Here, there, and everywhere

I forgot to mention that I´m in Uruapan.


(winner of the 'dude with the pimpest hat' competition in Uruapan)

My friends and I went up to the observatory at the university to watch the lunar eclipse. Here´s what we saw.



(Guanajuato at night)




(unidentified flying object)

Leaving Guanajuato was hard, as I´d met really great people and learned a lot. But it was time to move on.

I took a bus to Léon where I stopped for the day to buy shoes. You really wouldn´t believe how many shoe shops there are in this city. There were at least 5 gigantic malls dedicated solely to shoes. And then about 1000 independent little stores on top of it. It was completely overwhelming. Yet somehow, with all of the selection, I managed to buy shoes that are the wrong size, which is the reason I went to buy shoes in the first place (as my last pair of incorrectly sized shoes gave me crazy blisters). My heart goes out to all people with short, wide feet. Too many shoes are bad for the sole.


(ummmm... a gillion shoes, and THIS is the only picture I take?)

Without spending a night in Léon (it´s really not set up for economy tourists -- I went and checked the one hotel with a price that looked reasonable, only to find out that it was for 4 or 5 hour for sex) I got a bus to Uruapan, where I am now. There´s not much happening in this city, and the only reason that I came here was to spend a few nights and buy a guitar in nearby Paracho, which is apparently world-renown for it's guitars.

Instead, I got really sick, and have spent almost a week here, in bed (see previous post). I have managed to get out and see a few things. The first was the national park that they have here. It was quite beautiful, but packed with Mexican tourists (it was the weekend). I was a little disappointed, because although it was really beautiful, it was incredibly concrete & touristy.




Another day trip I took was to the cascades just outside Uruapan. This was far more tranquil and enjoyable. The cascades themselves were nothing spectacular, but the 557 steps that you had to climb down (and subsequently back up) to see them sure were. The cascades had their own beauty, a more subtle beauty than the raw power of, say, Niagara. If you looked close, you could see all of the life that these falls sustained in their mosses and grasses, etc.





The final day trip, and reason that I came to Uruapan in the first place, was to Paracho. Paracho has guitar shops lining up and down the entire main drag.




The whole town is dedicated to guitars and stringed instruments. Even their sidewalks.


(sidewalk guitar & incorrectly fit shoes)


There were thousands of beautiful handcrafted guitars.





Store after store each with their own unique guitars, that all looked the same as the guitars in the last store.



But I wanted an acoustic guitar. And of the 10,000 guitars I looked at, maybe 10 of them were acoustics, the rest were all classical/flamenco/spanish guitars. And the acoustics weren't that nice. So I still have no guitar. I have a new strategy though. I'm going to buy a cheap guitar, just to have something to strum on while I'm at the beach. This way, if it gets lots/stolen/wrecked, I won't be too upset about it, and I'll still have something to play around with.

"Darnit Jonathan, I'm a Doctor not a Surfer"

Or at least I think that's what she said... but my spanish is not so great.

After spending 40 hours in bed writhing and wiggling around trying to relieve my hips and lower back of their constant discomfort; pushing and pulling the covers on and off as I oscillated between frigid and boiling; not eating (the thought was sickening)... I thought I'd best go to the doctor.

Now, it's one thing to be sick. It's another thing to be sick when you're alone. It's another to be sick when you're alone in a foreign country. And a _totally_ different thing to be sick when you're alone in a foreign country where nobody including the doctor's speak your language.

Normally, nodding and smling your way through a conversation when you don't understand all of the words is completely acceptable. But let's see what happens when you do that at the doctor's office:

Doctor: "Are you allergic to any medications?"

Jonathan: *smile, head slightly nodding, eyes with that doe-in-the-headlights thing going on*, thinking, "Can't you see I'm frickin' dying here... gimme something or I'll pass out on your desk."

Doctor: *eyes light up* Really? What ones?

Jonthan: "I'm 27."

Doctor: "27!?"

Jonathan: *still smiling and nodding* --What, am I going to lie about my age? Come on... you've
got about 15 seconds until I'm face down on your floor here.

