irish" pubs in the world with a common Irish name?!) after that it was a whistlestop tour of posh dollar-a-beer bars culminating in being treated to kareoke until 3am.

We managed to convince Carlos "I know another bar we can go to" Stifler to drop us home after kareoke. Lucky that, as his semi drunken driving was getting a bit hairy. Drink driving doesn't seem to be an issue here. In fact I was proudly shown a picture of a crashed brand new BMW.

Next morning I was up at chicken bus o'clock to head to la libertad and then on to playa el tunco, a famous surf beach (don't worry, jane's been there too..!) I found a tent on a raised platform by the beach for $4. After a night of little sleep I treated myself to a night in a bed in Papayas lodge. El tunco was a bit quiet, the bars were empty by 8, so three of us decided to go back to san Salvador and on to Nicaragua.

So it was back to Valerie´s house in San Salvador with the promise of another quiet night in as she had a big night out planned for the next day.

With unnerving predictability we found ourselves still out at midnight. Instead of kareoke we rocked out at a "Veni U2" gig, intended to raise funds to bring U2 to el Salvador, with a tribute band fronted by a very womanly Bono. For a tribute band they knew very few U2 songs, in fact they just knew Vertigo which they played every few songs in the hope we'd be too drunk to notice.

Notice we did, so it was off to a nightclub that would fit very nicely in the poshest part of any capital city. Suddenly it was 3am, we hadn't had dinner yet and our bus to Nicargua was in two hours. And so we found ourselves packed into a car, eating drive-thru mcdonalds, cruising the streets of el Salvador.

We got to the apartmentst 3.45am, just in time for a quick brush of the fiaclas and to catch our cab. By 4.15am there was still no sign of the cab. I was slowly falling asleep on my backpack on the footpath, mark was trying to drunkenly figure out what to do while michael from holland was chuckling whilst proclaiming: "ishn't did weird".

I was seconds from passing out when a police 4x4 pulled up and four commandos, toting machine guns for good measure, jumped out and surrounded us. Using a jumble of "bus", "5am" and "mucho problema" we got across the gravity of the situation. Either because they were nice people or they didn't want to deal with the headlines the next day ("3 gringos murdered on sidewalk") they threw our backpacks in the back and invited us to ride with them.

And so it was, with two heavily armed, ballaclavad, commandos guarding our bags in the back, that we came to get a police escort through San Salvador to our bus terminal.

My memories of passing through Honduras don´t amount to much, I´m sure it was beautiful etc. but I was fast asleep for all of it (except for the obligatory "welcome to honduras" sign).

Antigua (again) and El Salvador

The original intention was to spend a day in Antigua to re-form my body into it's normal shape after a 9 hour bus journey and to get a wash done. Five days later and I'm finally in el sALvador. I blame Rum, Paul, Jessica and Devon. The hostel was just too much fun to leave.

In the end I'm glad I stayed because it gave me the chance to climb Volcan Pacaya again. The first time round I climbed it in the morning but I later discovered to my horror that Jane had climbed it in the evening. In order to faithfully recreate Jane's journey I would have to climb it again.


Going back gave me a chance to see solid rock where last month I saw flowing lava. Geography teachers worldwide would wet themselves. The lava this time around was a good 20 minute hike further up the volcano on steep, slippery terrain, a mixture between sand and sharp rocks eager to attack your ankles. Thanks to my days of playing frisbee on the beach I found the easiest way up was to run.

The lava snuck up on us this time, we were scrambling over fresh, hollow sounding rock when the guard said softly and with no sense of urgency that we should perhaps not be where we were and instead follow him. A good call as a few metres on we could see that we had been standing on the thin roof of a cave about two metres wide from which flowed a fast moving stream of 2000C liquid magma (dr evil would love this!). At the same time the sun was setting creating an incredible glow as the clouds we were in rushed by.

Having been toasted marshmallow style by the lava we started our descent. The easiest way to do this was to attempt to ski down using feet as skis and my trusty stick as a "jaysus" device to stop a fusion of ass and sharp rock. We made it back in good time using flashlights and a bus. Never was a Burger King cheeseburger and fries more deserved.

This morning I was up to get a shuttle to Guatemala city at 9. First things first though, I needed coffee, bread and to post my latest postcard to Rosie, Queen of Clonskeagh. I was hanging out with Helen (from San pedro / NZ, just back from the rainy caribbean coast and very hungover), Jessica (from Antigua / Oregon and off to semuc champey) and Sophia (from Sofia, off to San pedro again) on this beautiful morning. By 9.15 there was still no shuttle, no big deal in Guatemala to have a delay. I popped my head into the girls at the travel agents to check on it. My appearance was greeted with calm panic followed by some frantic phone calls. I left them to it, I could see I was in good hands.

