Planatnitos, Sea Turtle Camp, Mexico (saving the damn turtle mofo!!)

Adventures to Patanitos Sea Camp (Saving the turtles Mofo!!)

So what epic 24hours!! Woke up in beautiful hotel room about 8.30am, shot up showered, Slapped my Ipod in My bikini bottoms and played girls aloud as loud as I could as I did my rutial dance/pack my bag routine, Somehow being in Mexico for two days I have accumalted 4kg to my bag!

Left my hotel room at 10am... walked to the end of my road and waited for one of my favourite golf buggy guys to drive me to the bus station and without fail.. picked one up immediately and headed straight to the bus terminal. The amazing thing about Mexican Buses is that you can literally show up anytime.. and bam your on a bus with 30mins! (only had time to scoff 2 tacos from a vender for breakie!) Seriously awesome, they have all the prices and destinations on the board so you know what to expect, and you even get to chose your seat travelling mexico is a piece of piss if you know where your going, and from mazatlan to Tepic it cost 230peso (which is £11 for 4.5 hours of journey on a delux bus!!)
Now I travelled 1st class on the way down to Mazatlan and that were pretty awesome.. with this bus.. you can recline your chair so that it turns into a horizonatal bed, and you can flip this thing down in the front that lifts your feet up!! can... 2 male and female toilets in the back..and TV's every 3 seats! ha ha what a joke! so that flew by.

Got to Tepic and had to get the Pacifico Bus down to Las Varas, which is where I was too Meet Gordon Godfrey who was the geezer who was taking me to Patanitos Sea turtle Camp. Hmmmm this wasn't duelux, it was economy but did only cost e 63peso a mere £3!! and although it was a coach, it was rammed and full of mexicans with massive cardboard boxes..and big things that took up the aisles, no goats tho!! It was a proper bumpy ride through massive mountains and rainforests and whenever we stopped at some crazy village everytime about 3 mexicans stumble up the aisle trying to sell us things! 'No Gracia' seems be the only spanish I seem to say tha day! The journey took a good 2 hours of bumping and grinding (but not in a R Kelly way!) till we finally came across civilisation!! Las Varas!
Literally the bus station is a concrete opening with a women holding toilet paper! haha so sat down and waited for Gordon and true to his word, he showed up, He was a tall white american, and greeted me with a "here she is!!!" In a arkward struggle to get my bag back on we jumped in the car and he took me to go get my weeks supply of food from the supermarket. Well what an experience!, if anyone of you have ever been travelling with me you will know I fucking love international supermarkets.. just to look at all the crazy stuff they eat and the hilarious names they call certain brand and food! But this was completely and utterly not the case and exactly what a third world country supermarket would look like!!! majority of it was open with rows of gammy veg coz of the heat.. so hence went straight to the can goods and dry pasta aisle..! in a rush to grab all my food for a week feeling the pressure of Gordon waiting axientiously on the side!! had to make some snap decisions on a budget of 100 pesos (NO cash machine in las varas!)
So literally bought pasta, cup noodle and 6 eggs from the back counter which I would say was covered in at least a thousand flys!!!!
The journey to the Camp was exactly the sort you could imagine in a fuck off chavolet! potholes, dirt tracts, half a meter mudpools that the chev has to plough through! Passing through small villages were they live in corigated iron shacks with palm tree roofs, big trucks carried vats of water coz of the floods (were in the middle of hurricane season at the mo, and they had mass floods for a week, all the power went and I been told that when the electricity goes so does the water supply! WTF looking forward to this) there were kids hanging off the back hitching a ride back to their local village. We turn off at a sign that says "Patanitos resort and sea Camp" and we travelled down a small tiny dirt track full of puddles of mud to which we travelled down for 7miles!! and it's crazy.. we pass fields of cows, anorexic horses and most importantly POACHES!! they literally have the fucking cheek(and the lack of policing in this area as were in the middle of fucking nowhere!!) to walk down the route to get to a 9km beach where all the turtles come to lay eggs, to nab the nests.. and apparently these guys are ruthless they'll go out in electrical thunder storms if the have to! There is also miles and miles of palm trees with cocnuts pacing out the journey!! can it was at that moment that I realised there was no turning back or running away!!!..

Patanitos is this beautiful resort of 10 immaculate holiday masions, where people own them and rent them out to people to holiday in, and of course having the turtle sanctuaary there also attracts those rich fuckers who want to see the turtle be released into the sea..
so crusing past these beautiful houses
I thought fuck yes...
I'm going to be living a life of luxuary!!......as we cruse these sexy houses, how very wrong I was, we parked up literally next to this (please see photo as word can't describe it!!)