Doctor: "Allergies?!"

Jonathan: "None." --Why didn't she just ask, no need to get all riled up about it, sheesh.


So this went on for a while, then she took my blood pressure and pressed on my belly and somehow determined that I had a stomach infection and a throat infection. I wasn´t so sure about this assessment, as it didn´t explain the extreme dizziness, complete lack of energy, or aching body, but I figured that she was the doctor, and I filled the prescription.

I had to force myself to eat, because a few of the pills were to be taken with food. But to get food, I had to get out of bed. This was a huge challenge.

The next day, I dizzily wandered to the market to buy some fruit. I must´ve looked like a drunk, weaving back and forth across the sidewalk. On the way home, I just got too tired to continue (it´s about a 7 minute walk normally), so I sat down at an orange juice vendor and got a freshly-squeezed orange juice. Well, I passed out on their counter, and awoke to them prodding at me, saying something that I couldn´t understand and pointing at the ambulance across the way. The vendor lady kindly went and got the ambulance attendants, who came and took my blood pressure, and decided I should go to the hospital.

Thankfully I did. At the hospital, I slept for 2.5 hours while waiting for the doctor. When the doctor came, I explained, in a combination of spanish and sherades, my symptoms. They took my temperature: 39.3 degrees celcius (approx. 103). That doctor gave me a fever reducer, and told me I had pharyngitis.

That night, I sweat profusely during the night. But the next morning, I felt like my fever had broken and I could stand up on the first try without falling over or holding onto the walls for support. I was on the mend. How the first doctor failed to notice that I was burning up, is beyond me.

So here I am, 7 days later, almost recovered. Only have a sore throat and tonnes of stuffiness left. I am spending a whole lot of time sleeping, about 14 hours a night. Other than that, I´m just being bored, recovering. I´m really trying to just chill so that the end of this can be killed off before heading to the beach. Eating fruit and bread. Listening to music.

I remember at some point while thinking about physical sickness, it occurring to me that physical illnesses are usually rooted in some kind of psychological illness. You know, a good old case of the crazies causes you a lot of stress-imbalance, and weakens your immune system. The vulnerable points of your body are then suseptable to infection, and next thing you know, you're down for the count.


Of course, there are other factors too that can wear you down -- lack of proper nutrition & sleep, and introducing yourself into a foreign climate with new bacteria/disease come to mind immediately.


Well, I can't guarantee which one it was, but holy cow -

Total Eclipse of the ... Moon

A quick note, just to let people know (if they didn´t), or remind them (if they did), that tonight there is a total lunar eclipse. You should probably check it out.

Here´s what NASA has to say about it:

http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/LEmono/TLE2008Feb21/TLE2008Feb21.html

Talk about getting mooned, yowsa.

Wanna what? Oh!

That´s the phoenetic name of the town. AKA Guanajuato, to the civilized.


(Guanajuato, a beautiful old silver-mining town)

I said my goodbyes in Real de Catorce, I made some great friends, and had a fantastic time, but it was time to move on. And move on I have.

I packed up my things, and went to say goodbye to some friends I´d made over the previous few weeks. When I was there, picking their brains for local information about where to go in Mexico to find what I´m looking for, the seed of a roadtrip was planted. La Huesteca... how beautiful, what great memories came flooding back for them... oh but we can´t... oh but life is so short... teeter.. totter... BAM, we landed on the side of advendure. And off we went.





...to La Huesteca (not to be confused with La Huesteca in my previous post around Monterrey).





La Huesteca is actually a large region shared by many Mexican states, spotted with all sorts of natural wonders. But due to restrictions in time and money, we only visited this one spot. Not that I´m complaining: the water was 32 degrees celcius, all natural, and so clear you could see the bottom up to about 5 meters. It was actually warmer than the air. I don´t think I´ve ever been in water that warm outside of a bathtub, it was like silk. I missed out on some cascades, which I´m sure were beautiful, but I have a feeling I will see more, and more spectacular ones in the future.

