Top Ten Reasons To Love Staying In Hostels

10. Toilet paper resembling sand paper. Insert ¨wrecked em, damn near killed em joke¨ here:
Also an interesting note for a you astrology buffs: It´s amazing how red Uranus looks from Mexico.

9. Rooms next to the shared bathrooms. I worked up a song to the tune of ¨partridge and a pear tree¨ at our hostel in Mexico City and had the joy of singing it every night: five belches grand, four stank bm´s, three painful groans, and a big hacker cleared and spit. (and an occasional vomit....(to the tune of the b-day song ending ¨and many more...¨))

8. Bugs. mosquitos, spiders, bedbugs, roaches, ants, and scorpions. I have gotten very creative with making bug killing devices.

7. Rock hard beds. I would actually prefer to sleep on the floor... if it weren´t for all the bugs.

6. Public refrigerators. Every time we´ve left something in a public refrigerator some midnight snack stoner has come along to eat it in the middle of the night.

5. The five minute supply of brownish hot water in the shower and the smell of raw sewage wafting up from the drain.

4. Listening to a chorus of farts every night as you are trying (keyword trying) to go to sleep. Thank you valium.

3. Trying to figure out what that sticky residue is on the shower floor every morning.

2. Witnessing strangers urine and feces floating in the toilet every time you need to use the bathroom. Water conservation is great, but not when other people have to pay tribute to your turds every time they need to use the jon. And the saying ¨If it´s yellow let it mellow¨ need not apply to shared bathrooms. Also, seeing other peoples poopy toilet paper in the wastebasket flushes me with anger.

and........



1. It beats living on the streets, or most Santa Cruz apartments.



Hope all you potty humor lovers out there enjoyed.

Hey Bryna...... ¨Fart¨ -- made ya laugh again didn´t I?

Ttyl,

Chris

A tribute to 10 years

Melanie and Chris

There´s shockingly not many pictures of Melanie and I after over 10 years of being together. Obviously mostly pictures of me as she is the much better photographer and me of course being so picturesque (a fine example in the album cover).

There are a few pics of us though and I´d like to share them with everyone as I think it shows our true colors when we´re together and our true love and friendship for one another.

Hope everyone enjoys!

(click on the picture to open the web album... mother)

Chris and Melanie

Shettling Down in Xela (pronounced Shay-la)

a.k.a. Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

We were both ready to leave Mexico and find someplace to settle down for a while. Although we have experienced so many incredible things there it was quite exhausting; the constant moving, bus trips, hotels/hostels wear on a person after a while.

This time, however, we did not choose the ADO busline and had a much nicer journey. We signed up with a private tour company for a reasonable rate and were promised a comfortable 12 hour journey into Guatemala in a nice van. They also promised to walk us through customs and other potential snags which turned out to be worth its weight in gold. More on that later.

The day of our departure we were down in the hotel lobby waiting at the specified time, 7:00 a.m. We waited, waited, then waited some more. I silently contemplated walking down the street to the corner store where we purchased our journey to see if the building was now vacated. We did hand over the full cost of the journey in cash days ago just going by the credentials posted on the plaque behind the desk. It was at least a hundred bucks. Had we been scammed?

No, right then the guy drove up with his coffee looking like I did when I would roll out of bed, throw scrubs on , and stumble down the stairs to work at the hospital -- pillow lines on his face and everything. Lets just say I don´t miss that in the slightest. He, and the nice dude that worked at the hotel, helped us load our things in to the back of the van and we were off.

It was a large van that could comfortably hold 10 adults. We were the first ones onboard so I thought maybe I'd be able to stretch out and get comfy. We proceeded to stop at six or seven other hotels, one of them picking up six passengers at once. We crammed into that bus like it was a clown car at the circus, all thirteen of us. I still managed to fall asleep during a large portion of the first part of the trip. Luckily we were right next to a small window that cracked. Appartantly from hearing the others complaints at the border it got quite hot and steamy back there. I had a dream about that same bus ride, only instead of dirty smelly backpackers, ligerie clad Victoria's secret models that smelled like flowers were cramming in. Where was I?...

