Hotter Than Hades
...with a pitchfork.
howdy ya'll...not sure where i left off last time. my head's a little fuzzy from all this damn heat and humidity. never ever ever ever ever ever visit the coasts of mexico during the months of april-july. holy hell it's hot. a nice cool day here is in the mid 80s...at the moment it's close to 92 degrees, and the humidity must be damn near 70%. we walk around in a constant stinky sweat (i formally apologize for making fun of all those hippy stenches in humboldt), but thankfully we're not down here to impress anyone. hmmm...puerto escondido, i think it was. we spent a fabulous day on playa manzanilla, lounging under a huge umbrella for free as long as we bought beer, which was hardly a burden. muy tranquilo, very few people, and soft, crystal clear ocean waves...we spent over an hour snorkeling along an old coral reef, spying from above at thousands of electric-colored fish, and we even spotted a stingray. on the way back to the hotel from the beach, we became lost thanks to kesia's geography skills, but we were quickly rescued by a local who showed us the right way and chatted with us about his time working in portland. pretty cool coincidence. aside from lounging at the beach we spent all of our time mellowing out in the pool, finding ourselves the main exhibit at the aquarium, or at leas tit felt like it with this one family that kept gawking at us. very uncomfortable, but hey i can't help having nice man boobs. at least we weren't the jerks swimming in our undies...real classy. our last night in puerto escondido was spent drinking fresh coconut juice from cocos we bought at the shop of an ancient old man (my brother), his shop consisting of a crusty old wheelbarrow filled with empty tequila bottles and trash, and a big ass machete. i think i need to buy one of those, they're awesome. try getting one of those in my carry-on bag at the airport though. probably not gonna happen. we also had the fortunate chance to be sitting next to these two gay guys from chihuahua at the internet cafe, who showed us their absolutely amazing photos from their trip to chiapas and guatemala...very green and pristine, and not too hot (they claimed, but i suspect they were lying...this whole country is a frying pan right now).
moving on...we had an absolutely cruddy bus ride from puerto escondido to our next destination, acapulco. the bus was ghetto (a fine greasy sheen that only the likes of greyhound can match), the baggage loader was ghetto (he demanded a tip from us even though we placed our bags under the bus...tip this), the movies were ghetto (mostly b movies from the 60s featuring your favorite ex-porno stars), and most of all the drivers were ghetto...we purposely bought the front two seats of the bus so kes could keep her gentle road stomach intact, but upon boarding, the driver demanded we move back a seat, that the front two were reserved for his second driver...great lie, but i didn´t really want to piss off our ride and have him dump us in the middle of the jungle without our bags. kes did her best to argue with him, and restrained herself very admirably without striking him in the eye tooth. we found out later, that those two front seats were actually reserved for the driver's buddies he picked up along the way, how nice. we must have passed 5 different military checkpoints, and twice we were boarded...the second time one of the "drivers" talked quietly to the soldier, who then promptly walked towards us and asked to see our identification...thankfully, he left us alone with a gracias, but it sure was a puckered-up moment for a minute there. very beautiful drive, nonetheless, with nice coastal views, passing through dense tropical palm forests...lots of neat little pig-filled towns...got to see some real life cowboys herding their cows down the middle of the highway, straight out of city slickers, minus the city slickers. finally we reached the gigantic city of acapulco (more than 2 million folkers live here), and settled down into our hotel up on the cliffs above the zocalo (a lush town center filled with mangrove trees, screaming kiddies blowing bubbles, and traditional music and dancing...we spent a lot of time chillin here people watching). The local buses in acapulco are very cool...almost all of them have airbrushed artwork covering the entire outside (pinky & the brain, blade, ren & stimpy, nekkid chicks, etc.), and bumpin' sound systems...you can't really beat a local mexican bus blaring 50 Cent's latest hit and spray painted with the characters from the Little Mermaid. good stuff. experienced the clavadistas, acapulco's somewhat famous cliff divers...despite being a little homo-erotic for me with the bulging speedos and shaven chests, it was neat to see these guys jump off cliffs headfirst (after praying at a little shrine nearby) into the crashing surf 25-35 meters below...about 90 feet or more. crazy mofos. we checked out a cool castle, complete with moat and drawbridge, that was used to defend against maurading pirates, who, we learned in the museum, never actually mauraded anywhere near here...typical government overspending on silly defense projects. Oh, as a sidenote, for those of you who actually care about the political situation down here with lopez obrador being denied a run at the presidency, it looks like all the protesting has made the international community frown heavily on the fox presidency, and the charges may soon be dropped, clearing obrador to campaign. now if only we can get our president to give a gnat's shit about protests at home...but that's a rant for another day. spent some time trying to relax at playa hornos, but were cruelly denied the rest due to the insanely aggressive vendors plying the beaches here. they would come at us in attack formation constantly, even touching us a few times in attempt to give us outrageously priced massages...kes actually had to up and slap some sense into one lady for getting just a little too touchy feely. too many people on the beach here...and it's not even the busy season. i mean we were truthfully rubbing elbows with our fellow sunbathers...a bunch of sweaty sardines...we rented an umbrella from a guy who was so excited for us when we told him we were on our honeymoon that he gave us some refreshing coconuts with ice in the milk just because he was a nice guy, which made the unpleasant experience worth it. the people here are very friendly...one of the women who worked at the hotel we stayed at gave kesia a change purse she had just finished crocheting because kes had remarked how beautiful it was.