From there, I spent a day on a bus getting to where I am now, Guanajuato. At first, I didn´t really like the vibe here. There were tonnes of tourists, mostly Americans (no offense, but in general, it´s a different kind of tourism). And the kind of tourism was what I didn´t like: lots of ´do you speak english?´and museum visiting... people coming just to see the city, and not get immersed in the culture. This kind of tourism is not for me, and I like to avoid it. I wasn´t planning on staying long at all.



(yes, I know, sepia, the oldest trick in the digital book... but come on, check it out!)


Then on my second night in town, a great thing happened.

The main market was brimming with life: oodles of vendors hawking lots of the same stuff (that I have no interest in), tonnes of live music of all styles (all latin-based), tourists eating Americanized meals at Americanized prices, and people walking around in a half-daze caught up in the commotion. Yes, it was definitely alive. But for some reason, I just wasn´t feeling it, I was disillusioned with the whole thing. I thought I´d leave the next day.



(typical scene in Guanajuato, these were just some people hanging out, playing music and laughing, outside a giant indoor market)

As I stopped to examine some art, the girl that was selling it started to talked to me. She quickly realized that my spanish was... new (she´s since come to call my particular vernacular ´prehistoric´, with a great accompanying laugh). But, she was funny, and had a good feeling about her, and best of all, she was patient. So I stayed to talk for awhile. Then, after walking around the town for a while, looking about like a tourist, I returned before she closed her stand for the weekend.

This is where things got really cool. Her boss came and dropped off a guitar, how sexy is that! Well, I started to play it in the stree with drunken abandon (I´ve not had much guitar access since leaving Canada). I figured that most of the people couldn´t understand what I was saying anyway, so it didn´t really matter what was coming out of my mouth. Well, people started to congregate - first a woman and her baby came and danced, then a bunch of local university students sat across the way on the raised sidewalk talking pictures and giggling whenever I flashed them a smile (naturally, they were women), then some other locals stopped in the street and started flashing pictures... it was all a little much really, but we were all having fun. And it turned out to be a great impression on my new friend, who invited me to dinner with her family.

So I went an celebrated my friend´s cousin´s birthday with their family, and we had a jolly good time.





Since then I´ve been just laying low, not finding much crazy adventure, but learning a tonne of spanish. I´ve been hanging out with my friend, and her friends, who don´t speak any english. I´ve attended a few university art classes, as she´s an art student. By about 3:00 every day, my brain is fried after I´ve pounded as much spanish into it as possible.


(this is the university´s main building)

But I´m learning. Slowly, but it´s happening. I´m not at the point where I can have real conversations, but I can go into a space comfortably where people don´t speak any english. Granted, most of what they say sounds like gibberish to me, as it´s generally delivered at light speed, but I can smile and nod and then get my point across... on a good day.



(I think there´s an unspoken rule here: thou shalt not paint thy house the same colour as thy neighbour´s)


All in time, little by little. I think I severely underestimated the amount of time it takes to really learn another language, and this life lesson has given me a lot of respect for people that speak other languages fluently.

Hope you´re all shining!

A shaman, a mountain, and a desert

It was late, and starting to rain. I probably should've just gone back to my room. But for some strange reason, I stuck my head into the cantina and asked where the billiard hall was. I had no intention of playing billiards, and knew exactly where the billiard tables were.

A rather particular lookin man answered me, and then started the usual ´De donde eres?´conversation, asking me where I´m from. I wasn´t much in the mood, but he was ... different. He was wearing a large beaded necklace, full of different dried berries and unidentifiable beads, along with a large silver chameleon pendant which was holding some kind of spectacular stone. I talked to him for a few minutes, ascertained that he was different than most, and decided to keep moving and listen to my tiredness.

But then a few guys that spoke english started talking to me, and it was a relief for my spanish-fried brain to be able to converse coherently. It turned out they were going to go to the desert the next day, with the other strange-looking man as their guide. People say he´s a shaman. My spidey sense was tingling, it sounded like an adventure to me.