...Oh ok, so I woke up a little while before our breakfast stop about 4 hours into the journey. The scenery was astounding; gorgeous gigantic mountains everywhere surrounding cute little towns and villages in the valleys below. Cute locals in colorful outfits walking right next to the highway some trying to get the driver to stop top sell there wares. We passed a cop going really really fast, definately speeding. The driver made eye-contact with the officer and gave a little friendly honk as we whizzed by. He actually honked at a lot of people. I was then especially happy we had gone with this service as they had apparantly paid off the police ahead of time. I had heard many stories of assuredly having to pay a ¨tax¨ to the local officers when making the journey alone. Also there were some stories of highway robberies. These people seeemed to know everyone and the journey went totally smooth.

We had a decent breakfast at a small town along the way. The bathrooms didn't have toilet paper and the toilets wouldn't flush though. Sorry to the person that went in after me... I had brought a bunch of kleenex in one of my pants pockets and I made Melanie steal the rest of our toilet paper from our hotel in San Cristobal before we left, thank goodness.

We arrived at the border and had to unload all of our bags, go through customs, and then load up on a different van. I was thankful here as well that we were using the service because it would have been quite confusing otherwise. This time we had to load our belongings on top of the van and I felt quite sorry for the little guy up on top when I hucked the box-o-books up to him almost causing him to fall off. A new driver took the helm for the Guatemala leg of the trip and we were off once again.

We passed through many more cute towns and around many more mountains. It was truly some spectacular scenery -- wish I had the pictures to prove it. Many hours later we arrived at a gas station and everyone unloaded to stretch their legs. It had actually been only eight hours of driving. We were the only two passengers actually going to Xela it turns out, so at this point we were instructed to get into the back seats of a pickup truck and throw our stuff in the bed of the truck. It seemed a little sketchy but at this point we were just looking at each other, shrugging, and saying what the hell. Our new driver got in along with his travelling companion. Turns out we were just minutes away from our destination down the worst road I have ever riden on in my life. Apparantly, our driver told us, it had been under construction for six or so years. Such is life in Guatemala apparantly. The driver was incredibly nice and actually gave us a rundown of the entire history of Xela (Quetzaltenango) in our 10-15 minutes together... well he tried to at least. To get the entire history in he had to speak some really fast Spanish and we had been crammed in a bus for eight hours so our brains were mush. We soaked up as much as we could.

Through the course of our journey I've felt less and less bad about my Spanish comprehension, as it seems that usually when I don't understand Melanie doen't either. She's naturally way better at salvaging the conversation and/or pretending like she did understand than me. I usually get that squinty-eyed head tilt look, mouth half open. After looking at me for a few seconds, then chuckling politely, most stop trying to address me directly and just start talking to Melanie.

We pulled up at our hotel, unloaded our stuff, checked in and went to a restaurant across the street, the closest one to our hotel. The entire meal ended up costing five dollars total and the food wasn't half bad. Turns out after being here for a week that is the norm-- really good food at amazingly cheap prices. Eating out is costing us about 5 - 10 bucks per meal on average and as stated the food has been great. Way better than in Mexico except of course for Marcela's home cooking. We ended up switching hotels because the one we originally were staying in was a pressure cooker with one tiny window and the light switch in the bathroom shocked the shit out of me every time I turned the light on. I really didn't want to die from electricution in a Guatemalan bathroom-- not quite the end I had envisioned.

We are now staying in a really cute hostel and have a private room with a comfy bed. I say private, but it is really one big room that has been separated in to two by an extremely thin wall made of plywood. It hasn't been that bad except for some dude that was staying in the room next to us for a few days that had unbelievably bad gas. I mean this guy must have been drinking a two liter of soda water right before bedtime. Luckily I never smelled them but the sound was bad enough. They have since moved on thankfully.

We officially signed up for a Spanish school today and will be living in a private apartment on school grounds. It´s really really cute, almost the same size as our apartment at Westside Animal Hospital (extremely small). It´s up a cute windy staircase, kind of an attic apartment. For the next couple of weeks we will be studying Spanish five hours a day one on one with a professional teacher. Hopefully that will help my Spaninsh speaking immensely. We´ll see.

Sorry no pictures this time, but Melanie I´m sure will post some in her blog. We plan on being here for at least two months so plenty of time for picture taking, however, I don´t plan on taking any more pictures of the locals after Tara made me feel so guilty. :(

After that, who knows where we´ll go, we sure don´t....

