Man eats ant pupae and lives!

For our farewell, our amigos took us to Las Mañanitas, which is a very gracious old restaurant/hotel in Cuernavaca. It's listed in the '1,000 things to do before you die' book, so we were quite excited to go. And it was lovely - the service was attentive without being obtrusive, your every need was anticipated, and peacocks and crested cranes wandered around the landscaped grounds. The dining tables and comfy relaxing conversation areas were al fresco, and the clarinettist who strolled through the drinkers and diners sounded pretty darn good after one of their really strong Margaritas!

However the most memorable thing about the meal for me, and perhaps for others at the table as well, was the starter Al ordered. He actually ordered it to share, and we were all keen to have a taste, as it really was an unusual offering. Escamoles, it was called, on both the Ingles and Español menus. Our host told us it was ant eggs, and we thought, well, it might be like an exotic caviar-type thing. When it arrived, they were clearly not eggs, they were pupae, very ant-shaped, white and about 1cm long. They had been lightly fried with a wee bit of onion and epazote, a Mexican herb. Luckily the ants here don't have the strong formic acid smell and taste like the little black ones back home - they do bite though. You broke off a bit of corn tortilla, and scooped up a little pile of these things, and added salsa or avocado, and then down the hatch. I'm happy to say that I did taste it, and it didn't taste too bad, although the texture was a bit much for me! Al and Enrique reckoned it was delicious, and ate the lot with relish.

Al's generally quite adventurous with food, and after the success of the escamoles, he ordered the chicken stuffed with huitlacoche (also with huitlacoche sauce). Huitlacoche is a fungus that grows on ears of corn (Ustilago maydis for all you botanists out there). Click on the link for a fairly unappetising picture of it in situ on a corn cob. Anyway the chicken arrived, covered in very black sauce. I had a try of that too - it was quite nice actually, although Al found it a bit sweet.

So that was Cuernavaca. After two weeks we are sad to leave our friends but we are dying to get 'home' to France where we can finally unpack our bags and relax for a while. A PhD student is coming at 8am tomorrow morning to give us a ride to the airport in Mexico City. Al's desperate to get back to work - he had a nightmare last night that his sabbatical was almost over and he hadn't done anything...It's hard to believe that Emily will be starting school in Aniane in little more than a week. I'm a bit nervous for her, I hope it will go well for her. She is handling things really well. I think after 5 weeks with just us for company she is pretty keen to get into the playground again herself!

The three fatties

No, it's not the Rodrigo family, although I'm sure we have put on a bit of weight after two weeks of delicious Mexican food (lots of cheese and meat, hardly a vegetable to be seen!)

All over the building we are in are little mud and stick nests, tended zealously by pairs of swallows. This nest is at the bottom of the stairs to our 'casitas' right by the laundry. Every day the adults fly back and forth to tend their squeaky offspring, with great results. The first photo is the three chicks early last week - all you could see were the beaks poking over the edge.


Ten days or so later, the three little fatties can hardly fit in the nest. Their beady little eyes follow you as you walk past and they are noisy as ever. We had hoped that they might fledge before we go but they still look pretty fluffy, so maybe not. The nest must be very sturdily built to hold them, plus an adult sometimes as well.

The Long Mexican Lunch

It's Sunday and we woke this morning to the sound of church bells and the ever-present exploding fireworks. Someone was singing.

I'm really impressed by the creativity here. The houses, the way they are squeezed into tiny sites, abutting one another, with turrets,wrought iron and rock walls, ornamented and painted glorious intense colours. Even the mortar in the walls is decorated with smaller stones. Tubs of flowers even in the humblest of dwellings.

Even so we were surprised and delighted when we came to our friends' house close to the centre of Cuernavaca. The area feels very old, stone cobbles outside and the main entrance is off a steep pedestrian-only road. The entire property is walled by a tall stone wall and they have an outside living room with leather couches, small fridge, and one of those chiminea-type fires if it gets cold. On top of this structure is an outside bathroom with loo and shower (both with doors!) and a basin open to the elements.
The swimming pool was carved out of the rock, and they found a cave underneath when they were excavating it, which they now use to store
ladders, and tools etc. In another cave is the lawn mower and another fridge.

The whole thing is on the side of a steep gully, but they have lawns and gardens on two levels. The garage is on the very bottom level, again carved out of the rock - you go into a kind of cave to get to it. Inside the cave is a natural spring. It's a wonderful place, a dream garden full of nifty nooks and crannies.


