Back to the beach, back to the basics.

I love the mountains. I do. I love mountains and colonial cities and volcanoes (theoretically), but having been raised in, on and around water, I go a little crazy if I’m landlocked for too long. After a lengthy trek through the hinterlands, I was starting to feel like the goldfish who quit the bowl (and found himself belly-up on the kitchen floor. Even the motorcycle looked like it could use a good drink from the stream). So a few weeks ago I said goodbye to inland Mexico and followed the free highway back to the coast.

There’s something that changes inside you when you go to the ocean… Similarly, there’s something that changes inside you when you realize you’ve been traveling for ten months. I don’t know which it was exactly, but as soon as I was in Playa Azul breathing salt air and dumping sand out of my boots again I had an overwhelming Buddhist zen-like urge for everything around me to be very simple. With the bike, I’m often so entranced by the sun and the sky and the wind and the ground passing under me, that when I snap out of this spell, it’s hard to remember why it is I need… well… anything, other than maybe a few clothes and some gas money.

So in one of these instants I decided to dump half my luggage – out went chain lube, bike cleaner, rain gear, most of the medicine kit, books, vitamins, plastic silverware, clothes, an unused repair manual, a hat, some wrenches too small to be practical and a random pair of cooking tongs. (Some might call such a massive discharge foolish – “You’ll be sorry,” they say, “when you find yourself in a rut without any gear.” Might I remind these skeptics that Mexico is not Botswana. Anything I need I can buy in a store.) If you’ve never thrown out a whole bunch of stuff in a half-delusional whim, you’ve missed out on one of the finer pleasures in life.

I replaced 30 pounds of luggage with a new bikini and a pair of flip-flops and found myself a space under an oceanfront palapa where I parked my tent for a few days (cost: $2.00 per night). I meandered in this fashion along the coast, passing through Playa Azul, Zihuatanejo, Pie de la Cuesta and Pinotepa National. A newfound proficiency in Spanish opened the door to a whole new world of colorful conversation, and at night I would often find myself sitting across from a new Mexican friend animatedly recounting the story of his life. I heard it all, from the tragic (alcoholism, jail, murders, lost children, drug overdoses) to the… actually, for a while there it was mostly tragic – but it kept me hanging off the edge of my seat. (Some interesting stuff concerning local culture and history always made it into the mix too).

One day on the coastal route, I noticed my hands were suddenly covered with strange, solar-induced bumps… to remedy this lizard-skin malady (no amount of SPF seemed to work, and my riding gloves were long ago lost), I started wrapping them in shards of an old t-shirt that had been torn and torn again and used as a towel, a head wrap, a motorcycle chain cleaning cloth, and most recently emergency clean-up relief when I dumped a bottle of fuchsia nail polish. (It’s that old anomaly – no matter with what packaged products and supplies I prepare myself, a shredded t-shirt is my most revered possession… which is why I no longer have packaged products, only scraps). I was able to creatively wrap to conceal the nail polish on one rag, but the other was hopelessly covered. So with my grease-stained, faux blood-tainted rags, I looked like some sort of rough rider who just stepped out of a bar fight (with a George Thorogood song playing in the background). The boldest of military checkpoint inspectors and gas station attendants would sometimes ask what happened to my hands. “Nothing,” I’d reply. Then I’d smile sweetly, bat my eyelashes, and drive away. (My hands have since recovered).

It would be silly to try and describe entire trek along the coast. Suffice it to say that one fine day I arrived in Puerto Escondido. There are places where nature enchants you and there are places where the people enchant you, and then there are places where some otherworldly force is at work and it grabs hold of you and won’t let go … Puerto Escondido is all of this. Any real surfer from any country will tell you he/she has heard of Puerto, but it seems the town itself has no idea it’s been discovered by the entire world – as if its only ambition is to be like your friend’s basement in high school. Except that this time instead of ungainly teenagers, Boone’s Farm and bowling trophies, you’ve got charismatic travelers, eye-catching surfers, Mexican beer and miles of big, beautiful beach.