a few sidenotes:
there are shoe shiners everywhere, and won't hesitate to tell you about their special process for shining up your nasty ass old tennis shoes, and they claim to even have some way of sprucing up our feet when we're sporting our sandles...not sure i want to stick around to find out what that entails...nail polish? hmmm...
driving down here is sensible insanity, or cohesive chaos...there are no rules. people drive seemingly at whatever speed they desire, change lanes when they want (what the hell is a turn signal?), cut each other off for fun, and never ever ever ever ever obey a traffic light or a stop sign. yet everyone is strangely very aware of where and what everyone else is doing...we have seen zero accidents so far, despite all the crazy taxi rides we've taken so far. those dudes are ruthless. mabye all the rules in the united states that we so strictly follow while driving make us lazy (thus giving us plenty of time to apply makeup, talk on our cell phones, read the paper, etc.)and unawares, increasing our chances of killing each other. the lack of rules keeps you on your toes at little more...who knows?
Okay, moving on as you are more than likely nodding off by now...bought tickets to zihuatenejo, near ixtapa...ixtapa is a manicured resort town, so we avoided it like the plague and decided to settle for awhile in the somewhat resorty zihuatenejo nearby, which has yet to shake off it's sleepy fishing town past. this city is great...very slow paced, not too many gringos, good food, and beaches where we can actually use them in the way that god intended...drinking beer and relaxing in the sun, without crowds of people and persistant vendors of crappy trinkets. and here we shall remain for the next five or so days, doing exactly that...drinking beer and relaxing...oh and ofcourse, eating ourselves to bursting. snorkeling is definitely in the plans. since we could easily get away with it, we might even kill someone here for the hell of it...just kidding, kesia made me write that.
well if you made it through that, congratulations, here's a cookie.
we love you all and look forward to seeing/hearing from you all sometime soon.
and remember, it ain't eazy being greazy...
dustin and kesia
howdy ya'll...not sure where i left off last time. my head's a little fuzzy from all this damn heat and humidity. never ever ever ever ever ever visit the coasts of mexico during the months of april-july. holy hell it's hot. a nice cool day here is in the mid 80s...at the moment it's close to 92 degrees, and the humidity must be damn near 70%. we walk around in a constant stinky sweat (i formally apologize for making fun of all those hippy stenches in humboldt), but thankfully we're not down here to impress anyone. hmmm...puerto escondido, i think it was. we spent a fabulous day on playa manzanilla, lounging under a huge umbrella for free as long as we bought beer, which was hardly a burden. muy tranquilo, very few people, and soft, crystal clear ocean waves...we spent over an hour snorkeling along an old coral reef, spying from above at thousands of electric-colored fish, and we even spotted a stingray. on the way back to the hotel from the beach, we became lost thanks to kesia's geography skills, but we were quickly rescued by a local who showed us the right way and chatted with us about his time working in portland. pretty cool coincidence. aside from lounging at the beach we spent all of our time mellowing out in the pool, finding ourselves the main exhibit at the aquarium, or at leas tit felt like it with this one family that kept gawking at us. very uncomfortable, but hey i can't help having nice man boobs. at least we weren't the jerks swimming in our undies...real classy. our last night in puerto escondido was spent drinking fresh coconut juice from cocos we bought at the shop of an ancient old man (my brother), his shop consisting of a crusty old wheelbarrow filled with empty tequila bottles and trash, and a big ass machete. i think i need to buy one of those, they're awesome. try getting one of those in my carry-on bag at the airport though. probably not gonna happen. we also had the fortunate chance to be sitting next to these two gay guys from chihuahua at the internet cafe, who showed us their absolutely amazing photos from their trip to chiapas and guatemala...very green and pristine, and not too hot (they claimed, but i suspect they were lying...this whole country is a frying pan right now).