The house inside is all plaster and dark chunky wood. It was also quite 'cosy' - which Emily loved but rather dark inside, which would drive me crazy. It was beautifully restored and joins on to the neighbouring house, which is a hotel
(currently being renovated). They look out onto a tree-clad hillside, the other side of the gully actually, which is very pretty.


Lunch lasted all afternoon, we got home at 8pm, and included local dark beer and neat tequila, which is surprisingly good. It's really nice to relax and eat all afternoon. We had a barbeque, with lots of snacks and trimmings such as sticks of carrot and jicama (a mild-flavoured white root vegetable, crunchy and juicy) sprinkled with lime and salt, about half a pig-worth of pork scratchings (they sell it in big pieces here and it is used in cooking), carnitas (deep-fried shredded pork that you roll up in a tortilla to eat) and lashings of guacamole. And of course the ever-present green and red salsas - they have been on every table we have eaten at, even at breakfast, and they are good, especially the green.

Oh, and a taxi driver complimented me on my spanish this evening!!

Xochicalco

We went to Xochicalco on Saturday. It's the remains of a fortified city dating back to 700-900AD. The archaeological site is large and very interesting. It was very hot, and about 800m lower in altitude from where we are here on the hill above Cuernavaca. Apparently the time to come is on the 21st of June, solstice, when it is inundated with people seeking the spiritual benefits that are supposed to be maximised on that day.

Highlights of the day were:

Insects - we saw loads of colourful butterflies and bugs. No scorpions though, to Al's disappointment.

The observatory, inside a cave deep inside the hill, where the ancients had carved a hole, about a foot in diameter, up to the surface. It was a very sacred place - only the astronomer and priests were allowed in, and the measurements were so precise that they developed a calendar based on the passage of the sun across the opening. It was the wrong time of year for direct sunlight when we went but if you stood in the daylight under the hole, it looked like the opening scene in Mr Bean, where he stands under a spotlight. We all had a go at being Mr Bean.

The pelota courts - Pelota was a ball game with sacred and ritual meanings, played on a court with stone hoops on each side. Three playing fields had been excavated, one with the hoops still intact.

Beautiful carvings on the Quetzlcoatl pyramid (Quetzlcoatl was a feathered serpent, a symbol of power).


After this we had lunch at a Mexican roadhouse. It looked like a packhouse from the outside, a place where you might stop and buy a few chips of strawberries back in NZ. But inside it was full of people laughing, chatting, and eating at plain tables with bench seats and white plastic tablecloths. Our waitress came to the table and told us the menu in rapid Spanish (thank goodness we had our Mexican friends with us). We had cecina, thinly sliced beef that has been salted, then fried, and it was the food of the Gods. Really really delicious. We also had sopes, which are like little tortilla pizzas - corn tortillas are shaped with a low ridge round the edge to keep the filling in, usually beans and cheese, and sour cream. Most of the tortillas here are made from a special white maize flour.

Also on the table were chiles rellenos (fresh mild chiles stuffed with stringy cheese and cooked in tomato sauce), spicy pork sausage, whole cooked pinto beans and fresh cheese. We drank Yoli, a sprite-type lemonade from the neighbouring state of Guerrero, out of glass bottles. Yum.

Hacienda de Cortez

Hacienda de Cortez is a former sugar mill built in the 16th Century. It was burned down during the Mexican revolution and all the wooden roofs and fittings were destroyed, but the stone walls and foundations survived. Restoration began in 1981 and a beautiful and very romantic hotel now stands, incorporating the remains of the old buildings, amid lush tropical gardens.

Our friends took us here for lunch yesterday. The food was okay, but the location was superb and we spent ages walking around just enjoying the atmosphere. Amazingly, it was quiet and serene inside the grounds, while just over the wall was all the noise and bustle of the street.

Here is a view of the back of the restaurant. At the centre back of the picture is an acqueduct (you'll have to trust me - you can't really see it) that was used to turn the water wheels of the sugar mill.



Here is a view inside the restaurant. All over the place are these enormous fig trees (not the eating kind of fig). The trees start life lodged in the stonework. Their branches grow up and their roots grow down, eventually reaching the ground. They are all over the place here, and have even been allowed to grow inside some of the buildings.

Wild weather and los colorines revealed

Another wild thunderstorm last night. The lightning was spectacular. It's like cartoon lightning, big jagged stabs that light up the whole sky. Then this morning, all is calm and beautiful, a gentle breeze ruffling the pine needles, everywhere green and sunny. Not a hint of last night's mighty meteorological tantrum.

