El Mirador: Day 3

Another morning in the jungle, again a slow paced walk and still the guide (sober for once) at the back of the line. The mud and water were there to welcome us with the ants and banana-spiders on the way.

Orchid

As explained by Raul, we quickly arrived to a “small” river that wasn’t that small anymore: from 20 to 50 m large and the deepest point going over 2m50/3m. The cross will be something… We find our way a bit down the river were some branches were stuck and allow us to get an hold on during the cross, and quite frankly, we passed easily even though the currant was strong. Then, the turn of our guide, who was still on his mule waiting the good moment to go through. Everybody is ready to help him out in this ‘not-so-good-idea’.

Well, everybody but me :)

As the mule walk straight to the currant, logs on its left, we tell Raul to get off it. 2 meters later, the mule only has 5 centimeters to breath, and we now shout at him: Get off the freaking mule!! 

Not so sure of himself anymore...

Here you go...

Head in the water, breathe taken away and hopes vanishing little by little, Raul is finally off and in a matter of second, the mule is swept away by the currant, under the logs. Everybody is now tense, searching for the animal down the river. No sign, for what we think of an eternity. No visible bubble, no swirl what so ever. 

Tension

The tension goes away as the desperation take place, but suddenly we can see an ear, soon a second one. The mule is trapped underwater by the leash! With the strength of the last effort, it manages to finally breathe with a terrified look, kicking in the water, trying to swim. Nobody dare to move, it’s still too dangerous to risk to be stunned in the river and we are now waiting for a miracle to happen. The animal won’t be able to keep up this rate longer and will, for sure, collapse of exhaustion. And it happens: the miracle. From nowhere, the mule managed to locked its head into a tree to not go further down the river.

The miracle

But it is in the middle of the river, still kicking. At once, somebody shout that we need to get the leash back and Damien is already swimming against the currant to carefully approach the animal. The risk is high because if the mule frees its head, he might receive a kick, but the good fortune is here to protect us. In my boiling head, the eventuality of seeing my cousin, unconscious, floating and taken away by the current is washed away quickly as Damien reach the closest tree of the mule. He is now out of danger. Everything is still to be done though. He grabbed the leash and throw it to Nick, Adam and I. The mule HAS to cross now, pulled by us, as much as we can. Head out of the water, the last meters are finally crossed and in 30 centimeters of water, it collapsed, exhausted. We finally saved it! The tension goes down as we all take our breath back. 

Saved!

But… Where is the guide? Our little crippled Raul was still hanging on a log, waiting for help and thankful for us to have saved 3000 Quetzales (more or less 300 euros, the equivalent of 5 treks like this for our guide).

Back from a very closed one

We took a lunch well deserved but we all had something in mind at the moment: we were late. And there is something you do NOT want to, it’s to walk in the jungle by night and there is 7 hours waiting for us now: no time to relax. Therefore, we packed our things, and started again. But after a bit, our guide is still not behind us… I had to run back and pulled the mule. Every minutes count now but we are soon back on track at a good pace.

The second river, easier to cross as we are now in control of the trek, is a small detail. We are all tired but pushing to the very end: El Mirador. The closer we get, the more impatient we are. Only one hour and a half away, the rain started. Lightly at first, it wets everything on its path. Speeding up in the end, we got to the camp under heavy rain.

Maybe that’s one of those moments of pure happiness; being in a relatively dry place, hot coffee and even a cigarette.

Totally worth it!

El Mirador: Day 2

The night was noisy, as every night during the rainy season, and even more noisy when an alarm clock goes off in the middle of it (like… 3 am…). No need to precise it’s our lovely guide who fucked up. So, we woke up like flowers (grumpy ones) as Raul went shopping (yes, you can shop at 6 am in this part of the world). He came back full of courage in bottle mixed with a soft: the trek is going to be fun for sure now.

I wish I was kidding

Expecting the worst of Raul, we started the trek on a slow pace in the muddy and humid jungle. The guide was behind (?!?), on his mule, answering ‘STRAIGHT’ to any question.

“Is it right or left?”

“Straight!”

“Up or down?”

“Straight!”

"How do you prefer men?"
"Straight!"

Straight!

