Holidays are coming!

So, as you may have gathered, I’ll be off to the US in summer. I’m soooo excited! Why? Oh, yeah, right…the wedding. But also…! I’m going to be getting me a new computer! And a new camera! And a portable speaker system for my iPod! Oh yes, it’s all planned! All I need to do is save up at least $5,000 but preferably $6,000. I’ve banked over $2,500 already so I’m more than half way there.

This is the baby. An HP packing an Intel 64 bit duo core processor. A whopping 3mbs of RAM. A dedicated Nvidia graphics card, built in webcam, 250gigs of hard drive space and so much more! It’s not that I don’t like my Sony Vaio anymore - I do! It’s served me well, even if the CD drive did stop working some time ago. But it is nearly 3 years old now. I don’t think I’ve ever had a PC approach 2 years let alone 3, but electronics are pricey in Mexico. Roll on July!

The Secret Wedding

A couple of weeks ago I gave Paola an engagement ring, as we’re planning to get married in the summer. Probably in Milwaukee or Chicago - the bureaucracy of getting hitched in Mexico is too much to bear. Personally I liked the idea of Niagara Falls or Las Vegas! Cheap, quick and you just need a passport as ID! It is just a civil wedding anyway, not a full blown church do.

Not the real ring, because quite simply I’m not that rich!

Ever since then I’ve been getting congratulations and all sorts from family and friends. Which is really weird, because I didn’t tell anyone! A quick interrogation session has revealed that Paola immediately wrote off a few emails. But I guess the ’secret’ is out now. Not that it was ever a secret. I’m just muy flojo - very lazy! S’pose I’d better tell them all again soon…

The Secret Wedding

A couple of weeks ago I gave Paola an engagement ring, as we’re planning to get married in the summer. Probably in Milwaukee or Chicago - the bureaucracy of getting hitched in Mexico is too much to bear. Personally I liked the idea of Niagara Falls or Las Vegas! Cheap, quick and you just need a passport as ID! It is just a civil wedding anyway, not a full blown church do.

Not the real ring, because quite simply I’m not that rich!

Ever since then I’ve been getting congratulations and all sorts from family and friends. Which is really weird, because I didn’t tell anyone! A quick interrogation session has revealed that Paola immediately wrote off a few emails. But I guess the ’secret’ is out now. Not that it was ever a secret. I’m just muy flojo - very lazy! S’pose I’d better tell them all again soon…

Villa de Quinta Xamay

So I’ve finally uploaded all my photos from the weekend. I have to say, on average, I produce a reasonable selection of photos. Some photos are better than others of course. But this bunch are really pretty uninspiring. Feel free to look through them, but I suspect their future viewing lies solely in my getting nostalgic! One thing I kinda forgot to mention in yesterday’s post, is what lie at the top of the mountain I climbed. I mentioned the pyramid, but just before that is a set of gates. Which open at 9am. An hour after I got there. So although I went to the top of the mountain, I never did get to see the pyramid. Shame…

Click here to see all my Flickr photos.

The villa we rented was, like the photos, ok. For 500 pesos a night, it would have been great, but it was actually quite pricey - 1,250 pesos a night. Still, there was a swimming pool and despite the warning signs about keeping shoes on at all times, no scorpions or spiders. They are pretty endemic in this area.

Villa de Quinta Xamay

So I’ve finally uploaded all my photos from the weekend. I have to say, on average, I produce a reasonable selection of photos. Some photos are better than others of course. But this bunch are really pretty uninspiring. Feel free to look through them, but I suspect their future viewing lies solely in my getting nostalgic! One thing I kinda forgot to mention in yesterday’s post, is what lie at the top of the mountain I climbed. I mentioned the pyramid, but just before that is a set of gates. Which open at 9am. An hour after I got there. So although I went to the top of the mountain, I never did get to see the pyramid. Shame…

Click here to see all my Flickr photos.

The villa we rented was, like the photos, ok. For 500 pesos a night, it would have been great, but it was actually quite pricey - 1,250 pesos a night. Still, there was a swimming pool and despite the warning signs about keeping shoes on at all times, no scorpions or spiders. They are pretty endemic in this area.

Chapultepec Park

Last weekend I managed to have a pretty nice weekend all in all. I’d already blogged about the Art of Chapultepec, but I hadn’t gotten round to the rest of the weekend. Well, I went to see a footy match at Estadio Azul for the first time in a long time. They even managed to win, with their boy wonder Villeluz scoring the winner in a scrappy 1-0 win. On Sunday me, Paola and her in-laws plus kids went off to Chapultepec Park for the afternoon. It’s a central attraction for Chilangos with a (rather mangy) zoo, a big park, a lake, a botanical garden and of course the castle which sits on top of the hill.

