The island was ok, but to be honest I enjoyed it far more simply because of the people I was with. We all made friends; Jon with an animal he aptly named “Black-Dog-White-Balls” and Gemma made *extremely* good friends with her 24 year old blonde diving instructor (I haven´t asked her what colour his balls were). W hung out, went cycling in the blazing heat (Naomi Stoll is a trooper) and the girls and I went snorkelling. Unfortunately, Jon literally “missed the boat” on that occasion (which, Jon, I remain permanantly sorry for). I know it´s a cliche phrase, but “it really is another world down there” under the water. I was a bit scared at first, particularly since I´d never gone before (I´d never even tried on those flipper things) and the boat simply dumped Naomi and I out of our depth on our own whilst shouting that they´d “Be back in about an hour”. Naomi was wonderful though, and patiently manouvered me through several panic attacks and a bout of acute sea sickness (has anyone actually got sea sickness out of a boat before? I have reached new levels it seems…)

Coming back on the boat to the mainland Jon decided to export several boxes of Lucky Charms – a cereal that I believe has been made illegal in the Uk due to it´s exceptionally high sugar content. Mark, if you are reading this, watch out, because this cereal is coming your way and Jon assures me that it really does make your faeces change colour.

After we got the boat we headed to the capital on an 8 hour coach journey. It was pretty long, but the service was really plush. In the States the poorest people got coaches, but here they seem reserved for aristocrats and tourists. We spent a night in Tegucigulpa and the next day got up at 4am to get 3 different flights (bloody crazy central american airlines!). I am now absolutely exhaughsted, but we have found a hotel to sleep in until our final journey home begins tomorrow…

I don’t think I can quite describe just how beautiful the Lake really is - if you really care, you should search for some pictures on the web because this kind of scenery is just beyond my ability to write. The lake is so huge that you’d mistake it for a sea if it wasn’t so still, and the absence of waves means that the reflections of the volcanoes and mountains that surround it are reflected in the water. In the afternoons everything clouds over and the lake goes this bluish gry colour – Jon described it best – like the fur of certain siamese cats.   Our boat took us to San Pedro, which is one of the small towns around the lake. It’s an eclectic place; mayan washer women take their clothes down to the lake and scrub them on the rocks, weave and bake bread, but the place itself is defined by tourists. I walked in to one restaraunt and asked, in Spanish, if they were serving and the guy looked at me like I’d just asked him an incredibly difficult riddle - I thought my Spanish might have been a bit dodgy, but it turned out that he couldn’t speak a word, even though he’d been living there for several months. Almost everything in San Pedro is set up for tourists; as soon as we got off the boat we were being offered horses and kayaks. Our first day there we hired out 4 horses - although I think they ended up riding us more than we rode them – they just started breaking in to spontaneous galloping whenever they felt like it, round mountain passes, through canopes and under vines… It was incredible, if vaguely life threatning.  

Thinking about it, I really, really loved my time by the lake. You can wonder up in to the main heart of the village and eat lunch for about 25p with “the locals” (God I hate that phrase). I remember sitting on this little cobbled step looking down over the village and towards the volcanoes, feeling the sunshine and trying to conceptualise “being in Guatemala”, when I was approached by the sweetest little girl you’ve ever seen who came over to state in Spanish that her name was Manuella and that her favourite flavour ice cream was strawberry. She demanded that I tell her my corresponding information and the name of my parents – I did as I was told and, seemingly satisfied, she nodded and walked off.

The next day was market day; so we got a chicken bus to Chichi, where all the villagers come down from the surrounding pueblos to trade twice a week. The whole scene is so packed it was like something out of “Where’s Wally”: Mayan women dressed in traditional bright colours; reds, pinks and greens wrapped around their waists over and over again and baskets on their heads; old ladies selling vegetables sitting on the floor with reddish brown skin and wrinkles so deep they look like they’ve been carved in; live chickens and people weaving in and out of the smoke from swinging catholic chains; baskets of flowers being sold on side steps and rich tapestries and throws dangling from hundreds of hangers; men selling nuts and jade, silver and pocket watches being sold from broken glass cabinets… (it was really nice to find a market not dominated by polyester). Your senses are literally overwhelmed as people approach you with dolls, braclets, blankets - everybody haggling.

