Bilder fra Zacatecas

det finner du her


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10214&l=8a5dd&id=532806889

Chihuahua

30^th of July

After a good night sleep at the bus I was looking forward to explore a new city. Chihuahua turned out to be very different to what I had got in mind. It seems like the average wage level here is lower than in for instance Zacatecas. All the missing persons posters that’s hanging on every lamp post is frightening. Human traffic seems like a big problem here, which is really horrifying. Me and OC was walking downtown when this old man started to talk to us. He was quite good at English, and very interested in what we were doing in Chihuahua. I still haven’t seen any other white skinned people in this town, so we sure attracted a lot of attention. Anyways, this old man that we were talking to showed us a lot of tricks with his handkerchief. He was making all sort of animals, humans and food out of it. I must admit that I suspected him to co-operate with somebody else to steal our wallets. He tried to get all our attention, while some of his friends walked behind our backs. I had my hand on the wallet, so I guess that’s why they didn’t dare to try to take it. Let’s just hope he was a friendly man that wanted to show his well trained handkerchief tricks.

In the evening we watched a movie about Francisco “Pancho” Villa. I found the movie very interesting, and informative regarding to Mexican history. We had visited Francisco Villa’s house earlier today, and I recognized some of the locations in the movie. It was also cool to see the car that he was shot in. I can understand that he is a real hero for the Mexicans, since he wanted to free the people from the Spaniards. Although, his methods are of course questionable, and I sure understand that the Americans hate him. He is an important part of Mexican history and culture, and is like a Ernesto Che Guevarra is for the Cubans.

Finally I understand why there is so many that has written 20^th of November on walls all over Mexico, and there’s actually a street here in Chihuahua called 20^th of November (in Spanish).

Hospital in Mexico (..ooouch)

27^th of July

Today, I probably had the worst experience of my life. We went quadbiking, which started of quite fun, but when we came up in the mountains OC lost control of his car, and drove of the road. He fell on solid rock, and hurt both his head and back very much. I was the first person on the scene, and the next thirty minutes were terrible. OC was hurting real bad in his back, and after a couple of minutes he feinted. We tried to keep him warm with our clothes, and I was trying to talk to him for a long while. Then his heart beats stopped, he didn’t breath and his eyes went totally white. I taught that we were losing him. It was some horrible seconds, but then he started breathing a bit again. He also had a lot of cramps and were hyperventilating. Holding a friend in his hand and thinking he is dying was unbelievable. I hope none of you will ever have to experience that. When the Ambulance arrived after approximately 30 minutes and my work was done it was just too much for me. I started weeping for a while. For the next couple of hours I didn’t know how he was doing. Kaia went to talk to the doctor. When she came back with the message that OC was all right, and had been extremely lucky it was a big relief. I guess that those seconds will be the best on this trip.

From two o’clock I’ve been staying at the hospital with OC, since he’s staying here for 24 hours. He is under observation, so there are people coming in every hour and waking us up. Since OC is gotten a lot of Valium, he has been sleeping most of the time while I’ve been watching some movies on the laptop. This is a day I will remember for the rest of my life, and I most definitely could have been without it. After all, I guess this is the perfect time to get religious, OC really had a guardian angel today.

In the night at the hospital we were disturbed by nurses all the time. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was twenty different nurses that dropped by, and none of them could talk any English. We understood what they wanted to do. They used body language, and we listened carefully to their Spanish. I’ve do understand more of what they are saying now, than what I did in the beginning. Probably because I’ve picked up some word and phrases.

Zacatecas vs. Mexico City

Mexico City was totally chaos. It was much polluted, traffic was crazy, crime rate was sky high, everybody was trying to sell you thing, and it was survival of the fittest. In Zacatecas everything is much more relaxed, and it seems like people are enjoying their lives. Even though everything goes slow, I still feel more comfortable staying here for a couple of night, instead in huge Mexico City. Everything is also a bit cheaper, and I feel that the locals don’t try to fool the tourist as in Mexico City.

