Mexico: 12th October - 11th November
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| After taking the trolley from San Diego city centre down to San Ysidro, I walked across the bridge and through the giant metal turnstiles that lead into Mexico. Ignoring the inevitable offers of taxi rides, and walking straight past the giant pharmacies selling cheap medications to day-tripping Americans, I got straight on the bus for Ensenada, where I stayed at the Hostal Sauzal for a couple of nights while I figured out my plans for Baja California. This photo is my first of a giant Mexican flag in Mexico. More will follow... |
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| My next stop was the desert village of Cataviña. I stayed at a beautiful ranch a couple of kilometres out of town. The desert was exactly as I had hoped to see it in Baja. Cactuses as far as the eye can see. The tall, spindly ones you can see are called ciprios and are found nowhere else except this area of Baja and a small area of Sonora state in mainland Mexico. |
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| Just a photo of me in the desert. |
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| When the sun went down, it got very dark, very quick. With no city lights to pollute the heavens, the stars were as good as I've ever seen. |
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| The desert made a big impression on me. You can tell from how many photos I am posting here. |
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| Here's another one. I have no idea what kind of cactus this is, but it is very pretty, isn't it? |
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| My next stop was the oasis town of San Ignacio. The desert throughout Baja California, but especially here, is full of vultures. These guys posed for me on this cactus, with a volcano in the background. Couldn't ask for more, really. |
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| This is the Mission church at San Ignacio. |
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| Final bus ride in Baja brought me to La Paz. I arrived at sunset and this was the view as I walked along the sea front to find a hotel. |
| Years ago I read about the giant mantas in the Sea of Cortez and ever since I'd wanted to visit. In the meantime I've seen my share of mantas elsewhere, but nothing like the six meter monsters that I'd read could be seen off of La Paz. So I got to La Paz and all the dive shops told me, well you could see mantas, but the GIANT mantas all disappeared one winter about three years ago. There were 52 catalogued and traced individuals, and they all headed south for winter in 2002 and not one came back in the spring of 2003. Nobody knows if they just decided to go and spend their summers somewhere else where there are fewer divers to bother them, or if the vast Asian factory trawlers that now crawl up and down the Pacific coast of Mexico are to blame. If it's the latter, it would be a tragedy beyond words. |
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| Anyway, be that as it may, I did six dives off of La Paz over two days. On the first day, at a site called La Reina, my dive buddy and I spent most of our first two dives being awed by the biggest school of bait fish I've ever seen. They were being harrassed and slowly eaten up by six or seven big jacks. Countless times this school of small fish completely enveloped us, so that it became dark as night, all I could see was fish everywhere, and the rustle of their fins and scales as they passed over me was like thunder. It was very, very impressive. |
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| Also at La Reina, there were a few sea lions hanging around, although they weren't really in the mood for playing. |
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| Next day, we went to a site called El Bajo, a sea mount rising from a depth of about 45m up to the surface. For unknown reasons it acts as a focal point for large schools of hammerhead sharks. We spent our two dives there swimming out into the blue in the hope of seeing some sharks. On the first dive, after about 20 minutes of finning gently along at 30m, we did indeed see 3 hammerheads. Now, it seems to me that if you drop into the Sea of Cortez with its billions upon billions of gallons of sea water and swim off in a random direction, should you have the good fortune to see a hammerhead shark it is sure as damn it not because you found them, but rather because they have found you, and have come to check you out. So what did our Japanese dive guide along with two or three of our American friends do on seeing these sharks? Swam at them as fast as their furious fin strokes would carry them, scaring them back to whatever depths they had come from, and we saw nothing more for the remainder of that dive nor the next one. |
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| This blurry shot was all I could manage in the five or six seconds that I saw the hammerheads. |
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| This jolly lady cooked me my hamburger dinner one night in La Paz. Half the price, bigger and much tastier than those from the Burger King on the sea front. |
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| After five nights in La Paz it was time to leave Baja California and cross over to "mainland" Mexico. I wanted to take the ferry to Mazatl¡¦, but Hurricane Paul had something to say about that and quite sensibly, seeing as the hurricane was scheduled to cross the ferry's route right about the time I would have been on it, the sailing was cancelled and so I had to make the shorter trip to Topolobampo and then take a night bus down from there to Mazatl¡¦. This is a view from the ferry just after leaving La Paz. You can see how wet and stormy the weather in this normally desert region is; that's the edge of Hurricane Paul moving in. |
