Bugger

Click the photo or here for the photos from today’s excursion to Iztépete. I’d never heard of the place until I flicked through Sarah’s Guide to Gwod book and it sounded interesting. It’s no Chichen Itza or Maccu Pichu but it’s pleasant enough. Hell, it ain’t even stone burrows on the Quantocks. It’s not far away, just off the corner of the huge streets Mariano Otero and el Periferico and though not really signposted, it’s easy to see. It probably looks better in the rainy season but is still worth a visit. It was discovered in 1954 and dates from around 650 AD, so not as old as the roman ruins mum and dad were wandering around in Cartagena…

Afterwards we went to Home Depot to pick up woodstain and stuff, which was like being back in Downey. talking of which, I think we’ve worked out when we’re going back for a week or so to help with the move and to renew visas. No Pink Panther this evening, I’m pleased to report. So it’s pizza and either Capote or American Visa…

This morning I played around with the fantastic mosaic program (website here) and knocked up a few mosaics, they’ll be on flickr soon enough, but are taking forever to upload. While we have a decent DSL connection for downloading, the upload limit seems to be around 5k per second. Not something they advertise, the cabrones at telmex…

See, it’s not all work, work, work here in Mexico. As some of you more alert readers have probably already surmised…

Tomorrow we’re meeting up with my Mum and Dad in Cancún airport, hiring a car and then heading off to Tulum and who knows where else. Providing I can find a power supply to recharge my camera occasionally, there’ll probably be a photo or two in the offing of white sands, blue sky and increasingly sun-burnt británicos. And one gorgeously tanned Chirlandesa…

Positively shaking with excitement right now, it’s going to be grand to see me folks and whisk them round some of the most beautiful places in the world. Read all about it next week.

In more mundane blog news, somewhere down there on the right there’s a new section: “I googled… “sun-burnt brits”… and all I got was this lousy blog”. Well that’s a widget to see what the latest search terms arriving at the blog are. It seems most people are looking for the defunct Parque Metropolitano de Guadalajara pages. But that’s another story.

Well, have a lovely week everyone. I’m thinking of doing a podcast about just that, asking random strangers in Spanish (and probably in cantinas) what they’re planning for the weekend every other week. Snapshot of a bar culture type thing. We’ll see. So many silly little projects, so little time. What are you doing this weekend? Immortalise it in the agaveweb blog comments… 😀

Had the best flight yet back to Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico yesterday night. Since I’d flown the week before I knew all the vaguaries of what to do to / bring / not bring at the airport. Whether to take me shoes off, take the laptop out of the bag, bring liquids etc. On the way out from MX I had a bottle of tequila in me hand luggage and though they confiscated my bottle of water, they let me take the agave juice on board with me because, hey, it’s just tequila… Flying over Northern Mexico we had to divert around some thunderstorms which I’d never seen at night from above. It was spectacular, several flashes per second lit up the clouds like so much electric candy floss. My iPaq wasn’t up to the task of filming it though due to the light conditions and being asked to film stuff after several hours of intense scrabble playing on it. Mexican immigration didn’t even ask me any questions, stamped stuff and let me go on to get me luggage. For the first time I got the “Red Light” at customs. They have a traffic light system where you press the button and it either turns red or green. Red means a hand search of your bags. After the most cursory of frisks before I knew it I was back at the house. Just the way things should be.

Had a bit of a nap and went to ‘rent’DVDs from Santa Tere. I got Almodovar’s new one, Volver (which has been conspicuous in its absence from Mexican cinemas), Thank You for Smoking (which I watched yesterday, 3.5 Lulus), The Butterfly Effect (recommended by El Cala) and, to get the bargain 4 for the price of 3, Reservoir Dogs (it’s been a while). Tacos from Tacos al Pastor on Av. Mexico just to get back in the groove and a quick visit to Starbucks because you don’t want to know what happened the coffee maker over the last 11 days…

I’m trying to find out what’s going on on next Sunday’s Shakira front. There are plenty of tickets left (due to the extortionate price) but I’m not sure who else is going any more. I’ll go on my own if it comes to that…

Remember way back in January the photos from Chapala with Ed, Monica, Daniel and Pat. Well I’ve been virtually wandering the planet on Google Earth again and zoomed in on Chapala. Here’s how it looked when you had to walk 1500 yds from the end of the pier to get to the water:

And if you like such things: chapala.kmz google map file