Update, now in english

Since I'm already writing a diary, I'm not going to blog in Norwegian as well. So heres an update on how I've been doing for the last couple of days. Copy paste from my personal diary.

24^th of July

We had been taking the bus for the whole night, and when we arrived at Zacatecas many of us fell asleep in the movie room, but some of us went sightseeing for the whole day. We went to the mines and the cable cars over the city. In the mines we had a funny guide that talked real good English, he was joking all the time. It wasn’t very informative about the mines, but still we had a good time. Then, the whole group ate together at one of the local restaurants. It wasn’t very good. In the evening I sat up at the sunroof talking with a bunch of people. It was the best experience in this travel. They told me all kinds of crazy things. They were very interested in what we were doing, and wanted to know a lot about Norway. It was fun to tell them, and they obviously didn’t know anything about Norwegian culture. Phillip was the one I talked the most with. He is 43 years old, and originally comes from a little place outside of London. His life story was quite amazing. He started hanging out with some bad people, and his life went to hell as he said him selves. He started doing drugs, robbing people and actually also doing armed robbery in banks. Then his mom died fifteen years ago. He got very spiritual and started believing that there is a God that is watching after him. He always feels safe, and he said that knowing that somebody is watching after him is the best drug in the world. For the last 8 years he has been travelling around the world, meeting new people and working a little bit every now and then. He doesn’t owe anything except his cloths. He loves to go scuba diving, and thought that we were very spoiled when we were going scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef. He rated that as the best place to scuba dive, except some of the caves he had been diving in. So I’m really looking forward to it. When I told them that we’re going up in the north, they told me many of their experiences while travelling. One of them had taken a train in the Grande Cobber Canyon, or whatever it was called. They had taken the first class train, where they did have lots of armed guard, which they didn’t have on the second class train. Therefore the second class train used to be pretty popular to rob. When these guys that I talked to drove past the second class train they saw bunch of bullet holes all over the place. The standard had become much better in the last years, so I guess we won’t the bullet holes and so on. By the way he also told me about a ferry trip he had been taking a while back. It was a small ferry with 400 passengers, and it only was four toilets, so they flooded after a couple of hours, and the trip actually lasted for sixteen. The ferry was also leaking, so there were about fifty members of the crew that was filling up cans with water, and throwing it out in the sea again. And the worst of all was that it wasn’t seats for everybody, so many people had to sit on the ground for sixteen hours.

While sitting up and talking to these lads I learned about the backpacker life, and it absolutely seems like something for me. Many of them had a very strange way of living, and they surely were very social people.

25^th of July

Today we had this assignment, so me and the Swedish lads interviewed three Spanish speaking people we met in the town. It actually was quite funny, and we learned about their lives as well. The presentation also went ok, even though we probably could have prepared more. At the night we had this totally crazy “walk in the streets party”. We hired live musicians, bought a lot of cheap mezcel (similar to tequila, only stronger and cheaper) and we payed of the police to be allowed to drink in public. What a fantastic experience. Our group payed everything, but I guess 150 people joined the train. It was quite like 17^th of May in Norway with drunk Mexicans and South American dancing. It was really great fun, the Mexicans are real party people. The drunker they got, the more did they tried to pick up our blond good looking girls. It’s a tradition to do this in Zacatecas. It started ages ago when they had found a lot silver in the mines. The workers then hired a lot of hookers, stripped, drank tequila and danced in the streets. Strange people these Mexicans. By the way, I love the way we just paid of the police to get permission. Corrupt where?

