Hey everyone,

Firstly, apologies for lack of replies to umm, almost everyone, so far...but thought I´d update you all on my first few weeks...

So I arrived in Mexico to find that BA had mislaid 200 bags from my (direct) flight, so I spent my first night in Mexico City airport filling out forms. As I was possessionless (which by the way, lasted for 9 days!) and craving the sight of my long lost amiga, Gina (Genie for future reference), I got my first loooooooooooooooong bus up to Zacatecas to see G&K´s lovely town. We spent the weekend crawling up mountains (it turns out that the altitude affects almost everything you do here, including carrying a bottle of water from the shop 10 metres away to the house, taking about half an hour) and sampling the insides of Zacas´ wacky bars.

I then took my first trip back to Mex City to try and seek out the bag, no luck, so after investing in some new clothing I bussed it across to Guadalajara, Mexico´s second, and more Mexican, city. There I was greeted with a girl we soon-after nicknamed ´sick-girl´ who , as you can guess from the name, was quite sick, all over the room, for a number of hours after getting back from Tequila. So with my non-sick roomies, Kim and Lexi, we headed to Tequila the next day to find out what it was all about...ventured on a tequila factory tour where we tried the different strengths and flavour tequilas, and to our surprise found that it really isn´t as bad as it is at home. The fiestas de Octubre were also on in Guad so we went down there to see the Master Show - basically an excuse to get all the local pop stars together in a kind of showdown, fair ground rides, market stalls and of course bars...in all the excitement we decided to brave it on the reverse bungy, where we got strapped in so tight we still have the bruises to show for it.

Later in the week, I returned to Mex City airport, and unsurprisingly, found no bag...Genie then came down to Mexico City to play for the weekend. We went to see our first Aztec pyramids after being cornered by a couple of guys from Bristol to go on their bus trip. It turned out to be a really good day, despite being hounded for photos and interviews by a load of kids on a school trip, losing the bus, and collapsing at the top of the pyramids from exhaustion. To finish the day we took a trip back to my favourite place, the airport. But even that could not be without complications. After planning our route on the metro (there are no maps on the underground), we approached a station called ´Aeropuerto´ and as there is only one airport in Mex City, concluded that we should quickly jump off there. So we came up onto the street and were told by two Mexican guys it was ´just down there.´ Half an hour later the pavement we were walking on became pretty much non-existent and we found ourselves climbing over building sites, and eventually, just walking on the motorway. Next thing we know, a policeman (and his gun) pulled up, blatantly confused by why we had chosen this route...it turned out the motorway would fork off into two motorways and we wouldnt actually be able to reach the airport at all. So he agreed to give us a lift. The rest of the evening consisted of rowing with BA, who eventually gave my bag back (!!), but by this point our frustation and immense hunger had led us to give into a McD´s (eek!).

The rest of our weekend consisted of discovering how long public transport really takes in Mexico City...hanging around in the ´south´ caused us to underestimate how far apart the South areas really are...it took us 2 hours to travel from a market to a canal...on numerous forms of transport where few locals knew where anything was and the drivers let their mates take the wheel. Sampled lots of the city´s sights - among them, went to the anthropology museum, climbed the TorreLatinoAmericano (from which we could js see smog) and more interestingly, walked through the endless back streets of market stalls, prostitutes and building sites. All the banks had been shut down and market shops have taken over the insides of them, with the bank signs still intact. We also came across some indigenous groups doing some sort of tribal dancing thing to celebrate Colombus Day.

Our Saturday night outing was interesting, the club we went to looked like a sort of dining hall where there would be a show on the stage at some point...but soon everyone was dancing around or falling over the tables to I think the biggest mix of music thats possible to find in a club and then caught one of the notorious, green and white beatle taxis without a front seat home.

I then moved on this week, making a swiftish stop in Puebla (and the Cholula ruins) in honour of some uni friends who used to live there and then carried on to Oaxaca where I met a group of people in the hostel (mostly Aussie) to spend the next few days with.We witnessed the biggest tree in the world, little local villagers making rugs, more ruins, and this absolutely beautiful place called Hierve Del Agua. It was a sortve natural pool area some 4000m in the mountains, where the pools reached right to the end of the mountains and you could see right down into the valley, where there were petrified limestone waterfalls (ie.theyd solidified in the shape of a waterfall). We also visited a Mezcal place (another type of Mexican alcohol made from same plant as Tequila), where the focus revolved around which flavour to buy for Sara´s bday outing that night.

I then moved on with one of the girls from the hostel to a beach town called Zipolite on the Pacific coast...this involved catching a camioneta (an open air van, truck carrier thing) at 7 in the morning after being pushed off a night bus in this tiny town. You need to flag them down and quite often the drivers are in a rush so for the rest of the journey, clutching onto our bags was a must. So we stayed in a cabana in Zipolite, like an old mud hut thing right on the beach, was really nice to js be able to chill out in the hammocks outside our door. This place is renowned for being very pretty but above all for being a bit of a hippy paradise - something which seemed to reflect in the local hangouts - Crazy Horse (the barman from Middlesborough who had actually changed his name to Crazy Horse legally), naked Aussie Andrew (who would prance up and down the beach all day watching to see what attention he was drawing), and 63-yr old Brent (a retired American) who we took to the club...the club which called my drink a cocktail (Bacardi, Gin and WATER)!

Moving onto Puerto Escondido, I swiftly bumped into another one of the guys from the hostel and with a couple of others, all spent a couple of days together. We discovered a bar run by the lovely Maya who constantly fed us with free shots of tequila (!!) and chitchat. Took a scenic walk one day around the mountain to find a local beach, ended up a tad lost and ended up jumping over a bush and sneaking through private property to get there...but it was a lovely place, we all ate lots of seafood and got burnt.

The journey to Acapulco (which wasnt all that loco) was awful - really bumpy road for 10 hours, really bad driver who got us lost and kept stopping for food breaks and yucky bus with non-functioning air con. The clavadistas (cliff divers) were worth the visit though...

So now to this week...arrived in Cancun on Tuesday and its (torrentially) rained pretty much since then...I swiftly moved to this island on Wednesday after looking around Cancun and deciding that, as predicted, it is the only city that I have so far not liked. The island is lovely though, really laid back, little hassle and nice hostel with its own beach bar that gets going after 11pm. Have been snorkelling (sizes of some of the fish are a little scary), waded around the streets knee deep, been to an island made of plastic bottles (yes a guy lives on it), ate loads of cake, waded around more streets knee deep, ridden around in the back of a jeep in the torrential rain, and hungout in the beach bar...but unfortunately I will be saying goodbye to my Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch roommates tomorrow for southward routes.

Hasta luego amigos! xxx