I’m not much into zoos so we didn’t go there, but we did have a wander around the botanical garden and its greenhouse. Where, incidentally, I found the perfect place for our turtles to go and live when the time comes! Not that they’ll agree to this, but they have two perfect little indoor pools with sunlight streaming through a stained glass dome type thing. It’s warm, humid - all the things that tropical turts love so much.

Click here to see my photos on Flickr.

After that we wandered down to the lake, queued up for the best part of an hour and then took a couple of paddle boats out onto the lake. Paola did a lot of complaining that we weren’t going fast enough, but not an equivalent amount of paddling sad to say! Bloody knackering it was!

The Lunar Eclipse

I discovered there was a lunar eclipse the other night a bit late on, but I got home just in time to get a few shots! My student that night had mentioned that all her friends were off to the Zocalo to make use of the 100 free telescopes installed by the government. Sounds like another queuing nightmare to me! I did remember that morning on my way to work at 5.30am, the moon was low, full and bright, so it was worth trying to get a photo in spite of the terrible pollution - both light and car fumes! I found an article about shooting the moon, but understood very little of it! I have three worth posting. None were brilliant although the first one isn’t too bad.

Tepoztlan

I know what you’re thinking - two days without a post?! Is he still alive? Yes, I’m still knocking about. I abandoned the turtles for two days and went to Tepoztlan in Morelos, just south of the city. I say ‘just’ but perhaps I should point out you have to go up and down 3100 metre mountains to get there.

It was Paola’s dad’s birthday so a retreat from the smoke of the city was in order, and Tepoztlan was chosen. Which was cool - it’s one of the very few places left within range of the city that I should have visited but (until now) hadn’t. It’s perhaps not as scenic os Taxco or Huichapan but it is still very pleasant. And it does have a few things going for it, including a famous pyramid at the top of a pretty sizeable mountain. Paola’s not so slim brother, who has recently been exercising, decided he could beat me to the top. I guess he based this on me being a smoker and him doing a few kilometres of a cycling machine. It’s meant to take 45 minutes to climb to the top. I did it in about 18. I’ll be nice and just say I won, and not mention how long I had to wait for him. He owes me 500 pesos…

It’s also supposedly the birthplace of Quetzalcoatl. But more of that tomorrow, along with the photos which I’ll upload to Flickr. I’m pretty tired right now!

Tepoztlan

I know what you’re thinking - two days without a post?! Is he still alive? Yes, I’m still knocking about. I abandoned the turtles for two days and went to Tepoztlan in Morelos, just south of the city. I say ‘just’ but perhaps I should point out you have to go up and down 3100 metre mountains to get there.

It was Paola’s dad’s birthday so a retreat from the smoke of the city was in order, and Tepoztlan was chosen. Which was cool - it’s one of the very few places left within range of the city that I should have visited but (until now) hadn’t. It’s perhaps not as scenic os Taxco or Huichapan but it is still very pleasant. And it does have a few things going for it, including a famous pyramid at the top of a pretty sizeable mountain. Paola’s not so slim brother, who has recently been exercising, decided he could beat me to the top. I guess he based this on me being a smoker and him doing a few kilometres of a cycling machine. It’s meant to take 45 minutes to climb to the top. I did it in about 18. I’ll be nice and just say I won, and not mention how long I had to wait for him. He owes me 500 pesos…

It’s also supposedly the birthplace of Quetzalcoatl. But more of that tomorrow, along with the photos which I’ll upload to Flickr. I’m pretty tired right now!

Mega Mexico

Everyone knows that Mexico is a big City. It always has been - it’s predecessor, Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire was home to 250,000 people, which made it the biggest city in the world all that time back. It reclaimed that title last century although Tokyo has since surpassed it. But still, with 28,000,000 people calling it home, it’s still one huge megalopolis. There are two parts to the city. Distrito Federal is the metropolitan centre, containing a piffling 8 or 9 million Mexicans. This is where the tourists spend their time. But outside DF, in the Estado de Mexico, the city sprawl continues ever outwards. Mile after mile of it, with the other 20,000,000 citizens trying to scrape a living. Scrape being the operative word. It’s poor, with little in the way of reliable modern utilities and running water is a luxury. The photo below shows the monstrous area known as Nezahualcoyotl. It’s one hell of a grid.