On the first day, I happened upon a place called Surf Hostel Zicatela. A dark cement stairwell next to a cinema-slash-café-slash-surfboard rental shop led to an uninviting black door where a black iron bell (an actual bell, like one you clang) was the only means of entry. From this shady entryway, I stepped across some sort of magic threshold (like when Dorothy lands and discovers Technicolor) into an open-air balcony where a thatched roof was draped over a beehive of board shorts, bikini tops and flip-flops. Sun-streaked dreadlocks and ponytails fell loosely down browned backs; old surfboards were crammed into corners and hammocks of various colors and sizes were weighted down with relaxed, outstretched bodies. Some people stood cooking cheap noodles on the rusted camping stove; others dabbled nonchalantly with the music on the portable stereo. The single dorm room was crammed with maybe 25 sets of bunked beds with flimsy foam cushions in the place of mattresses, and backpacks, sleeping bags and drying towels were thrown everywhere. In short, this was a traveler’s paradise.

This was also a place that would later be described by one of its longer-term residents as a “crazy house”. And that it was. You could not dream up a nuttier cast of characters. There was “El Flaco”, a well-meaning, rail-thin Mexican I only once saw wearing shoes and who one night performed some sort of tribal hand-reading on me (then recoiled in horror, and went to smoke a cigarette without much explanation). There was the animated Sebastian from Argentina who was always belting out some Spanish tune and making jewelry from seeds he trekked five days through the rainforest to collect (he also told a sidesplitting story of his wine-drinking pet birds named Doobie and Pepe, but it’s probably only funny if you were there). There was a band of four – an Austrian, a Canadian, a Mexican and an enormously tall Swede – who would play poker at the old wooden table in the middle of the room until all hours of the morning and the Austrian would claim he sold his girlfriend for a 20 peso buy-in. And there was Lou, a good-hearted yet totally bizarre character who spoke a strange hybrid of Spanish and British English – neither of which were totally intelligible. One morning when I was heading out to surf he jostled awake and tiredly asked me, “Where do you live?” He had already asked me where I was from the night before.

“New York”.
“Yes, yes, I know, but where do you live now?”
“Now? I’m just traveling, so I stay in different places…”
“Yes, right, but at this very moment, where do you live?”
“Umm… at this hostel?”
“Yes yes, but I mean, where is this hostel?”
“…Puerto Escondido?”
“Ah, yes, right, right, splendid.”

Then fell back to sleep, spread eagle on his foam mattress. I could go on for pages with stories like these. But I’ll move on…

Within my first few hours in Puerto Escondido, I’d found one of the red-shorted lifeguards to teach me how to surf. The next morning as the sky was just starting to color, I piled onto a four-wheeler with three lifeguards and a surfboard and we sped a few kilometers down the beach to where the morning haze met a rocky outcropping. Surfers and fishermen exchanged muted greetings, some sorted out their nets and others waxed boards, and some stood in silent veneration of the rolling waves and foaming waters at their feet. It felt like I’d just been let in on a big secret (and as payment surrendered another piece of sanity to the madness of the sea... sanity is in ever-diminishing supply on this trip).

Learning how to surf is like learning how to ski or to ride a motorcycle – the second you stand up and are carried over top of the water, you start mentally re-working your life plans. With my surf instructor (Jorge), we paddled out and practiced sitting on the board, laying on the board, rolling over the waves, and waiting waiting waiting for the just the right moment… Jorge’s favorite English phrase was “Take it easy, take it easy,” which he would use so often you would have thought I was fighting my way out of a straight jacket. Sometimes when we were in the wrong spot at the wrong time, he would swipe me off the board and under the rolling wave, and then I’d feel myself dragged beach-ward by the strap attached to my ankle. (It gives you a whole new respect for the ocean). Then I’d reconnect with the board and paddle back out, and once I was back on the board I’d hear, “Take it easy, take it easy”. It was funny, amazing, exhilarating. And I did it, I surfed. I found my waves and I surfed.