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| From Mazatl¡¦ I wanted to make it all the way to Zacatecas in one day, but that wasn't possible so I had to break the journey for a night in Durango. No time for a romance (sorry, if you don't like Bob Dylan you'll have no idea what I'm talking about) but there was just time for a quick walk around the Zocalo (central plaza) before the sun went down. Here we can see some balloon sellers (very common and popular in Mexico) chatting on the Zocalo in front of the Cathedral. |
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| The next day I reached Zacatecas, home to the world's largest silver mine, the profits from which over the last four hundred years have built a city full of grand colonial architecture and splendid churches. The city sits in a narrow valley between two hills, and there is a cable car, called El Telefor¡¦o, connecting one hill to the other, passing over the town. This is the view from the cable car. In the centre of the picture you can see the Cathedral. |
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| On the hill by the Telefor¡¦o terminus is this statue of Pancho Villa, who was a major populist figure, general in the Mexican Army and leader in the 1910 revolution. Judging by this statue, the porker did well to mount his horse, let alone mount a revolution. |
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| This is a guy selling delicious fruit cocktail from his little stall in the city; papaya, melon, water melon, pineapple, and mango. He asked me if I wanted salt or chilli powder on it. He thought I was strange when I declined. |
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| I stayed in a wonderful hostel in Zacatecas; the owner brought everyone out to a fiesta on the friday night. A big crowd followed as a band marched through the narrow streets of the town, stopping at each little plaza for dancing and drinking. |
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| This man in a big sombrero is drinking home-brewed Mezcal. There was lots of home-brewed Mezcal going around, we were each given a little cup on a length of ribbon to hang round our necks. At each plaza, free home-brewed Mezcal was handed out... lots of free home-brewed Mezcal... |
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| Here the nice man gives some more free home-brewed Mezcal to the friendly couple from Slovenia. |
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| And here we down the delicious free home-brewed Mezcal in one: Arriba, abajo, al centro, al dentro!! (that's me in the middle by the way) |
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| After four days in Zacatecas it was high time to move on, even though I really didn't want to on account of the wonderful hostel and the great people I had met there. But gradually, as always happens, the friends I'd made were moving on, new people were coming to take their place, and it just didn't seem as much fun any more. Just before heading to the bus station to catch the night bus to Mexico City, I took this shot of the Cathedral from the roof top terrace of the Hostal Villa Colonial in Zacatecas, one of the best hostels anywhere in the world. |
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| Another reason why it was hard to leave Zacatecas was that my next destination was Mexico City. Although I'd been there before, its dangerous reputation still caused me a little trepidation. I arrived before sunrise so I hung around in the bus station for an hour until it was fully light outside, then headed down to the Metro. I reached the Hostel Moneda, right near the Zocalo, easily enough and without any nasty people robbing me of anything. Right away I noticed that there weren't nearly as many VW Beatle taxis as there had been six years ago. Still plenty, just not as many. Notice another giant Mexican flag. (No Jim, it's not small and close, it's large and far away). Notice as well that the Cathedral seems to be vertical but the flag pole seems to lean to the right. Well, the flag pole is perfectly vertical; the Cathedral leans dramatically to the left, a result of subsidence caused by Mexico City's location on a drained lake bed. |
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| Straight after checking in at the hostel and enjoying the free breakfast, I was off on the free walking tour. We visited the Palacio Nacional, the Cathedral, and various other spots in the city centre. At this stall, this lady from Oaxaca gave us free samples of her fried grasshoppers to try. I've always declined to try these before (they are also very popular in SE Asia) but this time I thought, what the hell, give it a try. So I took a mouthful of about 5 or 6 of the crispy little things. She'd doused them in lime juice and to be honest that was all I could taste. They were chewier than I expected but didn't stick in the teeth quite as much as I thought they would. |
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| The next day I decided to try to see a different side of Mexico City than the dirty, scary downtown I was used to. So I took the Metro out to Coyoacán, a suburb about 10km south of the centre. Coyoacán was the place where Hernan Cortéz camped before invading the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, over the top of which modern day Mexico City was built. It really was (almost) literally a breath of fresh air compared to the city centre; a quiet, friendly neighbourhood full of pretty little parks and pleasant restaurants. It had almost a village feel to it, something I didn't expect to find so close to the centre of one of the world's largest cities. This shot is of the church of San Juan Bautista on Plaza Hidalgo in the centre of Coyoacán. |