My trust was well placed as ten minutes later my shuttle, i.e. a volvo estate with three Americans already in the back, duly turned up. After doing a few laps of the city's one way streets trying to find a way out (half of the streets were being dug up and the rest closed due to the presidents imminent arrival) we were on our way.

I was dropped at the tica bus terminal two hours early so I checked my bag and went for a wander. I saw a last chance to experience Guatemalan culture across the motorway and thought what a great way to spend a few hours. I put on my sprinting shoes and ran through the speeding cars to get across to the megamall complete with McDs, BK and joy of joys Taco Bell. I feasted on taco fries and, appropriately, a volcano taco (cultural, no?). I enjoyed a few hours of wandering around shops such as Tommy Hilfiger, Zara, y'know traditional guatemalan fare, before the volcano taco duly lived up to it's name and for the second time that day my sprinting shoes proved themselves to be a lifesaver.

As the grand Tica bus pulled into the Guatemalan side of the border a murder of cambio men came charging towards us waving huge wads of quetzals and dolares. Putting on my best Roy-Keane-talking-about-the-FAI face I pushed through them to get to the border control. As I stood in (the wrong) line I amused myself by observing the tactics of the cambio men. The would stand outside waving their wads as if having the biggest wad was crucial to gaining credibility and business. Some would tap on the glass, others, when they caught your eye, would wave their wads and wink, kindred spirits with old men who hang around primary school gates with bags of fresh candy.

Back on the bus we drove the short distance to the el Salvador side of the border. This time it was all a bit modern with the border guy walking through the bus scanning our passports with a fancy piece of beepy machinery. No stamp in the passport?what's the point incoming here?!


There was time to hop off the bus for a super greasy popoussa and a coke as the guards checked the bags. I swear they only looked at the bags that belonged to locals. I say this because my bag was near the front and they just climbed over it to get to the cheaper looking ones. Either way after about a quarter of the bags they got bored so it was "Vamos" and we were off.

So I'm now sitting on the bus on the way to San Salvador where i'm staying with victoria and her boyfriend, my first couchsurfing experience. Tomorrow I'm off to playa el sumthin to try a bit of surfing and to see what el Salvador is about. It's gotta be good, right? After all it's got "al" in it's name.....

I couldn't take it anymore. I mean, I need my ass right? If it ended
up staying numb forever then how could I ever appreciate a good sofa
again? Nine hours in a hiace van from San pedros to Coban was enough.
I could do the two slow, windy hours to lanquin the next day. I needed
relief.

That's how I ended up in Coban, lovingly described in the lonely
planet ("LP" or "the bible") as "not so much an attraction in
itself...", in the rain. Cold rain at that. May as well have been in
Ireland, at least there I would have a warm bed and a mammy ready with
a roast chicken sandwich and a glass of the latest super value red
wine if the month.

As it was I was alone in coban, slightly damp LP in hand, trying to
find hostel chipi chipi (closed down), followed by hostel jam bamboo
(doesn't exist) before hotel la Paz proved the bible can be right at
least 33% of the time.

I settled into my private room and tried to convince myself that the
mcdonalds I'd spotted on the drive in was a bad idea. It's amazing how
a seemingly intelligent person with all sorts of letters after his
name can have a debate like this with himself and still have no
conclusion after half an hour.

Only thing to do was to go for a wander with the bible and some
quetzals and try sort out a plan for the week. The town itself was
dark, wet and dirty. I was tired and grumpy. We agreed that I'd do my
business as quickly as possible then I'd leave it alone to get on with
being "not so much an attraction"...

Target one: Internet cafe. God forbid I go more than 24 hours without
reading the Irish times. Target two: pollo campero, a guatemalan kfc
which I justified as being a compromise between mcdonalds and
Guatemalan cuisine. It is Guatemalan owned after all. Target three:
bed. Easy.

That was yesterday.

I'm now sitting in a thatched hut beside a fast flowing river,
cappucino in hand, cinnamon roll in belly, listening to the white
noise of Israelis garbling in Hebrew and watching the hens cluck their
way around the garden. It's overcast but not raining, warm and not
cold but at the same time it's cold but not warm. Is there a word for
that temperature? Answers on a postcard please to al c/o el retiro.