The day after Jon and I hired another motorbike and headed up in to the mountains. The volcanoes there are covered in deep green vegetation – the patchwork farms and fields of England gone vertical. Jon and I kept climbing round these near vertical roads (the bike gave out several times) winding around the sharpest corners very slowly. The clouds spilled between the peaks of the mountains, looking exactly like smoke – as if there were fires in the valleys below. As we climbed we passed mayan villagers doing what they always do - carrying huge machetes for farming, women in bright red and purple lugging huge bundles of firewood on their heads with kids strapped to their chests. Once we took a wrong turning and headed up the main cobbled high street of a mayan village - the only vehicle on the road Jon and I skirted past dogs, children, chickens and raised eyebrows. Once we got really high we started going through the clouds; the first thing that hits you is the sudden drop in temperature and then your complete lack of vision kicks in.

After 4 hours straight of un-ecological biking, we came home to find Naomi and Gemma. They’d decided to spend the day climbing up “the nose” – a nearby mountain – instead of gallavanting about on unsafe motorbikes through unknown territories. Unfortunately their pleasant mountain walk led to them being held up by three kids - all of which were brandishing machetes. Ouch. They took Gemma’s camera and some of Naomi’s money – when Naomi started crying one of them tried to give her back 5 dollars compensation but the ring leader wouldn’t let him. No one was hurt or anything, and as Jon said, this is no phenomenon of the “third world”; it’s just like what happens in London all the time as a consequence of massive disparities of wealth - that’s not to say it’s justifiable, but it is understandable. Gemma and I went to the local police station to report the offence and try and get a letter to present to insurance. We walked in to this tiny office in the village to be confronted by 3 absolute characters – one fat, one short one lean and all totally incompetent. I’m telling you it was a perfect setting for a comedy – a sort of fawlty towers in a Guatemalan police station. These three policemen proceeded to pretend to know what they were doing by getting an age old type writer out of a dusty cuboard and typing their report on very thin paper, quite clearly mimicing what policemen were supposed to do from their knowledge of movies. This was done whilst simultaneously trying to get Gemma and I to go out dancing with them that evening because Guatemalan women were just a little too *catholic* for their liking. To write the statement, they required Gemma’s father’s name, her age and whether she was married or had a boyfriend. We managed to explain the story to them by acting it out – it’s funny how there is a universal sign for “brandishing machete” (make a fist , hold it sideways and sort of jab it up and down whilst keeping your eyes really wide). One of the policemen made his mate re-type the letter because it would make him look more superior to point out mistakes and, having finally received draft two, Gem and I decided to leave despite the torrential downpour going on outside. I cannot quite emphasise how much rain actually came out of the sky that afternoon – the streets turned in to waterfalls, the roads in to rapids – as Gem and I quasi-waded quasi-swam back all the villagers looked out from their porches with expressions that said more plainly than words, “What the fuck are you doing?“.

So now, after all that, we’ve come back to Antigua ready to get up at 3:30am tomorrow to catch a shuttle bus all the way to Honduras.   

The next morning we got up early to catch our efficiently pre arranged bus to Tikal from outside our hotel. Tikal is about an hour’s drive away; a set of Guatemalan ruins set in the deep rainforest. I’ve never been in forest like that before; you can here the howler monkeys as loud and ferocious as lions, you pass neon orange caterpillars, terrifyingly mechanical looking spiders with metallic legs, dangling vines, twisted tree roots that are so contorted they look like surrealist creatures… and the mosquitoes! Jon got bitten over 20 times on just one forearm by these ubba bugs. As if all this wasn’t enough, set right in the heart of this crazy setting is an ancient Mayan city full of towering limestone pyramids that you can climb up on to via rickety makeshift wooden ladders. At the top of Temple IV you can see this huge blanket of deep green rainforest with the peaks of these giant structures just peering out over the top like dinosaurs in a lake – it really is breathtaking.   When we finally made it back to Flores I was exhausted – but Jon had set his heart on this motorbike idea and in the end we hired one. I was so glad we did though – we drove all round the island of Flores (even if it is just 2 miles long at its widest point) and then drove deep in to the Guatemalan countryside around the lake. The bumpy paths were filled with deep muddy puddles from the periodic downpours and Jon and I got absolutely caked in mud  as we went up and down the hills that were filled with greenery, little vegetable patches and kids faces peering out at you from behind every post. Riding out in to the sunset felt fantastically like a scene out of Motorcycle diaries or something! To start with I thought all of the Guatemalans living in the surrounding countryside might be a bit hostile towards us because they all sort of stopped and stared as we passed – but they all broke in to a smile the second that you smiled at them. I think more than anything they just thought we looked a little absurd; covered in mud, swerving around and nearly crashing in to goats, chickens etc and grinning like maniacs. 