Nick forgot quickly the concept of dryness after a short hour, followed by the two other British. Damien and I, happy with our super waterproof shoes, learned quickly how ironic those gears are as they stayed full of water as soon as the path is too flooded. For a normal hike, they are perfect, to ‘swim’: not so much. Meanwhile, Raul was laying on his donkey, having a hard time to articulate his thoughts as much as his gibberish. Two times at least, he felt down from drunkenness, miraculously without hurting himself.

Tarentula

Our new best friend: the sticky web of the Banana-Spider

Supposedly a pawnprint of a tyrannosaur

After a good 10 hours of slow pace hiking, we finally arrived in Tintal, our first stop and unexcavated temple of the old Maya’s empire.

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El Mirador: Day 1

After Mexico and Belize (where you will have the privilege to see some pictures here and here), we arrived in Guatemala on a cloudy Sunday. Totally broke BEFORE the border, it was already an adventure to get to Flores, little island on a lac. And as soon as we were there, we got hooked up by a tourist agent for a trek in the Jungle to go to the mythic El Mirador for the following day. We agreed totally unprepared and lacking both money and food at the moment.

Meeting at 5 am, we woke up 30 min late and the only memory I got is myself, on the street, bare foot and only wearing a short, calling the goddess of luck to not loose the 1350 Quetzalles we gave the day before. Well to be honest, I was also wearing my lucky charm as the bus appears. Our guide, Raoul, an old and crippled Guatemalan, pick up another three dudes (Bristish) to complete the group he is supposed to lead 5 days in the jungle: Adam, Nick and Piers.

Raul 'The Burden' Mayen

Adam 'I dunno' Wickes

Piers 'Captain' Davies

We quit, little by little, any civilized world. The houses are as rare as the teeth in the mouth of our guide. The road gets dirtier and more and more flooded. So much flooded indeed that we get stuck at the exact middle of our road to our first stop: Carmelita. The bus is stuck, and we need everybody to release it from the mud/water. 

The sweat

The little sweat didn't do much for our moral but the 4 hours of waiting for some miracle to happen got on the nerves of some. Bargaining with almost every vehicles passing by (which were few as we were in ‘nobody gives a shit’ land) and calling the tourist office did not help so much (it work just as much as complaining). 

The wait

Very long wait

Finally, a pick-up from Carmelita helped us out and we finally got to this remote village where the beer is hot and where you can find a stick signaling THE spot to get a mobile signal.

Carmelita

It was too late to keep on with the plan, so we had to sleep there. Raoul got on his mind to get wasted (just that) and disappeared for 3 hours. It allowed us to know a bit the locals who were very talkative about our guide… our alcoholic guide…

Little boy with a top

As Nick said on this first day: “There is gonna be quite a few firsts”.

Chiapas: San Cristobal de las casas

Let's try not have 1 month of delay between the blog and the real life!

So, we were in Puerto Escondido of the state of Oaxaca and we took the night bus to San Cristobal de las casas. We tasted a bit of the very stereotype of the French tourist: being a total c*nt. We've got to work double rate to compensate those guys!

So we arrived the morning to this small city and the contrast was stunning: most people wear traditional clothes. Just like time got stopped here.

Superb City

It's amazing how little these people seems impacted by the mass of tourist that goes there everyday. Anyhow, visiting this city was very nice, Mexicans were very helpful and nice to us. We also had the chance to be hosted by Jesus for one night and played a Basketball game where we showed them how we do things in France :)

To add a bit to this crazy day (yes, we arrived early, had time to visit and to beat the crap out of three Mexicans in one day!), we had a karaoke night with Swedish girls.

We are living in a very weird world, I tell you!

Puerto Escondido

After the calm of Oaxaca City, we headed to the beach of the states to taste a bit of the famous party over there. For once (in a long time), we settled in a back-packer “near” to the beach and we felt relieved not being hang on the decision of anybody to go now and then. This freedom didn’t last long though as, for our first night in Puerto Escondido, we decided to spend our money in a fancy restaurant. You know, after eating constantly in the street for some time, you start being confident about your body and you let your guard down. Well, this fancy restaurant revealed to be tough on us: we were stuck in the bed for 24 hours the day after. We would still enjoy our evening (thanks to Carla, Lyda and Tequilla!). Frankly, at first, we thought of a very bad hangover but then, as the situation didn’t evolve, we had to face the reality: we got food poisoning.

