Puerto Vallarta

There was an unsettling Wall-E feeling at the Westin time-share in Puerto Vallarta. I was the only person running on the treadmills - everyone else was walking. And most of the cheerful Americans lay by the pools ordering super-sized bland meals from English-speaking waiters, listening to new-age pan pipe music. Much as there was twisted satisfaction in being slim and fit by comparison - it isn't real... I'm still an over-the-hill chubby back-of-the-packer. And the "Rhythm of the Night" show we saw was such a smaltzy tourist fabrication - we hated it. Outside of the security gate, the people hawking timeshares and tourist tat were obnoxious. This isn't Mexico! So we ran away.

We found an idyllic small town, Yelapa, at the head of a small river, on a grainy beach, about an hour's water taxi ride away from Puerto Vallarta. The Lagunita Hotel was perfect, with individual palapas on the beach, and a nice little restaurant. It just had a genuine Mexican beach resort feel - friendly and relaxed. I wish we could have spent the whole week here instead of in the timeshare!



Billy walked up the river while I had a massage. OK, the sound of the surf was a bit loud for sleeping but the feel of the place was just right, and we loved it.Rising early, we explored the village—a maze of adobe walls and red-tile roofs criss-crossed by cobblestone lanes climbing impossibly steeply. There are no cars or motorcycles in Yelapa - just mules, water taxis and lots of dogs. Everyone greeted us with Buenos Dias, and left us alone on the beach. It was hard to leave to go back to PV!

But it is time to go back to work. OK, one last stop at the Cheeky Monkey for cheap Margaritas!

Cuajimoloyas to Lachatao, Mexico

We need to take 3rd-world travel lessons from our kids! How we've been spoiled by the English-speaking taxi drivers and guides. With a only a little slip of directions from the booking office in Oaxaca we struggled to find the 2nd class bus terminal and after finally buying tickets and boarding our bus, we ignorantly sat in the wrong seats, wedged in between bags of garlic and crockery for 2 hours then got off at the wrong stop....ARG! Billy heroically flagged down a lorry loaded with chickens in crates and we clambered on top to ride the last few kilometres to Cuajimoloyas where our mountain guide was to meet us. As we were late, the tourist office for "Pueblos Mancomunados" set us off with a lovely young girl, Daniella (hugging a tree in the photo), to try to catch up with our official guide, Javier. So we raced along the trail at altitude of 3200 metres, far away from the noise and stress of the city. It was fantastic!

We caught Javier and a French woman tourist, Sandra, at their lunch stop. Javier's enthusiasm was infectious as he described medicinal plants and history, but he spoke no English and our Spanish is very basic, so sometimes we just nodded agreement - without understanding what he had said. Sandra's was not much better but her English was much better than our French! The landscape was spectacular with huge agave plants between familiar pine trees, festooned with beautiful bromeliads.

The cabanas were almost-new dormitory-style cabins, with an ensuite toilet. The open fireplace was very welcome as the temperature drops below freezing at night, (yet raises to almost 90 degrees at midday!). We met up with an English couple, Kate and Adam who had been mountain-biking, and watched the sunset before a simple but delicious dinner in a local woman's small comida (dining room off her kitchen). There seems to be a critical lack of change in the mountain villages, but incredible trust. The shopkeeper would not accept payment for beer but was willing to give it to us, along with lending us a bottle opener, with the understanding that we would bring the empty bottles back the next day when they would be able give us change for the 100 pesos. 7 beers, 2 bananas, a bottle of water and nuts cost less than 5 GBP! Billy and I decided to try a single bed for warmth, but regretted it by the middle of the night... but coffee and hot milk from a bowl as the sun rose was glorious.
The walk along the canyon between Latuvi and Lachatao was beautiful and eerie where the moss hanging from the pine trees swayed in the wind, the aptly-named ghost forest. We were glad that we carried 2 ltrs of water as the temperature rose along with the steepness of the trail.
Got to run now.. but want to tell anyone traveling to the Oaxaca area to book a trip with this eco-tourism project. It is a great chance to see the un-spoilt mountain villages and gives them a fighting chance for survival!

Oaxaca Mexico

Jet-lagged early rising walks, sampling mole and chocolate. We signed up for a couple of tours to outlying villages in the central valley with a rich crafting heritage. Our guide, Jose Maria Brena Morales was fantastic, managing to avoid the tour buses and providing his Zapotec heritage insight at archaeological sites and Mezcal tastings. The yarn in the photo was all hand spun and the amazing palate the result of all natural dyes in Teotilan. We succumbed to the sales pitch and bought a beautiful rug - now we've got to carry another bag! At the Dona Rosa pottery, we watched a demonstration of an interesting hand-building technique on two saucers that was way over-hyped... perhaps I'm just a cynic, but burnishing pots was not "invented" in 1952, nor is smoke fired raku so revolutionary... But the old guy did put on a well-rehearsed show.