 As if that wasn’t enough for one day Jon and I then jumped on a night bus to Guatemala City. It was pretty extreme, particularly since I had acute diarrhoea and the only toilet consisted of a tin cell with a hole leading out on to the fast moving open road. We were met at Guatemala City with a man with a placard who took us straight to Antigua, which is where we are now. It’s an absolutely beautiful place with a load of Spanish colonial architecture, tucked in between 3 huge volcanoes. The air is really cool and clear up here because we are higher up and the whole place is set up for tourists; the shop order goes hotel, language school, internet café, laundrette, coach company, food place and then repeats. Still, I haven’t seen much of it yet because I have spent the last day and a half in bed trying to recover and being exceptionally poor company for Jon. Here’s to being well…     

After about half an hour travelling on a speedboat that was driving at a 45 degree angle over the water, crashing in to waves and chucking us about, the water started to turn lighter and greener and we pulled up at a small dock on Ambergris Caye. Walking down the dock, Jon and I saw a sting ray swimming below us in the clear water – little details like that really get me and remind me how far away I am from home – there really is nothing like that in the Thames! That said, the whole island is really quite breathtaking – it looks like a film set or something. Our hotel is literally built on the white sand and overlooks these turquoise waters that have patches of emerald and navy blue; the roads are all made of sand; there are palm trees everywhere and the local people are quite stereotypically Carribean. I love to hear Kriol, here is a little taster from my guidebook:

I’ll see you later = Ah wahn si yu layta

Fine thank you = Aarait

I am thirsty = Ah tosti

Jon and I made friends with a load of local kids who were able to teach us a bit more as we swam off of one of the local piers. The water really is undescribably beautiful; and if you put on goggles you can see hundreds of fish clustered just below the surface just a hair’s breadth away from you. The kids showed us how to feed them from our hands, pointed out the fish that would explode when you touch them and highlighted poisonous eels. Unfortunately I really hurt myself jumping off one of the piers as I sank too deep in the water and hurt my ear. One of the local strutting youths, a guy who goes by the name of “Wicked”, told me how to get the water out of it: you have to warm some sea water in your mouth, spit it in to your hand and pour it in to your ear. I was a bit dubious at frst, but it made me feel a bit better.

As well as swimming, jon and I have rented out bikes that have neither gears nor breaks – to stop you simply have to back pedal! We stopped on our bike trail so that Jon could climb monkey-style up a coconut tree . He managed to bring a few down and (after a lot of effort) we managed to get the thing open, drink the milk and feast on fresh coconut. Then we biked on to a lake where there are about 40 wild crocodiles, some of which are 13 feet long! Although we didn’t see any, the locals often come and tempt the crocodiles out of the water with fresh chickens to entertain tourists. Apparantly some of them will even swim across the lake for $30 – what kind of a stunt show is that?!

Today has been great because Naomi and Gemma (some best friends from my old school) have managed to make it to the island to stay with us on their travels. We’ve taken them to our local burrito bar and to our favourite swimming point. It’s so wonderful to have some more females around (and I don’t think Jon minds being the only guy either…).

Anyway, I’m off to spend the rest of the day in a hammock…tomorrow it’s Guatemala.

Like Los Angeles, Mexico City is a city of cities, but unlike LA its accessible; it´s green and white minis provide a taxi service that buzzes all over the city, and its tube system is so cheap and efficient it puts the London Underground to shame. Even the buskers are more “advanced”; instruments have become mechanised as people simply wonder the tubes playing requests for money with a CD player in hand and a speaker in a backpack.