moving on...we had an absolutely cruddy bus ride from puerto escondido to our next destination, acapulco. the bus was ghetto (a fine greasy sheen that only the likes of greyhound can match), the baggage loader was ghetto (he demanded a tip from us even though we placed our bags under the bus...tip this), the movies were ghetto (mostly b movies from the 60s featuring your favorite ex-porno stars), and most of all the drivers were ghetto...we purposely bought the front two seats of the bus so kes could keep her gentle road stomach intact, but upon boarding, the driver demanded we move back a seat, that the front two were reserved for his second driver...great lie, but i didn´t really want to piss off our ride and have him dump us in the middle of the jungle without our bags. kes did her best to argue with him, and restrained herself very admirably without striking him in the eye tooth. we found out later, that those two front seats were actually reserved for the driver's buddies he picked up along the way, how nice. we must have passed 5 different military checkpoints, and twice we were boarded...the second time one of the "drivers" talked quietly to the soldier, who then promptly walked towards us and asked to see our identification...thankfully, he left us alone with a gracias, but it sure was a puckered-up moment for a minute there. very beautiful drive, nonetheless, with nice coastal views, passing through dense tropical palm forests...lots of neat little pig-filled towns...got to see some real life cowboys herding their cows down the middle of the highway, straight out of city slickers, minus the city slickers. finally we reached the gigantic city of acapulco (more than 2 million folkers live here), and settled down into our hotel up on the cliffs above the zocalo (a lush town center filled with mangrove trees, screaming kiddies blowing bubbles, and traditional music and dancing...we spent a lot of time chillin here people watching). The local buses in acapulco are very cool...almost all of them have airbrushed artwork covering the entire outside (pinky & the brain, blade, ren & stimpy, nekkid chicks, etc.), and bumpin' sound systems...you can't really beat a local mexican bus blaring 50 Cent's latest hit and spray painted with the characters from the Little Mermaid. good stuff. experienced the clavadistas, acapulco's somewhat famous cliff divers...despite being a little homo-erotic for me with the bulging speedos and shaven chests, it was neat to see these guys jump off cliffs headfirst (after praying at a little shrine nearby) into the crashing surf 25-35 meters below...about 90 feet or more. crazy mofos. we checked out a cool castle, complete with moat and drawbridge, that was used to defend against maurading pirates, who, we learned in the museum, never actually mauraded anywhere near here...typical government overspending on silly defense projects. Oh, as a sidenote, for those of you who actually care about the political situation down here with lopez obrador being denied a run at the presidency, it looks like all the protesting has made the international community frown heavily on the fox presidency, and the charges may soon be dropped, clearing obrador to campaign. now if only we can get our president to give a gnat's shit about protests at home...but that's a rant for another day. spent some time trying to relax at playa hornos, but were cruelly denied the rest due to the insanely aggressive vendors plying the beaches here. they would come at us in attack formation constantly, even touching us a few times in attempt to give us outrageously priced massages...kes actually had to up and slap some sense into one lady for getting just a little too touchy feely. too many people on the beach here...and it's not even the busy season. i mean we were truthfully rubbing elbows with our fellow sunbathers...a bunch of sweaty sardines...we rented an umbrella from a guy who was so excited for us when we told him we were on our honeymoon that he gave us some refreshing coconuts with ice in the milk just because he was a nice guy, which made the unpleasant experience worth it. the people here are very friendly...one of the women who worked at the hotel we stayed at gave kesia a change purse she had just finished crocheting because kes had remarked how beautiful it was.
a few sidenotes:
there are shoe shiners everywhere, and won't hesitate to tell you about their special process for shining up your nasty ass old tennis shoes, and they claim to even have some way of sprucing up our feet when we're sporting our sandles...not sure i want to stick around to find out what that entails...nail polish? hmmm...
driving down here is sensible insanity, or cohesive chaos...there are no rules. people drive seemingly at whatever speed they desire, change lanes when they want (what the hell is a turn signal?), cut each other off for fun, and never ever ever ever ever obey a traffic light or a stop sign. yet everyone is strangely very aware of where and what everyone else is doing...we have seen zero accidents so far, despite all the crazy taxi rides we've taken so far. those dudes are ruthless. mabye all the rules in the united states that we so strictly follow while driving make us lazy (thus giving us plenty of time to apply makeup, talk on our cell phones, read the paper, etc.)and unawares, increasing our chances of killing each other. the lack of rules keeps you on your toes at little more...who knows?
Okay, moving on as you are more than likely nodding off by now...bought tickets to zihuatenejo, near ixtapa...ixtapa is a manicured resort town, so we avoided it like the plague and decided to settle for awhile in the somewhat resorty zihuatenejo nearby, which has yet to shake off it's sleepy fishing town past. this city is great...very slow paced, not too many gringos, good food, and beaches where we can actually use them in the way that god intended...drinking beer and relaxing in the sun, without crowds of people and persistant vendors of crappy trinkets. and here we shall remain for the next five or so days, doing exactly that...drinking beer and relaxing...oh and ofcourse, eating ourselves to bursting. snorkeling is definitely in the plans. since we could easily get away with it, we might even kill someone here for the hell of it...just kidding, kesia made me write that.
well if you made it through that, congratulations, here's a cookie.
we love you all and look forward to seeing/hearing from you all sometime soon.
and remember, it ain't eazy being greazy...
dustin and kesia
posted by Oldie | 5/11/2006 11:45:00 AM
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