Vikings used to sail, Therefore this post is legitimate..

Things here are ticking over. When I say ‘ticking over’ I mean, of course, in the time bomb sense rather than heading towards a nice definable goal that will march me down the road to ‘freedom’ or whatever they call it these days. The way things are going, ‘freedom’ is probably trademarked by Coca˜Cola or something.

My brother is writing his marine archaeology dissertation on Viking long forts. On Tuesday we went to look at Dunamark near Bantry, right at the tip of southern Ireland, a site he saw on a topographical map

and thought might be a long fort due to the name (‘fort of the ships’) and the fact that it is mentioned in ‘the book of invasions’ as being the place that Noah’s granddaughter settled after the flood (the book tells us that Noah and his sons wouldn’t let her into the ark and she was forced to build her own.

She floated for 9 months after the flood before landing in west cork (? — what, you’re thinking, that’s her FIRST question mark to this story?). Anyway, Noah’s granddaughter landed in west cork — 8 men and three women. She was obviously left out of the ark for a reason because all the men had, in short order, run away and left the women alone.

What kind of country calls their first EVER book ‘the book of invasions’? It’s from 900 or so. Anyway, the Annals (a book from 1100), tells us that the Normans built a castle at Dunamark. The Normans invaded about 1000 and the Vikings were there by 900.and Colms hypothesis was : there must have been something there before the Normans in order for it to be called dun na marc, right? Besides, the Norman castle is still there.

Things are slightly complicated by the fact that there is a alleged collapsed souterrain (an escape passage in Irish forts from waaaay back — I mean, before the Normans or even the Vikings) somewhere on the site mentioned in a three line description in a 1928 topographical survey, but Colm thought it was definitely worth checking out.

Anyway,  we found the site after FINALLY escaping from Michael, an English (of course) new age hippy who owns the adjacent land and is convinced Ireland was peopled by Phoenicians and arrived in Dun na Marc.

(Michael explaining Dunamark is actually Phoenician)

The signs looked good. There was something Colm has never seen before. It’s an obviously man made channel, curving inland around the outside of the fort for a couple of hundred feet. Even after 1000 years, the sides are still straight and true and there’s even an obviously man-made stone wall type thing at the end. Colm thinks it was made for Vikings to park their boats as before the long ships, Irish boats were made of skin and bark and were just dragged up on land when necessary.

Now archaeology has always had a reputation of an upper class, very learned, behatted, dechinned-Englishman-at -the-royal-geographical-society touch to it, and so what happened next surprised me, although it probably shouldn’t have.

Colm, my father, my brother Sam and Colms best friend Mike as well as myself were at this fort in, it being Ireland, the pissing rain. It’s totally overgrown, as are all these things in Ireland (farmers called these things ‘fairy forts’ and no one ever tore them down or farmed over them because fairies in Ireland are squat, spiteful, evil things, with magic — you don’t want to cross them, they all seem to have chips on their shoulders – more so when they’re carrying a grudge, like you knocked down their house).

The forts walls are easy enough to scramble up, but the flat part inside is a bramble strewn mess, but Colm is great at marshalling other people to do his work for him and Mike and Sam were soon scrabbling around with rotten sticks they’d found. My austere-archaeology impression was rudely shattered by three gobshites (eh, that means, loosely, ‘morons’ ) roaring in the bushes .’OUCH! OWWW! I’M STUCK! WHERE’S THE STICK? GET ME OUT OF HERE. OUUUUUUCH!!’

(You’re not actually allowed dig in historic sites in Ireland, but you can look through debris. Mike’s trying to fall into the rabbit hole here, by the looks of things)

Mike found the souterrain by falling into it – backwards – while hacking through the bushes and Sam found not just one but BOTH pieces of masonry we found Sam sloping off to have a fag. Lovely masonry, I must say, but still.

Despite the souterrain, Colm thinks it’s Viking, which is very exciting. Irelands Viking expert has given it an tentative thumbs up and the only way it will ever be confirmed is via excavation and carbon dating- which will never happen. I’ve made a small but significant contribution to Irish archaeology, but I’m left with a lingering worry as to all those other sites…how rigorously, exactly do other people do their surveys?

All the best sailing stories involve blood and nudity

Jesus, now I’m wet and he’s naked. This is not how the day was supposed to end. He’s my uncle!