So I packed up my bag, and met the crew at 9:30 the next morning. Now, originally there was a plan. I have learned a lot about ´plans´in Mexico. The distilled version of my conclusions are that they don´t exist. One of my fellow compadres summed it up best: ¨mañana doesn´t necessarily mean tomorrow, it just means not today¨. That is Mexico. Our plan was to take a jeep into the desert and spend a day there. Well, it´s three days, some mad blisters, and a whole lot of unforgettable experience later.


(see how happy I look as we left?...)

The guide-shaman got ansi, and decided that instead of waiting for the jeep, we could just walk. No problem. So, we bought some hats and hit the road... well, the trail... well, the shaman, through the desert and onto the mountain. After walking for a few hours, we asked and it turned out that it was about another 5 hour hike to the town we were going to sleep in, directly over the top of the largest mountain in sight.

Ohhhh kay. We didn´t have the right clothes, shoes, or nearly enough water. But we figured we could make it.


(see the town WAY off in the distance... that's where we went)

Upon reaching the pinnacle of the mountain, we came across some alters and decided to make some offerings of tangerine's and cigarettes. It was at this point that it became apparent that our guide-shaman was definitely on a different plane than the rest of us. We were starting to itch to get going, as we still had a LONG way to go until we reached the town. But our guide had other ideas. He saw some crows flying overhead and took it as a sign. What sign? They were some birds, man. But to him, it was a sign that we should go and sleep in a cave on the side of the moutain without any sleeping bags, blankets, water, or food to speak of. Things were getting a little too Don Juan/Carlos Castenada for the rest of us. After some prodding, we convinced him to descend the mountain and cross the desert to this town. It was getting late, and if we didn´t get going we were going to be hiking across a road-less desert, attempting to follow various stream & river beds into our destination, in the dark.


(HOW are we getting down?)

Fast forward a few hours, and the group has descended the mountain, but been seperated into two groups: a group of two that were ahead of us, and a group of three, myself, another fellow, and our guide. But our guide was showing some serious signs of loco. We would talk to him, but he would just stare as us with a blank expression. Tensions were rising. He wanted to sleep there, in the ruins. Well, that just wasn´t going to happen. So the other guy and I desided to finish the hike ourselves (which was going to be much faster, as we didn´t have to continuously wait for the guide to talk to the cactus´and investigate all the desert plants and animals). Off we went.


(somehow, we made it... look at the biggest mountain in the background, that's the one we just climbed over)

Of course, we got lost. Of course, the sun was setting. And of course, we came across a man with a big gun. Hmmm. Well, after throwing out a friendly ´hola´and getting a well-mannered response, we decided to talk to him. It turned out he was out hunting rabbits and rats, and kindly walked us to the intersection that we couldn´t find before that lead to the town. That man was a life-saver.


(our savior)

We walked along the road, and who did we come across? Our guide. After explaining why we had to get going, we all walkted together, through the sunset into the night, into the town. Finally, we'd arrived. But wow did I have some blisters. And our friends were there. After a long discussion about our miscommunication, we desided to put it all behind us, and do tomorrow what we had come to do that day: walk through the desert.


(hubba hubba)

The next day came quickly. After a meal, we hired a jeep to drop us off about 8 km ouside town in the middle of the desert. This desert is at 6000 feet / 2000 m. Being so high, like the town of Real de Catorce, there is not much water in the air, so when the sun goes down it gets _cold_. No problem. So we set out walking about the desert, examining all things that came our way. Surprisingly, the desert is a place that is teaming with life, I had no idea. Not to mention how incredibly beautiful it is. It reminds me of the prairies, the way the sky just goes on forever. Except of course, there are cactus´and shrubs of all sorts all around you. Little insects crawling everywhere, birds out polinating whatever they´re polinating, and a multitude of sounds and smells that I have no words to describe.



Again, we got seperated. I couldn´t walk very quickly, as I had blisteres from the day before. So I ended up with two fellows, walking back to town. Of course, we had to watch the sunset from the desert, that was the promised highlight. And was it ever... absolutely breathtaking.



(a desert at 6000 feet)

So we walked and we talked and we laughed our way back to town under the stars. At the hostel we found the others, with a fire burning. We sat around it until the wee hours of the morning and called it a night.