 Our first real day in Mexico City and Jon and I met a Mexican film directer who Jon had met in last year´s London film festival for about 10 minutes. His name was Ricardo Benet, and he was a fascinating, wonderfully friendly guy who adopted us and told us all about his films. He writes and directs world cinema type stuff, setting several of his most famous films in Mexico around the theme of immigration to the 2 magnets for Mexican migrants, Mexico City and the USA. He took us all over the place, and he seemed to know everyone. He kept bumping in to other ”arty types”; opera singers, composers, film directors -but unlike in England his arty community didn´t seem exclusive or confined to the hugely rich – it was made up of all sorts of people. He took us to a little “village within the city” to the South with cobbled streets, church bells, quiet tree lined squares and little arty cafes on every corner – like I said, not the Mexico City we were expecting. Then he took us around Mexico University which has close to half a million students with theatre, music and drama facilities that looked and felt just like the South Bank in London. He even drove us to Frieda Carlo´s house, where he showed us her art and told us about her fascinating life – a feminist who painted herself with a monobrow who married a chauvenist, lived with a major disability and had passionate affairs with Communism and Trotsky.

The next day was more conventional; after Ricardo took us for a slap up breakfast in the Spanish colonial “house of tiles” (the Mexican equivalent of the Ritz) we headed in to the Zocolo, or central square. It´s a wonderful place, and you really get a sense of the layers of Mexican history as Aztec ruins from the 1300s lie alongside the Spanish colonial buildings, with the modern portaloos and McDonalds (the contribution of contemporary society) slightly absurdly superimposed on top of it all. Everything around the central square has a slightly odd look, not just because of the different layers of history, but also because the earthquakes have left everything standing at slightly odd angles – even the floor is dipped in some places. The surreal looking outcome is exaggerated by the fact that Mexico City is built on an ancient lake bed so the foundations aren´t very stable. The central cathedral is literally sinking in to the ground, dipping in the middle despite the Mexican government´s attempts to rescue it. It was really interesting to compare all this to the US, which seems so new and neat in comparison – its hard to believe that the US could be so much more economically advanced even though Mexico´s history and culture is so much deeper and richer.     

The whole square had a particularly electric atmosphere to it whilst we were there because of the recent electoral controversy. The square and the streets surrounding it were filled with gigantic white tents set up by Obrador and the left in protest against the electoral results. There was only 0.5% separating Obrador from the centre-right winner Calderon and Obrador is making accusations of electoral fraud, demanding a full recount and bringing the Mexican democratic institutions in to question. This is a particular soft spot in Mexico, whose population was only able to vote for a single party for over 70 years and is still dubious of electoral manipulation. Although there weren´t as many people in the streets protesting as the number of tents might have suggested, many of the main roads were blocked and leftist protestors even cut off the entrance to parliament, an action which resulted in some violence. Mexico may have appeared far more developed than I had expected it to be, but hearing the news gave me a sense of the fragility of that progress.

Moving away from the square the surrounding streets were filled with hundreds of market stalls (some less legal than others) selling everything from fly ridden chickens to guitars and ”alternative” abortions. Jon and I found several streets that only sold gigantic puffy  wedding dresses – 80% of the population are catholic and weddings here are a Big Deal. Girls have a special “coming of age” celebration when they reach 15, after which I guess they are able to marry. I couldn´t resist going in to one of these shops and pretending Jon was my fiancee so that I could try on one of these unbelievable wedding outfits. Informing the gentleman behind the counter that although we wouldn´t be buying today there was a good chance we would return to make a purchase tomorrow, I was shown to a large platformed cubicle with a heavy black curtain covering it. A quiet old woman dressed me – giving me a huge netted underskirt to make my dress puff out, and lacing up my corset – she even attatched a long white train longer than a room to the back of my dress. Then she asked me to step up on to a pedestal, turned these studio-like spot lights on me and threw back the curtain so that Jon could judge the transformation. I felt like I was in a fricking horse show or something! Jon pretended to be the “not easily impressed fiancee” and I the indignant future wife.

