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laptop-office.com laptop-travel.com |
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Available for direct phone assistance in laptop usage for business and travel |
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A blog/journal of travels with my Laptop… See galleries of photos at www.writer-4-hire.com/photo_albums |
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Where have I been ?
Currently in Mexico before taking off for Lisbon and Madrid—see below.
Where have I been on this leg?
I’m on a journey through the isthmus of Latin America, looking for the best places for traveling professionals to live or visit for a while. Looking for the mid-size provincial city, for example, where life is good, the people friendly, costs are low, but you can still get what you need for life and work—like excellent broadband services, where you can sit in a café and connect to the world. What have I found so far?
Beginning in Mexico City… Gallery: www.writer-4-hire.com/photo_albums/Mexico/1mexico-city/
Mexico City – ah, wild, chaotic, huge, workable MC! Great for a visit, a swoop in and out again, a taste of serious concentrated yang energy, as you wonder how it all works. You can get anything you want here. But I wouldn’t live here, the health pressures are just too strong—the pollution, the electro-smog, the cocktail of it all. However the cows of all kinds all over the streets were a real treat. And the Diego Rivera murals are fabulous, huge, and sardonic in their take on the Spanish disaster (for the Indians at least). Frieda Kahlo’s self-portraits are found side-by-side with images of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, who is really an ancient Aztec goddess connected strongly to the serpent of wisdom. And to get a breath of cleaner air, I bussed it to... Taxco Gallery: www.writer-4-hire.com/photo_albums/Mexico/2mexico_taxco/
Silver City! About 3 hours from MC by bus, like an Italian Tuscan hill town, built over and round a valley or two, with narrow winding cobbled streets, beautiful plazas, silversmiths everywhere in shops and on the streets. Kombis and SUVs swarm the streets, winding in around the walkers who somehow stay alive. Taxco is a wonderful town, busy and prosperous, silver-plated. You could easily live here in comfort for a while. I was going back to MC but was somehow forced to detour to... Malinalco (unfortunately no photos of this amazing place) Halfway between MC and Taxco in a hidden valley, Malinalco is a dark place in the best meaning of the term. It drips with superstition and hidden ritual, the dark eyes of the inhabitants know everything you do, while seeming to be oblivious to you. You feel like the only tourist in town that once dallied with human sacrifice … and I was! I arrived here on Wednesday afternoon, the height of the market which seems to cover the whole town in stalls, surrounding the ancient Dominican monastery/cathedral with its courtyards and crypts and cemetery with lively business. Looming over this beautiful village is the reason I came – the remains of the Aztec Initiation site for the elite warriors, a 500 step climb up the dark mountain that watches over the town. The climb was worth it. A whole temple carved out of one huge stone! I was dragged here for some reason that I still don’t know about … except I just had to visit, flu or not. Oaxaca Gallery: www.writer-4-hire.com/photo_albums/Mexico/3mexico_oaxaca/
Down southern Mexico in Chiapas, beginning of real Mayan territory, which is an area covering southern Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala plus a bit of Honduras. Thousands of towns and cities were built here, some of which have been uncovered from encroaching jungle, while most remain under green disguise. This was a whole built environment over a couple of hundred thousand square kilometers, and a energy/communications network linking the sites. A mind-boggler! We’ve been bending down and picking up shards of pottery in the most unlikely places, with designs worked in … they’re everywhere. Rather like my childhood in New Guinea where we’d find shells, guns, machinery round the town, left over from WWII a few years before. Layers of history everywhere. Oaxaca is a bustling prosperous and creative town—everyone is creative here rather like San Cristobal (below). It must be the springtime climate which causes it. I know that I’m feeling much more like writing and creating myself ever since I came down this way.