The next day we decided to come back to Real de Catorce to collect our bags. This was supposed to be easy. Ha. Nothing in Mexico goes according to plan, which is probably why it´s such an adventure all the time. Making a long story shorter, we took a bus to ... somewhere? Then another van to the crossroads that lead to R14, just 24 km away. After some hours of waiting, and finding other hitch-hikers, we got a ride in the back of a dump-truck, and then the back of a flatbed, and arried back in town just after the sunset.

A good meal and some wine later, we fell into a well deserved sleep. Oh man, except the few hours of intestinal pain and an intense cleaning of my entire bowel tract in the middle of the night. Montezuma had his way with me. And that takes me to now. Valentine's day. A circus has rolled into town, and there´s a big fiesta happening at the graveyard (of course) tonight.

Tomorrow I´m on my horse, time to leave this town for another destination. Destination, unknown.

Happy valentine's day!

Keepin´it ¨Real¨

Hola, from Real de Catorce!


(I never did figure out how to set the timer for longer than 10 seconds...)

With the help of a note that a friend in Monterrey wrote me, I managed to get off a bus headed elsewhere at the junction of the highway that leads here, to Real de Catorce. I figured, I hitched around Canada all summer, I´m sure it can´t be that hard in Mexico (detail: I can´t speak much spanish, but I´ll revisit that later).




So, out goes my thumb, and not 10 minutes later, I got a lift from three twenty-somethings heading to Real for the night. Although they were Mexican, thankfully, they spoke english quite well.



The road into R14 (as they call it, catorce -- ¨ka-tore-say¨ -- is 14 in spanish) is straight out of the 1800s, cobblestone for... however many km it is, it´s hard to judge because you have to drive about 20, and stop at multiple points to take photos. And then there´s the 3 km long tunnel that leads into the town...




When we got here, they invited me to stay with them for the night, so we rented a couple of rooms and headed out to watch the Patriots lose the superbowl and drink some beers (yes Mom, I know the plural of beer is beer... but this is how the kids do these days).




After a long unsuccessful search for another bar, and two people fewer, ¨Freddy¨ (as I´ll call him) and I arrived back at our original Superbowl-watching bar, which had completely transformed into a drunken disco! Perfect. So, after drinking sufficient beer to be able to communicate with the spanish effectively through my ´Napolean Dynamite-esqe´ dance moves (I think they were just jealous), we lit the town up. I was bought some tequilla again, by a guy, again. This seems to be a trend, perhaps I´m not putting out the right vibe. Although really, tequilla is tequilla, a dancing-man´s drink.

My new friends left the next day after we´d toured around to see the firing range (where the Mexican´s killed each other during a civil war -- I´m not sure why they call it a civil war, I fail to see how war is civilized),



the old graveyard,

and the cockfighting pit (insert non PG13 joke here). As they were leaving, Freddy gave me a very special and touching gift. He handed me a lucky coin, an old Mexican coin, that was given to him by his grandfather. He told me that it can be charged by climbing to the top of the pyramid at Teo...hickamydickerylittlebolabadabba..tan (I will learn the spelling later). I hope to do that. Amongst the debauchery, we managed to have some meaningful conversations, that I will never forget.

I´ve since visited the puebla fantasma (ghost town), and far beyond.




In the ghost town I stumbled across an old mineshaft. As any normal person would do, I descended into the darkness, using my keychain flashlight to guide me. After about 15 metres, I encountered a drop-off, at which point I re-assessed the situation: nobody knows I´m here, I´m alone, in an abandoned mine-shaft, in the dark... I turned around. What a sissy.



From there, I just walked and walked, climbing whatever ´hills´ got in my way.

Real de Catorce is beautiful. It´s a boom-gone-near-ghost-now-being-revitalized-town, which was previously based on mining, and now on tourism. Located in the mountains of Mexico, it´s a magical place.

I spend my days, for the most part, attempting to learn spanish, meditating, and meeting people while walking around the town. I have made a few friends that don´t speak any english, which is really helping me learn spanish. We´re trading english for spanish lessons, and having some great times doing it. You can still joke around in another language, even if you only know a few basic words and body language.