Heading homewards, we encountered a contrast to the glamour. Our hostel was right next to Sevilla tube station, at the end of a road that was sunk about a foot and a half. It had been raining, and the hostel owners had forgotten to inform us that when it rained, the sewage broke, flooded and bubbled up to fill the street with actual shit up to beyond your knees. Jon and I stood and looked at this sea of faeces as it began to get dark – the smell was absolutely diabolical - and realised that if we wanted anywhere to sleep that night, we were going to have to cross the 15 metres to our hostel door. Some old men were standing by the side of the road and laughing at us as we bought a set of black plastic bin liners and attached 3 to each foot in a makeshift attempt at  creating wellies. A real crowd had gathered by the time we made our first steps in to the sludge, with neighbours peering out from their windows and our hostel mates jeering from the safety of their clean rooms. I cannot describe exactly how it felt when my bags burst, sort of like a paralysing squeamishness came over me as I felt the sludge descend over my flip flops. Hiarious! We made it across in the end though – and after a very long, very hot shower I felt better (although I will never be able to wash away the pyschological scars).

The second night the sewage debacle happened again, but this time we all had to get out of the hostel to meet a guy who went to my college at Oxford. I´d been put in touch with him by one of my hosts in the States, and all I knew about him was that he was a very prestigious business-politics tycoon in Mexico. Hence it didn´t help my feelings of apprehension to turn up with my travel mates soaked through and knee deep in sewage! However, the gentleman we were visiting, Timothy Heyman, and his partner (a witty Mexican woman who looked exactly like a blonde Cleopatra), were incredibly polite, unjudgemental and hospitable. Their apartment on the 20th floor was one of the most stunning places I have ever seen, with huge views over the city, originial paintings by Diego, a library and a set of invisible butlers and wait staff. Trying desperately not to get our sewage ridden shoes on their white carpets, we sipped incredible drinks, ate an incredible meal and talked about politics and economics. Tim was an incredibly interesting and intelligent man who told us all about the current situation, about the government monopoly over petrol (Pemex) and the need for greater liberalisation and sustained democratic reform. It was an entirely different perspective on Mexico than the one given by Ricardo, but we felt like we´d got to hear both sides of the story.             

 We left Baracias the morning after a huge storm and, refusing to pay for the toll road, we began winding “Undead Red” round the “curvas peligrosas” (dangerous curves) of the mountains towards Mexico City - I´ve never experienced such hair pin bends! The road was pot holed, unfenced and covered in fallen rocks and trees from the night before. The scenery looked just like Switzerland or something, with these huge blue mountains and rain washed greeneery complete with cows, dogs, bulls and horses in the road. When we stopped in this cottage with a genuine smoking chimney set in a deep valley for breakfast, I literally expected Heidi to come skipping round the mountains yodelling away with a set of goats! There were just three things on the cottage menu: meat, rice or some kind of meat-rice combo. When we paid, the lady who served us kissed the money and crossed herself in front of her catholic shrine in the corner.

Failing to do the entire journey to Mexico City in one day, we pulled up in a surreal hostel and (since we were in the middle of severe storm no.54785837457) decided to stay in the first room we could. It turned out to be an extreme sort of love shack with an open toilet and a shower without a door in a room with a king size bed in the centre of it all. Privacy levels hit whole new lows. There was also a gigantic spa in one corner of the room which promptly exploded as soon as the guys turned it on, seeming to bring the storm inside and soaking the entire bed so we all had to sleep on the floor. Somehow though, we all managed to fit in to this hot tub (or “tepid tub”) and laughed a lot, the guys managing to drink over a litre of tequila.

You can imagine that the next morning, the guys did not feel like driving in to Mexico City. We left our car in the nearest air port car park and haggled a few guys in to taking us to our hostel. As soon as we checked in we had to head out to Mexico City airport on the underground to pick up Laura, Paul´s girlfriend, who is going to be with us out here for a while (finally, another FEMALE). It was only on arrival that she told us about the attempted plane attacks from England – we´d all been living in a car motel bubble and didn´t know a thing about it! Reading about the whole thing, as well as what´s happening in Lebanon, is really frightening.