Then, the days were better and as all touristic cities near to the beach, we didn’t really get to Mexicans. We had some british, Australians, Danish and so on. Tourists were everywhere but we had the chance to spend on day in a remote aera where we’ve seen one of the best sunsets on the beach.

Damien, Lyda, Carla and François

I’m not gonna talk about our failed attempt to get on a boat to fish and watch some animals in the sea because it was “kinda dark out there, you know?” BUT I will certainly talk about the three girls who made our stay a bit special. Firstly, Carla (the Spanish marvelous wonder that make disappear beers faster that the time to say it) and Lyda (The Cypriote whose point of view on things in general make you wonder about your own). We had such a blast with them and I can’t wait to see them again. Finally, the last girl, from the staff of the hostel, always lying in her couch poking people on Facebook (you can picture her body here), shouting to pass messages at the other side of the complex, and, at times, really awful with the clients (us!).

With all the nice people we've met troughout this travel, it's sometime hard to realize can be rude but as the manager of the hostel ask us to leave a review on his backpacker, well, we did... Jajaja

Next stop, the marvelous city of San Cristobal de Las Casas

François

Let's get together and ROCK the world !!!!

That's it, I am starting this world tour with my cousin ! Youhou ! We have been talking about it for so long. It is finally happening !!
But, hey !!
Am I ready to leave my life, my job, my friends?
Am I ready to start moving from one place to another every now and then?
Am I ready to have NO routine at all.?
Am I ready to start a new life, to make new friend, to find new goals in life ?!
That's so big, I am kind of overwhelmed by the size of the challenge.

The good thing is that I am not alone, I am with my cousin.
Together we are going to ROCK the world.
To meet people from different cultures.
To make new friends.
To discover new lifestyles.
To discover ourselves... may be... hopefully…

Anyway, let’s talk about this trip. After meeting up in DF (Districto Federales - Mexico City) and enjoying a couple of days in the big city. We moved on to the state of Oaxaca. This state is one of the most rural state in the country with Chiapas (a province located between Oaxaca and Guatemala). It is twice as big as Switzerland, and it is also covered by mountains, but it doesn't have the Swiss Road network. It means that it is a challenge to cross this state.

After 7 hours of bus from DF we finally reached our destination, the main city of the Oaxaca State, Oaxaca. Easy right ! Our local host was waiting for us with his pink shirt at the main bus station. It made it easy for us to spot him…
What a nice attention of him to come pick us up at the station. That's one of the many nice thing Mexican people do for us (apart from being way TOO generous and thoughtful with us).

Our host name is David Cruz. His family welcomed us for a couple of days in the old city of Oaxaca.
This poor family resumes part of Mexico history in itself. Señor Cruz (David’s father) moved several times to the US as an illegal immigrant to make money for his family. He did it for the last time from 2005 to 2007 (2 years and 3 months in total to be accurate). For Mexican people, immigrating to the US is a good way to make money and to improve their family’s lifestyle. The southern states of Mexico are extremely poor, there are few job opportunities and even less opportunities for poor families to climb the social ladder.

Cruz Family

So, for Señor Cruz, moving to the US seemed to be the solution. It meant making money, quickly; making sure that his family back home would have a decent life; and saving enough for his children’s tuition fees. But it quickly turned out that for him money was not enough. He was missing his family. Desperately missing it…
At this point he started drinking more than he should have. And he quickly became an alcoholic. It took him several months to get out of this hell and to come back close to his family.
He now lives a happy life with his 3 children and his wife. He doesn’t drink anymore and spend a lot of time reading the bible. He came back to his religious roots and is convinced that they helped him to get out of Alcoholism.
This story is the proof that money is not everything in life… A good lesson right!

Mexico City District Federal

Hoooo dear Guadalajara! I had to leave you and some part of me will stay there forever I think. But I had to move on, and despite the sadness of leaving those people that made my stay in this wonderful city so unforgettable, I was also happy to move on and to finally start our travel, our adventure!