So the ecstasy of Puerto Escondido behind, I've now headed back inland and am traveling with only two very modest saddle-bags (my compacted leather jacket fills ¼ of the space), a tent, a sleeping bag, and my camera equipment (and an Italian girl named Anna, with whom my only shared language is Spanish… but more on that later). The lone remainders of my once smartly-assembled riding wardrobe are a pair of dirty jeans, a trusted collection of thinning t-shirts, and my cowboy boots. I’ve become an expert at washing clothes in public restrooms and my hair looks like I was raised by a pack of sun-loving wolves.

And with this simplicity, I’ve found some sort of basic, perfect happiness. Things are as they should be.

A horse I didn't take and a volcano I didn't find

Lately, I've come upon this a lot. People who take one look at me and think, “We want your money and will use your vulnerability as a foreigner to subtly lie and manipulate you into giving it to us.” While I’m not opposed to using this genre of methodology on hapless victims like my brothers (for character definition, see “I’m killing things with my face”, footnote section), I do not care to be the target of it. In fact, I hate being the target of it. It’s like after you get your hair cut, and you’re sitting in the chair astounded at the transformation between the haggled head of hair from an hour ago and the sleek figure in the mirror now, and in this moment of weakness the stylist brings out his/her most sophisticated hair jargon and mixes it with subtle guilt-driving mechanisms – dry hair and broken ends don’t just happen on their own, after all – to make you feel as if the trio of brilliantly expensive conditioning and styling products he/she is suggesting are not just an option but the only option if you ever hope to reveal your hair publicly again. No, I do not care at all for the manipulation over-sell.

So a week ago when I exited the highway and turned into dusty Anguahan, the village nearest to the Volcán Paricutín I’d set out early to climb, I was mildly put off by the cluster of men who, some standing and a few slumped against the wooden posts of a droopy horse-corral, took one look at the girl with a blonde ponytail riding through and swarmed, trying aggressively to coerce me into abandoning my motorcycle right there and renting a horse for the trek to the volcano. Little did they know this easy target was well-equipped; I had a page – the page – torn from my guidebook directing a route through Anguahan, past a giant satellite dish and down to a dirt parking lot where a volcano foot trail began. So not only was I instinctively inclined to ignore these offers, but I had a double-sided piece of fact-checked wisdom telling me that the horses were not necessary (and that the trail they led you on was “longer…and less interesting” than if you went by foot). I signaled a polite ‘no thank you’ and continued.

But ‘mildly put-off’ quickly escalated into ‘highly annoyed’ when one of these very determined horsemen galloped alongside my motorcycle through very narrow dirt streets to the town center, shouting out an unconvincing sales pitch in fragmented English, telling me I wouldn’t even be able to get to the trailhead on the bike. (This, I knew, was untrue). He was riding just enough ahead of me to kick up a cloud of dust so finally I stopped and explained in my best Spanish that as a matter of fact I did not require a horse, I would be driving to the trailhead and then walking to the volcano, and that I didn’t even like horses (true – I was an anomaly as a child growing up in a 4-H town), so thank you and goodbye. He looked back at me as if he hadn’t heard a word I’d said, and in English replied, “You can’t get there with a moto,” and trotted off.

So what happened next... I found the dirt lot (entirely accessible by motorcycle), I found a trail, but in 8 hours of searching I did not ever find the volcano. Yes, it sounds strange, like what? Someone threw an enormous camouflage tarp over it? How can you not find a volcano? I don’t know. I just know that I didn’t find it.

Ok, kind of I do know. I went the wrong way… more than once. Constantly, actually.

