Ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted to visit rainforests, jungles, ancient buildings covered with green, exotic noises all that business.
This should be my first taste of it, I’m in Chiapas near Palenque, it’s not the Amazon but does look like it’ll have some of what I want. I did a bit of searching and just look at what I can expect, this:
or this
(from magnusvk‘s flickr Mexico Set.).
’nuff said.
We’ll see if my pictures compare when I get back.
Only a few minutes to spare but time for a quick update. The wedding was excellent, everyone had a great time and I enjoyed myself throughly. Hopefully more about that when I get back or when I have more time.
And so now I’ve joined my tour group, already it’s clear that this will be no VodkaTrain. Things started with breakfast at 7AM (which I skipped in my Tequila induced slumber). It may all be a bit more organised and respectable than I’m used to.
It seems a nice enough group, only one American — I expected more, but it does skew towards the older end of the spectrum. There are a handful of younger poeple, but just a handful so it may be everyone early to bed and early to rise. I’m told that that’s what the VodkaTrainers thought I’d be like at first, so we will have to see. I wanted to post this now so that I can be proved wrong or right later, I intend to enjoy myself anyway, even if I get frowned upon.
There are a fair few solo travellers, all older, comparing which tours they’d been on and which coutries they’d visited. I can’t decide it that’s a bad thing or not …
At the moment it kinda puts me off doing more of these tours because it makes me wonder if that’s what I’ll be like if I do. Just early musings, we’ll see how it goes, journey of discovery, etc, etc.
Normally I preface these posts with words to the effect of “everything going well I should be in …” but this time I can say that barring complete disaster I’ll be in Mexico City. Why? Because this trip has been arranged around Mexico City so that I can attend a wedding on the 3rd and I’ve allowed a fair amount of wiggle room if something goes wrong.
The wedding should be … interesting … considering I speak very little Spanish and I’m not sure who else is making the journey from the UK. But I was invited, and I was very flattered to be invited, so I’m going. By the now the wedding will be over, hopefully I’ll have recovered and I’ll have joined a tour of Mexico and nearby countries with will take up the next few weeks.
Aside from that I’m not planning the rest of my free time in Mexico City in advance, I’ve got a guidebook and I’m sure I’ll find something to fill me time with.
I was trying to decide between a couple of different itineraries for this trip and while I was looking online I found that around half of all the comments about Tijuana were along the lines of “Don’t go, it’s a shithole.”
Regardless, Tijuana is where I am, hopefully not being shot at, mugged, kidnapped, scammed or any of the other bad things that apparently happen here. Frankly I don’t think it’s going to be that bad, you need to experience these things once in your lifetime and it seemed a shame not to visit when I’m so close and it’s on my way (kind of) to where I’m going next. Plus it gives me the chance to cross an international border on foot, which I don’t think I’ve done before.
What to do in Tijuana? I’ve no idea. I’m barely here for 24 hours so I think I’ll just wander around, see what the place is like and try not to look too much like a tourist. I’m spending the next few weeks in Mexico so it’ll be interesting to see the comparison between the tourist trap places like Tijuana and the more off the beaten track parts of the country.
Yay, it’s the return of the pre-written autoposts. A month with guaranteed almost regular posts hopefully reflecting something close to the reality of my holiday.
So today should see me heading from Los Angeles to San Diego. Hopefully I’ve not been broken (either physically or with stupendous amounts of booze) by Marc while he’s been showing me his pad. I might even have managed to get up a not pre-written post.
I’m only here for a couple of days and, to be honest, I’m probably going to do very little. When I’m on holiday I always feel like I should be out doing something but to be honest the two weeks leading up to this holiday have been beyond hectic and I’m going to need to recharge before the wedding next weekend and the tour afterwards.
So I’m going to do a little shopping, find some good booze and decent food and maybe go to the zoo if I fancy a busy day.
Edit: 10amWell I’m almost certainly not heading to San Diego today, I’ll probably head down early tomorrow.
So got to California OK, got to the place I’m staying at and I’ve had a look around. No major hitches apart from it briefly looking like I’d have to reclaim and recheck my bags at Heathrow as I was flying BA and then Virgin. After some to-and-fro they managed to check my bags all the way through, and I managed to get through immigration, get my bags, get through customs and get out of the airport in under an hour. Something of a record I’m told.
Of course it couldn’t continue to go so well and yesterday the back of my throat swelled up impressively making it difficult to talk or even move without triggering my own gag reflex. Which is as pleasant as it sounds. A combination of that, jet-lag, and the heat led me to sleep from almost half of the last twenty-four hours. So having lost a day I’m rejigging my schedule a bit, hopefully it’ll all make more sense as things move on although it may mean that I’ll have to skip spending any time in Tijuana.
My throats feeling a bit more normal today, so I’m off into LA to do the tourist thing.
Well, I’m off tomorrow. And it’s been a busy couple of weeks, I’m actually quite looking forward having a ‘travel’ day where I’ll not really have to do very much but sit around and read. I was getting pretty frazzled on the lead up to this trip but doing the final packing last night everything just kinda ‘fell into place’. It reminds me that I’m always a bit stressed before a holiday, however once I’m away I can pretty much deal with whatever crops up, because by that point I’ve no other choice.