The bus here was by definition a chicken bus as there was indeed a
live chicken in a plastic bag one row in front of me. The chicken was
joined by three adults and five kids all in the same row. The bus made
frequent stops to squeeze more people on and to fix the cling film
that passed as a window by the passenger seat. I had the pleasure of
being warmed by a genial hombre gordo to my left and the crotch of a
thinly moustached chico to my right. At one stage I also had a tamale
carrying woman by my feet and another leaning in front of me whose
odour was a skillful mix of a few weeks worth of sweat and fresh
coriander. With companions like these the need for heating was
eliminated.

This is how I justified spending €1.50 on a cinnamon roll and a
coffee. Sometimes I deserve it, right? The plan for today us to
perhaps lie on a hammock, maybe gave a poke online, chill out if you
will. Tomorrow I'm doing a tour of the caves and water pools. That's
the reason I put myself through all those buses. It had better be good!

Until next time....

Adventures in Lilliput

Chica turned 11 yesterday and to celebrate we had fried chicken with rice and not a lot of chat. There was no cake (boo!) but the mood was lightened by the introduction of a new set of juggling balls. Everyone had a go, everyone struggled. The lessons continue today. Anyway the point of this post is to show you pictures of the family I´m living with in the Lilliput area of town.

Anyway here´s a few pics of my family. I couldn´t get the pics to rotate though, try turning your screen on its side for easier viewing!

From Family photos - san pedros
From Family photos - san pedros

Sunrise at the Indian´s Nose

It's pretty rare that a promise made over a roast dinner in a pub on a Sunday evening to get up the next day at 2.30am for a hike is actually kept. Today was one of those rare exceptions. That's how I ended up sitting at a deserted dock at ten to three this morning.

By ten past three in the a.m. our group had assembled and the guide had turned up. Both unlikely events! We hiked through rough, steep, sloppy terrain for 3hrs to reach the tip of the Indian´s nose. The view from there was breathtaking. I'd only ever seen the sun sitting on the horizon with a blanket of clouds below from an airplane. Real front-of-a-religion-textbook stuff.

We sat and watched the sun rise over a duvet of clouds, between volcano peaks, quiet in awe of what was in front of us. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

To make the day that bit better, after running back to San pedro for my 9am class I was told that my teacher was ill. So I'm lying in bed looking forward to a day of chilling out and napping. Tough ol life....

Family life in Guatemala

For the past week I've been living with a Guatemalan family in the centre of San pedros. It's headed by francisca and felix with Judith, rebecca and 11yr old chica.

A typical day here involves breakfast at 8.30am which can be anything from corn flakes to a chicken stew with tortillas. From 9am-1pm I go to school by the lake for Spanish lessons then back home for lunch. Lunch is the main meal of the day here usually consisting of a stew with rice or some meat, always served with tortillas. I can´t count the amount of tortillas I´ve had in the last week!

After lunch I do my homework(!) then try and get some exercise like kayaking on the lake, swimming or running. Admittedly I´ve only kayaked once but it was very tiring, must be the altitude, right?

Last week was special as Rebecca was graduating from high school. There was a fiesta dinner with the grandparents and family. Such is society here the girls (including rebecca) spent most of dinner making tortillas for the rest of us. When they finally made it to the table they were eating off polystyrene plates. Kinda surprising to have the guest of honour working in the kitchen until the end. The meal was a quiet affair with the main focus being the consumption of food, there was no real chat or alcohol.

After dinner grandad #1 spoke for ages in maya, giving advice to rebecca and lots of thanks to the big man above and to felix and franny for all the hard work they put in over the last 18 years. At this point felix started to cry uncontrollably. By the time grandad #2 took the stage fran had started leaking too. Meanwhile the three giants (fi, rob and I) were sitting there not knowing what to do as our maya isn't quite up to scratch and we didn´t know if we should stay around to watch the breakdown of the family!

Everyone had a go at giving advice to the poor girl (I didn't say anything as my advice probably wouldn't quite fit in with the guat life.) finally they were done and after a buen proveco and a muchas gracias we made our escape glad to have been a part if it.

San Pedro de la Laguna, Guatemala

Aesthetically San Pedros de la Laguna is not a pretty town. It's cramped alleyways, breezeblock "houses" and mess of telephone wires are what you might call "rustic charm" but to be honest it just reeks of a "this'll do" attitude. That attitude is fair enough given how people live, there is no room for the nice-to-haves in life. The town is right on the lake but you wouldn't really notice it unless you went looking.

The main tourist street is essentially an alley, barely big enough for the tuktuks and motorbikes that like to zoom down them. It houses many many bars and cafes, nearly all of them owned by ex-pats looking for a more sedate life. Little did they realise that the competition between all the bars has reduced the price of a litre of beer (to share of course...) to about e1.80. The bars are pretty cool though.