It turns out the part of the colorines that you eat is not the toxic seeds but the flowers!! So I will try them after all, if I get the chance. Apparently they are delicious, quite fleshy. Although I can't help thinking that the hallucinogenic properties would help with both the climb to the pyramid and also with the feel-good thing while you are up there.

Tepoztlan

I can't believe we've been in Cuernavaca almost a week. The time has sped by and our little brick casita seems quite homely now. This morning I saw a lizard about 15 - 20 cm long, greenish with a gold band around its neck. Al said there was a lizard on the ceiling when he gave his lecture this morning.

Today at lunchtime Enrique took us up to Tepoztlan. It's a charming town, nestled between a couple of picturesque, steep, forested mountains.



There is a very old monastery in town, but if you like, you can climb 300m up the mountain to a pre-Hispanic pyramid that distantly overlooks the town. It takes about 1 and a half hours of walking up an almost vertical slope but they say that they pyramid has very 'good energy'. After a climb like that I don't think that I would have any energy at all, good or bad..

The pyramid is about 2000m above sea level (we are 1900m asl here at the universidad). Our hosts tell us that Mt Ruapehu is around 2200m asl. Being so high above sea level does affect your energy levels. For the first couple of days here I felt a bit light headed and getting around was a real effort.

Lunch was delicious. We ate at a very colourful restaurant called Los Colorines. Enrique wanted to order for me their signature dish made from colorines - red beans that grow on a tree, but they were out of colorines today. Could be just as well, as an internet search this afternoon revealed that the seeds are poisonous, and are hallucinogenic in small quantities. Maybe it is a little joke they have with the tourists!

Instead I had cecina, which is meat sliced very thinly and salted, then grilled. It came with nopales, which are the flat stems of cacti - prickly pear I think. They remove the spines then steam it, slice it and serve in a salad with onion, coriander and a crumbled feta-type cheese called panela. The nopales have a unique taste, a bit tangy, slightly salty, really nice. Al had chicken with mole sauce - this is the sauce made from chocolate, but it has all sorts of other things in it, like sesame seeds, almonds, onions and banana. Enrique had chiles rellenos - big poblano chiles stuffed with mince, nuts and dried fruit, cooked in a tomato sauce. Em has discovered a Mexican alternative to chicken nuggets - tacos dorados - chicken rolled up in tortillas which are fried and served with sour cream, grated panela and guacamole. She wolfed down three of them, plus the guacamole.

Enough about food! We had a wander around - there were lots of street stalls selling interesting things, fruits including an olive-sized drupe called nanches, which I must look up on the internet as well. A couple of stalls were selling incense, not the stick kind, but the kind that looks like dusty bark - you throw it onto the fire - and it smelled really good!

We checked out a small old church that looked quite tumbledown from the outside but it was absolutely stunning inside. Workmen had just finished applying gold leaf - the final touch to the restoration of the interior, and they were putting away their gear as we entered.



The monastery was also beautiful, with a huge old church, very high ceilinged and with lots of colourful statuary. Em liked the decorations very much - she told me that she thinks Mexicans have very good taste. The pictures below are from the monastery itself.

The fun continues

Sunday was the last day of Al's holiday and we spent it exploring downtown Cuernavaca, particularly la catedral and the Jardin Borda. La catedral itself was packed, standing room only inside - we couldn't even get through the door. Turns out it was a special day - the Bishop was presiding over the Mass. Outside was a lively scene - lots of stalls selling different foods, cakes, breads, tamales, fruits and a bouncy castle for the kids. Pictured below is the Templo de la Tercera Orden, which is part of the cathedral complex.



Across the road in the Jardin Borda it was much quieter. The gardens were pretty but a the stonework was a bit run-down. Still it was shady and cool and very picturesque.



Al toddled off to work on Monday and at lunchtime our Mexican host and hostess and their sons (14 and 12)took us to a Yucatan restaurant close to the Universidad. The food was lovely. We ate many courses, each one a delicious morsel wrapped in a tortilla, and often swimming in a tasty sauce, served individually to each one of us.

After the men went back to work, Patricia and her sons took Emi and I for a guided tour of Cuernavaca. I've been trying to figure out the road rules here and I asked her what they were. Before she could answer (it was a pretty tricky question), Diego the 14 year old piped up 'nobody knows!' It was pretty funny at the time but actually not far from the truth I think! Patricia, my friend, prefers it that way - she likes the opportunities for interaction with other drivers that the lack of rules provides.

