Near-term plans

Quick shoulder update: it was much better after about 3 days, but then started healing more slowly, although it continues to improve. About a week after the accident, I’ve got about full range of motion back (if sometimes slowly and tenderly) and the sense of weakness I had in my arm is fading. Nice big yellow-brown bruise over the entire front of my right shoulder, though! I think it is definitely on the mend, but I’m going to have it checked by a doctor when we get to our next larger city in a day or so. Any reiki people out there, feel free to send some universal light this way!

The rains have finally come, and so the hole in the roof that acts as my alarm clock has proved an impediment, along with the other two or three sizeable holes in the roof of our room in Mazunte. They offered to swap us to another room the first night it rained, but I wasn’t eager to be schlepping our packs down all the stairs in the rain with my shoulder. So Petra and I noted where the wet areas were and moved the bed and our things into the opposite corner, covering our packs with our raincoats just in case. So far this has worked for keeping us dry, and can really provide a lovely atmosphere with the waves crashing, thunder and lightning in the distance and a gentle mist pouring through our roof.

In other news, Petra and I have been talking and are planning on wrapping up the Mexican adventure over the next couple of weeks. There are still definitely two more places we want to see, both here in the Chiapas region: San Cristobal, where a friend of Petra’s back from the days when she was squatting with artists in Paris, and Palenque which has ruins and comes highly recommended by everyone we’ve ever talked to who’s been there. After that, though, we think it is about time to dust off the passports and head on. That does mean we’re going to miss the Yucatan, which is unfortunate. But funds are starting to get a bit tight and we need to head somewhere to make them last longer.

From Mexico, you have two overland travel-on options. One is Belize, which is English speaking and I’ve heard is more expensive but otherwise know very little about. The other one is Guatemala, which has been our planned destination all along. It is supposed to be cheaper than Mexico and again comes highly recommended, but which just got hit by a tropical storm, has a volcano erupting near the capital, and apparently even has giant sinkholes. So we’re not sure what the full situation is there and will have to do some research over the next week. If anyone happens to see any news on what things are like in Guatemala while you’re online, do us a favor and post a comment with the link or send us an e-mail.

Life and love in Mazunte

We traveled out of Puerto Escondido with another guest from our guest house there, Sheila, down the coast a couple of hours to Mazunte. Sheila had found this great little hostel right on the beach and insisted we had to stay there with her. It doesn’t have a name yet (UPDATE: it's called Hostal Colibri) and was just reopened a few weeks ago, but the place where we’re staying (50 pesos per person per night, plus 5 pesos kitchen usage/p/n) is pretty nice. Some of the rooms are ultra-ultra-basic and musty, but the new owner Steve is working on it and it had a to offset that there is a deck that looks out over the water and steps that lead down to the sand. Oh, and a fairly nice book swap that I am enjoying. Absolutely nothing else to do in town, but really… what else more do you need? Sheila unfortunately had to head out of town the next day (hope all is well!), which was unfortunate but meant we could move up to her old room (sorry). It’s up a ladder through a trap door at the top of the hostel where you can see the waves out the window and listen to them all night. It even has a convenient hole in the roof where the morning sun shines /right/ in my face at an unknown (we lost our alarm clock in Poza Rica and still haven’t found a decent replacement) but relatively acceptable time to get up in the morning. They’re planning to fix that soon since if it rains, then a hole in the roof sucks...but as long as it doesn’t rain, I kind of like it.

So we moved up into the attic, and I went out to play in the waves. The beach here is very different: after you go out very far, it gets very rocky – a little smaller than fist-sized, it seemed. And they swirl every time a wave comes along, which generally gave the effect of being in a washing machine with a bunch of boxing midgets. But I looked around a bit, and found a part of the beach that stays sandy farther out.

The other thing about the rocks is that they mean it’s relatively deep here, and so the waves break closer to shore. I had noticed this before, but learned it first hand when I got caught up in a nice big wave I thought I could use to propel me back into shore until I realized it was going to break almost on the sand. My shoulder got jammed into the ground -- really hard -- and my back snapped over top in an uncomfortable way. Then I had to awkwardly lurch, on all-4s-minus-1 and with a stiff back, out of the froth before the next wave knocked me around some more.