The Buddha bar is a great spot for live music. I went to the open mic night and listened to some aged and some not so aged hippies jamming on their guitars and bongo drums. I guess when you're a dirty hippy you have plenty of time to practice guitar as they were all pretty awesome. Three or four of the bars show movies every night which is great for just chilling out and taking a night off.

I've been placed with a Guatemalan family about five minutes walk from the main alley. They are so nice and very, very authentic! In fact this is the one part of my trip in central america so far where people genuinely dress like they do in the guide books. I have my own room (with padlock) and get fed three times a day. Food is traditional maya stuff with shedloads of tortillas made on the cooker, I try to help but I think my strength is always going to be pasta and goo.

The kitchen is located across an alley from the house, under an avocado tree with a lovely view of the lake. The main cooker is like a steel table encased in fireproof tiles with a wood fire burning under it to provide heat. Everything is cooked on this steel, water is boiled, eggs are fried and of course the tortillas are cooked directly on it.

I'm planning on being here until next sunday at least as the spanish lessons are going well. Mi Maestra Estella halba mucho espanol y yo quiero habler espanol tambien. Lessons are from 1-5 every afternoon under a reed canopy down by the lake. I kept on getting distracted by hummingbirds buzzing by my head yesterday and by the occasional horse wandering by. It's a really beautiful setting for skool. The Kielys are heading off towards Belize this Sunday via a Mayan theme park and some other Guat sights. I'm going to stay here until fluent(!) and then head south through el salvador, honduras etc.

I've been doing a lot of thinking while on the road and I reckon that I should focus on getting as many stamps in the passport as possible before settling back into the real world sometime in 2009. So the plan is now to head south as far as Argentina and then head west towards Australia or NZ to maybe work for a while and then make my way back to Ireland somehow. I love the freedom of this plan as I can just as easily cut it short and head back to home at any time. This plan is just what I'm thinking right now and will probably change along the way!

San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico

After the heat of puerto Escondido San cristobal was a bit of a shock. It's a beautiful colonial town set high in the mountains. Whilst mountains are very pretty etc the elevation of almost 2000 metres made for very cold nights. Unfortunately the hostel dorms were more akin to barns with doors swinging open during the night letting in freezing cold air. I had to invest in a wooly hat from a street seller to add to my night time thermals.

The day trip to palenque didn't help the temperature situation. It started at 6am in a minibus. Four painful hours later we were at agua azul, a set of beautiful waterfaals and pools. After an hour there we moved to miso-ha, a very large waterfall where you could follow a path that led behind the falls. It was pretty cool being behind a waterfall but as it should turn out waterfalls contain water which is the essence of wetness. Needless to say I got thoroughly soaked. Did I have a change if clothes?of course not!

A few minutes drive later we arrived at the highlight of the trip: the ruins of palenque. These were some amazing ruins, made even more spectacular by the torrential rain. I waded through paths covered withthree inches of water to see giant pyramids, temples, houses and a spectacular waterfall that looked like it belonged in desneyland.

The drive home was long (5 hours), cold (on a mountain) and wet (see above) but it was worth it to get into the barn and shiver myself to sleep!

Puerto Escondido

After the bus ride from hell we settled into the hostel mayflower for what was meant to be two nights. Grotty as the town was it had the most beautiful beach with excellent chill out bars. As a result the two nights turned into seven without being noticed. I could have stayed forever but managed to drag myself away eventually.

A typical day there involved getting up around eleven and hitting lizas bar on the beach as they had shades. In order to sit under their shades it was courtesy to buy a drink. This is how the one a day piña colada habit kicked off! Lizas was a great launch point for getting pummelled in the waves, surfing and bodyboarding. Sadly my strong point was getting pummelled.

There's really not much else I can say about Escondido. It felt like a proper holiday spent with great new friends at the hostel. Even now, two weeks later, I'm having to convince myself not to go back.

The bus of death - Oaxaca to Puerto Escondido

To get from Oaxaca to Puerto Escondido you have two options:
1. 6 hour 10euro trip over the mountains in a hiace van
2. 11 hour 20euro trip around the mountains in a proper bus

We chose option 1.

Bad choice.

The bus had 14 seats and 8 seatbelts. Unluckily for us we could see out of the front window and thus see just how many times we cheated death. The driver seemed to be followed the mantra "we´ll get you there early or not at all" because he was hoofing it along narrow "roads" up and down the mountain.

His favourite trick was to save a few seconds by taking blind corners at 100kmph driving on the wrong side of the road. Another favourite was to overtake other vehicles with his lights off while driving in the pitch black darkness.

We seemed to have God on our side though as we had left on a Sunday and there were religious icons all over the van. For example the rear view mirror was covered with rosary beads... The speedometer has a sticker of the Virgin Mary covering all speeds from 90 - 130kmph....

