Welcome to paradise...

Its crazy to see that my last entry was on the 10th, it seems like a shortshort while ago.
Im on the beach! In fact in Zipolite- a very small pacific town, with the best chicken bbq youve ever had. Its just like how you would imagine beach paradide...palm trees, hammocks, thatched roofs and ofcourse insanely hot weather (Im not complaining i swear!). Yeah your sweating all the time, and cant sleep past about 9am because it gets too hot. 9am´s pretty early.
From Oaxaca, me and a friend (Jason, the crazy american i mentioned before..the guy who got chased by a jaguar) got a van to San Jose Del Pacifico for a night. Its this amazing little mountain town, surrounded by thick pine cloudforests. We stayed in a cabaña (hut thing) and had a double bed each and amazing views. Real cool place, where we went for a treck in the morning and found a drug rehab centre in the middle of nowhere. That was weird.

The next day went down to Puerto Escondido. This is possibly one of the best places i have travelled to; a short poem to describe it:
Puertopuerto is the best-o,
hot but cool and cheap as pesto,
perfect beach and tacos too,
where hippys thrive and pelicans coo,
dolphins here and turles there,
i want to stay, ok thats fair.

Hmm that was random i dont know why i just writ a poem...
But yeah puerto was the coolest place ever, met the best people in the world (including 4 people from Oaxaca by coincidence). Me and Jorge & Tessa (these dutch folk) went on a boat trip and saw dolphins and turtles (as the poem describes) and flying manta rays.
There was also the best coconut icecream ive ever had (and ive had alot), and great tacos and juice. They would cut down a coconut with their machete and then cut the top off and just stick a staw in. Also went to the coolest club. It was ina thatched little place and backed onto the beach, so you could go out onto the beach and party to crazy reggaeton.

Left Puerto after 5 days (i think..) and went down to Zipolite (where i am now) with Jorge, Tessa and Rob (irish guy). Rob was cool and for some reason was carrying with him boxing gloves, 2 surf boards and a saxophone. We all had a really amazing time in Zipolite...involving cocktails on the beach, lying around doing nothing, and being very hippy-ish (beers and saxophone on the beach etc).

After a few days, Jorge & Tessa (reallyreally great people who i got to know well, as i met them back in oaxaca) went off to San Cristobal de las Casas, so me and Rob went down to Barra de la Cruz. Its this extrememly small surfers village, just down the coast. Surfed. Slept in a hammock (apparently mexican mosquitos think Simon blood is pretty good..). Rob gave me a surfing lesson. It was super fun, and i was suprised that I actually managed to stand up and 'properly' surf! Wasnt much to do thoughç apart from this so i got a lift with this cool couple (the guys job is to map the bottom of oceans, and hes had loads of tv people filming and stuff. cool times) who had a massive land rover which they got from South Africa, and are driving up from Argentina to Alaska. Crazy. It was really fun.

Yeah so they took me to Mazunte (just up from Zipolite) and i stayed there for 4/5 nights (cant really remember..no one really uses the time or date here). I bumped into a german friend i met in oaxaca here as well, and so hung around with her and some cool other people. We went to the mangroves just north of Mazunte, and got a boat ride through them. Amazing. It sounds nerdy but i guess with the whole 'biology thing' i know how productive and important mangroves are, so to be in the middle of them was real cool. Crocodiles, weird birds, turtles, iguanas (there are iguanas everywhere here; one stole some bananas i had next to my bed the other night...pretty terrifying knowing that it was that close to me, considering that they are literally like small dinosaurs). The trees are amazing; roots coming out everywhere and so strong. We got out of the boat and had a climb around.
Also met some really cool americans in Mazunte who i went up the cliff with and watched the sunset a few times. Really aren't that many people there, let alone tourists so its quite hard to meet people, but it was fun none the less. Spent the days reading, sleeping on the beach, eating fruit. and i slept in a swinging bed ontop of the cliff.

And now im back in Zipolite again! So ive done a bit of a back and forth mission recently, just because i know i have to go back to Oaxaca to meet the parents and stefan on the 30th. Met a guy from Bristol yesterday whose staying here (with the proper accent and all..he didnt believe i was from bristol because of my accent), and also 2 cool danish girls who im hanging around with. We went to a great party yesterday. It was on the beach (of course) and there was a live reggae band (playing hits such as 'Night Nurse', which reminded me of home for a second because its what ralph sometimes plays) and fire dancing, and lots of hippys doing what hippys do.
Everywheres gearing up for Samana Santa (holy week) so its getting exciting.