I started on the horse trail instead of the foot trail (I thought there were the same for the first few kilometers – they weren’t). This wound through a pine forest full of dead ends and loops and confusing detours, so after twice backtracking, and scowling over the part of my page that suggested “a compass might be helpful”, I turned to my woodsman intuitions and started seeking out traces of horse droppings like they were clues from Hansel & Gretel’s basket. Not as easy as you might think – these horses were not well fed. But, hunched and slow-moving, I managed to find my way out of the pines…

The problem then was that in the pine forest there were exotic plants and flowers and other aesthetically pleasing vegetation to entertain my senses, but once outside it was just kind of, well, dull. So I put my country girl hat on, jumped an easy fence, and started off on what I was sure was a more exciting shortcut (and what was really just a divergence from that path that wasn’t even the right path to begin with). This is not much worth going into… suffice to say there is a part of me that thinks that having grown up surrounded by trees and lakes and fields and things, that I can wander off “into nature” anywhere in the world and will eventually drift back into something familiar. Not true. Mr. Bowen’s property lines do not extend this far south. There was some slogging through ashy fields and climbing over lava rock and other dirt-filled activity. Again, not worth going into.

Instead, here we pause for the story of the volcano (because it’s really quite amazing). In 1943, a local farmer was out tending his crops when (according to my page) “the ground began to shake and swell and spurt steam, sparks and hot ash”. What’s funny is that instead of, oh, I don’t know, going to tell someone about it, he tried to cover it up… which obviously didn’t work. Over the next year the volcano grew up out of nowhere to 410 meters (2,800 meters by 1952) and completely covered two nearby villages with its slow but persistent trickle of lava. (Imagine being able to set up a lawn chair and actually watch molten lava destroy your home). No one was hurt, but the towns were clearly destroyed – save for a single church tower belonging to the village of St. Juan. It’s still there today, and this is what I emerged from my “shortcut” to find.

The scene here is really something staggering. Pitch-black rock spread in jagged waves for miles, with a single church tower poking up out of it all (photo at top of page). There was a family from Spain (who’d come on horse) trudging up and down the rocks in deck shoes, but once they’d tired, I had the place to myself. What I found most incredible in wandering around it all is that some devout and seriously motivated locals make the journey to the crumbled remains of the church alter to keep it fresh with flowers and other offerings (or are they called sacrifices? This sound gory. I’m not Catholic. I don’t know the lingo). Now these are people who believe.

I knew that from the church you could get to the volcano (albeit in a slightly backwards way), so I asked a very kindly old man (on a horse, leading two women, each one on a horse) which direction to head out. This turned into a complicated conversation that came to include the use of sticks (for lack of the word “crossroads” in Spanish) and a finger-traced map of the area drawn out on the dusty ground. I could hardly understand a word of his thick, unrecognized accent, but the hieroglyphs I got. Many thanks were extended, and I departed.

I walked for hours along the drawn-in-the-dirt path without seeing another walker (or horse), past roadside alters to the Virgin Guadalupe and goats wandering from who knows where (to who knows where). Twice, a truck passed (despite prior claims by numerous sources that the trail was totally “unreachable” by vehicle): the first time it was going in the opposite direction, and the second time I was aimlessly climbing in the rocks (trying to keep myself entertained after hours of solitude) and couldn’t scramble back quickly enough to hail a ride or even to ask if I was on the right trail. So I continued walking past an endless expanse of black and weaving between small mountains to a destination whose existence I could neither see nor verbally confirm. Finally, there was a sign in the distance…

Volcan ⇑ (2 horas)
Geologico ==> (1 km.)

This was unbelievable. (Two more hours??!) I looked at the time on my camera (for lack of a watch). It was 3:30. Already I’d been walking for 6 hours, which was far outside of anything the page predicted. Even if I made it to the volcano by 5:30, it would be, according to the page, another 3 ½ hours to get back. Which meant that even if I beat all time estimates, I would still be in a race to make it back by dark. Geologico, whatever it was, was only a short kilometer away. And its path seemed to be heading towards what my highly keen sense of direction told me was town.

