Our last days in Guanajuato

Our days in Guanajuato are numbered!

As I am writing this, it's our last day in Guanajuato, and we are packing our bags and trying to throw away as much as possible! It's incredible how much stuff we managed to collect in those 3,5 months we have been here..

We tried sending some of the movies we bought here with Heidi, but she got stopped in the customs in Amsterdam, and the took away about 40 movies! :( Pinche Customs!
The rest of the stuff we are dragging with us, hope we don't have to pay anything extra for overweight!

Anyway.. We are leaving with a cab around 3 at night, going to Leon, and taking the plane from there early in the morning! It's a 30-45 min car ride to Leon, then we fly to Mexico City, change planes, and then fly to Cancun! Woohoow!
As long as we get our stuff to Isla Mujeres everything will be allright, then we can send the stuff home with our friends from Norway that are visiting us this Christmas!

We had a wonderful time in Guanajuato, met tons of great people, got to travel the areas around Guanajuato, Leon, Maruata and lots more, learned some Español, concerts during Cervantino, BarFly, Cuba Mia, Los Lobos, Bar Ocho, La Kech, and ofcourse our favorite, Cafè Santo!

Thanks everybody for being friends, partying, studying, and travelling with us!

Sarah & Luis

Maggie & Erin
Maggie & Sara (freaky nails!)
Sarah (nordlendinga) & Merethe
Crazy times in Guanajuato during the Cervantino!
Decorations in Botellita
More decorations.
Drinking tequila with Erin
Oooh! I forgot to tell you guys I had a 25 pesos haircut!
That's about 12.50 NOK and around 2 USD!
Cheap stuff, he was done cutting my hair in about 5 minutes, and gave me a "choirboy" look when he was done! And to think we pay around 800 Pesos (400,- NOK /80 USD) in Norway for a haircut! It is truly insane!
Damn! I'm handsome! :P (Bob says Hi!)

Pamela & Mark
Hallgeir (El Pirato) We'll be seeing you on Isla Mujeres this xmas!

Heidi :) She will be joining on Isla Mujeres!
Chris Arenz (Shaggy)

Nadine

Enrique (Kike)

Pino & Mike
Michelle & Enrique (Kike)

Gene

Margareth and Mike

Suzan & Margareth and her kids :)

I probably forgot to post a picture of YOU here, but if you feel you should be here to, send me a mail! :)

I am guessing that I am not going to be online that much when I arrive at Isla Mujeres, but we'll see what happens! :) We have a lot of things we want to do there, including diving with sharks, swimming with dolphins, go see the sea turtles, enjoy the sun, enjoy our hammock, and just relax and put our feet up!
I will be posting pictures here as soon as I have any! :)

Oh, and for christmas, money is fine! :) No need to stress with gifts, as money is the only gift I need nowadays! :p

Life's GREAT!

A wonderful trip to the beach!

Maruata is beautiful!
There! I said it!
I'll even say it again! MARUATA IS BEAUTIFUL!


We were getting a bit ready for the beach, and when we heard some friends from school were going, we were allowed to tag along with them.. :)

Check out the slideshow i made from the trip!
(thanks to Heidi for downloading the Zumba music)



We started at 21:00 and left for the Central de Autobus in Guanajuato, there we took the PrimeraPlus express to Leon, which takes about 45 min.In Leon we had to wait for the other guys/girls to show up.. They had bought the tickets for us. :)
They show up around 22.00 and we have to wait some more, because our bus to Colima was not leaving until 23:30.
Luckily for us, the bus we were taking was 1.class, airconditioned and had comforable seats.. :) We wake up around 06:00 and quickly get on the next bus leaving for Maruata.. That took around 2-3 hours, also it was more comfortable than you would think..
And when we first arrived it was a warm, pleasant beach we layed our eyes upon!

This place doubles as a beach/turtle reservation.. :p In the daytime there are a few people enjoying the beach, but it's not too crowded. And in the night, the seaturtles crawl up on the beaches to digg big holes to lay their eggs in.

This was the only turtle we saw on the beach.. :( (a rare and endangered animalcrackerturtle)

We were told that some of these eggs usually got stolen by thieves trying to make a quick buck, but we did'nt even get to see any turtles, or egg-thieves for that matter... :(


The first day, we just had to buy a hammock, and instead of buying one each, we opted for the double one.. :D Fits 2 people easily! Comfy too!
It was actually too comfy, because I hardly got out of it after we bought it! :D
We got the other two couples to buy as well, probably because we were having such a nice time in ours.. :D

Anyways... The first night was great, we were a bit tired after the trip so we took a early night, around 20:00 (!!)