It is, of course, a sailing story. I went out with my uncle Martin on Sunday. In retrospect, all my relatives tell me sailing with Martin tends to go like this, but I’d no idea at the time.

We went out for a day sail, with Martin, his girlfriend and her 11 year old niece. We left  at 5pm (it doesn’t get fully dark in Cork until 11) and it was a marvellous sail. Four foot swells and a stiff breeze had the little ranger 27 scurrying along at 6 knots. Martin loved it, but the 11 year old was curled into a tiny little ball in the cockpit, convinced she was about to die. She did it very quietly though, so I was able to ignore it.

Oh, the sail! On our last night on Xenos we met a man who told us, ‘it’s better to have two boats than no boat’ and, having been boatless now for a whole 60 days,  I agree. Jesus, I miss the pure bit of sailing. I don’t miss the work or the worry or the money, but the whoosh of the wind and the snap of the sails and the slap of the waves on your little boat. Pulling on the tiller, working the elements — God is in heaven and all is right with the world.

Unfortunately, the sail had to end. We came back into the harbour and dropped Martins girlfriend and the 11 year old off at the Yacht club while we went up the river to leave the boat on her mooring. Martin, lazy as sin, had me at the tiller for the whole sail and asked me to do all the tidying up too, the bastard.

Anyway, as I was leaping off the boat with the lines Martin mentioned the dock was slippy. Too Late. I hit the dock hard and then my knee hit the dock harder. I stopped the boat from a lying position, with the bow line, which I forgot to feed under the lifelines. A fine entrance to the oldest Yacht club in the world.

My knee has a lump the size of an egg today and it’s giving me the kind of pain where you just KNOW will turn into arthritis.

Anyway, we dropped off the girlfriend and the slowly unfurling niece and they went to the pub. It started pissing rain. We put-putted up the river. Martin had his outboard stolen a few weeks ago and is powering his boat with a 2.5 horsepower outboard. It took us 40 minutes to go the 2KM to the mooring ball, where we tidied up the boat and got ready to head ashore.

Martin only has a one person kayak to get to shore so we went to the boat closest to shore, tied up to it and tied a line to the kayak and I rowed to shore. I couldn’t get on shore. There was too much seaweed and, it has to be admitted, I’m crap on a kayak. Martin kept scurrying around the deck gathering  extra strings to tie onto his line to accomodate my stupidity moving up and down the riverbank and finally I had enough. ‘Fuck it, Im just going to step ashore’. I put the paddle down to use as a walking stick, heaved myself up and fucking kayak turtled on me. I crashed into the water.

Scratched all over with a lovely layer of stinking river mud marinating my cuts nicely and soaking wet, I staggered upright and sent the kayak back to Martin. He took his boat over to his mooring ball while I recovered.

I went to the car to see if there were any dry clothes (nope). I sat in the car out of the rain for a minute (ahhh). I sent a text to my sister telling her to have a change of clothes at the ready. Then the thought occurred to me Martin might need hep getting stuff from the shore to the car.

I arrived just in time for his grand performance. He lifted up the kayak and dropped the paddle into the water. It hung around the kayak for a loooong minute and then took off the direction we had come. Martin stripped and jumped into the water where he eventually retrieved the paddle but almost had a heart attack trying to swim back to the boat against the tide and the current (I was concocting desperate rescue plans from the far bank, complete with makeshift clothes).

Two hours later, two sodden swamp beings crawled into the pub to met met by an irate girlfriend and a tired 11 year old. Time to go home.

It’s true. Sailing really IS the slowest, wettest, most expensive way to get from A to B. But I still had a brilliant time… Dammit,  I think I may be a boat person after all…

A story from Ireland (instead of the Last Post)…

Because I’ve been trying to write ‘goodbye’ for two weeks now and still haven’t come up with anything to say – how many ways can one write, ‘it’s over and I’m devastated and overjoyed’?

So, here’s a story from Ireland instead…

Ireland is all right: I mean, it seems deathly dull to me but then when I stop to think about it it’s actually quite bonkers. Ireland just lulls you into thinking madness is normal. Take the robbery last week for instance.

Now, my parents live next to  a one street village called Kilnamaiden* 8 miles from the nearest main road. Last week at midnight, the locals were (as locals do) congregated in the pub, no doubt discussing sheep prices and EU grants. one looked out the window.

‘C’mere to me, whaaas dat?’ slurred one.