Hasta Proximo (until next time)

Chris

Saint Christopher and the Tortilla Beggar

Saint Christopher and the Tortilla Beggar

"San Cristobal de Las Casas"

Before I get to the parable let me tell you about our journey there:

México City was completely exhausting. The 13 hour bus ride to the town named after me was even more so. Let me just rant for a second about the bus company we used. Before getting on the bus, the dummies at ADL-GO bus company, made us check all of our bags at the baggage check counter kind of like at an airport. Unlike an airport (and any other bus company for that matter) though, the bus was ten feet away from the baggage check counter. Every other bus company had let me take my guitar on board the bus for safe keeping with no problems. The jerks at ADO, however, made me walk through a metal detector (which doesn´t detect metal at all – I had a knife in my pocket) and then used a metal detector wand on me (all for show). They wouldn´t allow my guitar on board because of space restrictions and made me go five steps over to the baggage check window to check it. I wasn´t a very happy camper when seeing that the bus was almost empty. I did remember to grab the valium I had stashed in the case out before checking it which came in handy later (see Melanie´s blog). I also had a little upper respiratory thing going on that wasn´t exactly helping my mood. The bus ride was crazy so I hear. I actually slept through most of the scary parts. Melanie woke me up looking very worried and I could see why. The road visibility was about two feet and the driver was racing around corners, racing up on other vehicles and having to slam the breaks, and then passing them reclessly. I think he must have driven that route a million times before and was having fun with scaring the crap out of everyone. He probably could have driven it blindfolded. I gave Mel a valium and was able to relax as soon as she dozed off. It´s not so fun to see her pale-faced with a slightly greenish hue holding her stomach. I´ve seen that look before when I´ve been the driver (several people on several occasions actually). I tend to speed up and slow down without thinking about it when driving, so I wasn´t too bothered. I was bothered by the green boogers I was blowing out my nose though.

The Tortilla Beggar parable:

We finally arrived, starving, in San Cristobal. I did feel a little better as I had somehow, through the course of the bus ride, mostly overcome my illness. It was nice and cool compared to México City and was a beautiful sunny day. After following Melanie around in circles in and out of the bus station a few times, panicking about whether we were really in San Cristobal or not (we were), we settled in at a restaurant across the street for breakfast. In her defense she had just woken up from valium sleep and she was going off of my assurances that we were in the right place. I am directionally dislexic after all.

As soon as we sat down we started getting psychologically pummeled by elderly women selling bracelets, belts, rugs, blankets, etc… that they had presumedly woven. I say psychologically pummeled because they had gone through some kind of sales seminar that took not taking ¨no¨ for an answer to a whole nother level. It was unlike any begging experience we´d ever had before. I ended up buying a bracelet for a few pesos purely out of guilt and I am highly desensitized to guilt having been raised by a Catholic mother (only outdone by those of you with Jewish mothers). She looked at the Jesus statue behind us, looked at my breakfast I was eating, looked me in the eyes with the most pathetic look (indescribable), and asked me to buy one bracelt so she could buy some tortillas to eat -- she was starving. Melanie said I should have just given her my tortillas (obviously her guilt training being way more advanced). It was too much for me to endure being in the town called Saint Christopher and all. I think buying that poor old lady tortillas earns me some sainthood. Unfortunately though word got out that I was a sucker (or maybe it was the halo over my head) and I was accosted non-stop the rest of our time there. Just kidding, actually, It was Melanie who bore the brunt of the begging. It seems their sales training has shown them that women are more likely to have bleeding hearts than the men – they had it all wrong with us though. It got me off the hook though so what do I care.

Anyone that gets the meaning of the parable please feel free to post a comment and I will tell you if you are correct.

To continue...

Our hotel was, as Melanie said, run by some hick from Oklahoma (I resemble that remark) that didn´t speak a word of Spanish. We immediately bonded as soon as Melanie spilled the beans (Mexican pun not intended) about me being from cow country as well. I say bonded but I actually thought it was quite embarassing to have an unabashed redneck in the middle of Mexico putting his arm around me while calling the housecleaning dude ¨lil pork rinds¨ and talking to the Spanish speakers in slow exaggerated English to no avail. It was an interesting experience nonetheless.

We took a side trip to the ruins of Palenque halfway through our stint in Saint Christopher. Try to imagine running up two hundred steps in 105 degree heat, beating sun, and 100% humidity. It was truly a test of health and willpower. I can´t say that I wasn´t completely exhausted by the end of the day but I did ok. Before all that running up and down the pyramids we took a tour of the jungle and saw some great waterfalls, some monkeys (none of which came close enough for me to spank), and some tasty looking medicinal herbs (this pic´s for u pops). ----------------------------------------------->

We stayed at a cabana hut in the middle of the rainforrest that was cool (not temperature wise). There were lots of little animals running around including a deer named Bambi that gave away cute little deer kisses.