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| By now it was the first of november and the Dia De Muertos, or Day of the Dead, celebrations were gearing up all over Mexico. The Day of the Dead has its origins in the beliefs of the indigenous peoples of Mexico (Purepecha, Nahua, Totonac and Otomí) who believed that the souls of the dead return each year to visit their living relatives - to eat, drink and be merry, just as they did when they were living. Offerings are made to the souls of the deceased in the form of food and drink, calaveras (skulls) made from candy (yuck, horrible American word but can't think of a more appropriate English one), and intricate pictures made from flower petals and/or coloured grains like rice and corn. |
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| Most impressive are the skeletons that appear everywhere, often dressed in elaborate costumes, like this one. The Dia De Muertos is not a solemn or mournful occasion, but rather a celebration of the lives of deceased relatives. |
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| These guys were my favourite skeletons. |
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| Tourist police on duty in the Alameda Park in downtown Mexico City. |
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| On my second (and last) evening I went up the Torre Latinoamerica, for an aerial view of Mexico City. From the viewing platform on the 44th floor it is possible to see the entire city, spreading out to the feet of, and in the north extending up the slopes of, the mountains and volcanoes that ring the capital. This shot of the sunset though is looking west (of course, it's a sunset!) over the hotels and construction sites of the Zona Rosa. |
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| Next day I took the bus two hours east to the town of Cholula, home to (arguably) the biggest pyramid ever constructed by mankind. This is a sunset view of the active volcano Popocatepetl, or Popo, that towers above the town. |
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| The pyramid at Cholula is so overgrown that it is kind of hard to accept that it isn't just a hill. Only when you go inside, and see the labyrinth of tunnels, do you realise that it is all man-made. On top of the pyramid there now sits a church, but at the base it is possible to see excavations of the Aztec structures that once sat at the foot of the pyramid. |
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| From Cholula I took a night bus to Campeche, an old Spanish fortress town once encircled by defensive walls to keep out the pirates who attacked from time to time. Only a few sections of the wall remain. |
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| This is the cathedral in Campeche. |
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| After Campeche it was a (relatively) short hop up to the Yucatan peninsula for a quick visit to Chichén Itzá. I went there before on my last visit to Mexico six years ago, but wanted to go back and get some better photos. It was exactly as I remembered it, except nowadays you're not allowed to climb El Castillo, the iconic pyramid at the center of this Mayan city. |
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| Lots of big iguanas hang around the ruins at Chichén Itzá. |
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| Next stop was the island of Cozumel, another place I'd visited last time. Then I only did two dives on a day trip over from Playa Del Carmen and remember being a little disappointed by the diving; this time I wanted to spend a few days on the island and hopefully find whatever it is that makes the dive community rave about Cozumel. |
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| Well, after two days and four dives I decided that whatever it was that Cozumel has, isn't what rings my bell. Great visibility and lots of turtles don't make world class diving for me; maybe I'm spoilt? |
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| Once you get away from the town, though, the scenery on Cozumel is magical. This is where we spent our surface interval between dives. |
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| Lots of these huge crabs running around in the bush above the beach. |
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| Cruises are the mainstay of the Cozumel economy, and each day I was there, four or five of these monsters disgorged their thousands of passengers (or "pod-people" as I heard them referred to!) into the town for the duty-free jewellery and one-dollar beers. Only way to escape them was to go diving... |
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| Cuban cigars are big business on Cozumel due to all the American cruise passengers who aren't allowed to buy them back home. |
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| Next stop: Tulum. Tulum is one of the smaller Maya sites and would not be very impressive were it not for its stunning location on a small cliff above the gorgeous blue of the Caribbean. |
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| El Castillo, Tulum. |
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| Boats pulled up on the beach at Tulum; in the background, on the cliff, you can see El Castillo. |
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| I spent one night in a beach cabanya near the ruins. US$20 for a grotty wooden cabin with a lumpy mattress and moth eaten sheets. Not as romantic as I had imagined it. Being alone didn't help things either. The only thing good about it was the view of the sea. Next day I headed into town for a night or two in the hostel there. |
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| On my last day in Mexico, I did two dives in Dos Ojos cenote. Cenotes are flooded limestone caves, with crystal clear water. There are many open areas where daylight floods producing magical lighting effects, and you can see the green of the jungle above the surface. |
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