‘Now dat’ said the most knowlegdable one, sloshing his half glass in the direction, ‘ is a stag party. Sur, whatt else could ittt be?’

‘Yer right dere’, said another, as they watched an old banger (translation for Americans, who no longer have such wonders: Banger:A car that only occasionally works) be pushed up and down the village by a bunch of lads in stockings on their heads.

Everyone watched as they did one circuit, then two and finally got the car started. Unfortunately, they got it started in reverse and it shot backwards, stalling. In the lurch of the stalling, a safe fell out of the back.

They pushed the car the length of the village again and roared out of the village, leaving the safe in the middle of the road and the locals looking at each other slack jawed (This dosen’t signify anything in particular. The villagers are generally slack jawed).

It turns out that the local toy soldier factory (I kid you not. Doesn’t every village have a toy soldier factory?) had been ram raided.

The befuddled sots (sorry, locals) called the police who eventually arrived. One of the local cops is known as ‘Ger the walk’ as he dosen’t drive. He got out and scratched his head around the safe in the middle of the road while his partner drove up to see if everything was all right at the toy soldier factory.

‘C’mere to me Ger’ says one of the  locals, ‘what if dey’re still up dere?’

‘Sure I dunno’, says Ger. ‘We’ve only got de one radio like. It’s de one in de car. He’d hafta shout and I’d run up dere I suppose.’

*My parents still live there so I’ve changed the name of the village or they’d never be able to show their faces in public again).

Boat Porn

What is it with boys and boat porn? Slater spends his days on the internet surfing for the perfect boat. I think he’s decided on a Hinkley 43 or a Tayana 52 (today).

I’m completely sick of being summoned to ooh and awww over another hunk of fiberglass and metal with various cabin layouts and prices, as in:

‘Look Julie, this one’s cheap.’

‘How cheap?’

‘$125,000.’

‘Slater..’

‘But look, it has a fully tiled separate shower, a big nav station and new standing rigging!’

‘It doesn’t have a rudder…’

‘Why do you bring that up? Do you know how easily we could do that? One  weeks’ work. No, two at the maximum.We buy this, put $60,000 into it and we could sail it around the world OR sell it for twice what we paid for it.’

‘Slater, it’s $125,000.’

‘So? You know what yacht world’s like! That’s a GUIDELINE. We could get it for 20%  less than that…’

(I now have my head in my hands and am moaning softly to myself…I will grow old and die and STILL this conversation will not have ended. Can I just get back to my talking book?)

Sorry, no pictures in the last couple of posts. Photoshop hates me and crashes every time I try to open a picture…

She’s slipping into the past…

We’ve sold Xenos. We always said we’d sail as long as it was fun and we’ve decided it’s time to move on.

We found a buyer, the transfer went through Tuesday and we were moved off her by Saturday.

I’m heartsick. Whoever said selling a boat was one of the two happiest days of your life obviously never owned one. We’re giving up our sturdy little boat, our home for the last five years – all those miles and all those memories. There’ll be new adventures, but there will never be another Xenos.

‘White Grouper’

We heard murmers of it in Cartegena.

We met someone who saw it in the San Blas.

We saw the evidence of it on one island, if the rumours are true.

We spoke to someone who was robbed of it in Belize.

White grouper.

All along the Western Caribbean – the coast of Panama, the islands of Honduras, Colombia, Guatemala, if you get friendly with a local or chatting to an ex-pat, sooner or later the subject will come up. Cocaine.

It’s the locals equivalent of winning the lottery. Everyone knows someone who’s found one. The islands we’ve been visiting for the last year are all points on the Cocaine highway, bringing cocaine from the jungles of Colombia  to the streets of the US.

The Western Caribbean is a reef strewn, shallow battered piece of ocean and the drug cartels do not send sailors on the trip. No, they send trusted acolytes.

Have you ever heard the urban legend about the guy who bought an RV, drove it out of the lot, pushed the ‘auto cruise’ button, went and made himself a cup of coffee and was sued when the RV crashed saying the instructions weren’t explicit enough?

That’s what happens to these guys. They plug the coordinates they want to go to into the GPS and Autopilot and sit back. A certain percentage of them will hit reefs and loose their cargo. At the drop off points, more packages will go wandering. Sometimes they have to dump everything overboard when they’re pursued. Then the  locals go hunting for what they call  ‘white grouper’ or ‘white lobster’ – named after the highest paying fish a subsistence fisherman can catch.