Yo voy a encontrar una amiga en la noche, de tomar une cafe y apprender mas espanol. This sentence probably makes no sense.

I´m not sure how long I´ll be here, it´s a good vibe, and I´m not in a rush. The Mexican lifestyle (mañana) is doing me some good.

Hasta luego amigos!

Hey hey from Monterrey

Monterrey, what can I say?
Beautiful, mountainous Mexican cit-ay.
Lots of friendly folks,
And a whole lotta spanish -
A different style of life,
Where I've made a plan...ish.



"Ish" is how I roll though, so that should be no surprise. Tomorrow I'm going to be heading for a small little mountain town called Real de Catorce. It was recommended to me by a few friends, one of whom described it (and this is the clincher) as a "hippy oasis in the mountains." Time will tell.

But as for Monterrey, it's been a great experience, a great introduction to Mexico. Am I *ever* glad that I studied some spanish before coming here. When I got off the bus in Monterrey, and had no idea where I was going, and nobody spoke any english -- an old Mexican man (grand total english words spoken: 0) took me under his wing and ushered me into his taxi, and from what I can gather, the street that I was asking about was on the way to his house, so he dropped me off. Perhaps some people might think it's not a great idea to get into a cab with a total stranger who you can't communicate with (other than a bunch of smiling and laughing, and a few weeks worth of audio tape lessons) in a huge city that you have no information about (other than a map with 3 street names on it, made in MS Paint and a hostel address where you may or may not have a reservation). But I picked him very carefully. I easily could've kicked his ass had el shitto hit el fanno, which made him a perfect aide.

Right, so I got to the hostel after a wee walk, and it turned out there was a room for me, after a few hour wait. Bonus. I dropped my bag and headed out to see the town. WIthout the details, I spent the day walking around with complete strangers who spoke no english (it's a trend), learning spanish, and seeing the town. At night I met a local girl, a friend of the hostel owner, who took me out for a walk and too see one of the most spectacular rock guitar-Gods that I'd ever seen.

The next day, yesterday, was incredible. I took a bus way outside of town to go and see "la huesteca" (the canyon).




Ancient peoples here believed that it is the bellybutton of the earth, and used to pilgrammage there by the 1000s, and walk 1000s of kilometers to get there. When I got there, I walked with a Mexican guy into the canyon (it's a few kilometers). He spoke english. It turns out that he works there, as an artist who makes sculptures out of marble. He took me into their studio, and introduced me to his friends, who were all very much my kind of people. So there I was learning to chip marble at an artists oasis in a canyon between the mountains. Awesome.

I had to let my new friends do some work, so next I climbed the smallest, safest looking mountain I could find. As I was leaving for the hike, my friend said "look, don't trust anybody, watch out for robbers and rattlesnakes, and be careful of the cactus'."




"Suuure," I thought to myself. Well, I didn't get robbed, rattlesnakes are not in season, and...


(cactus' are sharp)

The energy level there was incredible, it's like the whole place was vibrating. The mountain breeze blows music into your soul, if you just listen to it.



Later on, I took the bus with my new friend to visit one of his co-workers that I really got on with at a cultural event at the Government Palace. Before the event, we came back to my hostel so that I could get the blood off my legs, and it turned out that the hostel owner and he have known each other for 15 years... wild! We show up at the cultural event, dressed in our daily-wear.. nobody told us it was completely fee-fee-foo-foo -- everybody else, and I mean everybody, was in suit and tie or an evening gown. There was free booze, food, and a tonne of traditional Mexican music. Nobody looked at us unpleasently though, perhaps because I was the only non-local at the event, and they couldn't get past my face and hair to notice my clothes. A smile goes a long, long way. And being drop dead sexy helps too.



From there we went on a bar tour, until 4 am. What I'll remember from the day is this: If you drink beer, regardless of how cool it looks to light hand sanitizer on fire (that you've spread on your hands) before eating your pizza, DON'T. Burnt hair stinks.



Ciao!