So while disappointed about having to give up on the volcano, I was delighted with having a new important-sounding destination that was unknown even to the infinite wisdom of the page. The new path was lovely, tra-dee-la, wildflowers flanking me on both sides and birds chirping and nice smells and all those other things that make up pleasant postcard moments. And them WHAM! The record screeched to a halt. I turned a curve to find an enormous metal gate with serious barbed wire extending from it on either side (the gate closed, ironically, with a heavy padlock inscribed “American Lock”). Why, WHY put up a sign for an ambiguous geological attraction when it is barred from entry by a gate suggesting deranged captives or a nuclear reactor explosion. NO! I would not be denied two sights in one day (plus, this seemed like it was the only way back before dark). So I mulled a bit, kicked some dirt, fumed over the thought of the horse-guided folks sipping on margaritas by now, and pulled that country girl hat back out of my sack… there was a tree right next to the gate with a branch low enough on my side to where I could climb up onto it. From there I snaked my way onto a slightly higher one on the opposite side, crossing into the “other side of the fence” airspace, then worked my way down until I was hanging by my hands and able to drop the short foot or two back to the ground (it was nowhere near this graceful, and I actually sat on the tree branch for a few minutes wondering how long it might take for someone to happen by with a key to the gate and/or a ladder).

From here it was more postcard-perfect scenery (taken this time with a drop of caution; I was, after all, on the other side), but it kind of just seemed to keep going… and going… Where was this Geologico? (What was this Geologico, for that matter?) I walked double or triple the promised one kilometer and noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Finally, I threw my hands up. This place was nothing but empty promises. I was just about to… well, actually, I don’t know what I was about to do, I didn’t have much of a plan or many options, now being trapped inside quite a lot of barbed wire… but at a good moment, I came around a bend to find two men sitting under a tree – a peach tree! – with a transistor radio spitting out some mix of static and salsa music behind them. I could have kissed them, I was so happy to see other humans! “Anguahan?” they repeated after me (I was finished with Geologico), “Oh yeah, it’s only another kilometer down this path.” Ah! Hoooome freeee. (But why are you looking at me like that… Oh, right, I’m an out-of-bounds American who has infiltrated your security gate and is now likely trespassing on your property. Right.)

I stood for a few moments to offer what I could in the way of Spanish conversation, and they finished by very graciously (considering the circumstances, and my Spanish) handing me peaches fresh off the branch. Thus I continued through the rest of the overgrown grove with the bounce back in my step. There was, of course, another huge fence at the end of the path, but a dog or some other claustrophobic animal had come before me and conveniently dug his way under the fence, so I slipped out that way.

So to finish this long story, I made it back to my bike (whose tires had not been slashed by angry, dejected horseman) and eventually back to my dumpy hotel whose grimy surrounds I was perfectly outfitted for in my veil of dirt and ash. When I finally put the bike to rest for the night, my parking-attendant friend looked me up and down and with a peculiar expression on his face and asked “Where did you go today?” (Followed in his eyes with, “To wrestle with pigs? To volunteer at the garbage heap?”)

“To the volcano.”
“Really!? By yourself!?”
“Yes…”
“Did you get a horse?”
“No.”
“You didn’t!? Did you get to the volcano?”
(Short pause to consider a pride-preserving white lie).
“No.”
“Did you walk?!”
(Ah, stop making those exclamatory questions! Can’t you see I don’t want to talk about it…)
“Yes”.
“Oh, you can’t walk, you must rent a horse.”

No. You can walk. You don’t have to rent a horse. That’s just a manipulative sales pitch. (And okay, if you do, why didn’t someone make that clearer on this PAGE IN MY GUIDEBOOOK?) It’s just that I… well… it didn’t work out this time.

A few days later I sitting on the beach and a horseman appeared to ask if I wanted a ride down the beach. No thank you. I’m fine just where I am.

Guanajuato to Uruapan - or - Paradise to Hell

A not-so-quick recap of the points on the map I've hit in the past five days...