Our first day in Mexico City, and Jon and I have spent the entire day in the airport trying to figure out our flight home (there is no way we can pass through the Darian Gap and even Jon doesn´t want to go through Columbia). Airports are human created hell zones, phone cards must have been invented as some kind of sick torture instruments and airline companies have a tendency to breed, separate and multiply as soon as you try and pin one down. I am very, very tired, but the outcome of it all appears to be that Jon and I are going to travel all the way through Central America (stay tuned folks), taking a flight from Panama City to Caracus to return home on the 11th September. 

The next day was spent in another Mexican garage until 4pm (the Mexican lunch break appears to be 2 hours)and there were ruptures in our group about whether to abandon our car or not. It was the fact that we had invested so much in it already that eventually made us shell out another 50 bucks each for a new fuel pump. It seemed to work, and we drove the last 4 hours down Baja to Le Paz where a drunk motel owner showed us to our room.

Looking at the map, you can see that to get from Le Paz to mainland Mexico directly requires you to get a ferry or drive all the way back up Baja and round, which means that the ferry companies can charge you what they like to go the small distance. Thus we had no choice but to shell out 100 dollars each to get us and the fatal car across to Topolabampo. The ferry was a day`s mission, boarding at one and arriving after ten, but the journey over the Sea of Cortes was beautiful. Jon and I saw some flying fish looking like little grey birds skimming over the air currents alongside the boat. The ferry itself was filled with rich Mexicans and their families who could afford to take holidays and drink copious cokes. I slunk away from the crowd a few times to find some quieter decks to share with my ipod. I saw a beautiful sunset sitting on the vibrating floor with my back against one of those FerryWhite walls. The reflections of the sun on the water looked like hundreds of fire mermaids swimming in a straight line just underneath the water from our ship to the horizon. Eventually the water put them out, and the sun disappeared.

When we arrived in Topolobampo it was pitch black. We`d all agreed not to drive by night what with the bandits and the police and it being Saturday night and all. Still, it was either drive or sleep on the side of the port so we set off to Los Mochis, the nearest town. It was one of the dodgiest places Ive ever seen; grimy, drunks staggering about, crazy drivers, no street signs or lights… It was past 11, so we decided to stay in one of the first hostels we found which turned out to be hell in a building. The room Jon and I stayed in simply had a sagging bed and a small plastic chair that had real human faeces smeared on it. Our matress was like a thin membrane over rusty springs, there were coackroaches in the cupboard, the room was cooler with the fan off and the whole place stank of vomit. Grim, but we were getting up at 5:30am anyway to do a big leg of our journey. I lay still for a few hours sweating and listening to music, grabbing a few spasms of sleep every in which I had nightmares of getting malaria (the room being so hot had forced us to leave the window open, providing a convenient cat flap for mosquitoes). At 5am I was wide awake and heard Jon groaning next to me, his night didn`t seem to be going that well either! He said he`d spent the whole night trying to concentrate on the light bulb because that was the only normal thing in the room. I got up, had a shower where the cubicle was full of wet tissue paper (!) in a bathroom where you couldnt sit on the toilet facing forwards because a wall was in the way. 

It was pretty easy for us to leave that place early and begin our 600km jouney South. We were driving through Sinaloa and, according to the guide bok, that was one of the most dangerous regions for travellers, notorious for banditos, drugs and gringo haters, but we were comforted by the fact that it was Sunday morning and all the banditos were probably in confession being forgiven for their sins the night before. As we pulled on to the highway with no lane markings, it didn`t seem to be getting any lighter even though dawn dawn should have been breaking. In fact, it seemed to be getting darker. It started to rain, then it started to pour and then torrents of water started to gush from the sky with thunder and lightning clashing on all sides. At this point we are traveling quite fast down a dodgy road. Through the darkness, if you lent forward, we could just make out two little red brake lights of the lorry in front. We didn`t want to get too close to the lorry in case it had to brake suddenly, but we didn`t want to loose our guide through the rain either. We contemplated pulling over, but we couldn`t really see anywhere safe to do that and anyway we didn`t know anything about tropical storms; these things could go on for days! So we kept going, steadily, following the lorry, following the lorry and after about 45mins it started getting lighter as dawn began to break through the clouds.

