Monday, November 19, 2007

Mexico City


The first day of our stay in Mexico City we visited the Archaeological Museum. It was fabulous and had many artifacts from the Aztec and Teutihuacan periods.

The picture of the city is of Mexico City in its earlier days. It was built on a lake as a floating, yet secured city.


Teutihuacan architecture.

Drew at the Museum of Freida Kahlo, a famous Mexican artist and poet.




The main reason we wanted to visit Mexico City was that it was close to the Mexican pyramids as we wanted to compare them to the Egyptian pyramids we saw earlier on our trip. We are on the pyramid of the sun with the pyramid of the moon in the background. Chris is halfway up the pyramid of the sun. huffing and puffing and looking for an excuse to stop. Remember, if you are laughing at me back at sea level that we are more than 2km above sea level, and my heart was racing just to look up at the steps.

Before heading off to the pyramids, we had lunch with our tour group and were serenaded by the mariachi band.






Over a two day holiday period we were in Mexico City for the Festival of the Dead., There were many celebrations and offerings as this festival means alot to the Mexican peoplle. They beleive that the dead have gone to a better place annd this is why they are celebrating. This scene, one of many throughout the country, was at the palace.


In the park near our hotel in central Mexico, this little boy fell in the polluted fountain and had to disrobe his also polluted nappy and pants and dry them on the fence. No matter, the family were all happy and having a lovely day. (We mean the real family - not the papier machier characters which were part of a union protest for more wages)






Needing some dental work, drew accepted a leaflet handed to him on the street for a discount at the local dentist, but when finding the 1 room dentistry and the Spanish speaking dentist wearing street clothes and standing beside the 2 dentist chairs, he became a little wary about trusting the ´´´´dentist´´´´. The deciding factor in his imminent escape was the terrifying view of a pair of pliers and multigrips on the dentists chairs. Later, having received a recommendation from the staff at our hotel he took a taxi and over a period of 3 days visited the recommended dentist to undertake root canal surgery. On the 3rd day while he was bravely and perhaps somewhat foolishly undergoing root canal surgery by the Mexican dentist, Chris was enjoying a lovely day tour to the silver mining township of Taxco. In the town of Taxco, Chris is pictured on a balcony overlooking the town. Behind the trattoria Marco Polo in Cuernauaca is an open courtyard with jewellery and traditional clothes shops.


Mexican folklorica dancing was amazing. The colors and sound memorised us and the theatre was beautiful.





Sunday, November 11, 2007

Jamaica

Dunns River Falls were beautiful, but somehow I´ve got this out of order and can´t work out the Spanish editing language to get the photos back in order.

From Montego Bay airport we headed straight to our Jamaican all inclusive reosrt. This is the view from our room.The resort was a nice change from the cheap motels we´d been frequenting. But we decide after this to go back to bed and breakfast only because otherwise we tend to stay at the hotel and just eat and drink too much. Now we can leave the hotel, but stilleat and drinktoo much.

The view from the glass bottom boat back to Pebbles resort was pretty, but Drew foundthe glass bottom boat helped him to more than remember last night´s dark and stormy moments.














Having been warned by all and sundry not to use the unregistered taxis or public buses to travel to Dunns River Falls, of course, we did just that. Had a great trip on the very crowded bus and loved climbing up the falls.




At Negril we stayed at a clifftop hotel, with great views over to the sunset. The hotel had a free shuttle to its sister resort on the beachfront of seven mile beach. So once again we had to spend some time lazing on the beach and wandering up and down passing all the cheap beachfront bars and cafes. One night we went to a clifftop bar called Ricks cafe and enjoyed a quiet apperitif watching the cliff divers and the vast array of locals and tourists strut their stuff.






On a day trip from Negril, we visited Black River and took a boat ride to check out the wildlife. Crocodiles with no teeth, beautiful birdlife - unlike the beautiful birdlife witnessed on Negril beach. Then we toodled off to Ys falls and played in the water. Next we hopped on the bus and tried to take a short cut to the rum factory. The bus stopped and started and grunted and finally made it so we had many samples, as if we needed an excuse.






Tarzan the monkey man at Ys falls.








A typical scene in Jamaica.