It was the most acute pain I’ve ever experienced in my life -- I honestly thought I had broken a bone in my shoulder somewhere, and my arm was all-but immobile. And I assumed I had thrown my back out along with it. But I wasn’t concussed and seemed to still be relatively mobile, so held my shoulder and made my way back up to the room. I called up to Petraand she started coming down the steps, and I told her I had hurt myself really bad. And Petra sat down on the steps and said, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

And that’s how I knew that Petra /really/ loved me.

I know how much she loves me from other times, too; over the years we’ve both shared experiences where we’ve shown how much we care for one another. But it just showed me the real depth of her feelings again that being able to move Petra, who is normally the most here’s-the-plan-now-move person you could ever hope for in a clutch, to the point of illness just because I had hurt myself.

Then she got back up and we hobbled down to talk to Steve, who looked at my shoulder and said he didn’t think it was broken and things should be okay. But Petra still felt really ill all the next day, which I’m /really/ sorry about. I love her, too, and definitely don’t want her to go through that again and so will try to think things out more fully from now on.

So we kept an eye on it the first night and applied an ice-aspirin-tiger balm strategy. Of course, our room is at the top of a ladder but the bathroom is at the bottom, and swinging on and off the ladder was a bit tricky. My back was also stiff and sore, so movement in general was out for a day, and Petra was wonderful in looking after me. But we stayed pretty much completely inside our room for a couple of days.

So now I feel like we’ve become the old crazy couple in the attic, the ones that make the creepy moaning sounds but whom no one ever sees --  except for sometimes, late at night, in front of the book swap.  But the shoulder has healed way faster than I thought it would; it still hurts, but a couple days later and I’ve pretty much got full mobility back and at this rate in a few more all will be back to normal.

I don’t mind staying.

Odds and ends

 -- A camouflage painted VW van with half a dozen surf boards strapped to the top just pulled into our cabanas. I think the expression “Surf the Revolution” is incredibly cool.

-- The automated announcement service at the Matehuala bus station sounded shockingly like a Spanish-speaking version of the insane computer in Portal. I kept imagining what it must have been saying: “The 11:45 bus to San Luis Potosi is now departing from gate 8. There will be cake aboard the bus. And we will not try to murder you at all. Instead we’ll simply try to drive you insane by making you watch a horrible D&D movie, dubbed into Spanish. For three hours.”

-- Horchata Tang -> surprisingly satisfying substitute for the real thing. Allen, take note in case you see it in some specialty section. Just don’t make it full strength.

-- Btw, I’ll mention again: getting a 20 liter water jug saves you a bunch of money over buying a bunch of pre-cooled 1.5 liter bottles. Petra says I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating. We can get a 20 liter jug for between 13 and 25 pesos plus bottle deposit, whereas a 1.5 liter water bottle costs usually 11 pesos each. If you buy a packet of Tang in one of about 20 flavors (about 4 pesos average per pack) you can easily flavor 6-8 liters. Now for the effort of carrying around a 45lb (20 kilo) jug a bit you can save lots of money over buying small bottles of water or soda. If you’re traveling mid- to long-term, take heed.

-- In Poza Rica, the oil-field city we couchsurfed in for a week, there was a café that served café petrolero – oilman’s coffee. And it was seriously dark, although Petra (the resident coffee expert) declared it not very strong. But the place had free refills and was open 24 hours. Still would blow the socks off, say, your average cup of coffee in Ohio.

-- In Puerto Escondido, we have iguanas. About six to ten of them would sun themselves in the morning on the edge of a wall under the kitchen, and one or two could usually be found roaming around during the afternoon. Also, multiple smaller lizards to be found in the toilet bowls. Friends from law school might remember why I find that a highly stressful situation.

-- A few weeks after we arrived in Mexico, I was interested to see that Mexico City (which is also what we in the US would call a state) legalized gay marriage. I don’t understand all the ins-and-outs of Mexican politics, but my first blush reaction is that when a country as traditionally Catholic starts to legalize gay marriage, even if only in parts of the country, that is a real sign of the times.

-- One of the other long-term residents of our cabanas asked to use our computer to check her internet, then offered us some bracelets in thanks (she and her boyfriend make jewelry to sell on the beaches). I asked Petra to pick out mine, and she chose one of knotted waxed thread in purple, black and ochre. Not my first choice, but I kind of liked it. Then I noticed it matched the floppy hat I got in Bangkok, a hat that Petra also picked out for me. I take it my fashion consultant has a preferred color-scheme in mind for me.