San Cristobal Gallery: www.writer-4-hire.com/photo_albums/Mexico/4mexico_sancristobal/
Perhaps the best candidate so far on this quest for a pleasant place to stay for a while. It seems to be a great combination of picturesqueness, resources, ease of living, cost of living, likeable people, etc. And it seems to be springtime all year. It’s full of Mexican Indians who have a real dignity about them, who are pretty prosperous, and creative—this town has a lot of galleries of all kinds, and everyone seems to be making something, whether a work of art, or some kind of artesanial handiwork, from hand-made sweaters, shawls and hammocks to fossil and amber jewellery. The women still wear their regional dress with pride as a daily ‘uniform’ - except for the town women who would rather follow western styles. And they are generous—just today, Blanca in the internet café gave me a hand-carved letter-opener, and in the restaurant I was give a ’courtesy’ tequila for no good reason except that I’m good-looking! (just kidding). I have to say you don’t get that treatment in Australia. You can find good internet service everywhere, and even free wifi (wireless) in some of the fabulous little cafes. There’s a café I went to last night with a friend, where we had a choice of Arabic, Thai, Japanese and Indian cuisine. And it was good! I had a Tandoori chicken unlike any other I’ve ever had, but it was great with strong Mexican touches. The owner used to be the cook for a well-known eastern guru, and did a runner. In the same café the night before a friend called me from Australia on Skype to show it could be done: I could see him on video as well as chat with him by simply talking to my computer! That is pretty cool. Puerto Escondido Gallery: www.writer-4-hire.com/photo_albums/Mexico/7puerto-escondido/
Hidden away on the Pacific coast a 13hour bus trip from San Cristobal and a world away. I got climate shock. I went from a cool mountain climate, an ancient town, and upright mountain Mexicans to loose, laid-back, tropical, palm-crazy, beach culture. Hard work, but someone’s got to do it. I got over the shock pretty quick, walked the beautiful long arc of beach tasting the atmosphere of beach living—the boats, the palm ‘umbrellas’, the restaurants with their coconut milk from the coconut (and anything else you want!), the granite rocks, and the surf! This was regular, big wave territory—PE is famous for its occasional international surf comps, and the locals are obviously well practised. I had found a B&B that looked good on screen, $27/day, but then I got there… Darlene, a 60-ish dyed American bootie started to tell me the ’rules of the house’… I got them verbally, then I got them in print, as she parked me in the downstairs room. It looked ominous. Then I checked out the town, came back for a siesta, and found that the room was a sauna, inviting serious solar radiation right on to the bed. That was not all. Next door they were having a competition to see who could work fastest and loudest on hammering and cutting the new house that was going up about 10 metres away…. Darlene, who claimed to be into chi kung, along with her 30-ish boyfriend/driver/protector, sat upstairs. She had failed to get a week’s rent up front, even though she’d used all the tricks, even getting the boyfriend to look fierce over her shoulder— and thank God I’d had my wits about me. I gave her a day’s rent and a vague impression of perhaps staying. I had to plot my escape! The boyfriend was looking weird… Suffice it to say I got away, and found ‘Le P’tit Hotel’ almost on the beach, the best hotel I’d been to yet (but see below for an even better one!), only $27, everything I wanted, beautiful, pool right outside my door, cable TV, everything laid on thick. And a jolly Frenchman in charge. This was good and way beyond what Darlene could give me—she gave me a headache, a creeping paranoia, and heatstroke. All in one day. To make matters better, I found a great little café with baguettes and espresso coffee run by a fine-looking blond German. I asked if they had wifi—they did! Got the key, and I was off. This was my office for the duration of my PE stay. Generous breakfasts, a sea breeze, open all hours, it was fine. Matters improved even more as I walked the distance along the beach to Zicatela (I was in the Bahia Principal, the main bay). I found a beach restaurant, so what, beers and tacos as usual. But this was different, this was actually a sushi restaurant… I”d had sushi before which was unnameable, with cheese in it, and horrible squiggly stuff in some kind of rice and I was feeling distinctly aloof. But the adventurer in me needs a run, will have a run, and I tried the tuna. Well, it was good, very good. I had a feast. I had the eel, the prawn, the dorado, the squid, the salmon, and more. I hadn’t had a sushi for months, Friends, I was feeling ok—I had a fine though cheap hotel, a café-office with wifi, and a sushi restaurant on the beach. I was at home again in Mexico. And I have felt at home, more than in Sydney. But wait till you hear about Acapulco...
