Diarios de Dave

FIN

2006-11-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

Travels in Central America, June - September 2005.

First Month in Guanajuato
Month 1: Living with a Mexican family in Guanajuato, taking Spanish lessons and getting used to Mexican food and culture (i.e. salsa and Rebelde!)

Mexican Travels
Month 2: Bussing and hostelling down through Mexico, via the west coast and across to Cancún in the Yucatán peninsula.

Belize and Guatemala
Month 3: Scuba diving in Caye Caulker, canoeing in the jungle in Belize and live volcanoes in Guatemala.

Lakeside hippies

2005-09-13T09:41:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened since the last post, so I'll sum it up a little!

Arriving in Guatemala, we stayed at a placa called La Casa De Don David on the side of a gorgeous blue lake called Peten Itza, which had gardens with bushes in the shape of toucans, banana trees etc. The next moring around 6am, we wnet to the archaeological site at Tikal. Arriving so early, we almost had the site to ourselves, and could wander leisurely in the cool morning temperature. We watched spider monkeys for about an hour around the ruins, and they were great entertainment. A few times, they just jumped from one tree to another, with all four limbs splayed out. We also saw coatimundis, and wandered around in a bat-filled tunnel. The ruins themselves were almost a sideshow to the wildlife, but very impressive still, see Temple I below.

Temple I at Tikal seems to be at the heart of the national identity, every license plate has a picture of it behind the immatriculation number:

From there, we went to a working farm called Finca Ixobel, and stayed in a treehouse. Then on to Finca El Paraiso, where a hot (boiling!) waterfall cascades into a cold pool - pretty weird, and great to swim in and mess around. That day was a nightmare of travel, with the bus arriving two hours late, and driven by a maniac who really had it tipping over when he roared around corners. We had some interesting experiences trying to find accommodation in Antigua, trying about ten in a row without success while travelling around the cobbled streets in a tuc-tuc after dark.

While in Antigua, we visited a coffe plantation (much more interesting than it sounds), and climbing an active volcano. Here's one of the volcanoes near Antigua, seen from within the city before we left for Pacaya, the active one.

Pacaya volcano itself was incredible, thundering and spitting red-hot ash into the air right in front of our eyes, while the rocks around steamed, smelling of sulphur. Wow. The photos of the spitting ash aren't so clear, but this one gives an idea of the smoking rocks:

We've now moved on to Lake Atitlan, a lake surrounded by small villages. Last night was San Marcos de la Laguna, where we stayed at a hippy retreat, did meditation and yoga. Interesting times, it took place in a pyramid, where we had to first descend, and then enter the pyramid through a trapdoor. Plenty of talk of third eyes and finding oneself, but sure we had a laugh...

Talk soon!

Mucked up stuff in the jungle.

2005-09-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

We emerged from the jungle yesterday as mucky and smelly and dirty as we've been in a long long time. Not showering in 3 days would be OK if you were hanging around at home, but when you're wading across rivers, pulling canoes up mucky banks, cooking fish you've just caught over a smoky bonfire etc. it's kind of a problem! :-)

The first day we went on an uneventful trip of a reserve, then stayed in a jungle camp where we had to wade across slippery stones with the gear (see below) to the pretty crazy Guacamayo Camp. We had a "tour" of the camp from a 14-year old gangster (beside me below), who mostly told us stories about how insane his family was (threatening to kill each other etc.), and insisting how keen he was on marijuana.

We were a little dismayed to find out that the "here's where the dangerous animals hang out" (tarantulas, snakes) part of the tour took place outside our room, whose door didn't close, and which had no mosquito net. Had an interesting chat with an older guy there, who seemed to have shot and eaten his way through every species of wildlife native to Belize - in fact, now that I think of it, the only topic of conversation besides "things I have shot and eaten" was "things I have caught with a fishing line and/or spear and eaten". I slept a little fitfully because something kept fluttering its wings loudly above my head, but Dad slept like a top.

The next day was an overnight tour into the jungle, so we paddled four hours into the jungle in torrential rain in a leaky canoe, destroying in the process Dad's new digital camera, an alarm clock, binoculars and three books. I'm pretty sure my runners have also made a very permanent transition from "normal" to "stinking". Besides that, it was hardcore dirty, survival stuff but good craic. We caught catfish, killed, gutted, cleaned and roasted them, and sighted all the animals we wnated to, like baby alligators, howler monkeys and an enormous tapir (I woke at 5:30am to the guide shouting "Out of the tents, guys, the tapir might trample them!").

