cos it’s a huge waste of time. But it was that or Pacman and we got our taxes done today and had the dog innoculated against every plague going around so I don’t feel too bad… Anyroad, it led me to this page of winning entries for a “Make up a Jack Handey Deep Thought” compo and for that I thank it… almost as good as the old-as-the-hills originals. My faves?
Give me the strength to change the things I can, the grace to accept the things I cannot, and a great big bag of money.
Once, I wept for I had no shoes. Then I came upon a man who had no feet. So I took his shoes. I mean, it’s not like he really needed them, right?
Last night Daniel, Monica, Carlos, Jonathon and I went to the Lucha Libre. The usual plan is to meet at the Rincon de la Doa for pre-lucha banter, but it’s being remodelled so we ended up at the nearly empty Nuevo Leon. We drilled Monica on her Spanish verb tenses and got some tequila in to make the upcoming theatrics easier to believe. And once again the luchadores did not disappoint. The stand outs were Hijo del Rayo de Jalisco and some bloke in red gloves with vaguely indigenous features whom the audience chanted “Pocahontas” at… Another solid evening’s entertainment.
And since you’re doubtless wondering what I had for tea yesterday, Tortilla Espaola, and then Tacos de Carne Asada from Tacos Reforma (y Americas). Thanks for asking 🙂
I drove out to San Martin de los Flores expecting to see scenes like this, along with all the fun of the Passion… self-flagellation, stigmata, special Easter empanadas etc., but couldn’t see anything. It’s in a pretty dodgy part of the city and the car’s been playing up of late so I considered parking it facing down the hill so I could push start it if need be but no… just turned around and drove home. I made the right decision though cos it’s not starting again. Might just have to keep the car running tomorrow when we go to the airport to pick up Sally and Minnie.
I got a few more cars looking like their surroundings pix, but I like this one best of a shop looking like tree tree looking like shopfront on my wander round today. I added a picture of our beautiful kerb a couple of posts down too. Might have to get a few purple swirls on that too. There’s hardly any traffic around and a fair few people wearing their sunday best on a Friday and it was nice to wander round Santa Tere with hardly anyone around.
Let’s start by saying there are two roads to Barra de Navidad from Guadalajara. One is “la libre”, 80, which turns off from the toll road to Colima 10 minutes after the Plaza Outlet Mall thing. This is the one we took as the signs said “Barra de Navidad this way” and looked good to me, despite Sita shouting “don’t turn off here!”. Depending on the traffic and the competence of the driver this windy, twisty, convoluted, corkscrew route will take around 6 hours and you’ll see more topes than you should ever have to see in one day (see video in César’s blog). That said, it’s a stunning drive through the mountains. We set off late and arrived after dark, Sita and Monica checked out 5 hotels or so before settling on El Marquez de Santana which was perfect. Clean rooms, close to the beach, cable, secure parking, A/C, friendly staff and a pool for 60 bucks a night… bargain.
We wandered into town and had an outstanding meal at a restaurant whose name I forget, which overlooked the lake. Then continued on to Rocktavios where there was live music and a few tequilas on the beach. Next day was quiet, breakfast on the beach where the (short/long sighted/ blind?) waitress said I looked like Ricardo Arjona of “Pinguinos en la Cama” notoriety. Then shopping for trinkets. Then beers on the beach, pozole, nap, beers, DanceDanceRevolution, meal, wander, bed. Lovely day.
Yesterday we set off in search of Tenacatita to check out the mangrove swamps. It was a lot further along the coast than the bloke at the hotel said, so we had breakfast in Cuastecomate and watched pelicans doing their thing in a gorgeous natural harbour surrounding. We eventaully got to Tenacatita and had more food and then hired ourselves a lancha and lanchista (300 pesos, 16 quid an hour) who showed us round the manglares at high tide. A lovely refreshing ride, with none of the fauna we expected (no crocodiles nor snakes) but a fair few crabs and different coloured garzas (storks, i think)… High tide meant dodging the low hanging mangrove roots but was fun all the way…
After all that, back to Gwod. But not on the 80, we went to Colima on windyish roads, then pretty much 5 star roads from there on taking about 4 hrs all in all.
I finally got round to checking out my web stats today. They’re an odd bunch them anonymous googlers… Here’re my top 5 keywords that arrived at these here pages:
1: “this is how i got those pesky cats to stop crapping in my yard” 2: “it has been brought to management’s attention that some” 3: “mexican swearwords” 4: “cockeral sounds” 5: “pendejadas”
Hope they all found what they were looking for… Anyroad, as promised here’s the full set of photos from yesterday. and below a nifty little video autoproduced by the latest version of Picassa and hosted by our friends at YouTube. It’s Javier the barman mixing a Batanga for Sita in the Capilla cantina in Tequila. She’d worked hard for it…
I get RSS notifications whenever anyone uploads a photo tagged with guadalajara, or taunton and various other things. I’m glad I didn’t miss this one, of the 629 which passes not far from here… Ivan’s photoblog, by the way, is at lensations.com and has some great (old school non digital) b&w shots. As I point out in the Flickr, comments, at least 629 reads the same upside down… Todo se puede en Mexico.