We sat there feeling utterly nauseous for 6 hours of this journey from hell. The worst moment was when we overtook a truck at pace coming up to a left hand blind turn around a steep cliff. We pulled back into our side 20m before the turn, 2 seconds later a huge bus came hurtling down the side of the road we had just been on. Nauseau increased a little.

But as I keep on saying, all´s well that ends well. We made it to the bus depot to be greeted by a large shrine to the great Virgin herself. It turns out that believing strongly in theVM is much more effective than maintaining a sensible speed, driving on the right having seatbelts...

Mexico, eh?

Mexico City photos

http://picasaweb.google.com/alanwm/MexicoCity?authkey=ezP9xJq8eeM#

Mexico City - day 3

After a solid morning of uploading photos, making phonecalls on skype ("can u hear me?!") and booking hostels I hopped on the 10p tube to the university to meet up with the UNAM Pumas ultimate frisbee team.

I got off the tube at the instructed station to find myself in the middle. Of a very busy market. Skipping past hawkers and ducking under very low electricity wires I did a good job of looking like I knew where I was going and also looking as menacing as possible, my tactic for keeping out of trouble.

I guessed the directi0n right and after half a km I entered the university. Now if you think ucd's traffic is bad you should try negociate your way through Unam. It's circled by a 6 lane dual carriageway with seemingly no place to cross. I dodged past the vintage beetles and got halfway where I asked a guy in a hi-viz jacket "donde est (insert swimming motion here)?". "ah, la piscana".... Turns out you can get away with sticking in French nouns most of the time. After another half hour wander I found the piscina, behind which was the ulti team.

Training was great craic, we suffered a little from the altitude (2250m) and the pollution (bad). I'm sure it wasn't down to lack of fitness. After 3 hours of fun ultimate in the rain (just like home) I was glad to hear that we were off for some "flavoured water". It turns out that flavoured water is actually flavored water and not beer which was upsetting at first but that emotion was soon usurped by the refreshing mandarin water and by laughing at the crazy guy who danced around us proclaiming that we should always "be happy".

Happy we were. We moved on to dans apartment with some cervezas and tequila and had a great night talking about ultimate, rude words and the world. These guys and girls were just so nice to us. It was a great reminder of how unique the ultimate community is.

Mexico City walkabout

Mexico city 14oct 08

A classic hostel day. Kicked off by meeting new friend andree for brekkie. She'd just bumped into a previous hostel buddy the couchsurfing andy from Halifax. This chap was meant to be in india but had dry cleaned his passport and erased his visa so was stuck in the multimegalopolis that is mehico city.

Now to walk around it you'd think it was just a regular city. Its the details that get you. The slanty cathedral built on Aztec ruins, the slanty everything else also built on 2000 years if classic civilisation. What brings a wry smile is that after all that time they've come to this version of civilisation.

The periodic smell of sewerage, the dust from street excavations, the themed streets: fabricland, d.i.y.ville, pharmacyplateau, christmascity etc. The street hawkers selling a few crusty tacos from a polystyrene plate, the woman with bic blades, the kid with a palette of pritt-stick, the man holding two irons ("very good brand"). It's a city of small scale enterprise where you'll never find what you're looking for.

The scale of the chaos was most vivid from the 47th floor of the toure latinomerica. That's where you count at least five distinct skyscraper zones rising from the calming smog. It's where you see the whistleblowing traffic cop almost get knocked over four times in a minute. Its where you get a perspective on just how big this city is. It's very big, by the way.

We got a group of about 10 young hostellers together to go to the mexican wrestling (gimp masks and all) that night. Sadly after walking down the kind of streets you´re not meant to walk down at night we discovered that the usually reliable Lonely Planet (aka the LP or the Bible) had lied about the venue. We saw very nice, closed, venue and legged it back to the hostel bar for salsa lessons and beers with the lit up centro historico behind us. All´s well that ends well...

Mexico City

Left the 4star luxury of the fiesta inn, la paz, at the very un-4star time of 5am. We rode to the airport in a minivan that clearly did something wrong in its former American life that earnt it retirement in Mexico. There seem to be a lot of miscreant cars in the US as Mexico is run by cars and vans from the 80s and 90s and in the case of the taxis often long before that.

Two planes and a layover in the sparkly new Guadalajara airport (where there was a very useful shuttle bus to carry you 200m from terminal 1 to 2 - I'm sure a monorail will be put in soon...) left us in Mexico city. After the kielys found their bags we were off in a roasting taxi ride to the hostel cathedral. Let's just say that I'm glad i don't have a car here.