Sad news

My lovely new Macbook computer has died! After a few days of random crashes, restarts, and associated inconveniences, it has finally packed up completely. Al thinks it is a hardware problem, as he has tried everything else he can think of to fix it. Luckily I backed up all my photos on his ipod, otherwise I would have had to go back and do it all again ...

Which is my way of excusing myself for not posting for a few days. I will keep posting but I will have to queue for time on the family computer ...

La Ciudad de la Eterna Primavera

The city of eternal spring. That's how they refer to Cuernavaca. It's because of the weather I think - everyone tells us that it's lovely in the mornings but tends to rain later in the day. But it's also a very pretty city, and people are friendly.

We decided to find our way down to El Centro (downtown) this morning. We are quite a way inside the campus, there are no shops or restaurants close by and you have to leave the university grounds to get a taxi. We hadn't gone further than a few metres when the Maintenance Director, whom we had met the day before, passed us in a taxi. "Blah blah blah blah!" He called to us in Spanish. Si, si, si, (laughing) we reply. "Blah blah (also laughing)!" he responded. So we jumped into the taxi and they dropped us off at the taxi depot just down from the Uni gates, with much muchas gracias-ing and waving. A couple of seconds later we were in another taxi, heading downtown. As soon as I told the driver we were from NZ and only spoke a very little Spanish he was off. "Blah blah blah blah!!" And so forth. Actually we are beginning to understand a bit of what people are saying to us and they are very tolerant of our terrible Spanish - even Al, who has never had a Spanish lesson in his life, is starting to chat away quite confidently.

There was a handcraft market outside the palazo de Cortes (which is now a museum). There were loads of lovely baskets that I was just DYING to buy but luggage restrictions being what they are, I restrained myself. There were also lots of brightly painted ceramic plaque things, which would look great on our garage ... I may have to investigate the postage option ...

There was a stand promoting tourism in Morales (the state that Cuernavaca is capital of), manned by three policemen. They didn't speak English either but were eager to help us with our enquiries, listening solicitously to our blithering and blathering and pressing pamphlets into our hands. Even the one with the very large gun.


This is a view towards the cathedral from the Palazo de Cortes.



This is an ancient granary, built to keep rats out, on the terrace of the Palazo. Actually I think it looks a little rodent-like itself, if you look closely.

Afer the museum, and lunch (at the same place as yesterday - they recognised us!), we paid a visit to the supermarket. We bought food - a big stack of corn tortillas, still warm, exotic flavoured yoghurts and interesting white cheeses, and green skinned oranges, as well as the usual noodles and tuna-type staples. You have to buy your drinking water here as well - it's not expensive but the bottles are big! Here's a pic of our two 10L bottles (it's taken us 2 days to get through one) with the stack of tortillas in front. Salud!

Bienvenidos a Cuernavaca

It was dark when we arrived in Mexico City, dark and raining. Good steady rain, with big full heavy droplets, just like home. The first rain we have seen in the 3 weeks since we left.

We arrived at 'Remote Gate 42', and a kind of airbridge bus thing came to take us to the terminal. It glommed onto the side of the aircraft, like a regular airbridge, but had seats and a driver, like a bus.

Our ride to Cuernavaca was waiting for us as promised, but immediately we left the airport we ran into the worst traffic jam I have seen in a long long time. It took about 2 and a half hours to drive 80km. Our driver didn't speak English so it was a quiet ride, but we listened to his radio. Someone was speaking Spanish, a glorious tumble of rolling 'r's and lollopping 'l's...

Once in Cuernavaca we proceeded up what looked like a farm track. Our accommodation didn't look too promising in the dark, but once inside, hungry and thirsty, we discovered that our hosts had left us a feast of mangoes, papaya and other fruit, bread, cookies, ham, a sliced moist white cheese called panela, frozen veges with olive oil to cook them in, and cornflakes for the morning. Plus a selection of teas, juice, milk and half a kilo of fragrant ground coffee. Suddenly the accommodation looked pretty good. We are in two studio apartments, next to each other. Each one has two single beds, so I am sharing with Emily and Al has peace and quiet on his own. During the day his apartment has become the computer room.
I took the photo above from just outside our room.

In the morning, we discovered that we were on the side of a hill, looking down onto the city of Cuernavaca, in the grounds of the university. It's cooler here than down in town, and much quieter, although the birds are pretty noisy at night, and someone lets off fireworks at all hours of the day and night. We have met some of our fellow tenants, doctoral students from Argentina, whose English is about as good as my Spanish, so we have long tentative conversations with lots of miming. This morning two scientists from the lab took us down to El Centro for a bite to eat and a look around. The traffic was unbelievable - it seems you just shut your eyes and go for it. I can't imagine driving here!! But the streets are full of sounds and smells and colour, and history. Unfortunately we couldn't stay long in town because I forgot the rule about not cleaning your teeth in non-potable water and had to rush back home with a dodgy tummy. Feeling a lot better now (we picked up a packet of Immodium before we left San Diego for just this type of occurrence!) . Humberto and Ricardo told us this morning that it was well-known that the water in Cuernavaca is 'very bad'.