Guanajuato
Guanajuato is Mexico’s most fanciful, imaginative creation – it’s like a real-life trip down the rabbit hole. Tunnels carved out of solid rock lead into a city where colorful houses stacked on one another crawl up the mountains, and the crooked, narrow streets that wind between them are microcosms of lively characters and daily routines: in the paths that surround Plaza Baratillo (where I stayed), old crotchety women vend bright flowers out of plastic buckets just a few steps from the three “gordita sisters” (as named by an American friend) – one to cook, one to stuff and one to collect the money – who dominate the food-cart market and will send you away hungry if you arrive too late. Inside a nearby storefront is Guanajuato’s first and only sex shop, opening their doors after the sun goes down to reveal a confused mix of hemp/Rastafarian wares and adult-only playthings, and across the plaza is Café Zilch where American students pair with Mexican locals for acoustic guitar duets – sometimes singing out-of-place Beatles tunes and other times originals about black cats and love. Wander through the dense trees and sidewalk tables of the central garden and you’re bound to run into a crazy curly-haired teenager who roams town banging on a cowbell and screams “Photo!” whenever he sees you, then jumps onto something or dangles off a ledge for a quick pic. (at night he serves up drinks at the dim, artsy hangout, Barfly). Church bells (along with roosters and dogs) don’t ever rest. Spanish teachers teach by way of immersion, escorting lucky groups to shady, all-night salsa clubs. You meet other Americans who will hitchhike with you in the back of a rickety truck to the seafood tents at a nearby lake, and others who will challenge any slew of locals to a game of pool. Guanajuato is Utopia. The sun always shines.

(So much happened in here that to throw it in with these others and skip the details it deserves is to do it a serious injustice, but for the sake of time, we must go on…)

Next I drove two hours east of Guanajuato to…

San Miguel de Allende
In San Miguel, German DJs manage trendy jewelry boutiques (with streamlined turntables dangling at waist-height from the ceiling) and hip hostelers drag on Mexican-branded cigarettes and talk about the silversmith classes they’re taking. A man from Italy, the self-appointed “city guide” who speaks five languages, roams the town with news of the latest gallery openings and live music and adds (with a business card), “My profession is in real estate”. Sushi and expensive coffee and Middle Eastern fare are readily available in high-design restaurants alongside hoards of “Mexican” eateries with fountains, tropical plants, waiters who speak English and baskets of bread in the place of tortillas. The guidebook claims “Locals are especially fond of fireworks…” and sure enough, I was jolted awake at 5 a.m. on Sunday to the sound of what at first thought was a gang riot but turned out instead to be that of super-powered firecrackers… ending in just enough time for the church bells to start ringing (at least an hour later). Some years ago the city was named one of the top twenty places in the world to retire and it definitely wasn’t kept a secret: San Miguel feels like SoHo taken over by the AARP folks who never cash their social security checks.

(Admittedly, however out-of-place and vulgar the foreign capital here, the rich, artsy feel was like a hot bath after a long day. Indulgence, if only for 24 hours.)

Crossing over to the state of Michoacan, 200 miles southwest of San Miguel, I found…

Pátzcuaro
The rough story of this town, as I understand it, is that a resourceful priest came to Patzcuaro centuries ago when it was inhabited by the Purepecha people and taught them all sorts of “crafts” to reduce eventual dependence on the spreading Spanish empire. Craftwork must have seemed rosier than field labor, because they’re still mad about crafts today. The small red-roofed town has a few interesting plazas where sticky-faced kids holding melting ice cream crowd around Purepecha dancers in ceremonial mask and costume, and women selling enchiladas try to entice you into a spots at their plastic-covered picnic tables with promises of “free drinks!” (pointing to the grape and orange Fanta at the middle of the table). Once the towns sights are exhausted, it’s off to nearby Lake Patzcuaro. This is not a trip made in search of jet skis and parasailing; though the lake is enormous, it’s been a repository for untreated sewage long enough to move the whitefish business out of nature and into hatcheries (and to make squeamish tourists cringe when a local boy jumps in for a swim). The tiny villages surrounding the lake each boast a trademark craft: lacquered goods, corn cane figures, copperware, stone statues, etc. When I went to see the home of “Mexico’s most famous mask makers”, I expected that the masks would be on prominent display, like in the rest of the towns… Not the case. Locations of the mask makers are marked with small signs, and you have to knock on their door, enter through their courtyard and make yourself a guest in their home to have a look at the clay creations depicting kings, snake-faced men, Eskimos, and yes, even Shrek. (The flaw in this knock-and-enter system is that it’s easy to mistake doorways. Luckily, residents are kind, even when you interrupt their cooking.)

