After spending an amazing day at the beach getting pummeled by 6-8 foot waves (no kidding!) at Playa Zicateli, Lenhart and ate and retired to the hotel. Not exactly expecting to see our british friends again, I was pleasantly surprised when they came rolling in from the beach at nine PM, drunk on tequila and itching to go out with this crew of kids from Mexico City. The ringleader of said youth was a guy named Orlando. This kid was a punchy ball of nervous energy with a guitar in tow, and I immediately feared for my life. He had a mean look about him, and was wearing a canadian baseball cap.

The girls, who now numbered six (Rosie, Lisa, and Michelle were the original crew, and three unrelated others were staying at the cabana) tore out of the cabana with the force of a freight train and made a bee-line straight for the bars. British-girl-group number 1 wanted to meet Orlando and his gang at a bar called 'Tres Diablos' (they should have named it 'Tres Pescados') and group 2 wanted to check out a bar called 'Wipe-Out' so we briefly parted ways. Tres Diablos was the first bar that I have ever experienced what I have termed a Meta-Coverband. We walked in on a quartet playing a loud and very accurate cover of Gun 'N' Roses cover of Bob Dylan's Knockin' On Heaven's Door, complete with guitar solos an exceptional Axl Rose imitation. Fortunately they weren't limited to meta-covers (although the others they did were quite good) and rocked out some amazing covers of everything from Jimi Hendrix to Nirvana.

At one point Orlando invited me to the bar to take a shot of Mezcal with him. I thanked him afterword and he clapped me on the shoulder and said, completely deadpan "It's not a problem. We are all Mexican here" and turned and walked away.

After leaving Diablos the girls wanted to go dancing, and we were conned into taking a free ride out to a club a few beaches down, under the impression that the club was free. It wasn't, but the cattle truck we drove out in had already left and we had to take cabs back to another club, which was preparing to close. The girls decided that they wanted to Roll back down to the beach. I decided i wanted to go to bed in preparation of the 9 hour drive the next day, so we parted ways at the cabana. I crawled into bed under my mosquito netting and I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

Sat Jul 19 14:15:11 2003
Zihu to Escondido

Our next stop after Zihuatanejo was to be Puerto Escondido, which is on Mexico's southernmost coast, in Oaxaca (in fact, only two other major towns are more sourthernly than Escondido). From Zihua, the 8+ hour drive would take us through the tourist hell which is Acapulco, along the southern portion of Oaxaca, and finally to Escondido.

God and his cronies were NOT smiling on us as we prepared to leave Friday morning. To begin with, the british girls travelling with us had to wait on their laundry, which pushed our departure time back to around noon. No problem. But as the rest of the days events unfolded from there, we really began to wonder if some malicious cosmicly-aligned force was not pushing against us. I discovered, much to my dismay, that I had left my iPod and a single glucometer in the room Lenhart and I stayed in on the first nite in Zihu (we changed rooms on thursday). Inquiring after it, the hostel owner returned my glucometer, which had a note in it from the guys who stayed in the room after us. Because the hostel owner assumed the glucometer had belonged to a crew of heroin-addicted mexicans who had stayed in the room a week prior, the guys in possesion of my iPod decided to borrow it, and should I ever return for it (said the note) they would happily pay postage to ship it back to me, or I could catch up with them in southern mexico. Bummer. The note writer left his email address as a contact point, and a rough itinerary. So we were musicless until the british girls saved the day with some minidiscs and their minidisc players. Problem two solved.

Unfortunately, we couldn't escape that easily. While attempting to leave Zihu, Lenhart turned the wrong way down one of the many unmarked one way streets, only this one happened to have a traffic cop standing at the end of it. He confiscated Lenhart's license and told us to meet him around the block. Grrr. Upon meeting him, we asked "Can we pay the fine here?" which is Mexican for "Do you accept bribes?" and to our delight, he did. Problem three solved

God, however, was still not content. The wiley old bastard was still after blood and came at us with a vengence by forcing us to drive through the middle of Acapulco at rush hour. If Nogales is a festering sore, Acapulco (despite its beautiful beaches) is the whore that it rests on. It took us fully one and one-half (1.5) hours to travel ten miles through the traffic-jammed, tourist-infested hell. We made it out unscathed, but having been set back on our schedule our prospects of making it to Escondido were not good.

Sure enough, things took a turn for the worse. As the sun went down, it began to rain. On Mexican highways, this is bad, as speed bumps and livestock are generally more plentiful than other cars. After a brief powwow we decided to stay in Pinotepia Nacional, and a hotel that proudly displayed the freshly-killed scorpion found earlier in a guest's room. The pillows were sacks stuffed with rags and the "bedding" felt like a polyester tablecloth. We bolted early in the AM and have finally arrived on the beach in Escondido. We are staying in some amazing Cabanas on the beachfront, and we will spend the day on the beach before we head inland to San Cristobal.

