I forgot

I know this seems like a hard thing to forget but I did... OK. Just near Mexico City (70km to the SE) is a BIG active volcano. Well she let go on Monday night. The ash cloud was quite visible from the hotel. I didn't hear it or feel any earthquakes though. See the report below:

Popocatepetl Volcano (Mexico)
A moderate eruption occurred at Popocatepetl volcano on 28th January at 1753 hr, local time. An ash column reached 3.2 km above the crater and drifted northwest. There were 13 small ash emissions in the preceding 24 hours. A 12 km exclusion zone remains around the volcano.

Pretty awesome and it reminds me that we are in a very active region for most of our holiday. There is a big bugger of a volcano quite close to Quito that is also erupting daily and has in the past covered the city in Ash. Wouldn't that be exciting!! Its called Tungurahua

Need a snooze!

A full day here in mexico.

As usual I am suffering from my no sleepitis that I tend to get while my body adjusts to the different time zone, so since I arrived I have been averaging about 4 hours sleep. So I woke around 7am and couldn’t get back to sleep.

Ramiro was up and was heading into the city to have a look around at for some gear we needed for the nights work, so rather than spend the time in the hotel I headed out as well. We jumped on the train and headed into prowl the back streets of the city.

Everyone told me that Mexico city is a dangerous place, muggings, e.t.c everywhere. If that’s the case, it certainly doesn’t feel like it. At no stage did I feel in any danger walking through the back streets, on the contrary, it just felt like being somewhere in a big city in Asia. Crowded, noisy, and street vendors everywhere. I think Mexico city gets a bit of a bad rap.

We spent 4 or 5 hours in walking the streets buying the bits that we needed. Unlike Australia where you would go to one shop to get all the bits you need, here you have to visit 100 shops, 1 of who will have some of the bits, another will have the rest. But… these shops change almost weekly so you have to go through the whole process everytime!

I enjoyed it immensely again, I even went all brave and was eating from roadside vendors on Ramiro’s advice and it was sensational food. I am really enjoying Mexoico, I think its country that is not given its dues. There are some really amazing places to see in Mexico and I think I will have to come back sometime for a holiday.

After a couple of hours of questions about our systems we headed out for the night shift at 11pm. The work being done by the electricians here was a real eye opener. There was 10 people to install one of our sensors, normally there is 1 or two! The other amazing thing was the work methods. Workplace safety is something that is not yet heard of in Mexico. Scaffolding held together by wire, ladders up to an 8m roof, unbelievable, things that if done in Australia would get you in a LOT of trouble. I looked away and pretended to be somewhere else.

So we had some problems and the downside of that is I now have to work Wednesday night too. This means I probably wont be able to get up to the pyramids North of the city as I will be toasted after another full night. This means my cunning ballooning plan is looking flawed. Bugger!

Anyway, off to sleep. Need to see if I can get past 4 hours.

Working in Spanish

First day of work here was interesting. I am over here to help the guys out with some new technology that we have and they have never seen it. It made for some interesting times in trying to explain how it all works. Training in “spanglish” is certainly something interesting, not dissimilar to when I had to train in China and they all only spoke Mandarin. It’s a lot of waving of the arms and things progress very very slowly.

After 4 hours or so of training we hit the road again to go and see some of their sites for work. Most of you know how much time I spend in shopping centres for work, so it was no surprise to find myself in a couple more in Mexico, and surprise, surprise, they all look exactly the same as shopping centres everywhere else.

We cruised around through the Zoccalo, which is the main square in town on the way back. The Zoccalo is Stunning. It is in the Centro historico area of the city which is the original spot where the Maya settled Mexico City a couple of thousand years ago. The Zoccalo and the big church next to it are actually built on top of the original Maya ruins. Just amazing.

The Zoccalo is like stepping out of a third world country into the central Europe. The Buildings, the history, the architecture are breathtaking. We came down a beautiful street with intricate sandstone walls and then BANG, opening in front of you is the Zoccalo. I loved it.