There’s an cone-shaped island – Janizito – in the middle of the lake that is the place for Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations, but to visit in the off-season, it appears to be not much more than steep walkways filled with cheap knick-knacks and men making butterfly nets. Crowning the top of the island is an odd mosaic-statue of revolutionary hero Jose Morelos thrusting his fist into the sky – odd yes, but somehow wonderful.

Thirty miles further south…

Uruapan
Uruapan is a dump. The guidebook’s description as it being “… a very traditional ‘Mexican’ city retaining some colonial ambience”, is like calling Gary, Indiana “a waterfront town with real estate potential”. This city is a whole lot of dingy billboards hanging over crammed storefronts selling plastic shoes and hoochie women’s clothing. In my hotel room, the windows are cracked and don’t shut all the way; the toilet is missing its seat and the back lid is broken in half; the one light in the room casts an orange-ish, mind-of-a-serial-killer tint over the dingy floor; and a desk with three legs leans precariously in the corner. Also, just outside my door is a rock on a pedestal. It's not a pretty, sparkly rock or one of those semi-translucent ones that people put lights under. It's just a plain, grey rock. And it's on a pedestal. (I am only paying $10 a night for this place). To make matters worse, the people are about as sunny as the grit on their streets. The night shift manager at the hotel will not feed my knowledge of the area nor further my Spanish with my favorite game, “Ask the front desk”, because he is much too busy IMing someone a lot of hearts and smiley faces.

The odd thing about this charmless place is that is has beautiful “surrounding attractions” – a volcano, waterfalls, national park (see picture) – so I’ve been using it as a homebase for exploring anything NOT in the city. Tomorrow I leave Uruapan for Playa Azul, which, after here will doubtless feel like paradise regained.

(Just as an added item of interest, I was pulled over here – or waved over rather by two cops standing on the corner – for going the wrong way on a one way street [ironically, because I’ve gone the wrong way on a one-way in Mexico many times on purpose and never had more than a finger shaken at me, but this time it was totally on accident], and when I went along with the ticket they were giving me and asked when I could pay it at the station, the possibility of cash in their pockets disappeared and they let me off. A useful thing to learn about Mexico – don’t feed the crooked.)

Up next: The story of how I lost a volcano.

Some business.

1) First, I don’t know how to say it without sounding like a sentimental schmuck, but a million thank yous to everyone who has commented, emailed or sent along general encouragement. What a surprise to find that my ramblings have a home on the net (and in your hearts, aww). Your support has kept me firm in the idea of selling this trip as a book. And money = more miles = more blogs. So thank you.

2) Some of you have emailed me to ask if I can tell you when a new posting is up. I can only guess that this is because you tire of looking at the same thing for weeks on end and would rather use your internet navigation time to read non-neglected blogs. So yes, if you want to be notified when a new post goes up, send an email, subject line “Tell Me”, to tracy.motz@gmail.com.

3) I’ve finally uploaded some pictures to Flickr. You can view them at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/talkingwithstrangers/. Be forewarned, they’re of the generic, mom-pleasing sort and will not be interesting to most. They’re not interesting to me, and I took them. (Peter Barnes, do not look, they will waste your life.)