The next morning, I woke up early to catch the sunrise, listen to the waves and all inn all just enjoy the beach, but quickly found out that 2 backpacks had been stolen from one of the tents of our travelfriends.. They had gone to the toilet for 5 minutes, and when they came back, both their backpacks were missing from the tent.. :( SUCKS!
They had their money, phones, mp3players and all their clothes.. :/
Luckily, we had enough money so we could share, and they had everything they needed.
Even though they drank mostly mescal, cheapcheap booze, (20 pesos / 10 Nok)
they were happy! :D

The beach was lovely, but now we always had to have someone guarding the tents so we knew our valuables were safe.. And we suddenly got more suspicious of the people passing by all the time..


As I was writing, the beach was lovely, and it had these huge kickass waves coming in all the time, with some crazy undercurrents, so we had to be a bit careful..
But the water was lovely, there were lots of different fish in the water, but they weren't that easy to spot because of the waves.. Merethe found a Blowfish dead on the beach, and I found what looks like a Barracuda head.. :p Maybe it was eaten by a shark? hehe.. who knows?

They had bathrooms and showers close to where we camped, and we had to pay 5 pesos for every time we used it.. a little expensive, but not to bad..

We drank and ate good fish at the "restaurant" on the beach, they had good fish there, even though it was a little expensive.. (70 pesos for a plate of fish, chips, salsa, lime, and some more salsa)
But it was good enough to return there, and I even got Merethe to eat fish!! (WOW!)

This night was a little more comfortable than the night before(it was hot as hell in the tent!)
but we still went to bed early.. hehe.. It must be the sea air or something.. Lazy days.. ;)

The next morning the unlucky couple found out that their sandals were now stolen, and had nothing to wear on their feet.. :( Really unlucky!
We got more suspicious, but got the others to watch our tent while we took a little walk to a nearby hill.. After walking some steps, and through some bushes we came to the top, and WHAT a view! It was really beautiful!
And next to our beach was another nice area where we found a little cave through a rock, a huge cove with some scary waves and some more huts.

We also found out that the local "shops" weren't what you call too tourist friendly, they need some more stuff in their shops.. a little more choices would be nice.. But we survived! They had tostadas, salsa, and donuts, and of course Beer! :D

The day went by quickly, and the next morning nothing was stolen from the camp and we all felt better! :D
We enjoyed yet another lazy day in the hammock, doing nothing but swimming, eating, drinking and relaxing :D Oooh.. life is tough!
I bet a lot of people back in Norway are a bit envious right now! :p hah!

In your face for not joining us over here! :D

Anyway... we ended the night with playing Pantalones, the dice game (rules can be found in an earlier post) and all got drunk and merry! Pantalones is a dangerous game to play! Everybody gets drunk, and gets to know the "Pinche Sombrero" (which in our case was a Tuk from Canada)
"Pinche Tuk" :p






We got to bed, and were drunk and sleepy, but something was weird when we suddenly woke up and heard voices and saw shadows..
Merethe heard something touch the tent and she screamed for them to get away, I woke up, screamed as well, got my devilstick and kept looking out, but saw nobody..
We slept with one eye open and didn't get the best sleep in the world..

The next day when I was laying in my hammock, I noticed something with the tent, it was cut at the front corner...

The bastards actually tried stealing something through the hole that hey cut!
Luckily for us, we had no valuables close to where the hole was. (Note to self: Keep valuables in the middle when sleeping in tents)
I had some tape and taped it so the ants and mosquitoes didn't come in through it..

But now we tought it was maybe time to get going before we lost anything else... Not to fun to leave such a beatiful beach, but a real shower would not hurt to much either.. hehe

We left around 15.30 and took the bus to Colima, but were stopped on the way, there was a army checkpoint and they were checking "everyones" bags and suitcases for drugs, weapons and other scary stuff.. They were very eager to find something illegal (probably so they could get some bribe money, and scare the tourists a little) But they had nothing on us and had to let us go! :D hah! In your faces!

After this little pause in our bustravels, we finally got to Colima a couple of hours later.. Only to find out that the last bus left 1,5 hours before, but the next one was only 9 hours away and as we already felt as real backpackers, we took a trip to Colima to the giant market they have there! It doubles as a market for cows, horses and other farmanimals.. They even had a quad bike circuit if you wanted to go driving.. :D
There was also a huge fare there, with lots of different rides and horror houses and whatnot..
After eating and looking around for a few hours we took the bus to the center of town to get some cash and eat some icecream.. :D Colima was a nice town, but very quiet at nighttime.. a bit boring actually... I prefer Guanajuato over Colima anyday.. :D

Anyway.. as we had to wait until 04.00 we went back to the Central de autobus, bought some beers and got comfy by some benches.. :)

The time went by fast, and before we knew it we were on the bus to Leòn.. Yet another comfy busride.. not much to complain about on the buses here..
Arrived in Leòn around 0900 and quickly took our last bus to Guanajuato..