"Palenque"

Back to San Cristobal for a couple of more days to be beaten some more with guilt sticks. We mostly spent the next couple of days recooperating from the Palenque journey and writing in our hotel room (also to avoid being guilted into buying that 30´x 30´hand woven hemp rug). I did manage to sneak around and take a few pictures of the locals. Considering how beautiful San Cristobal was scenery-wise it was surprizing how few picture taking tourists there were. It seemed as though the locals really didn´t like having their pictures taken. I guess what they don´t know won´t hurt em right?... At least I hope I didn´t ruin a bunch of peoples souls or something. Hope that won't end my bid for sainthood. Wait that picture of me on the cross in my previous blog probably took care of that.

"Cute little girl in San Cristobal"

Well nothing more exciting to write about San Cristobal. We´re in Guatemala now having a blast. I´m enrolling in a Spanish school and salsa lessons. We are going to stay here probably for a few months. I´ll let you all know how things are going soon.

I bless anyone who reads this with the power vested in me,


Saint Cristopher

10 years of Chris in photos.

Hope everyone enjoys! I know everyone else has jobs and family and stuff but it would make me feel great if you stopped your life for a few minutes to admire me.

Thanks,

Chris

(click on the picture to open the web album....)

Chris Poses

Mexico CIty Week 2

Too Much for Two Weeks
Mexico City Week 2

Let me first say that I believe whole-heartedly that Mexico City has received a bad reputation from everyone that’s ever given us advice about traveling here. The police kept everything organized even with all of the protesting and craziness that went on. The people we had interactions with were very kind and helpful and we did not feel threatened once. Everyone else went about their own business. Being the huge city that it is, everyone has big city blinders on.

We were pretty tired from all of the hiking in our first week here. I would venture to say that we walked at least 5 miles each day, which was a lot after laying around for several weeks in Irapuato not doing much physically. However, we were definitely ready in week two to pick up the pace, especially since we had found our Starbucks energy source, and we still had so much to see it was mind-boggling.

First we visited the area in Mexico City called Zona Rosa. It was one of the most open minded, relaxed, friendly places we visited—very cool and hip with tons of bars, sex shops, and several happenin’ gay clubs.

Another area we visited a couple of different times was called Condessa. We visited an amazing museum (based on a Frank Lloyd Wright design) that had some of the best paintings and drawings I have ever seen in my life. We also ate at a T.G.I Friday’s (had an amaaaazing mudslide frozen drink – It’s amazingly hard to find good frozen drinks here), visited several Starbucks, and a mansion where I enjoyed the best mojito I have ever drank. It was, by far, the most rich and snooty area we visited in Mexico City. It was strikingly obvious how many more white people there were in the rich neighborhood.

We visited the ancient Aztecan ruins in the middle of the main part of the city called “Templo Mayor”, what used to be the principle pyramid and worshipping ground for the original people that came here hundreds of years ago. The Spanish as said repeatedly before destroyed all they could and it ended up being turned into a garbage dump until the early part of the 20^th century when an archaeologist excavated the site and unearthed some amazing treasures and history. It’s not much to look at now but the history behind it is intriguing and sad, as is the case with all other indigineous people around the world. But these people apparently gave Mr. Cortez a hell of a bloody fight. Here is a picture of me taming a wild jaguar that was patrolling the museum:
More museums and more museums… There are apparently one hundred and fifty museums in the city. There is a friggin museum for everything. Not counting the ones I’ve named in other posts, we’ve visited the Da Vinci museum, the Modern Art Museum, the anthropology museum, the Diego Rivera museum, the history of dentistry museum, and the “some dude collected a bunch of 15, 16, 17, and 18^thcentury junk” museum. I’m sure I missed naming a few.

The Da Vinci museum was pretty cool with all of the inventions he created, mostly for war, but a lot for mass production, lifting, general physics… cool stuff.

The dental museum had a recreated dental office from two hundred years ago. Amazingly most of the instruments looked exactly like they do in today’s dental offices except for a few that looked like Abu-garhib torture devices.

