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Published: April 24th 2008
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Tesoro Manzanillo
View from our balcony The mechanics of the trip we’re now on is hurting my spirit! Right now, we’re in Montana - Big Sky Country, and yes, there’s a lot of sky. In some places, not a lot else (100 foot snow drifts and closed roads?), but that’s okay, we made it into the US, and made it with the assistance of an extraordinarily helpful US Customs and Border official who clearly doubles as a tour guide. Anyway, let me go back a few steps….
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, we were in Mexico (the second half of our week). The day after we’d been in Guadalajara we lounged around the pool and went to the beach, had some drinks, and most importantly, Paul got a haircut. It turned out as not just any haircut, but a Mexican haircut. In defence of the ‘stylist’ she spoke no English, and for the purposes of what was happening, Paul spoke no Spanish. When he came back to the room, he looked like a stereotypical bad guy from an old Western, and had enough greasy product in his hair so it would have looked wet for about a month. It was awful,
Us at dusk
The sunsets were amazing... truly awful. However, all was not lost, and being the sympathetic girlfriend I am (who of course didn’t laugh at him at all), I had a go at fixing his hair. Granted, I’m not a hairdresser by any stretch of the imagination, but by Paul’s reasoning I couldn’t make it any worse. Not quite the vote of confidence I was after, but nevertheless I went ahead with it, and now, while slightly uneven, it’s okay!
On Saturday we went to the local markets (the Saturday municipal flea markets to be precise), and bought some pretty great (and also some pretty useless) stuff. Lesson - bartering here is not quite the same as in Thailand. Everything was of course authentic, especially my Chanel sunglasses. I’d bought another pair two days previously, but they had already broken - blame Fendi, it’s clearly an inferior brand! We also got the obligatory tourist t-shirts, and most exciting, bought some beautiful leather belts (one may or may not be crocodile…).
Sunday we went to the real town of Manzanillo (where we were staying was a few kilometres away on the beach), and saw the port in action, as well as some phenomenal driving
Manzanillo Snoopy
Not sure what role he played! by all concerned. We caught the public bus there (7 pesos each), and even managed to find the spot to get the bus back - no, it’s not as simple as standing on the other side of the road to where you get off! The shops and markets there were great, and the icecreams (pagueta de agua) in particular were amazing, I think they just blend together a mango with a tiny bit of ice, and then freeze the whole thing onto a stick. There was a cruise ship in town (full of what seemed to be Americans in their 70’s), and some of the shops even displayed special cruise ship prices just for them! I overheard one couple saying how friendly and considerate that it was to display the prices in US dollars for them, but I don’t think they realised the prices were twice as much as the peso price displayed below! I guess tourists are really only good for one thing…
We flew back to Calgary Tuesday night, and it was amazing how much neither of us wanted to be there. Maybe it was the fact it was snowing, -10, and windy? We left Calgary first
thing Wednesday morning, and headed south. We weren’t sure how far we’d get, but this leads us to the most amazing Customs officer we’ve ever encountered. He seemed far more interested in telling us about his parents’ recent trip to Australia and he and his wife’s last trip to Spain than anything we needed to say about our plans for being in the US. He also gave us maps and accommodation advice, and was just a really nice guy. In all the thoughts I’d had about us entering the US (in a minivan loaded with camping gear), what happened was definitely not the way I thought it was going to be!
The Montana landscape it big - that’s the only way to describe it. One of the mountains is 11,000 feet above sea level, and has 100 feet of snow on it. We would snowboard there, if only the roads leading to the place were open… not quite sure how that resort makes any money??
Most of the areas are incredibly flat, and the road never seems to end. No trees at all (prairie country), and whenever there are any mountains, they are all flat as a pancake
on top. For those of you interested in geology, we read that the landscape appearance is the result of glaciers - the flat mountain tops previously had glaciers on them, and the prairies were all glacier lakes.
There are two species of bird here that appear to be the stupidest birds in the world (big call I realise, but I’m standing by it) - they stand in the middle of the road (including the interstate which has a speed limit of 75 miles p/h) and don’t move, at all. In braking to try and avoid one, we nearly ended up in a ditch (but did test the capabilities of the brakes, which are pretty good). Paul and I have decided that there will be no more high speed attempts to avoid the birds - let Darwinism take effect!
Last night we stayed in Great Falls, a town of about 56,000. Not much seems to happen here, but we did discover you can buy really good ice cream. As well as that, you can also buy a 600ml bottle of Pepsi and two packets of cigarettes for $4.60 (not us, the guy who was before us). You could also
buy out of date cigarettes for $1.50 a pack (I didn’t know they could go off?). The US obesity problem and rate of lung cancer is all starting to make sense….
Today we continue our quest to head south towards Yellowstone. Where we’ll end up is anybody’s guess!
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