Passed the storm, things were getting greener as we approached the Tropic of Cancer. The mountains were covered in lush green vegetation and the low grey clouds hovering in the valleys were making everything damp and cool. Gone were the desert sands, rock and cactii of Baha and in its place we had a cross between a South American rainforest and good old fashioned British countryside. We drove for 17 hours. I repeat, but I cannot stress the significance of this fact enough: we drove for 17 hours. We were aiming for Paul`s friend`s house just north of Puerta Vallarta and we weren`t going to stop until we got there. We arrived in the dark; lost, tired and hungry. We had`t been given the keys to the place we were staying and even when we did find it, there didn`t seem to be any door bell so Jon climbed up 3 floors like a spiderman and startled the elderly neighbours. Jon couldn`t understand why they were so frightened but then, Jon couldn`t see what he looked like. Wearing only a ragged, filthy pair of shorts and a pirate bandanna to hold back his gigantic ginger biffro that had been blown upwards by the speed of the wind passing our car for 17 hours, he must have looked like some pre historic caveman, a fact not helped by his lack of Spanish, his tendency to mumble and his ability to superhumanly climb up and infiltrate tightly locked buildings. The old couple were scared, wouldn`t listen to any explanation and threatened to call the police. After a lot more hassle we did however manage to get in and we have our treasure: two apartments between the four of us that are clean, have functioning fridges, fans and cutlery… I keep pacing around our apartment in bemusement wondering at these objects of civilisation! As for the area itself, Bucerias is a Western buble by the beach where loads of laid back Americans come to live. When an ethnic minority segregates itself in England, keeping its own language and culture and `refusing to integrate`we tend to criticise, but I haven`t had a chance to talk to the Mexicans feel about their own white segregated minority. For all my pretentious criticism though, its very very good to be here!

Still, Jon and I met up with the guys without too much trouble and we made our first step down the Baja Peninsula, travelling for about 3 hours South down Highway 1. We stopped to stay the night at this little motel and went out to grab some food at a little roadside cafe. Big mistake. I ate a fruit salad admist the flies, happily chatting away to the owner who was called, of all things, Eggy Capone. Went back to our motel room that was pretty hot, especially when youre sharing a two person room with four people. Sort of fell asleep and woke up feeling Id been run over three times by a blunt lawnmower before being whizzed up in a giant human blender. Staggered over the bodies to the bathroom, puked three times and (apparantly) started gargling and talking to myself. The guys were great, they gave me a whole bed to myself. Not only that, but youd think admitting diarrhoea symptoms is a humiliating necessity, but with the lads it was like an amusing tale which inspired jokey anecdotes of a similar nature. They also bought me lots of ice cream and Jon even went on a mission to find me soup and, due to a lack of Spanish but not a lack of effort, came back after an hour with some kind of fried beef! Me being sick left us stranded in our motel for another night and day, but the next day we were back on the road.

Yesterday we came over 300 miles down the Baja Peninsula, which is the little arm that stretches out down the West coast of Mexico. There is only one road that runs down it and its said to be one of the most beautiful roads in the world. You run along huge desert mountains, alongside volcanoes - the Three Virgins is spectacular - and deep ravines, you run alongside little salt lakes and a million varieties of cactus all blooming away. The colours are all incredible, dusty teracottas, mustard yellows, orangey greens all framed against the bright blue line of the horizon and the straight grey tarmac of the road with its single straight yellow line threading through it, like a moving piece of string when youre travelling fast eough. Paul thinks that the cactus look like bony hands rising out of the ground, but I think they look more like quite comic figures, maybe drunk Mexicans in sombreros that are trying to stagger upat a slightly weird angle.

The road is sometimes deadly straight with desert planes, waving up and down like a rollar coaster rather than side to side…it really is like a big dipper when you go over some of those hills. At other times the road winds like a snake around the mountains and there are little graves off to the side where people must have just gone over the edge. We have to be very careful because there arent many road side barriers in Mexico and there are hardly any cars on the road. About half way through our trip yesterday one of our tyres literally blew up and luckily we were able to pull over at the side but I think that shook us all up. We had been thoughtful enough to buy a spare tyre and we flagged over a passing traveller who happened to have a jack. We carried on very carefully after that, even if Jon did insist on sitting on the car window whilst we were travelling along to take photos! 

