Mexican Midget Wrestling!

Hello everybody and welcome to the latest installment of my blog. I am currently sitting in an internet cafe in the small town of Creel situated on the Copper Canyon railway in Northern Mexico.

To be honest i'm not a massive fan of the town thus far; it is a bit of a hole and everybody is just trying to sell you things at ridiculous prices. But at least I suppose that I have not come here for the town, but for the surrounding countryside, which I intend on exploring tomorrow. This should make a nice change of pace from the last week which I have spent predominantly in Mexico City with a brief stop of in Chihuahua in Northern Mexico in order to catch the train. Before that I also spent a day exploring the spectacular ruins at Palenque.

Let's start at the beginning. Following my departure from Belize, my first stop off was at the Maya archeological site of Palenque. This was undoubtedly a beautful architectural site and was far easier to explore than Tikal, primarily because i visited on a sunny day as opposed to attempting to look around in a minor hurracaine. The site itself is vast and it's positions in a rainforest full of waterfalls and streams makes it a pleasure to look around.

Following my time in Palenque I decided that instead of spending time on the beach as I had previously planned, I instead decided to head straight for Mexico City. This was largely down to the fact that I have spent a rather large amount of time on the beach recently, and also because I have looked at the prices of Mexican beach resorts at present and it wasn't particularly financially logical. I am however very happy I made this decision as it enabled me to spend more time in Mexico City, which is undoubtedly one of my favourite cities of the trip so far. Aside from the great night life which I experienced in full, I also had a chance to look around the Frida Museum, see Trotsky's final home, visit the Inca ruins at at Teotihuacan (including getting to climb the world's 3rd largest pyramid) and go and see a Mexican wrestling (Lucha Libre) event.
THe wrestling was undoubtedly one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life, particulalry when a midget (above) wrestled a six foot man. You know you shouldn't be laughing, but you cannot really help it.

Anyway i am being asked to leave this internet cafe, so I better go.

I will speak to you all soon

Phil

Hurracine Season!

Hi everybody and welcome back to yet another delayed blog entry. The reason for this is due to the fact that I have spent the last eight days on an island with linited internet connection and certainly is not because I was too busy relaxing on the beach drinking rum. Honestly.

Anyway, last time I posted I was sitting in El Salvador preparing to head into Guatemala for a few days. As seems to be a common theme with my travels in Central America I seem to head into problems whether they are man-made (like the strike in Nicaragua) or natural (the Hurracine that has just hit Central America) with little warning. Fortunately it was only a minor Hurracine where I was and all I experinced was a week of heavy wind and rain with some minor flooding ion Guatemala. This did mean that Guatemala could have been a bit of a wash-out, however I managed to prevent this from happening by enduring the rain for four days at least and taking the time to climb and active volcano and see molten lava, walk around one of Latin America's most beautiful colonial towns in Antigua and also explore on the Mayan world's most spectacular ruins at Tikal. I did get a little damp doing this, but all these activities and particularly Tikal were well worth getting wet for.

Following four days of getting drenched and information that the Hurracine was moving from Belize towards Guatemala, I decided to head in the opposite direction and head out to Belize and particularly Caye Caulker an island just off the coast. Arriving on the island, it little resembled the Caribbean backpacking paradise I had seen in photos with it's overcast skies and some flooding, but given a day that would all change. The next day the sun was out, the island dried off and I was once again in a Caribbean paradise (it seems to have been happening a lot lately). However I had actually not come to Caye Caulker to laze around on the beach, I had only come in fact to dive one of the world's most famous scuba diving sites 'The Blue Hole'. The site itself is world famous, it is one of the world's deepest commercial dive at 40m and is in a particularly spectacular environment. The hole was formed during the last ice age when it was in fact a cave above sea-level. However as sea rose the caves roof collapsed leaving it in it as a circular pool descending 120m with caverns and rock pillars full of a variety of friendly sharks. This hole is surrounded by a shallow circular coral reef.

I actually think the trip worked out perfectly in hindsight, as I was unable to do the dive on the day I intended as the water was still too choppy following the hurracine. Instead I opted to do a snorkelling trip that day and dive the next. This was certainly a good thing as it takes some getting used to swimming with sharks and its better getting used to this at the suface than 40m underwater. It is slightly unusual jumping into the water when you can see over 20 nurse sharks in the water that are up to 8 feet long, but after a few moments in the water with them you realise they are not going to hurt you and seem to in fact rather enjoy the human attention. This meant the next day when I was surounded by reef sharks that came out of the blue void beneath my feet and when I met a shark when entering a cave at 40m I was a little more prepared.

Following the dive I had paid everybody I needed to pay and was ready to leave in the morning, but unfortunately a couple of bottles of rum later with a group of people that all instantly seemd to click resulted in us all deciding to stay on the island for a bit longer. This time has been spent far more leisurely and I have done little more than sit on a beach laze around and drink cheap but suprisingly good Caribbean rum for a while.

I have just arrived in Mexico today and will update you all on my progress here soon, But for now I am off to see some more ruins.

Phil