So all in all, it was highly eventful and a real experinece, but we were very happy (strike that, ecstatic) to get back to civilisation, real beds, good food, and cold beer. We grinned like eejits through dinner and managed to find a lot of craic out of the madness of the trip.

Into the jungle

2005-09-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

A quick post before Dad and I venture into the jungle! We've come back to the mainland after 3 solid and fantastic days of diving around the islands off Belize. Have finally had a chance to pop up a few photos, so here are two, to prove we're alive and well! :-)

First, the two PADI qualified divers tucking into some juicy watermelon on the boat to a dive:

And this is one of the tropical islands off which we dove, in particular myself and a guy called Mike from the trip, checking out a dead turtle off the coast of Half Moon Cay:

So we're now close to the border with Guatemala, and will be spending the next 3 days, 2 nights in the jungle, trekking around and looking for strange animals!

Diving with Dad

2005-08-31T16:43:00.000-07:00

From Cancun, we sped as soon as possible down past the Mexican border and into Belize, where we ferried our way out to the magnificent island of Caye Caulker. Right now we can't get photos up, but wow - this is the tropical paradise you've always imagined (our hotel is actually called Tropical Paradise Hotel!). The food is amazing (cheap lobster, great sauces like Lemon n Lime etc. ), the people are great, friendly and they speak English with a Jamaican accent. Seems like half the businesses on the island are called Ragga or Rasta something (Rasta Pasta, Ragga Gal etc.) - either way, it's all very cool and Caribbean.

The last few days, we've been learning how to scuba dive, doing a PADI Open Water Diver certification course. Hard to describe the experience of diving, though anyone who's done it will know. It's tranquil, beautiful, and generally just feels weird and surprising to be so far under the water and feeling okay. We've swum with sharks (small, harmless nurse sharks), seen rays and parrotfish and generally a pretty bewildering array of coral and aquatic life. Really good times, diving all day til you're knackered, then eating great food for decent prices, having a cold beer and sleeping like a baby. Apologies if I'm rubbing it in, will try and get some photos up soon.

The coconut assassin and imminent arrival

2005-08-27T09:01:00.001-07:00

After the last post, I went to the ruins at Chichen Itza. As impressive as they are, they're a huge test of patience! Sweltering heat, and swarms of pushy gringoes shooing people out of their way to get the perfect photo...

Yikes. Then on to amazing Tulum on the coast, where I saw the ruins there, stayed in a hut again, and spent time on the amazing beach, with it's clear turquoise water and white sand. While reading there, I heard a loud thump about a metre from my head and turned to see that a huge coconut had just missed me - a would-be assassin. Needless to say, I've been checking palm trees carefully before taking shelter under them since then! Here's a picture of me with the coconut gangster himself.

Next, on to Playa del Carmen further along the coast, and met up with Dan Romero, my Mexican friend, once again. Great craic as always. Then on to Cancún, where Dan was staying with his parents. They brought us out to Hooter's for food, so Bar, I'm only one step behind you! Cancún is the big, loud, expensive gringo central that I expected, and not really my kind of place.

Dad arrives today - I've been carefully checking flight times and news sites, because he's coming via Miami, and with the hurricane there I was sure he would be diverted or delayed. But so far all looks to be on course, so here comes phase three - it's gonna be great!

Calm in Campeche and Merida Madness

2005-08-22T17:58:00.000-07:00

Arrived in Campeche at 3am from Campeche, and had a very calm day there, with my own room in a hotel - I slept, ate well, wrote, and thought. Definitely necessary once in a while!

Campeche has a waterfront (see below) that stretches so long that you have a 180 degree view of purely sea and sky, so that night I got a pretty amazing show as the sun set through the clouds, making every colour of the rainbow, with lightning flashing in the distance, and a full moon rising behind me. I couldn't have asked much more of nature!

Then on to Merida, which was supposed to be a one-night stop, with a cursory look around town. But I ended up in an incredibly homely, friendly youth hostel and have now been there for about 3 days! The first night we went to a band rehearsal of one of the guys who works there, and had right craic.

Hung around a bit the next day, as there's a comfortable library here in the hostel, but also went to a few cantinas (cool bars here) with the owner, a very interesting guy called John from New York, and went to watch reruns of Seinfeld with himself and his Mexican wife. Then dancing in the streets, where bands belt out popular modern Mexiacn music in almost every street in the town centre!