Someone might be coming tomorrow to take us out of the city to do some sightseeing tomorrow, so we'll see.

A pretty full-on day

Yesterday morning we were due at LAX to catch our flight to Mexico. It was also the day we woke to the news that a number of suspected terrorists had been arrested in the UK, foiling an alleged plot to blow up transatlantic aircraft using explosives disguised as soft drinks and other ordinary things, using an ipod or mobile phone as a detonator. We actually didn't hear the news properly until we got into the hotel shuttle, where it was all everyone was talking about. Lots of speculation, lots of stories, most of them true it turns out, about hand luggage requirements, security checks etc. We were 3 parties - us, going to Mexico City on United, an English couple going to Washington DC on Alaska and a US family going to Sydney via Qantas, all trying to reassure ourselves and each other that we were going to be okay. Lines outside some terminals were really long - we were lucky though, the United line was not too bad, but we were a bit more nervous than usual. I think everyone was.

Including the security guy doing risk profiling at the security checkpoint. Used to the routine of shoes off, laptops out etc we organised ourselves at the checkpoint and all our stuff went through without mishap. We were fine in the metal detector too, except E's shoes set them off, but that was easily checked. Still, the risk profiler took exception to us, well, me, actually and decided I needed to be body searched. It wasn't as bad as it sounds although the risk profiler was rather confrontational, barking out commands like a little seargeant major. I had to stand in a special booth, and a female officer showed me how to stand and basically felt all the places where I suppose I could have something hidden. She did ask me if I would like a privacy screen - I said, nah, just go for it, but then belatedly remembered I was wearing a skirt. I was kind of worried that it would tickle as well but they must be given non-tickling classes because there was none of that sort of thing and it was all over very quickly.

After the body search our hand luggage was comprehensively swabbed for explosive residue. The women security guards were quite friendly by this stage but still, it's not an experience I will be rushing to repeat.

Now the most amazing thing about all of this is that it all took less than an hour, from being dropped off at the kerb by the hotel shuttle to clearing security.

Flying out of LA the smog was thick and viscous, and it was hard to make out the mountains in the distance. There were a pair of FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) marshalls on the plane, sitting just two rows ahead of us. Down below the pattern of houses and streets, all swirly and dotty, remind me of an earth-toned Aboriginal painting ...

La Jolla

Yesterday, our last full day in San Diego, we headed out to La Jolla (pron. La Hoya). Pictured above is the tiny swimming beach, in the background, with groups of cormorants and pelicans on the cliffs in the foreground. It's a very pretty beachy suburb, with lots of wildlife to make things interesting. Here's a couple of hot pelicans. I don't know if you can see, but the one on the right was flapping his neck to cool himself off.

There are also lots of shops and restaurants, mostly in quite old buildings, and the area has a real seaside feel. Emi commented that it reminded her of home.

There are lots of caves in the cliffs. Some enterprising soul hand dug (or so the story goes) a tunnel from The Cave Shop, which seems to be a kind of tea room, down to one of the caves just above sea level. We decided to pay our money and have a go. The staircase was pretty steep and the steps were wet and a bit slippery but we descended without incident. The tunnel seems to have been dug through sandstone, which didn't fill me with confidence, but it has been standing for many years now.

The view from the cave at the bottom was nice, but the climb back up was pretty strenuous.

We packed up two boxes of unneeded clothes and shoes (and Al's books) and mailed them to ourselves in France this morning, to lighten our luggage a bit. After that we drove up to Los Angeles this afternoon and are now at a hotel near the airport, ready for our early flight to Mexico tomorrow. We don't have more than a few words of Spanish between us, so finding our way around might be interesting.

On the subject of elephants

My friend Gillie sent me this poem about elephants ... we'll dedicate it to Sunita ...

"Nature's blasting, billowing Archangel -
A land-manatee.
A land-siren
A land-whale
The oldest and largest of land mammals
Was born in the late Ice Age
While we were only a glint in Darwin's Eye....."

