Different Bed Everynight

Well we are now in Colima, a beautiful central mexican sunny (nice and hot now) town about thirty miles from the pacific coast. More cathedrals (sigh or yawn) beautiful plazas, fountains and fun shops. Zarha has been doing great maintaining veganism here, beans and rice everywhere. She eats that for every meal. I found a new fruit that I love and never new about. I will post the name later, I can not spell or pronounce it yet. I discovered in Gaudalajara, Elote, this is boiled corn on a stick smothered in butter with shredded cheese and chile powder. Find the picture of me eating it like a rabid amimal. I will make this when I return and a vegan option too! It was rich (que rico!) and cheap, I could eat that every day but some foods are specific to certain areas and then we dont see them again. The fruit is abundant and easy to access and now that we are farther south we noticed the prices are dropping some, which is really good news for our budget. An american expat who we met in the caves told us about the grasshoppers they eat in Oaxca and how DELICIOUS (she really emphasized that!) they are. Cover your eyes you fair of stomach or vegetarians out there.... I plan to try it. sorry.

I did complain about the hotel in Monterrey and that is still the stinkiest night yet, all our accomodations since have been rather comfy. Even so I would take many similiar nights at that stink pit in exchange for all we experience during the days. We are here in Colima which is our cheapest most comfy place so far. We have our own balcony, the beds are comfortable the air is fresh!

Zarha is the main photographer of the trip taking most of the beautiful pictures you see. She is also the only one with a time piece so she has become our time keeper. She seems to be a more flexible easy going traveler this year and besides our once a week guarenteed family fight we are all getting along well and things are generally much more relaxed than last year.

Sorry we can not easily call folks, the phone centers are not as common or abundant as they were in Venezuela, but once we settle in Oaxaca next week, we can try to call.

The town we are in is surrounded by mountains and volcanos off in the distance. We plan to get closer to the volcanos tomorrow. We will probably not be hiking them because they are VERY high and cold. You need to take guided tours to get the the top and those are pricey. The town we are in is also on some fault line and the town is recovering from a bad earthquake that struck in 2003. We have only seen pictures of the damage everything seems restored. There are also more caves nearby and we may try to explore those. I would rather crawl into a cave than a cathedral, I can endure longer periods of time in the caves.

love you all
d