Here was the capital, with his 21+ Millions people, his dirty air and crazy nights. I walked (A LOT) almost every day but I won’t make a touristic guide here (you can find that online easily, I trust you). But some words on my impressions… People are incredibly slow. It looks like they walk with some kind of disease and don’t mind so much having someone walking behind them (which is kind of funny sometime if you can understand what they are talking about). The second thing I can say apart praising Templo Mayo and La casa azul, is, as always, people will try to get as much money as they can from you. For instance, they won’t mind letting open a museum at the same price with most of the painting not available (did I say most of them? Well, ALL of them bar one…).

Then I had some time with my cousin who just arrived before going straight to Oaxaca (The city as well as the name of the district, which is simply a dazzling choice).
Before letting you go, you can still get some of my pictures of the city/museum on the flick’r account, but right now, some bizarre things I’ve spotted in the capital:


The first one really made my day: a flying Jesus! He somehow managed to exchange his place with some priest. Can you do that David Coperfield!

Flying Jesus!

 Then, maybe my lack of religious knowledge is not helping here, but what the **** is on the head of Jesus? Really, it's disturbing...

Jesus super star

 Finally, the cleverest doc' in town: As you can see this doctor raised the pourcentage of people coming back because of a torticolis by 80%!!!
I tell you, TV is bad.

Clever Doc'

That's all for Mexico City. I just upload many pictures on the Flick'r account. i'm now with my cousin and the travel can finally start: next stop Oaxaca!

François

Mexican sense of humor?

As you walk in Guadalajara, you might get by some weird signs. I once was in a mall to see this sign. It didn't seem to bother anyone but it make me laugh. Now I'm wondering if the Hungarian people are proud of their pizza and pasta!

Yammy Hungarian pizza!

Another sign made me laugh, imagining I would say to the people inside: "Can I come?".

What kind of store can it be?

You can also check that for one more dirty joke.

Some days in Puerto Vallarta

Thanks to Yvonne, I had a free ride to Puerto Vallarta for 3 days. The car was full with her mother, cousin and nephew, so you can imagine I didn't had the time to be bored.
The closer we were from the coast, the hotter it was and, after going through some little mountains, we could finally see the ocean. Personally, it was the first time I saw the Pacific ocean, and frankly it didn't move me that much (hoooooo): BUT other did move me during this trip (yeeeaaah).


As few of you know it, Mexico is hosting the 2011 edition of "La Panamerique" (haaaaaa, hum, what's that?). Well that's the Olympic games of America, and you can pretty much see how a big deal it is in Mexico as ALL the city are under construction. Well, maybe not all, but most of the ones I've visited. Puerto Vallarta is no exception and if you can see a nice beach on the pic below, it was heavily photoshopped.

no, just kidding, I just turned right and pushed 2 or 3 workers out of the way.

The day I arrived, the temperature was well over 30°C, but the killing part was the humidity: more than 65%. With this oven-like condition, you can try to access to one of the many (like really a lot) of Oxxo. It's a chain of supermarkets where it's always air conditioned. Therefore you can go in there, look at ALL the product a very long time (the time needed to get a bit dry), then buy a bottle of water with a face saying "hooo, I could have buy so many stuff, but you don´t have the brands I want... Too bad".
If you don't, you might look like that:

The hair below looks like they have been on the pool 2 min ago, but it's super dry on top!

A quick tour of the city taught me how annoying could be touristic cities; do I really look like Canadian? American? Well, I guess it doesn't matter much for them as you speak English and you like you have tons of money.


Apart from that, it's a very nice do surf and eat sea food rolled up in a taco or on a tostada. Pay attention to the tostada though, it's like a huge chips. and like them, they break easily and never in the shape you want them to do. It's kind of complicated to keep your cool eating those as you can be sure, at  one point, your laps will receive food. From you or your neighbour.

Some sun and some rocks

Filthy Tostadas (but so delicious)

Finally, some quick word on my return: I finally got an haircut!

Luis: "ho ho" me: "What? What? What did you do? What did you dooooo??"

Also, not being able to edit my pics is somehow helping me to make better pictures. Well, not for the moment, but I can see where I screwed up, and I'm NOW thinking I should do something about it... We will see how it goes...

