This week has been full of firsts for me. My first Mexican Margharita, the first time I´ve swum in the Pacific, the first time I´ve seen a dog run over (and a second!) and the first time I´ve seen a pelican!

So last time I wrote I was still stayig in Taxco, which is still one of the best places I´ve visted so far. On the last afternoon in Taxco we decided to do some sightseeing, so we went up one of the mountains in a cable car to admire the view. The journey was quite short and once we got to the top we found that a big resort had been built where the view should have been, so after looking at the main attractions ( a big sculpture of a golf ball) we headed back down the mountain again and decided to get a taxi up to El Christo, a statue of Jesus built overlooking the town. The views from there were breathtaking (see photo album!) and we spent quite some time taking photos and watching the sun go down. It was then that we realised that our taxi driver had got bored of waiting and had left us at the top of the mountain as it was getting dark! Daisy and I walked down the mountainside and through the small cobbled streets down to the town again, and really enjoyed it, because we felt that we´d seen much more of the town, going past people´s houses and talking to people we wouldn´t have done if we´d just got the taxi back down.

The next morning we got up bright and early to catch the bus to Acapulco. The journey was only supposed to take about three hours, but in true Mexican style it took five and a half instead, and we arrived at the bus station as the sun was setting. It´s strange, as the first sight you get of Acapulco is as you come out of a tunnel through one of the mountains, so on one side you had no idea how close you were to the city and on the other you could see the big city, towering hotels and the sea! We arrived at our hotel in the dark, and were greeted by an old lady and her teenage son who took our bags through to our room. I say our room, it was actually our own apartment, which would have been very nice indeed had it not been open on three sides, filthy dirty (including the sheets), the mosquito nets slit where people had been trying to break in and the lecture from the son about how we must keep everything locked up at all times, and if anything was stolen they weren´t liable. Which was nice. Later that evening (after we´d locked all of our belongings up) we went out for dinner and had our first Mexican Margharita and had an early night. Neither of us slept very well, as it turned out that our beds were made of sponge laid over concrete blocks!

The next morning we left the Bates Motel early in the morning to make the most of our day in Acapulco. We went and brought a picnic from the local supermarket and found a quiet spot on the beach where we tried to turn ourselves from blue to white in the eventual hope of getting a tan, and spent the whole day there and drank margharitas as the sun went down. Then we wandered into town to book our hostel in the next town we were visiting, but to no avail and we had some dinner, and that was the end of our time in Acapulco!

We got on the bus the next morning to take us to Puerto Escondido, a six hour bus journey away (actually eight hours). When I was in Thailand and travelling around, I used to frequently undertake long bus/train journeys, and was always amazed that at the end of twelve hours I would still be in the same country! Well, in Mexico 8 hours will take you just over the border to the next state! There were 184 speedbumps and a dog in the way of the bus and Puerto Escondido, which made very slow going.

As we hadn´t got a hostel booked we just asked the taxi driver to take us to any hostel, and he took us to a really cheap one on the outskirts of town. Once we´d paid up we went to our room and found that a cockroach had already staked it´s claim on the room and didn´t want to budge from the middle of the floor, but with the aid of one of our buckets (bucket and spade set- like we´d go to the beach without one!) we got it outside. Then we set about rigging the mosquito nets, as we were getting bitten as soon as we went into the room, and lighting the mosquito coils and spraying as much reppelant on ourselves as we could handle. Then we set out to investigate the town. There wasn´t must of it, and it was very quiet, so we ended up sitting in the bar at the hostel listening to well seasoned travellers talk about how no one back home understood them, and how they´d been to so many places they´d forgotten the names of most of them, and how they´d been smuggled into this country or that, and it just annoyed me, so Daisy and I went to bed. The next morning Daisy and I woke up feeling in better spirits and hoped that the beach would be so good it would keep us from wanting to move on, and although it was lovely, it was still quite hectic with people trying to sell you things and cars going by, so we decided to pack our bags again and move further alng the coast to Puerto Angel.

An hour and a half bus journey later and we were in Pochutla, the nearest town with a bus terminal to Puerto Angel, getting seriously hassled by taxi drivers trying to bundle us into their cars, which came as a real shock, because it was the first time we´d felt hassled since we arrived in Mexico. We got to Puerto Angel in the end, decided on a hotel and went to investigate. We were worried when we arrived at our hotel of choice because they seemed to be doing major building work, but it worked in our favour as the hotel was actually really lovely, and they were giving large discounts on the rooms beacuse of the building work.
The hotel is about 20 metres from the beach, with lots of lovely little bars around the small bay, the water is crystal clear with loads of pelicans flying around and the weather is fantastic.

We´ve decided to stay on in Puerto Angel for at least another three days, as the famous surfing beach in Puerto Escondido that we missed out on, is actually easily accesible from here, and there are lots of walks and excursions to do during the day and nice bars to relax in at night. The plan then is to spend about two days travelling down to the Guatemalan border and crossing into Guatemala to visit places like Lake Atitlan, Antigua and some of the famous ruins in the north of the country, so next time you hear from me I´m sure I´ll have done a lot more firsts!

Thank you all for the comments you´ve been posting, I know there was a problem with the spam filters, but they´ve been fixed now, so don´t let it put you off!

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