And if that's not enough, we went on a trip to the cenotes today, old huge caverns in the ground used by the ancient Mayas for throwing in human sacrifices. We threw ourselves in, a 14m drop that really gets the adrenalin going! The pic below gives an idea how clear the water is in these amazing stalactite-filled caverns.

So it's been a great while here, probably heading on to tomorrow, to the ruins at Chichen Itza.

Palenque

2005-08-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

From San Cristóbal, went to Palenque, ancient ruins set in a jungle.

On the way, our bus was stopped twice, once to be searched by a policeman, and the second, so that the army could linger a bit around the bus and then go away. Hmmm...

On arrival, two guys were being thrown out of the bus station and into a police van. Then taxied out in the pouring rain to accommodation in the jungle near the ruins - ended up staying in a one person cabin, where I killed two bugs within a minute in the room!

There it is, in all its splendour. Anyway, after an inauspicious start, had a really great time. Went straight to the restaurant onsite, invited myself to sit with an Italian guy, and had a great chat because he didn't speak English, just Spanish. Then some Italians I had met before arrived, and we all arranged to head to the ruins, so had a guided tour in Spanish with some Italian words thrown in - actually picked up some of the language from pure exposure to it over the two days!

The tour was amazing, through the jungle where we saw lots of monkeys (this whetting your appetite, Dad??), and out into the ruins themselves, which are ten times as impressive as anything I've seen before.

I`ll put on just one photo, this one is from inside one of the structures... See "Photos" on right for more.

San Cristóbal de las Casas

2005-08-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

My favourite Mexican city so far.

With a climate like an Irish summer, San Cristóbal is a city high in the mountains, surrounded by deep dark green forest, always cloudy, but in a good way. The white clouds hang down around the mountains, making it look all the more mystical, and making the temperature perfect for a poor little Irishman like myself!

The air of mystery certainly doesn't stop with the clouds. As you can see from the photo above and the one below, the indigenous population is large here, and they walk around in very interesting indigenous dress, carrying their babies on their backs in shawls, and talking in indigenous languages (mostly Tzotzil).

Went on a trip to one of the indigenous villages, San Juan Chamula, with my Mexican friend Dan Romero who I met in INSA. He lives 7 hrs away, and came down to stay in SC for the weekend. Great craic! But back to the indigenous...

The religion they practise is a wild mix of Catholicism and paganism. In the church they light loads of candles and stick them to the floor, then sing lilting, personal prayers in Tzotzil. And that's only the beginning. They drink refrescos (Coke, Pepsi, Sprite...) to make them burp, as this is seen as purifying oneself. If someone is sick, they need to lie down, and then either a hen, or a refresco, or an egg is waved around above them to soak up the badness. If it's an egg, the egg is then broken, a hen, the neck is broken... in church. This is another world.

Not to mention the ongoing mystery of the Zapatista rebels (indigenous rights, land reform) who live in the surrounding hills and staged an uprising right here in the city in 1994. A lot of people here head out to the hills to try and find them and talk to them, but I don't know enough to know if I support what they do or not, so I kept my nose out!

This is the main square in San Cristobal. The other great thing here was the nights out - Dan and myself headed to a great place caled El Circo twice, with lively reggae music that had the whole place jumping all night. Then met up again with a guy called Shane that I had met in Mexico City, Acapulco and Puerto Escondido. We had a great night out, great conversation on life and the meaning of it all, but also sadly learnt that tequila and cerveza certainly do not mix!

Would you buy mezcal from this man?

2005-08-11T17:10:00.000-07:00

Leaving Oaxaca tonight for San Cristóbal further south, so here's a little on the last few days in Oaxaca. First few days were fairly immobile, good craic with some Danish guys who were around, but mostly avoiding hobbling around on my barbecued legs...

Then yesterday was a great adventure, with legs recuperated. Met a German guy called Alex at the hostel and we rambled off to see all of the big sights within any distance of Oaxaca in a day on rickety buses and backs of vans. In fact, he´s a journalist with Frankfurt Allgemeine, so if your German´s up to it, his account of the day might be better reading! (click here for his version)

First off, Hierve el Agua, an amazing formation something like a waterfall stalagmite, formed by deposits left by water running down the hillside. Amazing countryside surrounds it far below, and we walked down and around the formations - quite a hike but worth it. Because no water flows anymore, you can safely stand right at the base, from whence comes this picture:

Then we tasted mezcal (a tequila-like liquor) from the amazingly dodgy "factory" of the esteemed señor above! Tasty but very strong...