We then headed back to the hotel for some great Mexican food, followed by my first Corona of the trip. Followed by about another 20. These guys know how to drink, I think its because of all the chilli in their food…….

Tomorrow is a long day with a day shift followed by a full nightshift in the shopping centre. Not really looking forward to that.

Mexico City at a glance

Well what a fantastic day. I met up with Ramiro and Chucho from our sales partners here and they took me out for a great afternoon. We did a lap of the city in the coolest car ever. It was a massively loaded up Jeep Wrangler that was like driving in a boat it floated about that much.

It is interesting to cruisea around some of the back block as you get to see some of the absolute poverty that most of the people in Mexico City live in. Everytime you pulled up at a set of lights street vendors were selling everything, from cigarettes and beers to Dashmats for your car. There is also a lot of “performers” who do some sort of novel act in the 4 minutes between light changes to encourage you to give the some coins.

Probably the most depressing we saw was a mum with her 3 kids. She was lying in the middle of the road while they were doing somersaults and other tricks off her feet. Desperate stuff, especially to have the kids involved, but people do what they have to to survive in the Worlds biggest city.

Speaking of that, this city has 22 million people in it. That’s the population of Australia + 1 million. All crammed into a 75km square area. Think about that for a moment………. It makes for a crammed in place.

We did a lap of all the city highlights and then headed back into the south of the city to meet up with one of Ramiro’s good friends who then took us all out for dinner to an amazing place called Arroyo. It was HUGE and completely full. It was everything I expectedx of Mexico and more. The food, the music, the people, the colour. It was just a fantastic place with some great company.

There were many beers, much poor Spanish and poor English, and too many laughs. These people are fantastic and if the rest of the Mexican population is like the 4 I have been out with so far this will be an awesome week. It did get a bit concerning at one stage when it seemed miniNICK had headed off and we didn't know where. Found him in the end, guess where he was.... suprise suprise....

After the cantina, we went back to Orlando and Heli’s place and had a few more beers and solved some of the Worlds problems. All in a days work when you are representing the views of your entire nation J

I got back to the hotel around 11pm and was very very keen to hit the sack ready for the big day ahead.

Mexico City

Hola! I made it to Mexico. I was not fortunate enough to find a bed in the beast that is LAX airport so I had to push through. In the end that made for around 36 hours with no sleep, but when I did get to sleep I managed to punch out 14 hours without waking up so I am now as fresh as a daisy.

On the upside of the trip, I think it is the longest Australia Day I have ever had.

The first thing you notice about Mexico City its its size. It starts appearing about 40 minutes before you land. Huge! The second thing you notice is that you can only see a little bit of it at any one time because of the pollution. There is this constant grey haze that is like a blanket. Still it doesn’t seem to bad (from one who has spent about 35 minutes outside).

I have to say that the trip from the airport was not as traumatic as everyone makes out and I was to the hotel in no time. The Airport itself is SPECTACULAR. The guys who own LAX could learn a thing or to from the Mexicans. It is spacious, has a good amount of shops, is modern and I think if you were stuck there for a while it wouldn’t be too bad.

Today (whats left of it) I am meeting up with my work contact for a quick tour of the city and then heading out for dinner with them. Should be a good opportunity for me to practice my Spanish before I have to train a group of them tomorrow in a language I know nothing of J

Adios Amigos.

In God We Trust

In God we trust

So it says on the US currency. And just in case he doesn’t do his job, then we will make getting into the country a right bastard. And so they have.

A couple of things that strike me as I sit here in LAX airport waiting to meet my connecting flight to Mexico city, the first is that the tanks are not keen on making the airport a great first impression. Its tired, very tired.

The flight over was OK though. Had a funny thing on the plane, the captain announced soon after take off that the US Transport Admin has decreed that on all planes heading into the US people are not permitted to “gather” around the toilet areas. I had to do a double take.

What harm is 2 or three people waiting to go to the john going to do on a plane that is 11,000km from the US. More importantly, who is tasked with the responsibility to make sure no such milling occurs? Ridiculous, yet another case of the Americans being scared of shadows.

