The problem with paradise

Zipolite is wonderful, unspoilt, hippy and tropical. Great seas, beautiful weather, cheap booze and lots of good food - and we have a room on the beach. We were only going to spend a day here but stayed a week. Its paradise


But all this has another side. We have to have a chemical arsenal against the local population of biting things. In the morning we have to cover ourselves with sun lotion and then mosquito repellent because of Dengue Fever, spread by day time mosquitoes. In evening we top up the mosquito repellent because there is malaria in the state and that is spread by night time mosquitoes. We have knock down spray to debug the bathroom before we can shower. Despite all this we are covered by bites from insects that don't understand Deet.


Our room is 3 floors up but we still have inch long beetles, half an inch ants and the occasional scorpion.

Lots of people drown here because of the rip tides and great big waves. Marilyn just lost her very, very expensive glasses. I dived down but a wave got me and ripped them out of my hand. Still I never did like them
Oh and there is a unofficial nudist beach

A day at the beach - Mexican style

Walk to the swimming beach on the nice new path around the headland. Looks a bit isolated so we only take bare necessities

Risk death climbing over the nice new, collasped, path

Meet hysterical girl who had just been mugged at knife point. The answer to her repeated, question 'why did this happen to me in Mexico' might be - because you are a small, white, blond girl who walked down an isolated path by herself, wearing an expensive gold necklace in a country full of poor people and a few nuts

Suddenly we are surrounded by police, they take the girl away but dont really seem very interested

However,

we get an armed guard (pump action shotguns, knives, trunchens, bullet proof vests) all the way to the beach



Beach is idylic



There is a little lady with a BBQ who cooks us a delicious fish lunch. Caught by her son who just walked into the bay with a net

It begins to get dark and we dont really want to walk down the nice new path without our armed guard

Ask a kid on the beach if we can get a lift back by boat. He says, enquiringly '60 pesos for two?'. Before I can haggle Marilyn says yes. He is so surpirsed that he actually says ¨'is this possible'. He whistles to his mates who get petrol from somewhere and swim with it in a 5 gal drum out to a boat

We get a lift back to civalisation in time for happy hour and 2 for 1 Margaritas

Heaven

Why belief in god is bad for us

Marilyn with friends in Oaxaca - no achohol had been consumed!

Moctezuma, the Aztec leader, believed that a fair skinned god was coming from the east who would stop human sacrifice. Unfortunately around the time he was predicted to arrive Cortes turned up with 550 soldiers. Instead of nipping down to the coast and slaughtering the lot of them Moctezuma sent 'the god' gifts of gold. These gifts just fuelled Spanish greed and ended up with a whole civilisation and its history being wiped out.

If Moctezuma hadn't believed in god the chances are that Mexico would now be speaking English and we would have been able to ask

¨does this bus from Oaxaca to Purto Escondido go over the mountain on that nice direct route or does it go to the top of the mountain, turn left down the mountain range, across a valley and up another mountain range, taking a route so windy that everyone except the driver feels sick and turning an easy 6 hour journey into 12 hours of purgatory?''

Still its nice now we are here

Trotsky and Wrestling

I knew Trotsky was assassinated by a business man with a ice pick but I didn't know it happened in Mexico City. He was living in a house that had been fortified after 20 Mexican, Stalin inspired, artists had broken in and sprayed the place with bullets. Visiting the house now is moving, especially when you learn that his whole extended family was wiped out by Stalin.

Luche Libre is as choreographed as WWF but with some amazing moves such as the dive from the centre of the ring, through the ropes onto the back of your opponent who is trying to run away. Our favorite wrestler was the `'only gay in Mexico' with pink, punk hair. To their horror he would give his opponent a passionate kiss every time he got them in a good hold. Favorite moment was the baddy who lost and had his hair shaved off in the middle of the ring.

Frida Kahlo and Diago Rivera's Blue house. Diago bought the one next door when Trotsky was living with them to give him greater security. That was before they fell out over their support for Stalin.

The Museo Nacional de Antropologia is deservedly amongst the world`s great museums. Our day there gave us an excellent understanding of the development of pre-historic and pre-hispanic Mexico. We also learned that the name of the maize fungus we like so much came from the Tarascan people and means 'sleeping shit' and that the indigenous people accepted Jesus because they needed new gods to cover the things the Spanish bought so Jesus is their god for horses, steel and money.

Mexico City is neither as dangerous or polluted as its reputation suggests, although we both have sore throats. Its a great and surprising place.
What happens if you break the planning laws


Getting rid of evil

Lost

Marilyn Mackley last seen on the metro in Mexico City




I jumped on the metro at the last moment and Marilyn nearly didn´t make it. Me and a couple of commuters had to pull the doors open because she was stuck. She made it but the shoe didn´d. At all the next stops the doors opened on the other side so we had to stay on to the terminal. Even then it took 4 of us to open the door enough to get the shoe out

Cervantino - another festival!

We stumbled on another festival, not difficlut in Mexico. Cervantino in Guanajuato is a 3 week international music jamboree that has everything from world class acts to street performers. It takes place in this beautiful colonial town squeezed into a valley. During the festival it is packed with music, film shows and theatre in every plaza and street performers in every road - especially loads of spectacularly unfunny Mexican clowns that attract massive audiences

Jonathan Miller is here with the London Concert Orchestra. The best things we have seen are Baaba Maal (Senagal meets rock) and a sublime version of Mahler´s 2nd (Resurrection) that made me cry

The town used to flood so they cut a tunnel in the rock to divert the river under the town. This is no longer used but the tunnel has been expanded into a subterranian road network complete with junctions, bus stops and car parks

There are lots of museums but our favorite is the mummy museum. If you die in interesting circumstances and no-one claims your body the local authority puts it into the museum. So some of the exibits are less than 30 years old

Back to school

There we were with our new school friends in a bar discussing America's inability to elect a sentient leader and the impact on the world of a President who thinks he has a direct line to god, when two large ex-marine types walked up to me and threatened, with a surprising degree of irony, `maybe we better start on Merrie ol` England` . They then walked off with some dignity underlining their point by giving the finger. The thing they seemed to have missed was that all the other people around our table where Americans who had been leading the discussion an are dismayed over what this administration has done

We are now real Mexican students and get student discount. Though homework and having to get up for 8.30 lessons is a bit of a shock for people who have got used to life without deadlines

We signed up for a weeks Spanish lessons in the Falcon Academy Quanajuato. It is so good we decided to stay a second week. There are only 3 or 4 in a class and they are really good fun. The school itself is very laid back with a great group of students of all ages from around the world

Learning a foreign language is all about confidence. Something we both lack. Marilyn`s suffered a further set back when she was in a bar (where else!) and asked for 'Dos copas de vino tinto, por forvour' and got `sorry I no speak englees` back from the waitress

We are staying with a family in large house on a hill. Its a lovely setting but every house has a dog, on the roof, that howls day and night all part of the Mexican right to make as much noise as possible.

We had seen local farmers selling maize covered in fungus. It looks horrible but the family cook prepared it for us, Maize Guittla Coche. It was delicious.

Marilyn´s men III

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The Beatles Singer