- Heathcote Williams: Sacred Elephant

The Wild animal park

For the last two days we have headed out of town to the picturesque San Pascuale Valley. You head north, turn left at Escondido (is that a fabulous name or what? Escondido.... Escondido ...you try it, go on, you know you want to...) and suddenly you are in farming country. Market gardens, ostrich farms, a ranch with lots of horses ... it's very pretty. The land still looks rather dry though and embedded in the small hills are big rounded boulders. Roadside vegetation includes what look like some sort of sunflower, maybe Jerusalem artichokes, and prickly pear cacti grow all over the hills (like gorse back home!).

All the way there, though, we wondered, what is the difference between a zoo and a wild animal park? Will this just be another zoo with bigger enclosures? Well, no. The San Diego Wild Animal Park is a wondrous place. The 'safari train' driver kept referring to it as 'Noah's Ark' and for some animals, it has been just that. Animals extinct in the wild that have been brought back to viable populations, and I'm sure the herd of 11 African elephants due to be culled in Swaziland were very pleased that the San Diego Wild Animal Park were able to airlift them out for a new life in the US. Incidentally, what's the difference between an African and an Asian elephant? African elephants are majestic, Asian elephants are pretty. What? Oh, oh yeah, there's something about the ears as well AND Asian elephants have one 'finger' on the end of their trunk, African elephants have two. And did you know, that as they grow older, elephants lose pigmentation on their skin, and actually do turn pink!! Here's Sunita, one of the Asian elephants - she's 57 and you can see the her pink skin around her upper trunk and ears.

Another big success story at the Wild Animal Park has been the Indian Rhino. These are the grey ones with the 'armour plating' not the white ones that you see in Auckland and Hamilton zoos. In 12 years they have raised 51 babies! Apparently, for these animals to breed, you need a large group of females. If there are not enough females, then they don't feel comfortable that they will be able to protect the young, and they just don't bother. Seems that the dear old lad just isn't up to the job of protection as well as procreation. At the Wild Animal Park they started with a herd of 22 females and just one male. Hoo boy! Here's a picture of one of the herds taking a nap.

The park is very large, with animals grouped together as appropriate. You'll probably need your magnifying glass to see the giraffes in this picture but it will give you an idea of the countryside and the enclosures. There's a 'safari train' tour that takes about 45 minutes - it's definitely worth doing, it's a big park!

Other fun things: I fed the lorikeets - it costs $2 and you get a little cup of 'nectar'. You hold it with your thumb and first finger, and the birds come and perch on your wrist to sip the goodies. It's really interesting to watch their dark tongues lapping up the liquid.

There's a 'petting kraal' for kids - you buy a handful of food pellets and boy those deer know who's got pellets! Here's Em being pestered by a very insistent dik dik...

The park is set out like African villages, with lots of colourful flags and spinners.

I hadn't heard of the Wild Animal Park before this trip, but my advice is, if you get the chance to come here, set aside a day to visit it. Come early before it gets too hot, and so that you can get a seat on the train without waiting very long. There's so much bad news about the environment, about animal extinctions and endangerments, that it's just wonderful to come across a place that is doing so much successful work with endangered species, some truly good news. The place is full of young animals, a testament to their work. If I lived here, I'd be there every week (until they gave me a job ...!!!)

El papel arroyo

We like the hotel we are staying at, we really do but every day we have had a problem with the housekeeping. Some days they don't leave coffee. Other days no kitchen towel or cloth. Another day no towels. And if I want a tea bag I have to specially request that too. Anyway today we got back from the Wild Animal Park all hot and bothered and there was NO TOILET PAPER. So here goes the daily call to reception, hello, can you please ask housekeeping to bring up etc etc. Also today the housekeeper left one of her cleaning products in our bathroom. 'Hilda' was written on it. I envisioned Hilda as a stony faced, solidly built middle aged woman who brooked no nonsense - no coffee wasting, no time-wasting tea drinking, you don't really need 3 towels, I know that child only bathes every 3 days ... Imagine our surprise when she appeared at the door, young, pleasant, and without a word of English. However this is when the fun started. 'Yes?' she said. 'We need toilet paper' we said, after we had got our towel, our coffee, our tea and our dishtowel (we were able to point to those on her cart). Blank look. We tried the proven method of repeating ourselves very loudly. That didn't work. Looked at each other. Looked at her. Still nothing. OK, so I mimed pulling the paper off the roll. Hilda is looking a bit bemused now but still doesn't get it (or DOES she ... perhaps she is waiting to see how far I will go with the miming...) Bathroom? suggests Al. Suddenly he has the brainwave to show her what we want. 'Oh!' She understands now, much laughter and smiling and pleasantness as she unwraps 2 rolls and hands them over. Finally a smidge of Spanish enters my head 'Que es eso, en espanol?' I ask. 'Papel', she tells me kindly, as a teacher would correct a slow 5 year old. 'Papel arroyo'. So now I know.

