Some Silliness, then Some Blogging and then More Silliness.

January 14, 2010 to February 3, 2010


The Photos


Welcome back to XGRFH radio, you are tuned to 31.2 on your travel dial.  I want to ask if anyone remembers a little blog I used to read on here, ‘GandoR’s World Tour’?  ZOMG, what the hell happened to those guys.  I keep checking their blog and it’s the same entry I’ve already read... and not just once.  I read it, it was cute, then I checked back after a sufficient length of time and no new entry, so I read the last one again.  Still cute.  Then I checked back again and still no new entry so I read the last one yet again, but this time to see if there were hints as to where they were (there weren’t... and it was getting less cute!)  And then I checked back once again, once again no new entry.  So I reread the last one and ran it through several decoders to see if there was a hidden message about kidnappers, torture or a reference to the Blue Sun Corp.  (in case you were wondering, NO, there wasn’t and that Rebecca girl’s rambling broke two of the decoders!)  So now here I go again to check the blog and see if they have checked in from their wild adventure and ZOMG... real actual words!

*But First a Word From Our Sponsers!*

Rebecca Fetch here, have you ever wanted to see the world?  Of course you have.  Have you ever wanted to meet new and interesting people?  Of course you have.  Have you ever wanted to go to the kinds of places that only the ‘locals’ know about?  Of course you have.  What is this wondrous thing you ask!  CouchSurfing.org.  It’s new (well the .org part anyway.)  It’s unique (why woudn’t it be)  It’s wonderful.  But don’t take my word for it, listen to these glowing reviews.

‘I love that there is an immediate trust established and that someone wants to involve you in their life.’ ~ the Jackson Gazette

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Check it out today!

So yeah, enough silliness for now, but not because there has been a sudden ban on sillines, but because I started this post 10 days ago and it seems to have stalled.  So again I’m gonna give the hightlights.

CouchSurfing ~ Awesome Sauce!  Every host has been fan freakin’ tastic.  I’ve gotten better about selecting and sending out requests.  I try to make them more personal and give them a feel for who we are and the response has been phenomenal.  I’m sure I will have more to say about the system as the trip progresses and a whole bunch of pictures of all the ‘couches’ we’ve surfed.

Hermosillo, Sonora, MX ~ Our very first Couch Surfing experience and it was spectacular.  Edgardo was a wonderful host with a great love for his city and a willingness to teach.  His sister and girlfriend were equally wonderful and we had several great conversations, one solely through Google Translate!  We had great food in the form of a 3/4 meter long burrito and other noms.  And our last night there turned into an impromptu face paint night (Edgardo was so entranced by the paints that he kept 2 small bottles of paint water, one of metallic and one of black light reactive!)  We were definitely sad to move on but move on we must.

Mazatlán, Sinoloa, MX ~ Our second surf of the couch was also wonderful.  The night we arrived Jeremy was throwing a party, so we immediately got introduced to a passel of people (hey look the correct use of a vocabulary word!)  Almost all of them were students at Tec de Monterrey, Campus Mazatlán.  We had a joyful day of blog writing from a hammock and even took a rather long walk up a hill to the lighthouse, where we got to spin flags for a bit.  Gregory taught Jeremy how to spin poi and we made a complete debacle of tie dyed socks for him (note make sure the material will actually take the dye!)  We spent a little bit of time on the beach with Jeremy and his crew, where we got in the first of TWO opportunities to paint.  The second came on the night before we were leaving (it’s possibly a trend but staying up all night before a long bus ride does NOT actually make the bus ride enjoyable!)  Also one night we had sushi, which was pretty strange in that none of it was raw, all of it had Philidelphia cream cheese and one had strawberries... strange and not partucularly repeatable.

One of the more wonderful moments of Mazatlán was when Gregory and I were walking back from the adventure of the light house.  Thinking we had gotten on a bus that took us almost directly back home, we ended up in a completely unfamiliar part of town.  Gregory asked for directions from several people and we carried on our way (no Kansas references please!)  We ended up walking what was essentially the long way home (no SuperTramps here, either!) and came across some young people spinning fire at the stoplights.  We spent at least half an hour talking to them, watching them spin and learning how to make poi on the cheap to share along our journey (or in case ours get lost or stolen!)  Gregory even spun fire to try and busk a little dinero but to no avail.  It was such an inspiration that we had to spin fire for our host and show him how the tricks he had learned so far looked ‘con fuego!’

Querétaro, Querétaro, MX ~ No I didn’t suddenly develop a stutter, the city and the state have the same name.  Not to sound too much like a broken record, however (as you probably intuited!) this experience of awesomeness was totally couch surfing!  Wait that’s not right... well, close enough.  Robin and his lovely wife Pepix, not only put up with us for an extended amount of time (see the glossy bit below), they fed us wonderful food, tried to teach us how to cook some for ourselves, let us borrow a tent and sleeping bag so we could escape to San Joaquín for a nice weekend and sent us merrily on our way when the time was finally right.

We also enjoyed a Couch Surfing event on our first night in the form of a Cantina Crawl, where we met many of the Querétaro crowd and enjoyed some fine rattlesnake mescal.  Among this crowd was the organizer of the event, Rodrigo, an artist of stunning talent in the pen and ink style and we were subsequently invited to a private gallery showing of some truly beautiful art.

So yeah I kinda glossed over a little bit there...

My new state of the art Apple MacBook Pro started glitching on me after we had been there a couple of days (Gregory thinks it important to mention a stumble and a fall but since I’m writing this blog, I will pretend I am perfectly graceful and it got sick eating Mexican Pop-Ups.)  Talking with Apple, they wanted me to use my install disks, which are safely in Grand Prairie, TX and generally didn’t think they would be able to help me without them.  So I asked Robin if he knew anyone with an Apple that might have disks I could borrow and Robin instead found me an authorized Apple repair shop.  It ended up being the hard drive, which was replaced at no charge.

While waiting for the repair to be completed, Robin urged us to visit San Joaquín.  It was beautiful and exactly the escape from the currently normal life that we desperately needed.  A perfect little vacation in the middle of our vacation.  We camped the first night and hoteled it the second night.  Staying in the hotel was not actually part of the plan, but it ended up being quite nice and we were able to leave our bags behind twice and go exploring.  In that exploring, we saw La Gruta de Los Herrera (caves and interesting rock formations) and La Cascadas de Maravillas (beautiful waterfall at the end of a very long downhill walk.)  We attempted to visit Zona Arqueológica de Ranas, but they were closed, so we wandered through the city some and eventually bussed it back ‘home’.

Next stop, Xilitla, San Luis Potosí, MX and a portion of the trip to fully expound upon if I can find the words.