FirstlyThis is just a brief update, nothing super interesting, just letting you know what I've done recently LondonAfter my adventures with the Kazakh, I flew to London for Sanj's wedding. Curry on Thursday, beers on Friday (including Sanj who hadn't written his speech and was coming for maximum two beers which turned in to six), a glorious wedding on Saturday, Super Cider Sunday Funday, beer > theatre > beer on Monday then a flight which I barely got to on Tuesday. Hectic. All of it was good. The opportunity cost for this trip was probably two weeks on Galapagos and I'm infinitely happy that I made the decision that I did. CancunI returned to Bogota then immediately flew to Cancun. So American. I Couchsurfed with Viki and Angel who were super chilled out. I tried some mescal which is the Mexican version of whiskey kind of. Not at all really, but it had the same sip and warmth and deliciousness. Infinitely better than tequila. There were a few variations which were also delicious. One day we went to the beach which was fun. That night we went to a hostel with some of Viki's friends and played games which was also fun. The night before we also went to the hostel, then out to the party zone of Cancun which I absolutely hated. So much so that I wrote in my little book some ideas about it, but I can't be bothered with it now. TulumMy sister arrived and we headed south to get away from the party tourists of Cancun, and apparently arrived in the laps of hostel style tourists in Tulum. We went to a cenote and Katherine went diving in some too. They are great fun. We Couchsurfed with a guy who slept in a hammock which was attached to the door handle of the room we slept in, essentially locking it from the outside. No bottles were required. CozumelWe then spent a few days on the island of Cozumel, a diving mecca 18km from mainland Mexico. There we found the potentially the world's best burrito. I had 5 in the 3 days we were there, plus one from a competitor's shop (wasn't as good, too much lettuce). One day Katherine dived and one day we decided to cycle around the island (65km). The hired bikes were disastrous and it was a literal pain in the bum to get back to town before the burrito shop closed. BanosWe had different flights to Ecuador, but eventually got to Quito and met up with Sarah, a friend we met in Scotland two and a half years ago. We immediately set off to Banos, a small town south of Quito. The first day we spent walking to the “end of the world” place which is really just a normal sized swing on a steep hill (not even a cliff) where you can make it seem like you're in an awesome place but really it's just pretty good. The walk was fun though as was the asking around for directions. Highlight was Katherine falling a minute behind then us waiting fifteen minutes for her. She was waiting for a life which she got through a 100m section of road because there were a couple of chooks vaguely near the road. The next day we hired bikes (infinitely better this time, but by no means good) and rode down to Pailon del Diablo which is a waterfall. It was fun, waterfalls are cool. AmazonNext stop was the Amazon via an eight hour bus which was impossible to sleep on. We arrived at 6am, found a place with WiFI for breakfast and downloaded GoT (it was a Monday). The bus from there to the rainforest was partially spent watching it, instead of socialising, but I'm comfortable with that decision. The next four days were spent in the rainforest going on boat rides to see animals, night walks to see insects, day walks to see “tribe people” which were just normal people except one shaman. We saw a bunch of animals, but nothing too unexpected. My favourite was a prehistoric bird, the babies of which have claws on their wings so that when they are attacked, they fall into the water and can use the claws to climb back up the tree. I haven't put up too many animal photos. If you want to see good Amazon photos, just do a Google search. CaliforniaAfter four flights yesterday, I'm now in San Francisco. My plan is to volunteer for the Bernie Sanders campaign until the primary. It's proving harder than I thought to get involved, but I am getting there. Americans are very diverse. I should start a list of all the weird stuff I see here, but I know I won't keep it up. It's a little odd to be in an English speaking country again.
Update: I have since had a few days here and I've walked the streets knocking on doors and registering people to vote. I think I will actually try to do a post on some of the stuff that goes on here that I haven't generally seen in other places I've been.
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Chris JonesJust a guy going for a bit of a documented ride. Archives
May 2018
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