The hostel is right in the middle of the historical district opposite the cathedral. The place is so full of cops and military types its tempting to walk around iPod in hand, camera dangling from the neck, waving a fistful of cash, complaining loudly about the smell of sewerage. Of course that would be immensely silly so instead the evening was spent wandering the streets and taking in the safest part of an 18m person city.

Free dinner is served on the roof of the hostel overlooking the main square where in a few minutes we'll settle in for some 2 -4-1 cervezas.

Until the next time my friends....

La Paz, Baja California, Mexico

La Paz
After a 19 hour overnight bus journey we arrived into la Paz at 7am. La Paz is the main city of Baja California and home to some fine colonial stuff as well as plenty of ramshackle buildings (and people!) it was also 35C with 100% humidity.

We had the honour if staying at the pension California, our first sub $10 home since camping. There were reasons for this. The room was large and had 4 double beds, unfortunately it also had ants on the Walls, cockroaches in the sink and was made entirely from concrete with no windows!

After a well deserved nap to recover from the bus we went on walkabout. Instant sweat was inevitable and embraced... The town was quite nice with churches etc but our main aim was to find the ferry company to get out of there before the hurricane hit. The first ferry company was closed up (we later discovered it has shut down permanently) and the second ferry company didnt go where we wanted to go.

The storm was getting nearer, the sky darker. We went to food to mull the options. While there it started bucketing down with what we´d call "wet rain" back home. It was decided that we needed some luxury to ride out the storm. We booked into the 4 star fiesta inn with wireless and gym and headed there to await the hurricane.

Now the hotel was pretty much closed up with sandbags everywhere, doors taped off etc. I´ll bet they were regretting their inclusion of an outdoor reception in the designs. There was nothing open and nothing around the hotel except for a marina so we did all we could do which was to sit in our room, watch Fox News to catch up on world affairs from an even and balanced source, and plan how to get out of there. Luckily the cheap flight phenomenom has hit mexico and we could book flights to mexico city to leave in two days. This meant a day in the sunshine bythe pool lapping up pina coladas and cervezas.... This travel lark is tough...

Green Tortoise Week 2

As I mentioned in my last post the GT was an incredible experience. Lying on a communAL bed is a great way to travel, especially when the beers get flowing. Over the last week we did:

Joshua Tree National Park (NP) where we managed to get lost on a 1 mile hike (those mountains needed to be tamed!) and ended up sprinting through the prickly desert to try and find our bus. There was blood a-flowin and stories-a-tellin after that one. The campsite there was beautiful, framed by incredible rocks and a most spectacular sunset. I slept under the stars that night waking a few times to admire the bright moon and the incredible array of stars. The next morning I was up in time for sunrise which I watched from a rock about 50ft off the ground. Listening to the coyotes howling while watching the sun rise behind a mountain with a plain of joshua trees in the foreground was some experience.

After that we drove to Zion NP in Utah where we hiked the Angels landing trail. This was a vertical rise of about 2000ft over 5 miles, a ten mile round trip. The last half mile rises about 800 of those feet with sheer drops either side of slippy, crumbling rocks. We did it as a group of ten of us (team tame - we like to tame nature) and got through the tough bits by focussing on what was for dinner that night! At Zion we had to say goodbye to our old friends on the old bus and transfer to a new bus with a new driver. About 15 of us made the transfer but were not impressed by the new "groovy" driver and his 24 year old hippy girl sidekick.

From Zion we drove to Bryce Canyon which is full of the famous hoodoos, vertical slabs of rock sticking up like stalagmites (is that the right one?) in a cave. Pretty incredible stuff. We hiked 8 miles around the canyon which once again provided us with an incredible sunset. This set us up for our first night drive where we had to sleep on the bus. I managed to yoink a bunk with about 1ft of space to squeeze into. I spent the night holding on for dear life as we turned hairpin bends and rocked our way to Arches NP.

Arches NP in some state somewhere (we were losing track at this stage) is full of the famous arches. Pretty tame trek and we were getting pretty bored of rocks at this stage.

This meant that by the time we got to Monument Valley, home of the navajo natives (injuns if you will) we were sick of rocks! we camped overnight under the stars by an incredible canyon with the snaking colorado below us which was slick as you like. The tour around the valley in a jeep was pretty poor (this rock looks like elvis, this one we call the weeping eagle etc...) I'd love to hear about the natives history and how they live now (pretty well it seems, they're all obese) but they were more interested in rocks that looked like things. woop....

