A holiday within a holiday
Hi everyone,
an update on my many (mis)adventures…
Since my last email, quite a bit has happened (like, a few people being added to this mailing list…), although if you have been following my website, you will know a little bit about what has been happening.
http://www.danielyeow.com/latintravel07.html
The biggest significant event to have happened since my last email was a trip to the coastal city of Puerto Vallarta. We took an overnight bus to this resort town and arrived at about 9am. Unfortunately it wasn´t too sunny when we arrived, but that didn´t stop us from testing the temperature of the water. It was quite warm. Later in the day I was thrown into the swimming pool (against my will) and it would´ve all been quite funny except for the fact that I had my digital camera in my pocket. (This is why there are very few photos of Puerto Vallarta on the website).
The weekend was quite relaxing and a good break from the chilly conditions of Guanajuato. The food was quite good and Sunday night´s meal would´ve been a highlight except for the Superbowl being on TV and the resulting obnoxious americans. On monday (it was a long weekend) we went on a boat and saw some whales, did some snorkelling and hung about on a beach. In case anyone is wondering, no, puerto vallarta has nothing on Australia in terms of the quality of the beaches and scuba diving. However, spending the time with our buddies from the language school was quite enjoyable as they are a really nice bunch. We took an overnight bus back to Guanajuato which arrived at 5am and got to have two hours of proper sleep before waking up in time to attend classes that same day… phew.
After our Puerto Vallarta long weekend, we had one last week of language school in Guanajuato. We were all required to give a short speech on our “graduation”. I freaked out a little at the prospect of having to give a speech in Español, so I wrote one out in advance (it is linked off my website, on mexico, page 3). We threw a little party on Saturday night and Nick learned some useful Dutch phrases (ask him about it). On our final weekend, we finally made a successful ascent of the nearby mountain “la Bufa” without getting chased by vicious guard dogs and I was involved in a very interesting and revealing (drinking) game of “never have I ever” with some of my scandinavian friends. What was revealed? Well… what happens in Guanajuato stays in Guanajuato…
We then journeyed back to Mexico city for a few days. On monday we visited the Museo de Anthropologica to find that it was closed on Mondays. So we did some errands like seeing a doctor (Nick needed some eye drops and I had a cold) and I went about getting my camera fixed. On Tuesday we met up with some family friends of Nick´s and climed a small pyramid which was fairly central in Mexico city. This afforded us a 360 degree view of the vast expanse that is Mexico city and it also confused us as there were many gum trees on the hill where the pyramid was located. Wednesday took us to Teotihuacán, the home of the 3rd largest pyramid in the world and Thursday finally saw us finding our way into the Museo de Anthropologica.
On Friday (two days ago), we travelled to Oaxaca where the cheese is nice and the original location of our language course until civil unrest forced us to change our plans. Interestingly, there is very little sign that there were ever riots here and the place seems very peaceful despite being on the second-highest alert level on the government website ( http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/Advice/Mexico , surely that´s worth some points). Tomorrow we will journey to the pyramid complex at nearby Monte Alban and, later tomorrow night, we will take a bus to the city of Palenque which is the home of a Mayan pyramid complex.
If, by the end of all that, we aren´t totally sick of Pyramids, we will continue to Chichen Itza, another pyramid complex, otherwise we will just continue onto Cancún then Cuba, Venezuela etc.
There has, however, been a major amendment to our plans. We will be diverting to the United States of America for about three weeks in order to visit various universities. We will be visiting the UC Santa Barbra, Caltech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Harvard, MIT and Princeton. We´ll probably camp out in New York for a day or two as well because I owe Nick dinner at a nice restaurant because I won a bet… (any suggestions for nice restaurants are welcome… I´m thinking somewhere like “Per Se” or “Jean Jeorges”)
I have also reorganised my travel blog and split the pages up so you don´t have to sit there for weeks waiting for it to load if you happen to have a slow connection. I have also inserted a dirty joke into one of the captions of one of the photos… email me if you can spot it.
I hope you all enjoy the pictures and leave a comment or two. I would also be delighted to get emails from any or all of you (because, let´s face it, I´m an egotistical attention-seeker).
well, I think I´ve rambled on for quite long enough.
cheers
Daniel
p.s. i now have a facebook which can be identified by this email address (argh! peer pressure), don´t expect me to post any photos to it though…
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