Ciudad - 18 de Noviembre, 2009

¡Hola!

Well, Ian and I have returned to the city of Oaxaca after some time on the beach, again. It seemed neccesary after Ian caught a cold, I caught some sort of respiratory infection, and now Ian has caught a cold, again. He has a theory that we´re simply swapping some sort of virus back and forth until it reaches critical mass and swamps forth from our embattled organs to wreck havok abroad. I think we drink too much.

I wanted to put up some photos from Mexico City, an absolutely phenomenal place that now holds a dear chunk of heart in it´s talons. Someday I now dream of having an apartment there and staying for a goodly chunk of time. We´re off to a farm to do some work for the next two-three weeks, so until then, here´s some images from the liveliest city I´ve ever seen:

Outside the Belle Artes

Looking out from the top of the Angel of Indepencia statue.

At Teotihuacan, early in the morning.

The size of the pyramid.

At the opening day of the bull season. (I was reading a lot of Hemingway)

Well, that's about as much as I can do today. Off to the farm for a while, much love to all.

Nick

Burned out boots - November 11th, 2009

Heyo all,

Well, we've just pulled into the city of Oaxaca, pursuing our continental drift if you will, further and further south. Perhaps it's the fabric of our Canadian passports pulling us towards those places ever warmer and warmer.

We feel, it seems, as if we somehow, in lieu of leaving Mexico City, actually escaped, as once it sank it's delightful jaws into our wallets we could feel the doom looming above. Mexico City is, to say the least, a frankly unbelievable leviathan of human endeavour. The streets course and throb with people, as would be expected when twenty-two million of them press upon the same dry lakebed, but within, and somehow underneath, this pulsing mob, they leave nary a srap of litter, or an uncongenial smile. Instead, you will find, should you venture, a city of the most audacious design, run through with cafes, boulevards, monoliths, ruins, castles, towers, pillars, parks, and people, people, people, all of such outwardly happy disposition and high civil ethics that I am sure you will be left wondering if it is Spanish you are supposed to be speaking, or simply a general language of human decency.

If I can sum up our opinions to date, which I can never really express to our hosts and friends here, it is that the somehow created mythos of Mexico, that of a northern, dry, burned out and littered country of moustaches and donkeys, is somehow the product of an ingenious foreign department which has taken upon itself to hide what is so obviously one of the jewels of the world from the prying and perhaps probing fingers of the global tourist body. There is simply no other way to describe it. The surprise, the wonder.

Anyways, some days back we hiked down and up to the volcano Paricutin. The lava field stretched on dozens of kilometers in every direction, and we made the summit after a rather grueling ordeal. Here's some photos of the ruins left by the whims of nature, and the impromptue party guest the volcano represents.
We hope, oh so desperately hope, to find a farm to shelter us for the next two weeks, while the scurrying locusts who occupy our wallets find time to die.

Nick

Like laundry, but dirtier - November 03, 2009

And so up, down, around and rinsed I find time to send off some words and move some photos to this arid space.

We've grabbed a day here in Uruapan, "the city of oh-my-god-there's-hot-water", not far from Morelia, "the city of unfathomably nice sunsets", in the state of Michoacan, the "don't tell anyone else we're here" state.

It's been very whirlwind the last week since Ian and I left Chapala and the hospitality of my parents, since then we've bounced to Guadalajara for some always delicious couch surfing, wandered southsouthsouth to the neigh-unvisited coast for some tropical soul balm, pondered all the back up to Morelia, camped in Tzintzunzan for dia de muertos, and now some long-desired shower action in Uruapan before we try to climb Paricutin, that volcano you might have heard about that just kind of crashed the geological timeline and showed up late to the party without an invitation.

Life continues to look like this:
Often like this:
And yes, I apologize, sometimes like this:
In case some of you might have started missing me.

When we return in a couple days, after very hopefully not falling into a volcano, or off, or through, I'll hopefully have some photos of Dia de Muertos ready.

Thanks,

-ñ