Guanajuato is a bit cold now in the evenings, and we could really feel the cold after sleeping on a hot beach for the last few days! Brrr!

I miss Maruata... *sob*

Oh well.. In December it's Isla Mujeres! (the Island of the Ladies)

Check out miss stretchy!

Louis and his best friend, Mr.Tequila

Playing Pantalones

Louis (one of the guys who got robbed) was hungry as hell, and we had just bought him some fries, he was happy as hell, he put on a lot of mayo and salsa and ketchup, and was just about to sit on his chair, when his friend moved the chair, and he fell on his ass, losing his fries, and being covered in salsamayoketchupfries.. Boy was he pissed..
So his friend bought him another plate of fries and Merethe and Sara gave him everything he needed. He smiled a lot after this! :)

Sunrise in Maruata, with one of the local ladies cleaning the beach.

More of the sunrise...

Merethe showing off!

Nice, eh?

Nice, eh?

Far down here, and nothing but big waves to land on!

Omg, teh Crabz0rz!

Some kind of vulture looking birds, there were a lot of these!

More pictures in my facebook gallery, will be coming back soon with a little Spanish update, so pay attention, and visit once in a while! :D Maybe you'll learn something?

Cervantino festival 2007

Today, Sunday is the last day of the 3 week long culture festival Cervantino, which has been an incredible experience!
I have been to three concerts, Baaba Maal, Orquestra Alejandro y Los Onyx and Buika, very interesting all of them, even though Baaba Maal was the best!

The festival started out pretty nicely with not too many tourists visiting our little town, but then more and more people came, it was ok in the middle of the week the first days, but then it got crowded, more and more street vendors showed up, they have a HUGE hippie market, where we have been 4 times already, and going there once more today to shop some more before they close it down.

There are performance artists everywhere, clowns, dancers, hippies, small kids showing off, and stuff to shop almost on every 2meters of the street!

Crazytimes, but what an experience..

The people that run the Quart music festival in Kristiansand could probably have a lot to learn from this place.. It must be at least 10 x bigger than the Quart festival here..

I was lucky enough to get to film this Spraypaint artist in action, hope you like it!



Nice, eh?

Other than that, the last few days have been wild! Just to get from one end of the street to the other, you have to fight your way through large crowds! Never seen anything this crowded in my life, people everywhere! I wonder how many people that come to Guanajuato during this festival, it must be 10-20.000 at least!

And there are police on every corner, just a 5 minute walk, and we counted 50+ police officers.. They seem to be doing their job, and we haven't been bothered by any suspicious ones.

Drinking in the streets is not legal in Mexico, and they uphold this pretty well.. Compared to Norway, the police here just take your drinks, pour them out and let you go with a warning.. In Norway you get a HUGE fine, and sometimes even have to go to the police station..

We saw a couple of hippies with large peace signs on their clothes getting checked by the police, probably looking for drugs, but very ironic to see these peace loving hippies getting stopped by "the man" :p

As you will see in the pictures, it was totally insane!


Some random guy that wanted to be in our photo! He was so happy because he just got one of the last cases of Cerveza from the nearest kiosk

I hope this isn't dog poop!
Yo!

Lots of people!

The same guy that i filmed earlier is displaying some of his artworks
Mr.Scorpion set free!
Pirates of the Caribbean, Gold edition!
FOTO!FOTO!FOTO!
The clowns putting on a show at one of the squares..
Mr.Silversurfer.. This guy was dangerous if he touched you.. You got silver all over your clothes, and it was almost impossible to get rid off!
Walking around with their instruments.. not easy when there are so many people!
Merethe, Mark, Sofy and Pamela
Candy! (dulces in spanish)
Trying on crazy hats at the hippiemarket

More people!
My tickets from the Cervantino
My lovely chicken salad

More people, this is actually when its early, and not so many people..
A huge globe was rolling around in the streets..
Yepp.. even MORE people!
Some of the local "circus" artists showing off
Don't fall!
Heidi and Pollo giving each other weird looks! :p
My wonderful Narañada!
Merethes Pollo y champiñones, she wasn't that happy! :p

Merethe and Hallgeir :D
Here everybody started shouting PIRATO! PIRATO! PIRATO! And when they saw that I took pictures, they all charged towards me and Merethe and started shouting FOTO!FOTO!FOTO!
Merethe caught by the festivalpeople! :D
Crowd after crowd!
Police doing their job.."Is there any alcohol in this?!"

Someone got busted! The streets were wet with all the bottles the police had poured out!
Even more people!
Here they charged a clown just walking by..


To sum things up, a wonderful festival, and I wouldn't miss it for anything!