Anyway, about 7 hours in, I confess…. I was milling. When along came the Captain, stretching his legs and doing a walk of the cabin. He stopped for a chat and we had a nice 5 min convo as I was one of the few awake. In good spirits I asked if it was OK for me to be milling while talking to him as the captain….. he thought about it, and smiled and said, sod it, and walked off.

The next great thing was the Visa waiver form they give you on the plane, that outright asks you if you have been involved in espionage or terrorism, or drug smuggling with a helpful yes/no checkbox. On further reading, it said that if you ticked one of these boxes in the affirmative, you should contact the US embassy in your country (hard to do while on the plane) as you MAY not be allowed into the country. Pure genius at work here….. no doubts about it.

Maybe if they trusted a bit less in God and a bit more in common sense then the World wouldn’t be half as fucked up as it is now.

Also attaching a nice pice of Rob, miniNICK and I before departure, and one of miniNICK here at LAX.

Hopefully I can find a snooze room somewhere here as I am a little weary.

More later

Sideline

Its only 3 days now until I jump on the metal bird to start 6 weeks away. Lots of things to do and organise before I head off but I am getting through most of them.

One of the things I have been doing in dribs and drabs is working on my basket. Since Simn has put a new floor in it I thought it needed to be resueded as it looked terrible. Never done any leather work before so it was a bit of a learning curve but I have to say I am really happy with how it has turned out.

I got the suede from leffler here in melbourne at a good price, its a great place with everything you need to redo the basket leather.

This is how it turned out.


My next post will probably be from an airport somewhere as I have a lot of time in them over the next few weeks. enjoy yourselves at work while we are on holidays!!!

Tripping

Time I told you all about our trip that is coming up.

Finally, after almost two years, we are going on our honeymoon to the Galapagos Islands. Its been a long time coming but as robyn now has a new job we have some time to travel and see all the places we have wanted to in South america as well.

I have to do some work along the way as we have partners in Mexico, Chile and Brazil, so i will see these people either side of our trip. The picture below shows where I will be going.


It should be great. I am really looking forward to it. I am in mexico city for a week before meeting Rob in Santiago to start our holiday. From there we will go down and spend 12 days in Patagonia in amongst the icebergs and glaciers, something i have always wanted to do.

We then head yup to Quito in Ecuador, where we will be based for 14 days. from there we will fly out to galapagos and spend a week cruising the islands which will be amazing and something we have been looking forward to for a long time.

We then fly back to Santiago where I have to work for a couple of days and rob will do a bit of touristy stuff. I then fly on to a few days in Sao paulo in brazil, again for work, and rob will head back to Australia. I am also looking forward to Brazil as I have a few friends living in SP through ballooning who I hope to be able to catch up with.

So the passport is in for Visa, the shoulder has been jabbed for yellowfever, the side effects have come and gone, and I am keen as mustard to get the trip under way.

I am crap at blogging

I got two posts into the blog about japan and ballooning and realised it was much easier to have a beer than it was to be bothered typing blog entries. I apologise to all of you who were waiting with baited breath for the next installment.

Life is moving along well at the moment and after a nice lazy christmas up at the olive farm, we headed back to melbourne to work the break inbetween holidays and to get organised for our awesomley awesome NYE party.

We were expecting around 20-30 people so there is a bit of prep work to do in the lead up. The party was themed as hawaiian beach, and the crowning glory was an adult size jumping castle in the backyard.

We had 25 people turn up and it was a BOOMER of a party. One of the best I have been to... but I allowed to say that as I am the host. Everyone was on the jumping castle and most were into the wading pool at some stage as well. The 42 degree C day made for a perfect atmosphere for a hawaiian party and beers, good food, great music and awesome company.


NY arrived faster than seemed possible, and thankfully most of the crowd kicked on spectacularly until around 3am, I outdid myself and pushed on till the last of them had fallen and made it till about 5:30am.

Great night! I don't know if I can beat it next year.......