Finally we managed to get a night out, we pulled up to a place called pace, full of yahoos. The steak house was pretty poor but reassuringly expensive. Nonetheless it was our first bit of meat in a week so we wolfed it down. From there we hit up a kareoke bar which went a bit mental. The groovy driver tried his best to be a young man (not happening buddy) and the rest of us made fools of ourselves. We piled back onto the bus at 1.30am for 4 hours of incredibly cramped "sleeping" where we had side lying room only, if that.

We arrived at the Grand Canyon at 6am and the hikers had some brekkie. I was heading down with team "all the way" the next day for an overnighter so we had the day off. Lucky that as we were pretty hungover and sleep deprived. I got my washing done, ate a big fried breakfast and went off to the rim to check out the canyon. It's pretty grand alright. Kinda like the dodder valley but feckin huuuuge and completely different. The GC was also a highlight as it was our first place to shower in four days (we had dipped into lakes and rivers but no showers).

The next morning we packed our bags and lunches and trekked the bright angel trail to the bottom of the canyon with a 4 hour stop off halfway to play cards and avoid the sun. Near the bottom we met up with team 3/4s for a swim in the colorado and to pose for some rather strange muscle-man photos. I'll leave it to your imagination!

Team all the way made it to the campsite 10 miles in by sunset and cooked up a feast of mountain house freeze dried space food followed by whiskey and cocao (thanks jane!). We slept out overnight only for the alarm to go off at 3.40am. We had to get up early to avoid the sun and get back to the bus for our departure at 11am. The first two hours were spent walking by headtorch, it was pretty cool watching seven lights bob their way up a canyon side. We reached half way after 90 minutes (a quick 4.5miles given the gradient) and had breakfast of sambos and energy bars. We trekked on after a few minutes and made it to the top by 8.40, just over four hours after setting off. OUr pace was pretty good as we climbed 1700ft over 10 miles in just over 3 hours of hiking. Needless to say we had a little sleep on the bus.

So we went to vegas (with a one hour breakdown in the desert on the way - overheating bus) where i stayed in circus circus with the kielys and our new friend ray the kuwaiti rig worker who comes from kiwiland. We gambled, saw le reve (ask jane about it) and generally wandered around for two days before hitting here.

On my way back from the post office in LV I spotted a hippy rainbow crusted campervan. I had a little giggle at those damn hippies and forgot about it. Until I got to the hostel in san diego and there was the very same camper van. Turns out it was owned by 8 irish kids who've been travelling around for the last month. We're now thinking of buying it for $500 and heading to mexico!! I've got some convincing to do but it would be sooo much fun!!

if you want to talk me out of it now's your chance!

Anyway that brings me to here, san diego, where we have two more nights before heading to mehico. More alventures to come. I'll keep you posted.

Green Tortoise Week 1

Having left Jane to fend for herself with the mac version of "head over heels" in Seattle airport I met up with Rob, Fi, Bruce (the car) and Sheila (the sat nav). We took the monorail to the skytower-spaceship-yokie, wandered around for about five minutes then headed to meet Brucie to go camping. We loaded up and took the ferry to Vacher island off Seattle where we stayed at a hostel / ranch full of families. We fit right in throwing frisbees and drinking beer. It was a quiet enough night which was needed after a big exciting day spend with Jane.

The next day we drove to Tacoma, just south of Seattle to meet up with one of the US kids who did a JYA in UCD. Turns out he was having a house party full of first years ("i've just turned 21, my life is soooo over") and bicep toting creatine freaks. good fun though, rob and i showed them how to party by being last up.

after that we took a week to head down the east coast of oregon stopping at national parks to camp along the way. ask jane what it's like as she probably went everywhere i went!

now i'm on day 10 ish of the green tortoise. what an invention!! i've met so many people from 20 year old summer students to 69 year old rita from glasgow ("my kids don't know i'm here!"). it's a great mix of people.

the green tortoise bus is a regular bus but without the seats. the entire back of the bus is a bed so you can laze around all day, go for a nap or sit up against the windows and admire the view. in the middle you have the dinettes for cards and dice and up front there are two sofa type creations which turn into another bed platform when needed. it's a great way to travel. sleepy? just hit the back deck, or the womb as we call it, and lie down for a nap. aaaaahhh, luvly.

we've had one night drive so far where 34 people are able to sleep at once. there are 8 on the bunks, 4 on the dinettes, 4 below the dinettes and the rest on the beds. pretty impressive.

