Yup, not the most exciting of posts, but after getting very sick I am back in San Diego.  Rather than ruin this with bad news, lets begin with something positive, lets start with a post about freedom.  Remember Plaxico Burress, the guy who caught the game winning touchdown from Superbowl MVP Eli Manning to propel the NY Giants to a 17-14 victory over the Pats…well he was unjustly framed and sent away for a couple years but today that man is now finally free!  Welcome back Plaxico.  That catch was so devastating to Tom Brady that aside from all the crying I have previously mentioned, Brady actually faked a season ending knee injury 7 minutes into the beginning of the following season just to avoid having to face the deadly Eli-Plax combo again.  For that, I thank you Plax.

18-1 Bitches

The last post from Mexico City alluded to the fact that I got sick.  I puked, for days, I couldn’t keep anything down, no food, no water, nothing.  I was very weak, and it sucked.  Well, I had a post on all that somewhere, but lost it.  It was a pretty good post.  Our friend Roel met back up with us, he was also sick, though he caught his from elsewhere in Mexico a couple days before meeting us, so while he was in rough shape, he was lucky enough to be coming out of it, when I was going in.  I picked him up at the bus terminal, had a nice long story about how I puked out front of the terminal in front of a bunch of people.  Then there was a little bit more that happened here, some stuff that happened there, who knows, the post is gone.  There wasn’t much aside from puking everywhere, as I told Paul and Roel they were on their own, I was too weak to worry about sightseeing.  We went to Oaxaca, and after a few days once I got myself under control I left them behind and drove a bit outside the city to Hierve del Agua, in order to recoup.  Admission is 20 pesos (under 2 dollars) and it was only around 3 us dollars a night to camp there.  The place cleared out by 7 in the evening, and I was the only person there the 1st night.  I enjoyed some more reading/guitar as I ate some rice to regain my energy.  I did not do much hiking, just walking to the pools and cliff nearly left me stranded due to my lack of energy.  The second day I hung out with a couple from Switzerland, and later that day Paul and Roel were able to meet up with me for one last night of camping, which ended with the 5 of us sitting around a fire fueled from an entire tree.  There is not much wood around up there, so you may want to bring your own, or look around before it gets dark.  Roel found a downed tree that must have been 30 feet long.  The reason it was there was most normal people would not bother with that, well most people are not Belgian.  Roel broke down that entire tree, with a bit of help from Paul.  I used the old “Im weak from being sick” excuse and stayed away from that scene, due to our lack of saw, there was a lot of rock balancing and jumping on the tree to break it going on up there, I like to think I knew better, i’m probably just lazy.  For those thinking of checking this place out, I would recommend going there in the afternoon and camping the night.  I had the entire place to myself in the morning, and was able to get some sunrise pics, as well as the pools to myself, as opposed to the previous day when I arrived and shared the pools with many people who stop by for the day.  As I mentioned I did not do much hiking so do not know how much exploring you can do, but there are trails all over the place.

Hierve del Agua all to myself

Ok, so I left off hinting that Paul and I were unsure of our future plans, I know, pretty rare for us right.  In Guadalajara he had mentioned to people that we would be out of Mexico in 2 weeks.  Well, we still had Mexico City, Oaxaca, the Yucatan, and everything in between before we would hit Belize (checkout a map, that is a lot of Mexican real estate to tackle).  It would by physically impossible to see everything on my rough list in 2 weeks, and of course that doesn’t include anything we randomly hear about or find along the way.  This made me look at our future destinations and timetables as well, since Paul and I were both planning on being somewhere in the area of Argentina in the Sept-Oct time as he has to fly out of there to go to Italy, and I have to go to NY.  So we started talking about splitting up, I knew he could backpack at least Central America with Roel, which would help him get his feet wet on backpacking travel, and give him time to figure out his South America plans.  I figured I could either ditch him and go at a slower pace all the way to South America, or at least take my time down to Panama trying to arrive there around Sept, and then fly home for a short break from the trip.  Another option I did not spend much time considering was sticking together through Central America, skipping things on my list to move at Pauls pace.  I dismissed this idea as I was concerned that I would for some reason or other end up not being able to go back and see what I missed, something I did not want to risk as there was already too much to see as it is.  I then started thinking about returning to the US, since even though we were 6 weeks into our journey, I was still only a 3-4 days drive from Cali by toll roads.  Well, as the list of things I could use grew (I want a skid plate, and possibly bigger tires, and of course now that I am back I want a million minor things to change) the decision was easy, send that sucker packing.  Secretly this was all part of my master plan.  I mean come on, who in the hell goes to Central, let alone South America?  Don’t you people watch fox news??  Anywhere outside the US is a cesspool of poverty, crime, and Boston fans…yeah I think I will stay here for now.  I needed to find someone who didn’t know any better, someone I could get pumped up with tales of free flowing cervezas, and women who don’t care what language you speak.  I needed to send someone ahead, to scout things out, and test out the safety levels of the various 3rd world countries.  So the plan was simple, get Paul on board, and then once we were deep enough in Mexico and he was hooked on this adventure, leave him to fend for himself, survival of the fittest.  So now, I have decided I will wait at least until my brothers wedding before going anywhere.  This gives me time to make some changes/get a bit more organized, as well as see how long Paul survives.  I am shocked to say they have already made it to El Salvador…I estimate I might have just been making it out of Mexico at this point, so we clearly made the right decision.

So I am not sure what happens now.  I have to admit it was easier when it was our blog, now that it is just mine I do not know that I want to have it.  As far as I am concerned you should have better things to do with your life than worry about mine.  I may let it go, or I may go all in, we will see how I am feeling when I finally depart.  I know there are some friends and family who are keeping up with it, and I do want to provide information that may help others with the logistics, but what can I say, I hate blogs.  For now I will keep everything and throw it under a “practice run” section, so that I can start fresh with a trip blog that goes in order and is not so confusing as the masterpiece Paul and I have made.  I make no promises to whether or not anything is done with the site after that!

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