rating kittens and competitively rearranging letters. Also put a few pix up from travels round San Jose’s Cinco de Mayo celebration and orchids on flickr. Rum old day at work. Much of a mixedness, swings and psychopaths and all that. Spend 75 minutes being worked on by dentists. Managed to fit a game of scrabble in on the palm, take some photos of my x-rays and my increasingly expensive mouth. They’ll be posted soon enough… If that doesn’t tempt you back i don’t what will. Cheersy.
______ _ _____.__. ____
/ ___\ \/ \/ / /_/ > / \___ | | \
\___ / \/\_/ / ____|___| /
/_____/ \/ \/
.__ .__ .__ __ .___
__ __ ____ | | |__| _____ |__|/ |_ ____ __| _/
| | \/ \| | | |/ \| \ __\/ __ \ / __ |
| | / | \ |_| | Y Y \ || | \ ___// /_/ |
|____/|___| /____/__|__|_| /__||__| \___ >____ |
\/ \/ \/ \/
David Bowie and Bing Crosby are singing in the background and we’re heading to Oakland tomorrow…
Season’s Greetings y’all
Hopefully this is a static link… Nicky Wire out of the Manics gets awarded his degree from Swansea at last. He was too busy supporting the Levellers the first time around. I remember my graduation from Swansea well. Sita blew the electricity to the house we were sharing with the hair drier. Mum and Dad came up from Zummerzet. I had to wear a tie and a plus-size mortarboad and gown thing. Me hair was still shortish. Half the ceremony was in Welsh. A harpist harped. People clapped continuously for 50 minutes or so. And I couldn’t get out of there quickly enough. Then we all went to the Cricketer’s/Firkin pub for a quick meal right after. And I think I was in the middle of a TEFL course too and planning the trip to Sevilla. Was it six years ago? Hey ho, when I said remembered it “well” a few lines backs, that’s open to interpretation.
Went to town today and bought Rilo Kiley CD and the March issue of Q. I’m mp3ifying RK now to listen to while walking the beastie. Q’s definitely gone downhill of late, though; these days I read it and think I could do better. And I don’t have the highest opinion of my own writing skills. I don’t reckon it’s just cos i’m older and not in touch with what the kids are listening to. Q always used to be for old people anyway. Luckily us old people have got Word magazine which is marvellous, has some fine CDs on the cover and many decent articles. Seems like a lot of Select’s writers have ended up there now too. I might have to change my 5 star review of Q on Amazon.
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.
Monica’s got an alternative version of events over here. and there’s plenty of pix as usual at Flickr central.
Here’s a low res virtual tour of the Manglares de Tenacatita: