Hi Everyone,
We're in Hidalgo Del Parral, otherwise known as Parral, State of Chihuahua, on the way South East. In the interest of minimalism, efficiency and as Steve puts it "getting more bang for the buck", we're consolidating our peeps/homies/cohorts/compadres/amigos into one mailing list. If you don't want to be on this list or know someone who does, please let us know.
With that said, we've been spending the last week in and around the town of Batopilas, visiting one Jim Hogg who leads a crazy life in the surrounding hills. We were kindly welcomed into many homes on account of his popularity, given beds and fed many delicious beans, tortillas and (unfortunately) even freshly slaughtered creatures whose corpses hung from the ceilings of our host's homes so that we might grab a bloody chunk at any time we desire.
The homes have dirt floors with no bathrooms or sinks, and the surrounding grounds are loaded with goats, cows, chickens, pigs, burros, horses, dogs, and cats. The town of Batopilas, with its great old Spanish architecture, is deep in a massive canyon with one way crumbling roads dropping up and down the mountains in the most terrifying fashion you can imagine. The wee Isuzu pickup couldn't take it so we were at the whim of Jim and his essentially brake-less truck. Turned out better that way because we could spend more time looking at the views and trying to pet the many creatures who wandered the roads with us. Steve made many human friends and shined up his spanish quite a bit, Ginny made many non-human friends (which is of course quite preferable), but sadly most of her friends were either ripe for slaughter or starving to death.
Some things of interest we have been up to include:
* Borrowed a .45 pistol from a known drug lord and shot it off a peak in the hills (did we remember to wipe off our prints?)
* Gave a ride to a cool Indian guy with brightly colored traditional clothing, head band, and homemade sandals. In return he gave us oranges!
* Steve listened to a great 3-piece band playing 3 "Ranchera" songs per 100 pesos. (Ginny preferred to sleep in the house made available to us that night because she was tired from banging around inside Jim's truck on those terrible roads all day.) The only song whose words were translated was the lament of someone whose dog had been shot so he shot the shooter.
And to generally tie you into the bigger picture, we were going to swim along the Sea of Cortez coast but it was too cold, so we are going to the Caribbean, Yucatan first, and visited Jim for 5 days along the way. From here we shoot down through central Mexico, hopefully avoiding excessive traffic, bad roads, and army road blocks.
We have an online photo album for those of you interested in seeing pictures. This may be found by clicking here:http://picasaweb.google.com/ginnygoon/MexicoTrip
Click the individual pictures to see bigger ones or mouse over to see the captions. There is also a slide show option.
Bye for now,
S & G
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