Acapulco and La Boca Chica Hotel Gallery: www.writer-4-hire.com/photo_albums/Mexico/9acapulco/
The taxi-driver from the bus terminal was saying: ‘Boca Chica Hotel! It’ s ugly! You’ll be all alone! There are drug-addicts in the streets! It’s so dangerous!...’ I smiled my knowing weary-traveler smile. ‘I have a reservation’. I had used ‘hotels.com’ to get a reservation for $50/night instead of the rack rate of up to $130! He wanted me to go where he got a commission, since the taxi fares are now fixed, removing a nice source of flexibility in charging unknowing foreigners. I was right. Boca Chica was the right choice. It goes back to the 50s and 60s, the heyday of old Acapulco, time of the beautiful Flamingos Hotel, haunted and owned by Johnny Weissmuller, and his pals John Wayne, Red Skelton (remember him?) and the rest of the Hollywood heavies of the time. Perched like an eagle’s nest way up on the highest of Acapulco’s cliffs, the guys and gals got into the sauce and all sorts of other things for decades of high living. And Boca Chica was the sophisticates’ watering hole and piece of paradise. Built on the point of La Caleta on the western end of Acapulco, landscaped into the rocks, patios everywhere, spilling over into gardens on many levels. Built in the 50s/60s but with style, and populated by 50s beauties and would-be leading men. MiguelAngel and Isabel his wife currently own the BC, and are doing a great job of maintaining their beautiful property. They have a palm-roofed circular restaurant which has great sushi and all kinds of juicy international food, along with local fare. This is the restaurant the locals come to for a good meal, and million-dollar view. Every room has a view from a balcony and on the ground level a garden terrace. In the 80s and 90s the big hotels moved in, on the eastern end of the great arc of the bay, the vertical Hyatts and Radissons, glass and cement behemoths with hundreds of rooms and little charm. But the Americans swarmed over them and mass tourism meant that the package tourers congregated at that end of the bay. Boca Chica and the Flamingos were left to the local Mexicans and the more discriminating travelers. Nowadays there are quite a few Germans and French , but not an America accent to be heard. In fact, the Americans moved in the 90s even further afield to Cancun, Playa del Carmen (which has the dubious distinction of being the fastest growing town in the world over the last few years…). Cancun and Playa are frequently buffeted by hurricanes, which rip roofs off houses and even uproot the palm trees. But it doesn’t seem to stop the influx of sun-seekers. I don’t get it personally—Mexico is full of beautiful places to visit, and Cancun/Playa must be the least attractive in the country!
The Silver Cities west of Mexico City See the various galleries in the link above These fabulous cities had an early colonial era of huge profits from the silver mines, which allowed the Spanish masters to indulge their taste for monumental building of cathedrals, palaces, and churches in plentiful volcanic stone, using, of course the cheap labour of the Indian peasants. There were many cycles of prosperity and hardship over the intervening centuries, but perversely, tough times in the 20th century meant that the ’developer’ disease of the western countries didn’t destroy these beautiful cities. There wasn’t enough money around to do it with! And the Mexicans had a sense of the beauty of the built environment, I believe, even though as they spread out from the historical centres they slowly lost the original high standard of building over the years. So Morelia, a few hours west of Mexico City (MC) in the state of Michoacan has a very extensive historical centre, and everywhere you turn you find portals, arches, passageways, courtyards, churches, palaces, fine homes with carriage entrances and patios, parks and cobble-stoned streets. You can stay in fine old family seats which have been turned into hotels, all with the characteristic Spanish-Mexican design of a square-ish structure of stone, with central ‘patio’, originally open to the elements as a carriageway and parking area and indoor garden. All the rooms of the house look over into the patio, often with a 2nd floor in the grander places. Now these patios are often covered and a huge new room is added to the already massive covered living space.
And then? Back to old Europe now—first Lisbon, then Madrid to do some energy work with friends, Barcelona and then an old ambition to be fulfilled. I want to follow the legendary Apollo/Athena line with my dowsing rod, using as my tour guide the great book by Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst called ‘The Dance of the Dragon’. More on that later.
Then back to Australia to organize my affairs/business before I make a real move back to Latin America for a couple of years at least.
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By Tim Strachan |
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Previous journeys— see here (soon)
Living by trading, and traveling while trading (2006) All over South America like a rash! (2005/6) Legless in Paraguay in the 80s, and landing on my feet (1981) Following energy lines across England (1994) Shot and nearly jailed in Rio & the Matto Grosso/Brazil (1983) On the run from the Godfather in Greece (1978) A journey as a translator thru cannibal territory in the 60s (1968) Discovery of ‘the great invention’ in Argentina (1984) |