San Diego zoo

The zoo of course was fabulous and the best part was we found our way there without getting lost. We were there bright and early, before it got too crowded, and it was a pleasant balmy day.

Here are some photos of our favourite exhibits :

Here's Mommy gorilla taking junior for a walk. He looks like he is about to fall off but he was able to stay aboard for the whole time we were watching.


This is Granny orang. She has a very neat hairdo which unfortunately you can't see because of her gorgeous hat. It looks like an expensive pageboy cut - and I love the colour.

These guys were a barrel of laughs. They were just hanging there under the water occasionally coming up for breaths. We decided they must be having a breath-holding competition and started timing them. The one on the left was the winner.

And here's the panda, Em's favourite. Unfortunately they were just lying about and the baby was up in a tree looking for all the world like a ball of fluff in a tree. Still, Em was not disappointed because there was a Panda Shop right there by the exhibit and she bought a very cute cuddly toy panda who had all sorts of adventures during the rest of the day.



We didn't get lost on the way home either, in fact we found a shortcut onto the freeway WITHOUT THE MAPQUEST INSTRUCTIONS!!! We reckon another week or two of this and we would be hooning around like one of the locals.

Rest day

We all slept in and spent the morning loafing around the pool watching the planes from the nearby Marine Corps Air Services base flying over. They are very noisy - so noisy it seems like the sky will split, but when you look up to try and find them they are so high that they look like tiny greyish moths. Every now and then one of those double rotored helicopters will chug over as well.

In the afternoon we discovered the Target store down the road. We got a few snacks including Cheetos (ooh, I love these - they're a bit like Twisties but denser and more crunchy) and Twinkies. Janet Evanovich's heroine Stephanie Plum is always eating Twinkies and other snack cakes in the same family so I just had to try them. And they were ... well, they were kind of tiny sponge rolls with artificial cream inside. Quite pleasant, I guess. Our favourite snack (and breakfast) is Reese's Puffs - a breakfast cereal that tastes just like Reese's peanut butter cups (chocolate and peanut butter flavour). If we were going straight back home I would definitely bring back a couple of packs! Junk food at its finest!

Believe

Believe was the name of the Orca show at SeaWorld. I'm not sure why .... but let me tell you, it was the best trained animal show I have ever seen.

There were quite a few Orca, although only one or two 'on stage' at once, and because they are so big, they can do some pretty spectactular tricks. Zooming up from underneath the water with a trainer on its nose to a height of 10 metres or so - actually that was probably more difficult for the trainer! Lots of splashing, jumping, and a lovely section where an Orca and a female trainer did a kind of slow dance in the water, lying on their backs, lots of tender physical contact between the two of them. The whole thing was very slick, fully orchestrated with inspirational music, which makes it sound awful but the sight of those massive predators interacting with their trainers with such confidence and trust was pretty impressive. To give you an idea of the size of the animals, you know how in dolphin shows the animal is given a fish as a reward for performing an activity - well, in the Orca show, the trainer would throw a whole bucket of fish into the gaping, teeth-filled mouth of the cheeky-faced super-dolphin! The show was great, well worth the entrance fee. There's also an underwater viewing gallery where you can watch the Orca swimming around between shows.

Before the 'Believe' show there was a tribute to US and allied forces currently serving, including having any currently serving servicepersons stand up for a round of applause.

Of course there were other animals at SeaWorld that we were also excited to see. The dolphin show was very good and included two pilot whales (the black animals on either side of the dolphins).

The 'soak zone' was the first 12 rows - and it was true - the animals had been trained to use their tails to deliberately splash the spectators - this is a pilot whale I think.


There were sweet faced Belugas, again with an underwater viewing gallery.


Watching the manatees was also a treat for us. No photo of these unfortunately. These massive paddle-tailed water mammals give the lie to the theory that you can't get fat eating salad! Their natural habitat is the Florida swamps but sadly they are now endangered there.

A real hit with kids (including ours) was the bat ray encounter pool. These large stingrays had been trained to hang about on the surface of the large pool so that you could touch them. They felt unexpected, velvety but slimy at the same time.

There were also massive walruses, including one sporting large gnarled tusks, making him look like something out of a fairy tale.