There’s an island we visited where everyone is fat and happy. There’re no visible source of income, but if you’re there a while you hear rumours. Every few years someone finds a bale, the story goes, and they take it to a nearby island which has a ‘party’ reputation where they sell it, earning enough to keep their entire extended family in scooters and chickens for years to come.

An island further north has a different story. Young men find the packages and spend it all on cellphones, booze and women and end up poor, unhappy and alienated a year or two later. One island we went to has a ‘drugs hut’ where everyone brings what they find for the village to sell. On another island, we were told we should really have an anchor light at the top of our mast as seaplanes fly in a couple of times a week as low as humanly possible to make pickups. Somewhere else, the cigarette boats the runners use get dumped as the cocaine highway reaches a new refueling spot and necessitates a change of vehicles.

And everywhere, the coastguard. The middle of the night, throughout the entire western Caribbean we heard them  on the radio, booming in on 16, obviously close, talking to some fishing trawler or open panga, telling them to get ready for a stop and search. No signature on the radar though, ever. We were later told that they deliberately  hide just out of range of your radar. Maybe they’ve got radar hiding abilities, I don’t know. It was eerie though. There you were, 3am, alone on the ocean and suddenly, palpable evidence someone was out there.

We had one particularly weird experience. As we were approaching Providencia early one morning (about 0200, we were changing watches) a container ship came out of nowhere.

Initally, we were miles out of her way, but they made a beeline for us. Slater tried hailing. Nothing. Again. Nothing. She was steaming towards us. Jesus, what was going on?

We lit the 1,500,000 candle torch on our sails to make them see us better. Still she charged. Then, 300 feet away, she turned broadside to us. We were looking up at her at this point.

We could see the bridge, we could read the containers (you never want to be close enough to a container ship to read the containers, ESPECIALLY at 2AM). She motored alongside us — she must have been idling almost,we’re slow — for about 5 minutes, not saying anything, not acknowledgeing us in any way and then she abruptly turned a couple of hundred feet in front of us and took off for the horizon. 5 minutes later she wasn’t even on the radar and we were still dangling in her wake across our bows. Someone told us the coastguard could have been on board. Someone else told us maybe we were at a rondevous point. We’ll never know.

‘Returning Boat’

I had long had it in mind to make a boat

That would skim the waves quick as any bird

Yet never carry people away from their friends,

But only carry people back to their homes.

-Yuan Mei

Mexico is shutting down!

The government has just announced that all non essential businesses will close from Friday the 1st until 5th May.

‘Functions like transport, policing, supermarkets and hospitals will stay open but otherwise the country will largely come to a standstill. It is already operating on half-battery since earlier this week when schools, cinemas, restaurants, gyms and other services were closed or heavily restricted.’

I guess this means we won’t be leaving this weekend — immigration and Customs will definitely be closed!

‘Cancun airport has been flooded by tourists trying to get out. The state of Quintana Roo, where Cancun is located, has yet to report cases but several tourists were found to be infected after returning home. Archaeological sites have been shut.’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/30/swine-flu-mexico-government-…

It feels weird to be in the middle of such a media maelstrom and feel so completely safe. Life is ticking on here. Hurricane season is coming — we had our first rainstorm yesterday and humidity is rocketing. People are hanging out on their stoops. Food is for sale, all the businesses are open here on the tourist mecca that is Isla Mujeres (although there are no tourists) and no one is sick. We can’t decide weather we should be worried or whether it’s yet another symptom of a 24 hour news media that needs to broadcast SOMETHING.

36,000 people die of the common-or-garden flu in the US every year. 12,000 in the UK.

I suppose it takes peoples minds off the economy.Personally, I think I’d be more worried about falling off my boat and drowning than the flu. That actually happened to somebody in the anchorage this week.

On the downside,  Cuba have placed a moratorium on all visitors from Mexico and told us if we do turn up, they’ll quarantine us. So now the whole ‘where do we go now?’ question has to be decided all over again…

I have a kickass life, and as for Xenos…

We’re back on the boat after being up north for the last two months, sugarin’.