We made it in to Santa Rosalita just after sunset, and our car literally broke down in our parking space. We are still waiting to find out what the problem is before we can take our next step…  

Anyhow, we spent all day sitting in garages, trapsing about in the heat and encountering one car problem after another. In the evening, we decided that after doing 4 days of doing nothing but car stuff we wanted a break. We decided to investigate the bars in downtown Tijuana. However, driving down there, we accidently got on to a one way road to the US – DOH! So we’re stuck in this huge traffic jam about to cross one of the most notorious borders in the world in a car that we’re not entirely sure is legitimate. What made things worse is that the car works ok when it picks up speed but at a slow pace it stalls like hell. So we’re jerking towards the border simultaneously having hysterics and getting incredibly stressed and just as it was our turn to get to the counter our driver, Figgis, lost his passport and the car stalled! We chugged over to the police officer who luckily just kind of grinned and waved for us to go on. Just as we were *exactly* on the borderline though the car completely broke down and we had to push the car in to the US! What’re the chances of it stalling precisely there?!

By some kind of miracle we managed to get the car started again and drove down the US motorway, stopping at some dirty KFC to laugh/cry at our experience. By the time we came out we knew we’d be driving in the dark which is always a bit dodge – we kept going the wrong way down all these interlocking highways and before we knew it there were these red and blue flashing lights behind us – the police were asking us to pull over. We’d read in the guidebooks that we had to be as wary of the police as the bandits in Mexico – the guide had all these case studies of police officers planting drugs in vehicles, asking for bribes etc. We were shitting it as the police officer walked over to our vehicle. Of course this guy didn’t speak any english either but he managed to convey that we were going the wrong way down a one way street and then proceeded to ask all these interrogating questions in a quite aggressive manner. I tried to play ‘sweet innocent super cooperative girl’ but he got us all out of the car anyway and began to search everything. Felt so helpless – we probably hadn’t even gone the wrong way down the street but we couldn’t really argue! I thought, it’s ok, we’ll probably be able to bribe this guy, but then a whole other van load of them pulled up and we were surrounded by cops. Everyone was searched and the officer took a particular dislike to Jon and groped him literally everywhere! Jon has a great sense of humour though: ‘What?! Does he think it’s possible to smuggle heroin in my bell end?!’ Then things took a sudden turn for the worse; the officers were searching our vehicle, bags etc. and in the ash tray built in to the car they found about half a joint’s worth of cannabis that must have been left there by the previous owners. AAAAH! The Mexican police are notorious for coming down really heavily on gringos with draw because the US come down heavily on the Mexican authorities for drug smuggling across the border. The cannabis they found REALLY wasn’t ours and I tried to explain that we’d only bought the car the day before. He replied that adding the cannabis charges to going the wrong way down a one way street gave us two choices: pay $300, or spend 36 hours in a Mexican jail. Once again, AAAAAH! All these images of Mexican jails start running through our heads. Paul started getting angry and I was really worried that he might do something stupid. I kept saying, ‘Isn’t there another way?’ not wanting to openly offer a bribe but wanting to get the option on the table. It didn’t seem like there was a third way. Paul started talking about the British consulate and the officers didn’t like that. On top of that, I was trying to flirt with these officers in the sweetest possible way – the car mechanic had told us earlier that the best option in such situations is to be as calm and cheerful as possible. So I talked to the particularly evil cop with little man syndrome about how much we loved Mexico, it’s culture, it’s oh-so-friendly people etc. I asked him if he had kids and made a big fuss when he said he didn’t; ‘But Sir why ever not?! You are so beautiful you must have thousands of children!’ – I even pinched him on his greasy cheek. The officers pointed to the guys in the car and asked me which one was my boyfriend – I said that none of them were because they were all so butt ugly. The officers laughed – particularly because the British guys didn’t have a clue what was being said. In the end, they let us off – I think we were too poor and the threat of the Consulate got them. They’d had their fun and exerted power over Westerners that constantly made thenm feel inferior. As they drove off, we sat in the car parked by the curb shaking from the adrenaline and laughing…