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Published: March 22nd 2008
Well we´ve had quite a week and covered quite a few towns and beaches that I´ll briefly run down...The Great Pacific Coast Beach Tour began not in a beach town but in Guadalajara, which I can now inform you is officially FAR from Mexico, although the boredom was relieved slightly by the free sandwich and drink that travelling Premiere class gets you! I watched about 4 films on the bus, one about an American boy who went to play for Newcastle United which made me want to come home (particualy the GNER train shot...haha what a loser I am!) and then a French film dubbed into Spanish about a small town which needs a doctor so they stalk the English locum to make him stay and pretend to love jazz music and cricket, which was really quite amusing and reminded me of our attempt to play cricket with the kids just before we left. They weren´t impressed!
Guadalajara is a nice town, full of pretty plazas and the cathedral is beautiful! We arrived at about 10 at night though and everywhere was already deserted, which I have since been told was because everyone is on their holidays, but I´m not
sure I believe that! We went to a "youth market" on Saturday as it was advertised with the promise of tattoos and piercings but there were none to be found, it was a bit like the Forum in Sheffield but HUGE and really interesting. Having failed to get pierced or tattood at the market, we went back into town and Angie and Sarah got their noses and belly buttons pierced respectively, it was quite a tense time! I still think Scarlett´s tattoo was the worst experience to sit in on though, the piercing noises aren´t quite as terrifing!
We went to a club on Saturday night which would have been really good except Mexican boys are incapable of leaving girls alone and dancing by themselves, and when they ask if you want to dance what they mean is do you want to be grabbed at any bit of your body they can get...I was not impressed! So I was mostly the miserable one and sat down and told boys to get lost when they came near me!
Next stop on the whirlwind your was San Blas, which was such a Mexican town I loved it! Even better the
bus station is right by the zocalo so no need to drag our bags on a combi or taxi into town. We arrived at about 8pm and the square was absolutely alive, which is really quite unusual here, normally everyone goes to sleep at about 8 and everywhere´s dead. We found a hotel with a resident pelican after a few no´s and settled in for the night.
San Blas´ main attraction apart from it´s beaches is a boat ride through what it calls the jungle (I´m not convinced) to a pool and a crocodile sanctury where you can swim (not with the crocodiles), which we duely went on. I really wish I could swim like a fish and make the most of things like that but when I can´t touch the bottom I get scared and can´t breathe so I can´t swim so I have to get out...but I still got wet and enjoyed it.
We went to the beach after that but ANOTHER cloud appeared and it got cold so we decided to go home. Unfortunately we´d arrived from the town by taxi and by this time there were none about and no sign of any buses,
The Sunset
It goes FAST here, by the time I´d got my camera out it´s practically gone!Kerry decided it´d be a good idea to thumb a lift and after about 20 cars clearly laughing their heads off at us a bus full of Mexicans drinking Corona stopped and let us pearch on their plastic beach chairs set out at the back, till we got to a crossroads and they were going the other way! As luck would have it a truck saw our removal from the bus and let us hitch a ride in the back, in and around a quad bike tied there, I was quite scared of falling off but didn´t...and the story has a happy ending!
The main purpose of the trip was really Puerto Vallerta, which is so different from anywhere else in Mexico I´ve been, I imagiene it´s a bit like Cancun and Acapulco. It´s really commercialised, right down to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Restaurant and totally geared up for the rich American tourist market, and consequently very expensive! But I loved it! The beaches are lovely but the sea´s very fierce!
We went on a boat trip around the Bahia de las Banderas (I think that´s totally wrong) and saw whales and an iguana and climbed up to
Cricket
Or our feeble attempt at it! It was not well recieved! a big waterfall where we swam again (myself I jumped in then ran back out!). Honestly I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I hadn´t been terrifically hung over and sick 3 times! By the end of the day I was ship shape but it was a bit late then!
The other noteworthy thing in Puerto Vallerta, apart from my tattoo (only henna!) was the bull fight we went to. I´m still undecided about my opinion on it. I´d gone with a vague expectation of some kind of skillful dance between matador and bull, with the killing of the bull somewhere in the background. The first fight was horrible, the bull was obviously really young and pretty weedy, it made some horrible noises of what could only be fear and made me feel pretty sick, I quite wanted to leave and would have done if I´d not paid $200 to get in! Angie did...but I persevered and Kerry and I got talking to a Mexican man who goes every week and explained quite a lot about the fighting to us, I think I enjoyed that bit more! I´m glad I went, it´s definately a Mexican thing to
do, but I don´t think I´d want to go again!
Yesterday we boarded a second class bus to Manzanilla, arrived 8 hours later at 10pm and there was no room at the inn! We walked round all the hotels in the lonely planet, found a list of ALL the hotels in the resort and rang them all and had no luck. That´s what comes on arriving in a beach destination on Good Friday on the busiest holiday week of the year here. "Dam" we said. We didn´t really know what to do so we ordered some eggs at a cafe and discussed the various options, sleep in the zocalo, on the beach (sea comes in handy for washing), skulk around wal mart all night....and decided to get a taxi back to the bus station where there were some comfy looking booths in a cafe there, and thence we slept! It was very uncomfortable! And quite chilly! Everytime I woke up, about every hour, I put more clothes on, but felt like too much of an idiot tourist to use my snazzy new Mexican blanket rolled up at the top of my bag! This morning we got the first bus
Homeless...
Is there any room at the inn?! NO! out of Rubbishy Manzanilla to the town where we now are, had breakfast and came to use the internet! Haha, and that´s the story up till now!
Tomorrow I´m off to Guadalajara to meet my host family and start my Spanish course on Monday...fingers crossed!
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diego
non-member comment
nice
thats a really nice city, i was born there :)