From Green Tortoise Wk 1

From Green Tortoise Wk 1

From Green Tortoise Wk 1

From Green Tortoise Wk 1

West coast USA road trip

Alaska

Vancouver

Sitting in dublin airport for six hours trying not to buy irish tat seems like an age ago as I sit in a humid hostel in downtown Vancouver. I should have known things were a little off as our plane was delayed three hours. Being diligent travellers we'd all checked in three hours early which meant six hours of hanging out. Luckily there were 30 of us so banter wasn't exactly limited. It was fun watching the people doing the dublin-london commute that I had so frequented.... aaahhh, sweet freedom was in the air.

We flew with Globespan (globewho?) in premium economy. For premium read "cramped, stuffy" as it was the worst long haul jet i'd ever seen. The seats were ryanairesque but filthy, the arm rest was held together with duct tape, the toilet had a hand written "out of order sign" on it, the food was woeful, the tvs were tiny and very far away, the movies were 10 years old etc etc etc....

After 9 hours of that we got to vancouver to be greeted by a robotic immigration man "why are you here, where are you staying, when are you leaving". I managed to sneak into the country and finally smell that unique arrivals smell of baggage, kerosene, humidity and excitement.

Our hostel on the first night was beautiful, it was an old converted barracks by jericho beach in it's own grounds. All 18 of us were in one long room for two nights. The weather was pretty woeful so we mainly slept, played cards and did some light training on a pitch that I'd played summer league on years before.

Two days later we moved to UBC to our home for the next 12 days. After a few days training the tournament got under way. We were in the group of death with australia (17-9), GB (17-7), Germany (16-8) and the cheating colombians (12-8) and venezuelans (17-12). This put us into the bottom bracket where we finished 14th overall. The spirit prize cheered us up nicely. I'm not really up for doing a full report on the games but suffice to say they were incredibly tiring but fun.

On finals day our team had decided to do $17 saturday which involves dressing up a teammate using $17 of charity shop clothes and watching the final dressed like an eejit. what we didn't bargain for was being hauled up in front of 4000 people to collect our spirit trophy dressed like straw chewin hicks! ah the fun.

The trouble with going on the booze after a month off it is that you forget the simple things such as: look after your phone and wallet and don't break your laptop. Unfortunately I didn't do any of this and ended up having a bit of a shocker. I'm waiting on new cards to make their way over to me (mum - we need to have a quick chat about that one!).

So we managed to get out of UBC, finally, with a group of six of us intent on having fun (JD, Ois, Brian mcdev, Rob K and Pete Forde from cark). Trouble is, we had no plan! At about 5pm we headed downtown to get a hostel. We didn't bargain for a big gig being on in town and all the hostels being full. We were a bit stuck, unwilling to head back out to UBC or Jericho so we hopped on the horseshoe bay express, got our footlong subway sambos and boarded a ferry to nanaimo on vancouver island. The plan was to rent a log cabin for a few days and chill out.

What we ended up with was a lot of "we're full" and "you didn't book in advance?!". Finally we got a place in Campbell River about half way up the island. This is one of the many salmon capitals of the world (nearly every town claimed to be the capital, someone ought to sort this mess out!). Our log cabin turned out to be an RV park full of hicks with a tiny prefab and some mattresses. Once the initial shock subsided we found the place to be "charming" for want of a better word. We headed off in godlentrojan (our 6 man car) to the town centre which was essentially three shopping malls and three massive car parks. We stocked up on beer, steaks and marshmallows and headed back to create a campfire and bbq. Our cabin looked our over a massive bay with the rockies forming the horizon, it was actually quite beautiful. We sat there watching the shooting stars above and the cruise ships in the distance and just had a lads night in.

The next day we managed to haul our asses into gear and go trekking for 4 hours aruond elk falls on the campbell river. It was an easy hike but gave me reason to be scared about my knee falling off in alaska. This was capped off with a swim in a gorgeous lake surrounded by pine trees and the setting sun. There's been a lot of random swimming going on.

We checked out yesterday and went to some island for a day of kayaking, otherwise known as water wars. There were six of us lads and 7 others who formed a french family. The introductions were priceless as we decided to practice our french "Je m'appelle JD et mon colour favourite est vert", :"Je m'appelle alain et j'ai deux saours et un chat"! As soon as we were in the water we set about soaking anyone within soaking distance and doing high speed ram-capsizes. Boys will be boys!

After a day of that we had to head back to our ferry. Luckily Rob had booked us a hostel in vancouver for the night. Unluckily it was for the wrong night. Luckily we found this out at 6pm not 10pm and managed to book another hostel in the dodgy gastown area. Unluckily it was above a very noisy bar and we were tired. Luckily 6 pitchers of beer cured our tiredness!! A good night out and a hungover morning leads me to being right here in the hostel international downtown vancouver, sitting beside a funny looking chap who's spent the last hour playing tetris online. Such are the characters you meet on this travel buzz.