Making maple syrup is great. We move from the sweaty tropics

(The day before we left Isla Mujeres)

to a snowy mountain in Vermont 

(A few days later)

where there’s always something to do — outdoorsy work in snowy woods if you’re in that mood, indoorsy work canning the syrup if you get tired of that. If you’re feeling adventurous, you could get a 900F fire going. We work 16 hours a day when the weather is right and none when it isn’t, and it always feels like a privilege. It’s a multi-generational family extravaganza and the highlight of my year – I wouldn’t miss it for the world! www.wildfarmorganics.com

All good things come to an end though. We got back a few days ago and are busy swapping out halyards, varnishing the mast, epoxying dings and the huge patch of stem that was brought down to bare metal by a surmised wind/dock interaction. It’s a first for us to come back with the boat actually in the water and we have so little work to do it makes my head spin!

As far as leaving the boat goes though, it’s not too bad — I mean, no one is going to take as good care of the boat as you would like them to. Thank goodness it’s steel though. If it were fiberglass, it would look as if someone had taken a bite out of the stem (the ‘v’ right at the front of the boat). As it is, we got a scratch that’ll be easily fixed and then we’re off again…where to though, is a whole other issue.

I think we’ll be ready to head to Cuba at the first weather window. That means a new record for us- we only arrived back here a week ago! As to where we’ll go from Cuba – well, that’s anyones guess. I try not to think about it too much – not knowing where I’m going kind of gives me the heebie jeebies. I’m a ‘firm plan’ kind of gal. Despite all the evidence to the contrary.

We got some friends from the bay area, Joey and Heather,  who are trucking their boat across the country even as I write to cross the Atlantic this season (the great circle route from Newfoundland to Ireland) – it would be pretty cool to cross the atlantic with a boat that move at more or less the same pace as us (a rarity out there these days). We have some other friends from the San Fransisco bay area (Traci and Eduardo, www.traciandeddy.com) making their way from Venezuela to Puerto Rico on their new boat. Going back down the Western  Caribbean has definate appeal. Back to the bay islands! Providenca! Panama! Wow! We have to get out of this area for hurricane season. At the moment that’s all we know!

A personal guide to Mexico. For Sarah.

(This is a temple in Palenque with a larger, unexcavated temple behind it.)

One of the great privileges of the way I live now is that I can be proved completely, totally and utterly wrong. When we first started sailing we planned to spend ‘six weeks in Mexico’ and then zip further down the coast.

(The market in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas)

I’d never been particularly interested in Central America. Mexico’s cliché was overwhelming to me and I had zero interest in it – an endless Cancun or Acapulco, lots of drunken holiday makers in bikinis and t-shirts about tequila (one tequila, two tequila three tequila floor), lots of crowds, lots of hassle – and believe me, you’ll see scads of that sort of thing, but Mexico… Mexico is so varied, so beautiful, so unique. I was wrong. Happily, totally, completely and utterly wrong.

(Sunset on Mexicos Gold gold coast, Pacific side)

The country is so damn big that different regions are, to all intents and purposes, different countries. The people of Chihuahua are completely different looking, speaking and acting to the people of Tabasco. What people in Oaxaca eat wouldn’t even be recognized as food to people of Quintana Roo. The landscape of Baja,with its cactus’s, desert and looking like ‘a giant kitty litter’ (as one friend put it) is Mars to Chiapas’ Venus (lush, verdant, fertile, full of lost cities and possibilities).

(Incredibly blue ocean, Isla Mujeres, Yucatan)

And the food. Oh my God, the food. Mexico has the most unique, delicious amazing flavours of any place I’ve ever been. Every region has a totally different cuisine each as tasty and interesting as the next. Don’t go on a food tour of Mexico. You’d never leave. Fish tacos in Baja, Moles in Oaxaca, choose-your-own-filling-tacos in Zihuatenejo, Sopa Azteca in the south…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

(Girl looks at dinner, Zihuatenejo)

If I were you, before I went I’d get a hold of ‘The Peoples Guide to Mexico’ by Carl Franz and Lorena Havens. It’s brilliant. It won’t tell you one place to visit or one hospedajes name but it’s an amazing look at Mexico – culture, sayings, music and food, weird customs and beliefs, which things to buy in which part of the country, even which bizarre herbal remedies to try!

It’s written by some people who went there in a VW bus in the 60s and totally love the place and it shows in every chapter. I can’t tell you how many puzzles it cleared up for me!

One of our first stops in Mexico was in a place called ‘Turtle Bay’ in Baja. (It’s actually a nice place. This Pic doesn’t do it justice).