Then ancient ruins at Mitla, and on to El Tule, a pretty damn impressive 2,000 year-old tree.

All of the major sights around, in a day! So, next stop San Cristóbal...

Burn, baby, burn

2005-08-10T17:44:00.000-07:00

Arrived in Puerto Escondido on Tuesday 2nd with a crowd from Acapulco, on the night bus. Although a little bleary-eyed, the trip was pretty hilarious. An absolutely enormous woman lurched up and down the bus every half hour, making weird sounds and falling into people - one of the girls woke up with the woman hunched over her, and started making little scream noises... perhaps one had to be there...

Anyway, Puerto was cool. Chilled, cheap, great food and lovely beaches, less wrappers floating in the sea than in Acapulco, and no high-rise buildings. So, some pretty relaxed times were had for the five days there, eating well, cold Coronas and warm water! Again, a good crowd in the hostel, so that always helps.

The second-last day there, three of us went surfing, which was brilliant craic! The waves were gentle enough, and it was surprisingly easy to stand up, if only for a short time. I hadn't expected to be able to stand at all, so I was over the moon! Unfortunately, I had also convinced myself by some twisted logic that the thick covering of hair on my legs meant that I was safe from the sun. Five hours under the water and the hottest sun I've seen in years meant that I've been hobbling around for the last five days with what would appear to be second degree burns! Maybe I should take a picture of my ping-pong-ball-sized blister... or maybe not.

Anyway, have moved to Oaxaca to get out of the sun. It meant saying goodbye to some people I had been travelling with, but that's fine. The last while I've been saying there's no such thing as travelling alone and it's true. I've met some very interesting people here in Oaxaca, and seen some interesting sights - I'll put some pictures up soon of my more recent adventures!

Loco in Acapulco!

2005-07-31T21:44:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

Am in Acapulco now, a huge resort place, loud and flashy with neon and clubs, perfect warm water and craic by the bucketload. On the walk to the hostel on arrival, met three people I knew from previous travels and so was guaranteed craic from the start!

So a lot of swimming, beer and tasty food at the moment - good times! Today went to see La Quebrada, cliffdivers, very impressive:

Talk soon!

Up the tempo

2005-07-29T16:24:00.000-07:00

The travelling has begun in earnest! After a lovely stay at Mariana's house, I had a great two days in the city at a hostel, where I met up with a crowd who were great craic and headed out to the pyramids at Teotihuacan.

After that, it was off to Cuernavaca on my own. Largely unimpressive town (expensive, boring, not very attractive), but did catch a lucha libre (Mexican wrestling) extravaganaza, which was very funny and interesting.

Then to Taxco today - a mining town well-protected by planning laws, with lovely white buildings, a perfect light-blue sky, and deep green vegetation all around. The picture is taken from a cable car in town.

Click on the picture and you'll see a bunch of others from various times - hope you're all well!

Back in town

2005-07-24T18:50:00.000-07:00

Back to DF (Mexico City) yesterday, and it´s been very different!

Instead of talking to the taxi driver about "water from the sky", I was actually able to converse a little, and in general the city looks friendlier and more manageable after a month in the country. Also, I met up with Mariana and Roxana from INSA which was cool, and we went out to a "soirée" at a friend´s house - some seriously fast and slangy Spanish being spoken there, so my head hurt after a while trying to keep up! Good craic though.

I´m staying at Mariana´s house in the south of the city, and her family are lovely, really friendly. In fact, we were just having a chat a few minutes ago, and her Dad popped out for a minute and came back wearing a huge green leprechaun hat! He´s also very interesting about Mexican politics, and was explaining the satirical sections of the paper earlier. All pretty eye-opening stuff.

I saw the main museum I wanted to see in the city today, and plan to see a few more places over the coming days, then move on; here´s a rough map of the route I´m planning to take, up to August 27th when I meet Dad in Cancun for phase three!

Basically I´m heading to Acapulco on the coast, via two towns called Taxco and Cuernavaca, then going to a few beaches along the coast, then a city called Oaxaca which is very culturally important and has a large indigenous population, then San Cristobal in Chiapas (green, leafy, very high in the mountains), and on to Cancún. Life is good!