La Lucha Libre

(Please, be aware that some part of this post could hurt your sensitivity -Outch, my sensitivity!)
I finally went to the very famous Lucha Libre. Most of the Mexicans I know here never went to one and I was kind of surprise of that. But then I remember I never went to see a football match of my city (Angers) neither (gasp).
Thanks to Couchsurfing (again), an event was organized and from a bars called "Red Pub", we were supposed to be magically transport over there. There is many bars that looks English around here but this one have something particular: you can be drinking in one of the legendary red bus of London. As you are thinking "it's amazing, it's even better than drinking the blood of a goat",wait for it: you can also be transported to la Lucha AND drink (which is, you have to admit, pretty awsome, WAY better than the blood of goat, even if you are thirsty). A burger and some beers later, the bus was full and eveybody was singing some improper songs. Our group was composed of many different nationalities (the nice thing about couchsurfing, really) from the beer drinker of spain (and it's a "she"), to the timid German who looks like Shaggy (but where is scoobydoo?!) without mentioning the argentian who could have as well steal the main role in Black Swan.

Wazaaaaa

This (very) happy group was then in the (doom doom doom doom) ARENA COLISEO! What an epic name no? The Arena itself wasn't so big (30 square meters more or less) and the stadium was filling in little by little with happy people ready to shout insanities.


Basically, La Lucha Libre, is the American catch you can see on tv sometimes (or if you are really bored, I guess you can check those links out: here or there). In la lucha, the fighters have more fat and they hid themselve with a mask, but otherwise, it's pretty much the same.
I understood during the "fight" how particular was this show as you could combine the primal essence that animate football fan to get pationated about sport, and screaming over someone with the drama of the never ending tv show "The Fire Of Love". You have bad guys who are really bad (here, it was a japanese), and you have good guys who are really good. I wasn't understanding all of the fluffy chat during the battle
(ho, yeah I didn't tell you? Fighters can request the micro cos' inside of them they only wanted to be an opera singer, really) but I'm pretty sure the talks were something like this:


-Guay (man, in spanish in the text), why did you steal my cat the other day?
-I didn't steal it, guay! *nodding to the crowd he actually did, like in some retarded puppet show*
-ho guay! You put it on fire, how could you do that to Poquito?! *the crowd is now booing*

-Ho yeah I did it and I took extreme pleasure in doing some bad action not because I'm sick in my head, but because, you know, I'm the bad guy. Shitty job, really, I wanted to date this hot chick the other day, but you was blonde, you know. She can't date bad guys, SHE WAS BLONDE!

 

This goes on until it's pretty clear the good guys has NOW all the good reason to kick his ass (before he was only playing with him because he doesn't really care about being champion of La Lucha).

Followed by some pretty dirty tricks from the bad guy (it's normal, he is the bad guy, he can sneak-attack people, break the rules and so on), to which the crowd was outraged by. Then the good guy start doing dirty trick (but that's ok, you know, remember Poquito! And it's against a bad guy so it's fine and the crowd is happy).



Who wants a hug?



Sometimes you also have a bit of Saint Seya with the good guy almost "dead" and the bad guy being to full of himself, would do a mistake and the good guy, coming from the grave, would win the game: tindin!

Victory!

Maybe the best part was in the public which sometimes stole the show. The bleachers are well separated from the down part, the most expensive, from the up part, the cheapest. And when I say well separated, I thinking fences. I suppose the atmosphere really can be explosive but this night was all fun and nice. Let's see some examples of what people were shouting at each other (with rhymes please)

Rich against Poor
    se les va el camion
    pobres, pobres chinguen a su madre (poor, poor, go f*ck your mother)
   
Poor against Rich
    Su puta madre (your mother the whore)
    Putos los de abajo (Assholes of downstairs)
   
For everybody to enjoy as the crowd just turn against themself for time to time:
    Guera coqueta enseñanos las tetas (Hey blondie, show us your tits!)
    Guero guerito a ti te gusta el pito (Blondie, you like cock)
    El que no brinque es puto

pobres, pobres chinguen a su madre!

The night out was all fun except for some minor problems like the beer at 50 pesos the half-liter (yes, it is expensive for Mexican standards) and some guy in the street with a broom.
Everybody should travel with there favorite weapon AT ALL TIME without being judge don't your think?