Slater got sick and we were stuck for weeks and was out on my own a lot. I got totally freaked out by the way men and boys were looking at me in the street. The book put this in such a good context that I was able to laugh and shrug it off and it has NEVER BOTHERED ME SINCE. It sounds pathetic and stupid I know, but I can’t recommend the book highly enough!

It was ‘The Peoples Guide to Mexico’ that introduced me to jamica (HAM-ica). DO NOT leave Mexico without trying jamica. It’s basically hibiscus Rasa (raspberry cordial, to those of you not from Cork). You can buy it by the glass (vaso) or the jug (jarra). It’s gobsmackingly great, delicious and thirst quenching in the heat. Every single little restaurant sells it, not one will have it on the menu – just like Rasa I guess! The guide books often just lump into one sentence under ‘fruit water’ which is weird and unnecessary. You’ll often be able to get a tamarind drink too, which is definitely worth trying, but jamica is worth coming to Mexico for…

Sopa Azteca. I discovered Sopa Azteca fairly recently, probably because it’s an old Aztec thing (Duh!) and we’ve only just moved into the Aztec realm of influence in Mexico. It’s a soup with a base of chilies and has tortillas, cheese, avocado and (sometimes) chicken in it (its often vegetarian though – ask). Sounds weird and revolting, doesn’t it? Nope. It’s delicious, spicy and refreshing. Actually, soup is almost always delicious and a cheap way to eat in Mexico. The vegetable soups are home made and chock full of fresh vegetables and they’re super cheap. It’s a pity you’re vegetarian – if you can get a vegetarian ‘pozole’ it’s definitely worth trying – it’s a soup with a base of corn husks. Mmmmmm. Also, Chile rellenos are great and usually just stuffed with cheese, battered and fried.

I don’t know if you came across ‘churros’ in Guatemala. They’re often sold on the streets in the evenings. You. Must. Try. Bags of fruit with chili powder on them. So much good stuff…

Well that’s a fairly pathetic rundown on food, but you’ll discover your own favourites.

San Cristobal.

I was going to do all kinds of fancy things here. I even started photo shopping a map with numbers and all that stuff, but the learning curve is just too steep and I no longer have time so you’ll have to cross reference this with a map in a guidebook or summat. Sorry.

Staying.

We stayed here for a week and a half in three different places in three different price ranges. Each one was great. Avoid the ‘hostels’ – they were all more expensive than nicer places and full of annoying gringos. Or, find somewhere just for one night and go exploring to find a place you like – it’s a good excuse to find hidden corners in the city.

Posada Los Morales

Ignacio Allende 17

This is about 5 minutes walk from the main square, if that. It’s a huge, 17thC hacienda sprawling up a hillside with loads of old furniture and nooks and crannies, an all you can eat buffet breakfast Slater hankered after. Accommodation is in lots of little cottages with fireplaces, huge beds and amazing views over the main square.

It’s the best view of the city and it gets chilly at night, so being able to light a fire and sit in bed watching dusk fall over the busy central square is pretty amazing. Apparently it’s usually very expensive, but there was no one there when we visited and we were able to stay for, I forget, not more than $15 a night for the two of us anyway. It’s worth staying here if you want to treat yourself – it is a beautiful place and very peaceful and quiet – there are terraces and verandas everywhere. We stayed for a night or two and then moved on.

Blue hotel, on Guadalupe

Neither of us can remember the name of this place, but there are a million like it in the city. It’s a block and a half from Plaza 31 De Mayo, right in the centre and pretty cheap (a hundred pesos a night, I think). It’s convenient. We stayed here for a couple of nights. Rooms on the top floors tend to be nicer – have windows and light, for example. Ask to see all the rooms they have available before you choose.

Posada 5 on Comitan, opposite a little plaza just behind the church Santa Domingo where the big ‘craft’ market is held every day.

This would be my top choice for a ‘long term’ place if I were you. This place is brilliant. It’s cheap (75 a night, maybe, for the two of us?), a big kitchen, free tea and coffee (and gooood coffee), a veranda and big garden out back with hammocks and a fire pit and free internet.

The best part though, is that the people are great. Everyone was really friendly. There were three unrelated Irish people there – which was a first on my travels, let me tell you! There were retired people and 20 year olds, women with children and backpackers all hanging out and interested in each other – not that jaded, too cool atmosphere you get everywhere. Lots of the people were staying there for a month, or two, or three. One man was from San Cristobal and had stayed there for THREE YEARS!!