La tercera semana a Guanajuato

2005-07-12T10:21:00.000-07:00

Third week here, and life is good! We´re getting quite a bit of rain now, but I have a pretty industrial-strength raincoat, so I can handle it...

Started taking salsa lessons at a bar here, and I´m really enjoying them - progressing slowly, but as Emma could tell you all, even that is a credit to my teachers, huh Em?!

On Sunday, went to León, a city near here, and had good craic - it´s less touristy than here, but much bigger and more industrial. At first we thought it was just a huge jungle of shoe stores, but we then braved about 2km of huge billboards and stores to discover the pleasant historical centre. In the plaza there we stumbled on this weird spectacle:

It was a ceremony where a pharmacy called Dr. Simi´s was giving out free toilet paper etc. in the plaza, and so had men dressed up as their mascot, Dr. Simi, dancing around. Struck me as strange the contrast between the traditional dances (Indian headdress etc.) that you see and hear about here, and this weird "dance of the corporate logo"!! Times change... Interestingly, a teacher from the school later told us that the owner of Dr. Simi is actually called Dr. Simi and is keen to run for president in order to allow production of generic medicines in Mexico, and that the ceremony we saw was partly an ad for the pharmacy, but also to foster good feeling towards him personally in the run-up to his campaign! Strange world!

Either way, it was good fun there, and whetted my appetite for when I head off travelling in a week and a half - still working out my itinerary, but it´s coming along...

Lastly, this is one for anyone who remembers Fight Club (my favourite film) - there´s a scene where the main character finds strange old magazines with body organs speaking in the first person, to their owner, to explain how they function, e.g. "I am Jack´s pancreas..."

So, just before I left Leon, I saw this collection in a shop window...

My personal favourite is the bottom right one, "We are your lungs" - a modern classic!

Muchos cambios...

2005-07-04T11:02:00.000-07:00

Plenty of changes this week - the American couple, Franya and Doyle (left) headed off, so I was a little disappointed, because they were great company - during the storms last week, we had some stormin` games of Pass the Pigs... :-)

Four new people arrived - thank God, they`re all great craic, and up for exploring the city, maybe taking salsa lessons etc.

Also, all of my classes changed, but they`re still very good - I`m starting to understand more and more of what people are saying, and moving on from my initial state where I was trying to express surprise at the rain by talking about "the water which comes from the sky"...

I`ve been watching quite a few telenovelas (soaps), great for getting Spanish "in on your ear" as they say back home! My favourite is Rebelde (see below), about a school for rich kids where some of the kids form a rock band - I`m actually starting to like the songs too, so maybe I should take a little break...

¡Mi cumpleaños!

2005-06-27T16:07:00.000-07:00

Classes started today, and were very good. Some of the irregularities I had noticed in Spanish turn out to be less wilfully awkward than I thought, they´re actually following rules, which is reassuring. The teachers are great, explaining everything through drawings, examples and exaggerated facial expressions, so no English used!

There´s a really nice American couple around my age staying in the house I´m in, and tonight we´re going to head into town and get a cubeta or two, where a cubeta is a bucket of ice with five or six bottles of Mexican beer in it! Thanks all of you for your messages today, pity you couldn´t be here to share the cubeta!

PS Below is my desk and TV (showing Argentina vs Mexico!) If you click, you should be able to look at a good few photos, but you may need a fast connection!

The Host Family

2005-06-26T16:19:00.000-07:00

Moved in with host family today, and like the bus from Mexico City to Guanajuato, got much more than I bargained for!!

They´re really nice and easy to talk to, so that´s a good start. The house is absolutely enormous, and up one of the hills, so it has an amazing view. For breakfast they made chilaquiles, which are like nachos in salsa with cheese - beats the auld Weetabix!!

My room is gigantic - it has three single beds in it , a big TV, shower and bathroom to myself etc., and is very separate from the house, i.e. I enter from the garden, so no toddling through the house to get to my place.

And finally, the kicker... they own a restaurant in town, beside one of the most beautiful buildings, and one minute from the language school - and I can eat there free anytime I want instead of the meals at the house! Had quesadillas with guacamole there, simple but very good.

Classes start tomorrow at 9, so we´ll see how that goes...