26^th of July

Today I slept pretty long, which was very good regarding to the party yesterday. Then we went to the Corona brewery, which by the way is the worlds 2^nd largest brewery. It was like an entire city, totally crazy. We did some mathematics, and found out that they produce 168 billion liters of beer every 20^th day. So beer obviously is big business. They had 5000 workers on the brewery. We also got to see some of the commercials for Corona, and we learned how they do their branding. They don’t make commercials just for the beer, but for the whole Mexican experience you’re supposed to get when you’re drinking their beer. It was fun to see, and very relevant to our course that’s about Intercultural marketing. The souvenir shop was really cheap, since they want people to wear their trademark all over the world. I actually bought three t-shirts, since they looked neat and I love Corona as well. In the evening me and OC was watching a movie. It was nice to just chill out. I talked a bit with Phillip about movies, and we liked the same movies so we’re probably watching one of his favorites tomorrow.

Bilder fra de første dagene i Mexico city

sjekk ut
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9698&l=4c63d&id=532806889

skulle gjerne lagt ut mye mer, og skrevet mer, men har ikke tid. Hektiske dager. Gjør det asap.

Pyramider og sånn

De siste dagene har vært rimelig hektiske med masse opplevelser. En dag var vi på tur til et par pyramider. Den største var verdens tredje største. Hadde kappløp med Juliane opp til toppen, men jeg måtte kaste inn håndkleet rimelig kjapt. Her vi er nå (Mexico city) er vi litt over 2000 meter over havet, og pyramidene var enda en del høyere. Tynn luft, bratt stigning og dårlig kondis hjalp meg ikke akkurat opp, men jeg kom meg opp til slutt. Flott utsikt og imponerende byggverk var kult å se. Ellers så får vi tequilla overalt hvor vi går, og den mest ekslusive sorten er den med larver i. Som den eneste i gruppa shotta jeg med larve i og spiste dyret. I følge meksikanerne levde den enda, bare at den var skikkelig drita. Smakte ikke så verst uansett. Ellers har vi bare kost oss rundt omkring. Var en tur i partystreeten her en kveld, og vi ble, somvanlig, den store attraksjonen på byen. 10 blonde jenter med store pupper og blå øyne er tydeligvis ikke hverdagskost i mexico. I kveld tar vi nattbuss opp til noen indianere nord i Mexico. Tror det blir skikkelig kult å se hvordan de lever. Gleder meg masse. Har tatt masse kule bilder. Skikkelig mecca for en fotonørd som meg, nå gjenstår det bare å legge ut litt bilder på nett, det kommer snart (forhåpentligvis). Orker ikke å skrive mer nå. Hasta la vista.

Framme i Mexico City

Etter 48 timer uten en eneste time søvn var vi endelig framme i Mexico by. Etter litt surr på flyplassen tok(23.00). Da var klokken 06.00 norsk tid, og jeg hadde ikke sovet på et par døgn. Den natta gjorde godt etter å ha levd på dobble espresso og kaffe i lang tid. I dag har vi vandret litt rundt i byen og sett mye kult. Fikk bl.a renset sjelen min av en meget religiøs indianer som danset utenfor en katedral. Sol og kokvarmt, helt til det plutselig ble skikkelig troperegn, derfor sitter jeg inne på internettcafe og skriver litt nå. Mexico har vært gøy til nå, og dette gir mersmak. I kveld skal vi på wrestling som er mexicos 2. største sport etter fotball. Mange tusen mexicanere og kjempeliv. Absolutt ikke noe for turister sa guiden, derfor skal vi dit. Skal vi lære om kultur, eller skal vi lære om kultur? 150 pesos for transport, kampbillett, drikke og litt mat. Som hun sa "dere får gratis tequilla, og for dere som ikke drikker kan ta et par øl." Liker holdningen. Gleder meg til å se wrestling, så kommer jeg med en oppdatering om et par dager.

Snart på vei

Velkommen til min blogg. Her vil jeg forhåpentligvis få anledning til å legge ut litt info om hva jeg opplever på min reise verden rundt. Nå er det bare to dager til jeg drar. Gleder meg! :-) Satser på å oppdatere jevnlig, samt legge ut en del bilder vi flickr underveis. Min neste post kommer nok etter noen dager i Mexico. Stay tuned.