Eating

There’re a million places to eat, but there is one street, Madero, which has three or four restaurants with a set vegetarian menu. It comes with a drink, the food is wonderful (seriously delicious) and filling and even the desert is edible!

San Cristobal is a café town. You’ll have no problem finding your own favourite coffee house, complete with coffee roaster and relaxed atmosphere. Count on whiling away at least a couple of days wandering from café to café. A great bonus is that enough baking Europeans have moved there to make the cakes AWESOME. The hot chocolate is great too, different from everywhere else I’ve been.

Café Yik. There are a couple of Café Yiks – one on 31 de Marzo, which is fun, and one just up the street on Av. General Utrilla (a pedestrian street that goes from the main square to the market by Santa Domingo). The cake is surprisingly good and they have a coffee roasting machine right next to the counter. It was the cheapest good coffee we found.

There’s an Israeli place that does good falafel.

Guadalupe

I’m putting Guadalupe under its own little heading ‘cause there’re two or three places there to mention. There’s the hotel we stayed at (which is nothing to write home about, although I seem to be doing just that) and there’s also THE BEST CAKE SHOP IN THE WORLD.

THE BEST CAKE SHOP IN THE WORLD is a tiny little store, just one door wide, that you will miss if you’re not on the lookout for it. I recommend – well, everything actually. It is the best cake shop in the world. The little bags of jam-tart looking things are very good. So are the meringues. And the…you get the picture.

Centro Cultural en Puente Real de Guadalupe 55 has an extremely expensive organic-type restaurant (don’t go there), but also a pretty good cinema that shows alternative and Zapatista films. There’s a health-food type place attached with good bread and interesting stuff like local hot chocolate for pretty cheap. In the restaurant space itself there’s an organic market once a week – we bought some of the best chocolate Slater had ever tasted there (I’m a crap-milk-chocolate-only snob).

Almost next door is a shop that’s run by a lovely Zapatista lady – not that she’d ever say that, but get talking to her – she’s really interesting. It sells the same sort of tat you see everywhere in the city and at the same price, or even a bit cheaper BUT all profits go directly to the villages school or the families that make the stuff. It’s where I bought all my Zapatista – themed presents. Really interesting.

We went to Simojovel, the amber mining town up in the mountains. It was really interesting – an hour taxi and then an hour in the back of a pickup to get to a town clinging to a mountainside. Do something like it. It’s a completely different take on Chiapas than you’ll ever get in San Cristobal.

The market by Santa Domingo is very good and cheap – you can bargain them right down. Buy a thick wooly cardigan. The food market at Mercado Municipal is well worth checking out – very cheap, very fresh fruit and vegetables (we got 20 mandarins for 50 cents when we were there. you’ll be there in mango season, you lucky bastards). They make a lot of leather shoes on the streets there. I’ve always regretted not buying myself a pair of sandals.

Palenque

From San Cristobal use the bus company AEXA. It is fully 50% of the price of ADO and just as good.

Don’t stay in Palenque. It’s pretty boring. Get a collective or taxi out to Panchan, which is right in the jungle at the entrance to the ruins. In fact, we walked back there from the ruins the day we visited them. It’s cool and quiet with streams running through all the accommodations and lots of quiet paths and hippie drumming every morning. Panchan is worth going to just for Don Muchos, an open pavilion where they have live music every night, a restaurant crowded with gringos and Mexicans (the Mexicans tend to arrive just as the gringos are going to bed) and FANTASTIC FOOD cheap. This is where I had my great introduction to Sopa Azteca, but the portions of everything are so big you’ll be eating for days.

No one takes reservations, but if you can get there early enough stay in ‘Margarita and Eds Cabanas’, which is definitely the best spot. All their rooms are great, they have good showers, filtered water and I think an area with a kitchen (although I can’t be positive about that). It’s quiet too. We did spend a night in the place right across the track from them, but it was full of noisy Israelis when we were there, shouting into the night. If you do stay there (it’s cheaper), try to get one of the stand-alone huts. It will be quieter. The showers are brutal.

Other places: If you’re heading down the Pacific side Zihuatenejo, Barra de Navidad  and Bahias de Huatulco in Oaxaca are great.

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I’m so jealous. Not only are you spending the summer in Mexico, but you’re going to be seeing it for the first time. Have a fantastic trip.