The Diego Rivera museum basically just had a big mural he painted in it – I think his most revered. It’s a great mural I have to admit.
The Modern Art museum was I think the most impressive museum of them all – some amazing paintings of all the Mexican muralists and other contemporary artist’s work that were jaw-droppingly great (my second favorite museum overall). There was very little if any of the “cover your body in paint and roll around of a canvas on the floor” art and that you’d expect to see in a modern art museum.

The museum of anthropology was humongous and overwhelming but well worth a visit if someone is never going to visit any of the ancient ruins like we are. They do have they remains of the cave person called “Lucy” though – several million years old, which is pretty cool. There is also a statue from thousands of years ago that looks like a not so distant relative of GW:

We of course took a day trip to see the pyramids of Teotihuacan. The views were spectacular and the miles of hiking in the scorching sun were well worth it. Melanie climbed a little pyramid but I couldn’t convince her to climb the big mama. This is her from my view at the top. Here’s another view from the top. I really love climbing these pyramids! They’re really steep and really tall and definitely will make your legs a little shaky and your heart race. I actually saw a few eighty year olds clutching their chests and gasping for air about halfway up – probably best to attempt when you’re young. If you think of it like any other staircase you’ve ever climbed it’s really no big deal (other than being hundreds of feet in the air). The key is to not look more than one step ahead than the one your stepping to, down or up. It kind of translates, at least for me, to life in general.

We spent more time in the park. Here’s a great pic of Melanie: Isn’t she beautiful?

One of the last things we did here was to go to the Basillica de Guadalupe. Thousands of people from around the world make pilgrimages there to see a picture on a wall. It’s a long story behind why and I won’t get into it, however, it is my mother’s patron saint and I went to check it out for her and to get her a religious souvenier. Here’s a little taste of what it was like... total religious madness:

The last thing I want to say about our time in Mexico City is about the hotel we were staying in: “Casa de los Gringos”. I call it that because everyone there spoke English and were from the states (mostly west coast hippies from Washington or California). There was something really annoying to be in the heart of historic Mexico and be surrounded by English speaking dirty hippies – I would, however, highly recommend it to anyone from Santa Cruz wanting to visit Mexico City. There was also no sound buffering and our room was right next to the bathrooms. We had the pleasure of hearing every loose stool, vomit, fart, burp, snort, sploosh, and splash amplified in stereo. We felt lucky if anyone flushed anything (thanks for conserving all the water hippies) and forget about anyone making an effort to conceal up their doo doo covered t.p. that they’ve thrown in the garbage. I also had a couple of different (non-important) items stolen from various places around the hotel. I’m so ready to leave this place – communal living is the pits. There was one guy from Somalia that we had some very interesting conversations about world politics with.

I left a few things out considering the amount of adventures we packed into the relatively short time here in Mexico City. We truly had a blast here though and I can’t overstate how wrong everyone was that said we would have problems here or would not enjoy ourselves. The food overall was good and cheap. The hotel, although as stated had it’s disadvantages, but was dirt cheap. The public transportation was amazing and the cheapest in the world. We apparently chose a good time to be here. There was apparently a mass exodus of people during these past two weeks for spring break and holy week, although it still seemed like a lot of people to me, it usually is much more crowded.

Well it’s on to San Cristobal, the city named after me, in the next couple of days. It will be a long bus ride – hopefully they play a couple of good movies. We will be seeing more pyramids and ruins at Palenque (so excited we’ll get to see monkeys and climb more pyramids!). I will write more soon. Thanks for traveling along with me.

Mexico City Week 1

Protests, Religion, Art, and Starbucks
Mexico City Week One
(Warning: this post contains a painting of boobs)

We arrived in Mexico City on a Monday night and as I said in my last blog entry I got cussed at and I believe cursed by an ancient woman on the street. Since then, by the way, I have given money to countless old ladies, even ones not asking, and have been counter-cursed several times over. I also gave money to the large cathedral here in Mexico City and I drank some of the holy water. So anyways, the next day we waded into the protest and have since witnessed three other protests and countless numbers of armed police, military personnel with big guns, and riot cops in full gear. Funny thing is with all these protests and all these police I have yet to see anyone arrested or any violence whatsoever. We actually joined that big protest for a while. Being Santa Cruz protest pros we thought we could show them a thing or two about how to get some things accomplished. Felt kind of awkward being the only naked ones though. Protesting all day is hard work and we had built up quite an appetite. We grabbed some dinner and headed back to our hotel to sleep and have dreams about societies that actually actively protest their government’s unfair/ corrupt policies instead of simply partaking in telephone opinion polls.

