The last few days in Mexico...

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I left Mexico City yesterday morning and felt really sad to be leaving. Luckily I will return in May to get my flight home so I can get to play for one more month. The last week was amazing - I forced myself to leave my comfy existence in Puerto and went on a little road trip down the coast to a hippy village/beach called Zipolite, and its even smaller neighbouring village Mazunte. On the way there we bumped into some hippies who had just come from the Rainbow Gathering that was taking place up in Vera Cruz. By all accounts it sounded a fairly challenging experience. This time it was held on private land which had previously been deforested for cattle. It meant that the site was infested with tics and also having suffered from continuous rainfall, very muddy. One of the girls we met was covered in tic bites! So we hooked up in the back of camionetta/ colectivo taxi van and got out together at Zipolite, and went and lied on the sand by the beach. I had heard the water was deadly here - apparently Zipolite even means 'beach of the dead'. and on paddling in up to my knees I understand why. The undercurrent was so strong, and the wave curls up from nowhere really close to the beach and then crashes down. There is some kind of shelf only a few metres from the sand which causes this. It is a strange contradiction to an otherwise laidback hippy paradise. The other strange thing about Zipolite is that the lifeguards are all voluntary. Up to 80 people die a year here but the lifeguards are voluntary?! Then on meeting a few I was further confused... One had a tattoo on his neck and eyebrow and looked more gangsta than lifesaver. Another one I saw wearing a lifeguard t shirt was severely obese. I don't think he was in any state to save anybody. Yet the lifeguards spend all day on the beach, zooming around on a buggy. I wondered how they financially could manage it, and the only conclusion I could come to is that it is all a front for some kind of ludicrous drug peddling. Turns out this isn't that far from the truth!

Mazunte is much calmer but hilarious as it felt like I was walking around some kind of hobbit village. All the little houses are carved out of wood and there are some lovely dwellings, but there are mainly matted hair hippies triping down the street, and the volleyball net on the beach had been squatted as some kind of community action zone. It's not overrun though, there aren't enough people to have that happen. It is a lovely place to be, and there were some great places to eat.

Heading back to Mexico City I took the 12 hr nightbus which passed surprisingly quickly despite the elderly mexican woman next to me snoring like a trooper. I headed for the neighbourhood of Coyoacan which is where the houses of Frida Kahlo and Trotsky are. It was nice but strange to be back in town. At 9am I got my flight and went through Las Vegas to Denver. I totally forgot that the rest of the world was not a beach because I arrived in Denver last night in my flip flops. Oh my god, it was cold! Apparently there is not much snow in Denver for the time of year, but it was still a shock to my beachbum system.