So yeah its been an intensely relaxed, very hot (i think my skins pretty much black now), cant-remember-anything-ive-done-because-ive-done-nothing few weeks. I love it.

So back to Oaxaca and then maybe to San Cristobal after. Ill update sometime soon.

Love para todos
Simon

Oaxaca-licious..!

Oaxaca = cool

Yes I am here in Oaxaca. Its a reasonably sized city in mid/south Mexico. Its much more relaxed than places more North, and being here involves: napping in the Zocalo (central square), wondering through the brilliant mercados (markets), munching on dried grasshoppers (with lots of chilli and salt), drinking mezcal and 2for1 Coronas, and in my case, learning Spanish.

Becari spanish school is where Ive been going for this last week. Its been fun- 4hours a day, 2 of grammer, 2 of conversation. The thing I like is that the people also there are very varied; e.g. theres a german girl (whos at my hostel) there whos just older than me, but then theres also two 50 or so Americans, all of whom are sooo nice (...i never thought id be friends with a 50 year old (not that 50 is old Sue&Ralph..)), and it also makes it feel less like school. So yeah ive learnt some useful stuff which should help me until i get to another one in Guatemala.


Oaxaca is in a valley, and there are some coolcool things close in the mountains that you can do. On ...hmm ok I cant remember the day (everyone seems to lose track of what day and time it is here..probably because we´re all asleep in the Zocalo), ok sometime, I went up to Monte Alban (the Zapotec 500BC remains). Cool sights of the surrounding mountains and the pyramids were impressive. I met some really cool Californian girls there- one of which (heather) I went to a climbing centre with on monday, which was great fun but my arms are aching pretty bad still (jeez though these Oaxaqueña kids are worrying good at climbing)..!

I met some reallyreally cool English/Welsh and Japenese folk at the hostel, and on saturday (i think) we went to Hierve el Agua, which are these 'petrified waterfalls'. It was amazing. We had to get a 1.5hour bus (only $15, 75p) past field upon field of agave (tequila & mezcal plants) to a small town called Mitla, which had a good little market. We had the best pineapple juice possible in the world here (Ive tasted all of them, this is the best). Too good to put into words. Anyway then we had to get in the back of a crazy little pick-up truck up the mountains through the desert. There were insane winding mountain roads, nomadic famers and their cows,goats,donkeys and pretty sure we saw eagles as well. The place was amazing; there are pools which are full of volcanic water bubbling from the ground on the edge of the mountain (which we swam in), and because the water is so mineral rich, the precipitates built up down the side of the cliffs forming 'frozen waterfalls'. Of course cacti everywhere.




























Met many many cool people here (in fact tonight im cooking with 2 dutch folk and an american, well their cooking right now so I should proabaly go and help, and then going to 'la casa del Mezcal) and having a super time. Actually the American is insane. He has the best travel stories ever (like the time he got tied up by drug lords in the honduran rainforest, and chased by a Jaguar). The city (and hostel) is beautiful- brilliant colours and cool shops. Although it is obviously poor- Alistar (one of the english friends) knocked a Corona on floor in a restaurant and instantly kids run up and start trying to clean it up and then expect money. Its weird because you want to give and help them, but if you do literally 10 kids then run up and expect it as well. Oh well.
Tomorrow im going to head into the Sierra Norte (maybe with the American and some Germans)- the mountains north of Oaxaca city, covered with rain/cloudforests, loads of crazy animals (monkeys, jaguars..)& plants, and stay in a forest cabaña for a day or two (or five), then head down back through Oaxaca city to the Pacific coast (Puerto Escondidio etc) for some doing nothingness.

Its hot here but not too hot. I hear the weather in Europe is not too good...oh well.
Will update soon (although im pretty sure theres not internet in the cloudforests..)

Oh yeah, and heres a picture of a 'Oaxacan Pizza'...possibly the tastiest thing ive had in several years- its tortila, frijoles, chicken, avocado, Oaxacan cheese (like a cheese strings) and tomatoes.


Adios y Love to all
Simon