We woke up the next morning at Casa de Los Gringos (I mean Amigos) and we headed downstairs to have the dollar-fifty breakfast special. They served chilaquiles, at least that’s what they called them, (they were actually gringoquiles - stale corn chips smeared with black bean paste and topped with mozzarella cheese) and corn flakes for breakfast with stale bread and coffee. Yum!!! I was starting to long for the Starbucks we had noticed near the town square the day before. It was the last breakfast we would eat at our hotel.

First we visited the Palacio governor’s palace military base thingy. The Spanish conquerors apparently built all of the main buildings on top of the main pyramids of the original Aztecan/ Mexicas, after they destroyed them and killed all the people of course. The Palace, however, is very large and impressive and Diego Rivera painted a ton of murals on the walls depicting the history of the evil gringos killing, raping, and ravaging all of the native people and destroying their amazingly beautiful advanced city. The murals are quite impressive. The whole place is crawling with military police carrying ak-47’s so it’s difficult to take too many pictures (they will confiscate your camera if they see you, even accidentally, taking any pics of them). There is even a garden in the middle that is filled with desert plants and at least twenty cats. It’s the only place so far that I’ve seen cats on this entire journey and one of the few places in the palace that it was safe to take some pics. Awwww so cute:

After the Palacio we headed into a marketplace that seemed to go on for miles. There were people yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs to buy their goods. Hot dog vendors yelling. Drink vendors yelling. The very large crowd of buyers all seemed to be yelling at each other. There was music blaring everywhere – all English music btw – Bob Marley, Queen, No Doubt, Usher, Blondie and many more. After a while Melanie and I even started yelling at each other, even though we could have heard each other talking normally, until we finally made it out of the market. It was like some sort of trance – very strange.

On to the main cathedral we went. Again built by the evil murdering catholic disease-bag Spanish conquerors. Actually other than being immensely huge it wasn’t that impressive looking. There was several cool side room shrines dedicated to patron saints/ martyrs (one usually goes with the other I guess). There was also the black Jesus shrine (don’t see that every day – usually he’s bleach white) – how’d they get away with depicting him as someone of color with the church? There were also a couple of other creepy monuments. One with a skull and bones of some martyr and one that bared an eerie resemblance to me! I was so freaked out I ran out of there screaming. Melanie had to cradle me in her bosom for a good twenty minutes before I would settle down. On a good note I got Melanie to cradle me in her bosom. After we got off the ground we walked by a statue dedicated to Pope John Paul II. I barely recognized him not being slumped over with drool dripping out of his mouth while breakdancers are spinning on their heads in front of him. Never seen the breakdancers video?

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/01/26/pope.breakdancers.ap/

Totally unrelated but has anyone checked out the controversy regarding the chocolate Jesus?… it’s very disturbing to watch babbling Christian extremists making foolish arguments and threats. The sculpture itself raises a good point for everyone to think about the true meaning of the religious holidays that you celebrate. And, by the way, I’ve seen many paintings this week depicting Jesus having a penis, albeit not a chocolate one. But I bet there’s a good chance some of you are eating a chocolate Easter egg as you read this.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/50069/

Back to the blog… We headed back home but on the way stopped at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the main performance theatre and an art gallery, to check out some murals painted inside. There are murals painted by Diego Rivera, Orozco, Siquieros, and many more – all amazingly impressive. Check out this one by Siquieros – definitely my favorite (repressed children cover your eyes):

The next day started with our first stop at Starbucks for breakfast and coffee. They actually have good coffee and ½ and ½, which in Mexico is a miracle. Also pretty darn good breakfast sandwiches as well. Ashamedly we have pretty much eaten breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Starbucks every day since… :( I know it’s bad, but I love Starbucks more than ever now. We have since found four or five more including one a couple of blocks from our hotel. We mostly walked around taking pictures all day and then that night went to a folk Ballet performance at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, which included singing, musical performances and, of course, dancing. It was an amazing performance.

That was pretty much our first week here. We took a couple of day off to rest – we were pretty pooped from miles and miles of hiking in the hot sun. We’re currently at the end of week number two and I will write about that soon. I climbed a huge pyramid – can’t wait to show you all.

Until then,

Chris