There were other exhibits, the usual aquaria etc but by the time we got to them the park was so crowded that you couldn't see much. Tip - go early because after lunch it gets really really crowded! There were also rides, but neither of the riders in our party could be bothered to line up to go on them.

So that was SeaWorld. We did get lost again, in both directions, despite the excellent Map Quest instructions. Actually we didn't get lost so much as just missed offramps. You really do need to know which lane to be in to come off in the right place as traffic is fast and unforgiving and they follow closely behind you, making last minute lane-changes rather life-threatening. Still, at least we can get onto the freeways now, which is a step beyond where we were a few days ago, just have to learn to get off them. As a friend of ours from San Diego now living in Auckland pointed out, he had the same trouble trying to find on-ramps to Auckland's motorways when he first arrived. Ah yes, but there is a difference - in San Diego you know there is an on-ramp, you just can't find it. In Auckland, half the time there just isn't one!

Lost in San Diego

We drove down to San Diego without any problems, and found our hotel with the directions they gave us. It's in Hotel Circle, which is a little patch of land between the freeway and the river. No-one would want to live here, it's rather noisy but there are hotels all over the place. We are staying at the Comfort Inn and it is the noisiest hotel I have ever tried to sleep in. The first room they gave us had freeway views and was rather noisy so we asked if we could change. Sure they said, and moved us down a floor to a room with pool views. Great, we thought. Until we started poking around a bit. The coffee machine fell apart when I tried to fill it with water and when I pulled the carafe out the lid flew across the room. The fridge fixtures had all been torn out so that you couldn't store bottles or cartons of liquids in the door. The in-room safe was just ... missing. Light fittings were damaged. There were gruesome stains in the toilet and around the plug in the basin. But the best was yet to come. At around 9pm the noise started. Well, it had probably been there all along but we noticed it then ... large people running up and down the corridor shouting. Thumping sounds from upstairs and next door. Crashing of doors. Clonking from the hard-working ice machine. And "Ryan? RYAN!! Open the freaking (at least that I think he said freaking) door!!" (Bang bang bang) at 2.30am. And an airconditioner so noisy that Em thought that giant robots were coming to get her all night. We can laugh now, but at the time we were feeling a bit strung out! So we are moving on today, to a more spacious place a bit further out of town, which they promise us is quiet. However, even after all that, Em is upset that we are moving because the Comfort Inn has 'kids rooms' with BUNKS. (Which is why we are booked it in the first place). She commandeered the top bunk and rarely leaves it when we are in the room. To compensate, we have had to promise to seriously consider getting bunks for her room when we get back to NZ.

Despite all this we had a lovely day yesterday - we found a HUGE shopping mall in downtown and had a couple of pleasant hours poking around (I'm sure I spent more time waiting around outside Electronics Boutique than the others spent waiting while I combed the sale racks at Macy's though - and at least at Macy's there was a lovely comfy seating area with TV for bored husbands). Eventually we found a bookstore where we were all happy.

In the evening we ventured down to the waterfront - we did get a wee bit lost on the way, but found our way there without too much trouble. The waterfront is lovely - wide pathways, grassed areas, parking, interesting sculptures, despite the airport, seaport, fishing port and navy all working nearby. We headed for Seaport, a cute, cute, cute little shopping/eating village on the waterfront. However, we nearly drove into the sea when Al saw the Midway, an enormous aircraft carrier tied up right by the footpath. Hyperventilating with excitement, he shot into a parking space and we spent half an hour or so looking at it from the outside. Turns out it is a museum, and I'm guessing we are going to be going back there for a closer look today!



After dinner we had a look around the cutesy shops (including a fab bookstore called Upstart Crow) so that when we left it was quite dark. We were on the waterfront. We wanted to get to the I5 freeway. How hard could that be? Quite hard, as it happens. After a lot of driving around, map stops, emergency lane changes etc we ended up at SeaWorld. Don't even ask. We'd been driving for about half an hour at this point, at least it seemed like it. Every now and then we'd catch a glimpse of the freeway, we just couldn't find an on-ramp! To add to the confusion, Al was having trouble distinguishing left from right and I hadn't brought my glasses so I couldn't read the map in the dark. Every now and then a small and slightly panicky voice from the back seat would pipe up ... "stop swearing Dad" ... "are we lost?" .... "where are we?" ...

Luckily the I5 freeway is signposted at the SeaWorld carpark exit and we did finally find our way onto it and we did eventually make it back to the hotel!

Oh! I almost forgot to mention the highlight of last nights dinner! Battered and deep fried pickle slices and jalapeno slices! They were surprisingly good!