Thurs Jul 17 12:33:22 2003
Zihuatanejo Redux

Our decision to take the Libres (non-toll roads) from Mazatlan proved to be a fruitful one. Not only did we save large ammounts of money, the drive was a much more interesting one. The roads snake through small towns in the countryside, and while they are not the most direct route the scenery paints a much truer picture of mexico than driving on the freeway. Local culture is in pretty free effect all along many of the roads, and there are an abundance of excellent roadside foodstands. The only drawback, as Lenhart mentions is the accursed Topes. Topes are in such abundance on the Libres (especially as we progressed south) that when we traveled 5 KM without seeing one we started getting edgy. The damn things have an awful tendency to sneak up on you in the middle of nowhere, without warning. If you are lucky some kind soul has staked a handpainted sign in the ground a few meters before the bump, but often there is an awful, skidding, last-ditch attempt to stop before you scrape the bottom of your car across them.

Driving in mexico is a dodgy proposition to begin with, even without the topes. The libres travel mostly through the mountains, and it is not rare to see tractor trailers careening down the mountainsides with a line of cars traveling on the wrong side of the road to get around the big-rig. Drivers often have 400 meters or less in which to pass, and given that no one obeys the posted speed limit this can be an adventure. There is a peculiar system of passing - if the car in front of you sees that you want to pass, they will use their turn signal to indicate that the road ahead is clear. This is particularly helpful when passing semis, but requires a great deal of trust (and probably some stupidity as well) that the driver in front of you isnīt just jerking your chain.

Tonite we will stay in Zihuatanejo again, at an excellent hostel (called Angelas) that we found last nite. We met three very cool British girls there, and they are travelling in the same direction as we are, so they will be catching a ride with us tomorrow to Puerto Escondido rather than deal with the erratic bus system.

Today, however, is Pozole Day in Zihuatanejo, so we are not in any hurry to leave. We will be snorkeling on a beach called Los Gatas and then retiring to enjoy the pozole, which is cheap and (supposedly) amazing. The net connections in this town are unfortunately too slow to upload our pictures, but I hope that we will fare better in San Cristobal. I will try and get a more detailed (read city-to-city) account of our travels up later today or tomorrow but now it is time for snorkelling and pozole!

Wed Jul 16 22:49:41 2003
from Zihuatanejo

I`m a few days behind but we are spending the day here tomorrow so I should be caught up. Check Lenhartīs blog for details if you can`t wait, otherwise check back tomorrow evening. I may have even figured out the pictures thing....


Sun Jul 13 22:05:43 2003
Mazatlan

Guaymas was a nice stop, if not kind of boring. Perhaps it was because we turned in too early - I aweoke at 2 AM to the sounds of loud music and intensive partying outside my room. At 4 AM, I was treated to a scantily clad woman repeatedly banging on a door down the hall and screaming for someone named Paco (or was it Chaco?).

At any rate, our lack of partying allowed us to get an early start (7:30 AM). This allowed us to find out at a much earlier hour that driving through mexico is more expensive than we previously imagined. Staying in mexico is cheap - i think we have spent fewer than 10$ US per day so far. Itīs the goddamned tolls and the price of gas that is killing my wallet. Tomorrow we will be taking the non-toll roads (Libres?) to Puerto Vallarta, although iīve heard that if you arenīt getting robbed by the toll booths, the bandits on the free roads will get you for the same cost.

I have yet to find any place from which i can upload photos. Maybe tomorrow....

Mexican computer keyboards are strangely laid out.

Tonite we are staying at the Hotel Mexico. 50 pesos (5$ US) gets us a double bed and a private bath one block from the ocean. We met some pleasant but quiet british kids staying in a room down the hall, a boy from Uganda, and a girl who is from Mexico but who we couldnīt understand because my spanish is for shit. It is improving but the language barrier is keeping me from figuring out, say, where the beach is and what size the beds in a hotel room are. I hope that as we are immersed further into the trip and forced to use more and more spanish that it will come a little more naturally. Weīve been lucky thus far in that many of the hotel operators and restaurant folk speak good english (better than my spanish) but i imagine as we press further south that this may not remain a viable option for communication.

More tomorrow from Puerto Vallarta...

Sat Jul 12 22:05:43 2003
"Xanax, Valium, Percocet..."

It is hard to have a good first impression of a place when you walk by the drugstores and the employees are hawking prescription drugs at throngs of disinterested tourists. Nogales is a shithole, a festering sore that ought to have scared us out of Mexico outright. And yet, we pressed onward, and have reached Guayama.

My flight to Phoenix was largely uneventful, and I arrived in Tucson exhausted from the previous evening's festivities. After another hard nite partying with the Tuscon locals, Lenhart and I set off for Mexico. After eight hours on the road, I am having a hard time conjuring the energy to this, so I will update it tomorrow and throw some pictures up as well....

Fri Jul 11 05:40:54 2003
Dig that time stamp - 1 hour, 20 minutes until the plane departs.

Thu Jul 10 13:43:18 2003
If any of you think this page looks suspiciously similar to Lenhart's page it's because i completely ripped him off. No worries right?

I fly out of RDU in approximately 16 hours. In that time i must have most (if not all) of my belongings moved from my current residence. No problem right?