Oaxaca's markets and central square, the Zocalo, are incredibly vibrant and facinating, but we're ready to get away from all the people and traffic, so are heading north tomorrow to the Pueblos Mancommunados, where eight remote villages in the Sierra Norte mountians have an eco-tourism project, Expediciones Sierra Norte, where we'll be walking "between villages and sleeping in dormitory cabanas, along the pre-Hispanic track that follows the Latuvi-Lachatao canyon trail through cloud forests festooned with bromeliads and hanging mosses". Sounds pretty cool!

2009 New Year's Resolutions
(back from a FREEZING night sleeping in the campervan in the Peak District)

I can't resist. Not sure why - I rarely keep to them for more than a few weeks. But there is something irresistible about that clean slate to write on - a fresh new year. A chance to do things right.

1. Stop shopping! (go for the shabby-chic retro look).
2. Follow my running training plan on Buckeyeoutdoors to be prepared for the White Peak Swift Half Marathon in May and the Mendip Muddle 20K in October.
3. I found a quote I really like: Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away. Make sure that I'm not too busy to notice them.

I sent in my forms for the White Peak "Swift" Half Marathon 0n 16 May 2009, and paid for my kids' entries for Christmas... hmm... isn't that really a gift for me? Oh well.

Join us! The sign-up is limited to the first 200 people and opens on 1 Jan 2009 - it usually fills up by April. Here's the link to the entry form:

Its a great race; soft underfoot on an abandoned railway line with fantastic scenery and a 800 ft downhill cruise for the second half - really fun!

There's a video of Nick and my Swift Half run in 2009 which can be found at this link on Runcast.tv . Petra and Snowshadow Phil also talked about running it this year!

Recovered from my bug, I really enjoyed the run on the beach this morning - what a great break from dank, dark and dreary London! A colleague and I extended the business trip a couple of days to see a bit of Ghana. I had my doubts as we said goodbye to our driver and his lovely air conditioned vehicle, and moved pretty down-market in hotels, but it was great to see a bit of the country. It would have been a pity to go home only having seen the beach, a conference room, our western style hotel and the drive between!

Well, it was great except for the 3 hr drive to Cape Coast in a taxi with no AC, in horrible traffic (both ways!!) What a miserable journey, choking down petrol fumes and sweating! I guess one really needs to travel very early or very late to avoid the Accra congestion. Sometime we didn't move for 10 minutes, as people came up to the car trying to sell us everything from drinks to a dictionary (really!) But the music on the radio was reggae or West African highlife music which I'm going to search out at home!

But as we began climbing up into the rainforest at the Kukum National Park, I knew it was all worth it. The canopy walk, a roped bridge 40 m up in the trees was the Ghanian equivalent of an amusement park for masses of school kids, but it was fantastic all the same. We were dripping sweat as we waited our turn on the forest floor, it felt like 100% humidity! But high in the trees there was a breeze and what a view!

Then we visited the British forts at Cape Coast and Elmina - sobering and horrific reminders of the slave trade. I’ll never forget standing in a lightless, airless stone cell that held women in incredibly overcrowded and inhumane conditions for months before they were boarded on ships never to see their loved ones again.

I wandered around the market at Elmina by myself for an hour and chatted with women at the Kente cloth stalls, and explored the noisy fish market. I really wish Billy had been with me to photograph the impossibly ordered chaos!

Home now with lots of souveniers of Ghana, necklaces, paintings, cloth and other suprises that will re-appear on Christmas morning. I do hope I get to go back to Ghana again!

Its been an interesting week in Ghana, meeting with the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation and our counterparts at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. We’ve been treated like visiting dignitaries, chauffeured around by a driver in a lovely Air Conditioned car and addressed with undeserved respect. The Ghanaians are incredibly warm and friendly people; they laugh alot.



We’ve spent all of the time in one conference room, reviewing documents, except for two hours a day driving from the hotel to the office and back. The stretch along which we are we are driven, from the capital, Accra to Tema, the container shipping port, is far off the tourist track and the inhabitants seem to live a pretty hard life. The women walk along the road balancing their wares on top of their heads (bags of water or fried plantains) and the shops are open shacks and most wares are set out in front on sides of road.

I most wanted to buy one of these coffins! To set out on that last journey in a giant duck or a model cruise ship would certainly lighten the mood at a funeral. I shudder to think how much it would cost to ship one to England!

I managed an beautiful early run on the beach a couple of mornings, but then caught a nasty food bug, and I didn’t want to stray too far from a toilet for a couple of days... But I’m feeling better now and we’ve a tourist day tomorrow visiting Cape Coast and the Kukum rainforest. It will be great to see a different stretch of road and some green space before heading home.

I saw this scary ad for a herbal AIDS treatment.... I hope they don't have many customers.