Guanajuato

2005-06-25T13:15:00.000-07:00

Second day in Guanajuato today, it´s really an amazingly beautiful little town! To see a map of where it is in Mexico, click here.

Left crazy old DF (Mexico City) yesterday in a bus. Having seen some of the worse parts of DF, I half-expected a nightmare of a bus, with wheels hanging off - couldn´t have been more wrong! Two passes of the metal detector before getting on, luggage tags on the bags, a little bag of food and a can, full bathroom facilities and 3 films during the trip, with TVs all over the place! Damned impressive... See below for a pic of some of my tasty food, including a Mexican sandwich in a bag with one tasty jalapeno in the middle - mmmm authentic!

Guanajuato is reasonably small and manageable, and feels really safe. It´s seriously fun - the centre is a place called Jardin de la Union and seems to always have bands playing etc. It´s in a valley and has houses up both sides. I have a few pictures, but I guess one will do! The one below shows one of the hills, and in the middle is the monument to El Pipila - he´s a guy who burnt down a granary with Spanish soldiers in it during the War of Independence.

Food is great here too, had great tacos de pollo (chicken tacos :-)) today, with a drink, and it came to around 4 euro!

Also signed up for Spanish classes at Espanol Universal, and tomorrow I´ll move in with the Uribe family! Looking forward.

¡Que ciudad!

2005-06-23T16:06:00.000-07:00

Am currently in DF, Distrito Federal, otherwise known as Mexico City!

Last night arriving in was a bit of a culture shock - had been travelling for around 24 hours when I arrived, and everyone at the airport seemed to want to be my taxi! Lucky enough I knew in advance where the taxis autorizados (the safe ones :-)) were, so I got to the hostel fine.

The city is gobsmackingly, mind-bogglingly huge - as you fly over, you see vast expanses of highly-concentrated buildings spread over mountainous terrain, and you think: "That must be all of it"... then you realise it´s only just begun. It´s huge.

Once inside, it still seems big, but a little more manageable. Anyway, today I had a look around and the place seemed more inviting than the night before. Met up with Roxana this morning and had an absolutely amazing day! We walked around the Zocalo (enormous main square), saw cathedrals and huge streets full of stalls selling pirated CDs, videos, clothes, everything - blaring music, chattering sellers, bustle... Besides anything, Rox showed me how to deal with the incessant demands! "No, gracias" works perfectly, people don´t seem to insist.

We also went to Templo Mayor, the excavated and partially reconstructed ancient temple of the Aztecs, and the fantastic museum alongside. There are huge numbers of statues and pots etc. but they all seem so interesting as compared to checking out the flint heads at the national museum back home; the gods have stories and names, and are always represented similarly; the god of rain, Tlaloc, was probably my favourite Mexican god (see below).

Another interesting one was the god of death, always represented with his liver hanging out of his stomac (see below) - a classy guy by all accounts. (PS his liver is the thing that loooks like a nut hanging out of a leaf there...)

We ate at a place called Sanborn´s, and had enchiladas suizas, tortillas filled with chicken, topped with melted cheese and covered in a tasty, not too spicy sauce. Also, plenty of totopos (nachos to us!), very tasty stuff.

Will see how things go, but hope to be in Guanajuato soon; Mexico City has a lot of interesting things to see, but it´s big, noisy, etc. so moving on to a small town is an attractive prospect!

He who would travel happily must travel light - Antoine de St. Exupéry

2005-06-18T07:56:00.000-07:00

Who knew that the man who wrote Le Petit Prince would also be able to tell me something about packing??

Following St. Exupéry's advice, I'm checking out Doug Dyment's site, onebag.com, to see how far I can go towards his ideal of always carrying only one carry-on sized bag when travelling!

Either way, excitement is rising ahead of Wednesday's flight! Checked flight times today and realised that I'll have to stay in Mexico City the night I arrive, so might wait a day or two before heading to Guanajuato to start language school.

Last day of college...

2005-06-13T06:49:00.000-07:00

Finished my last exam at Trinity today!

Gonna head off to play soccer for a while, hopefully in the sun, and then drinks in the Pav later - should be a big crowd!

All good things must come to a start...

2005-05-26T13:50:00.000-07:00

Less than one month to go before I leave for Mexico!

Last night, I finished watching Amores Perros, a cool Mexican film about dogs, love, and desperation...

Quote from Cha (on seeing the film's violence level) "And you're going to go there??"