And it looks like a few things might crop up, considering a fair bit of the area along the route I’m following for the first week is pretty much on fire and places I’m going through for the last two weeks are frequently hit by hurricanes. When you think about it it kinda puts my concerns about my bathroom into perspective, at least I don’t need to worry about my home being flattened, flooded or fried by forces of nature while I’m away.
Anyway, expect updates as and when I can get them up. I’m going out tonight and I’m leaving early tomorrow so I’m not even going to bother checking my e-mail before I leave, if I there’s something I haven’t done then it’s not getting done. It can wait a month.
… doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
Sigh.
Maybe I spoke too soon yesterday. Today I went home for lunch, partly because it’s easier to do shopping at lunchtime and partly because I’m paranoid about the bathroom.
Apparently I’ve good cause to be. Just as I was leaving to go back to work I heard the dreaded sound of dripping. Yup, my bathroom ceiling slowly getting damper. Again.
I couldn’t get anyone to answer the door upstairs until after work, and we looked under their bath and it was depressingly dry. Running a bath and emptying it showed no leaks, but there had clearly been a fair amount of water run down my wall.
Throughout my continuing bathroom fiasco I’ve been fairly upbeat, annoyingly finding the positive spin on everything, but it’s starting to wear on me now. For the first time I’ve had to consider what I’d do if I can’t get everything sorted by the time I’m due to go away. I’m not seriously considering changing my holiday plans but the idea of having to has moved from the not-a-chance box to the almost-certainly-not-going-to-happen box.
I’ve had to wonder what would I do if I wake up on the morning of my flights and there’s water cascading down my walls, how much would changing my flights cost, would that be covered by my insurance.
However, things are looking up. Upstairs dude found another potential source of the water that ties with everything (a leak in the bath that would only show up if water was left sitting in the bath) and I’ve had myself a nice steak and chips (the benefit of shopping at lunchtime is decent steak). My do-before-I-leave list is almost done, as is the bottle of wine I opened to go with the steak.
Back to the positive upbeat outlook then.
Six days until I’m on holiday.
I’ve been putting off packing for my holiday mostly because the pile of stuff to go clearly doesn’t fit in the bag I have.
Normally I’d don’t take much stuff but since I’m going to a wedding whilst I’m away I need to take a full kilt outfit. Of course I could just put it in a suit bag and take it separately but I’m joining a tour after the wedding and I’m really limited to one bag. Fortunately it does look like it’ll all fit, with some work and some tweaking.
And if not there’s always plan B: duct tape the suit bag to my ruck sack and claim that it’s all one bag …
Life is complicated by the fact I keep investigating anything that sounds like dripping water, of course it’s just the normal sounds my flat but I’m a bit paranoid. Every shadow on the ceiling looks like a new waterstain and I just can’t help thinking that the first thing I’m going to find when I come back is my new bathroom ceiling collapsed in bits in the bath.
So, to take my mind off all of this, I went to see Resident Evil: Extinction. What can I say? It’s not high quality cinema, but it knows exactly what it is and delivers on all counts. A Perfect Popcorn Movie as one of the imdb reviews says. And it’s got Milla Jovovich being all superpowered and kicking ass. What more could you want?
With the benefit of hindsight I can now see that camping in Ullapool in September wasn’t the most sensible idea in the world.
There were some good points. The bands were mostly good, the beer was reasonably priced, and the food was a good notch above the usual festival crap. The campsite is in a lovely spot, sandwiched between Ullapool itself and the sea and it has proper facilities. Ullapool is small enough that everything is in easy strolling distance, so you can always head to the shops or the pub.
There were some bad points. We arrived really late (because Ullapool is miles away) and started off the weekend well by having two of our bags nicked as we were trying to set up the tents. The staff seemed shocked (shocked!) by this so it looks like this year has brought a lot more wankers out of the woodwork to travel up here. The atmosphere on the campsite wasn’t what I expected, I’d been looking forward to something more relaxed and ned-free but it didn’t really happen. Although people were pitching in to help each other put up tents it did seem that over the weekend another group of people were doing their best to unpeg them again.
Apparently there were more thefts over the weekend and there were warning signs posted on the Saturday night. I wonder if the fact that Franz Ferdinand were headlining had any effect on the dynamics of the whole thing. Security seemed pretty poor overall, particular campsite security, it’s a shame that even such a small event should need serious security coverage but it seems to be the case.
I can’t really complain about the weather, it was the windiest campsite I’ve ever stayed at but I should have expected that. It did manage to utterly destroy my tent, but the old thing had had a good life and it was probably time for it to be taken out back and shot anyway.
Am I glad I went? Well, it was an experience and you have to try these things.
Would I do it again? Well certainly not the camping, but I think it might be worth going if you can get room in a hotel or a B&B or can rent a cottage nearby. The problem is by the time you know what the lineup will be all the rooms will already be nabbed.
No pictures as I opted not to take my camera, but if you’re on Facebook you’ll be able to find some tagged to my profile.
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