Basically a concrete monstrosity which looked like it should be in afganhistan/sarajevo post war, There was fucking litter everywhere and fucking piles of wood and rusty nails just laying on the ground. Any ho.. there was no time to suck it in and shit a brick... I was whisked into the the other hut and introduces to 'Rhiaro' who is our camp co-ordinator... He's the guy who is responisble for looking after us guys and telling us what we are doing for the day! All the bunk bed where stacked on one side of the hut and Kitchen was on the other side, all separated by some moldy shower curtains!! I was showed my bed and met the 4 Germans who were also volunteerng here!! .. There's Rebecca and Till who are a couple and here twin sister Vivianna and her flatmate Catalina.
So lets cut to the amazing shit you wanna here about and not focus on the shit shack I'm staying in... So our roles as volunteers is a) to work from 9pm to 2am every night walking 8km to 12km collecting eggs from nesting turtles. b)to help clean out the nests, collecting all the turtles that have hatched and struggling to get up to the surface, and bin all the undeveloped eggs C) Releasing the baby turtles into the sea and preying they survive!  D) which is not in the volenteer role but as one britain and 4 germans felt the need to take on a new role, to clean, rebuild parts and mend the dorms (the sarajevo shit shack in which we are meant to be living in!)

Day 1 (well night time day 1)

So put my bad boy trousers on...cover my entire body in insect repellant and try and find a long sleeve top to cover my arms from the millions of bugs that are already eating me alive. And so We set out at 9pm... we were cover 2km to 4km part of the beach, so Rhiaro our leader shows us tracks... and bam within 20 mins we find a nest..

By finding a nest you have to find the tracts of the turtle from the sea... once you see a few it gets easy to spot them. Then at the end of the tract is a massive circle pattern from where the turtle does this paddening down "dance" which she does in a clockwise motion to cover the eggs with the sand. So you find the Circle poke it in the middle with a stick until it  easily break through the sand. Once it does you dig...and that's exactly what I did firt time whhhooo hoooo.. it's incredible! you can feel the eggs amoungst the sand, they feels like a slightly deflated ping ping balls.. and that's exactly what they look like!!! ha ha then you collect all the eggs put them in a bag and fill out a form with all the info of where they were found,what the weather is like, was the turtle there and how big was she..etc pretty awesome stuff!!.. After our first find it became a bit of a slow night... until an hour later we found a turtle nesting. Right so the other way to collects eggs is straight from a nesting turtle!!.
When you find a turtle nesting... you first roll up your sleeve....I'll explain why in a minute!!.. and you start digging where her ass is..this doesn't bother her, as when a turtle starts laying eggs, they go into a trance and you can pretty much do anything around them as they don't have a fucking clue what's going on! if only human could adopt that trait hey!! (Kirsty - 14 stitching you know exactly what I mean!!) So where the hole is, you get your hand and you get stuck in and start grabbing the eggs as they drop out of this crazy alien duct that comes out of her fanny followed by this gross clear discharge (hence pulling up your sleeves) which kinda looks like those crazy blood sucking alien machine things from war of the worlds!! when there done and you have all the eggs...and they do that amazing crazy dance thing where they fiill the hole with there flippers and pad side to side in a circle to cover the nest... and off she goes back to the sea! It's incredible and one the most mind blowng things I've done to help the planet!!
We found another turtle that night and the lower back of her shell was snapped & showing inner gubs!! eerr Hermillo (who's the turtle expert at the camp and I totally dude, love this guy!!!) Told us that this was caused by the male being absolutely massive and breaking her!! What the fuck.. you could see by her front flippers that chucks of her shell had been cut out.. this is from one massive motherfucker of a male mounting her and fucking her to death!! literally! Aparently when turtles mate they mate for up to 2 hours, and the males do that crazy thing where the latch on a lock.. so there's no getting away!! Poor fucking female turtles.. they have a tough life!!
So why Save he turtles  hear you say?? well here are a few points of why these poor buggers stand practically no chance of surviving.

*First of all man kind have been killing turtle either for their meat or with their overize speed boats slicing through their shells
*When they do lay eggs...nasty fucking poacher steal their eggs for food.. yes in Mexico the economy is so bad here that if a poacher steals 1 nest ( which contains on average 75 - 110 eggs) they can sell 1 egg for 2 peso..so for one nest that's a fucking days wages for these assholes.. and they sell the local restaurants .. shops etc crazy stuff!
*when a turtle lays a nest... due to the lack of male turtles in the ocean, only 1/3 are actually fertilised
* and out of the 1/3 of the fertilised eggs... only 1/3 will hatch
* out of that 1/3 will hatch only a few will survive and the other will suffocate in the sand (hence why we take the nest so that we control the temperature and help them come to the surface)
* then with the surviving turtles, when realeasing them they had to muster up the energy to walking down the beach to ocean, swim for the first time and trying not to get eaten by the other animals! in every 1000 turtles that are realeased, 1 survives!!
man the statistics are stacked for these little critters!!

Day 2

So it saturday and the crazy mexican builders aren't there so It was today was the day we were moving the bunk beds out of the kitchen and into the Sarajevo shit shack!! Well I literally pooed my pants at the thought of living there... couldn't understand how we were.. but after 5 hours of blood sweat and trying and dodge the rusty 6in nail that's sticking out of the wall... and lots of painting over mold!! The beds were dismantle and put back together... and fair play.. it looked good and was alot more cooler! whoo hoo
After the "post war Sweeny make over", I get told I have 10mins to get ready to have dinner at Gordan house!! So instead of showering, I picked up one of the body boards... dived into the sea to the most amazing waves I have ever seen and gave myself a good scrub down.. shove on a t shirt dress and i'm good to go!
Gordan is the guy who owns one of the amazing masions here at patanitnos resort. Please see picture of this mofo crib!!! But as him and his lovely wife susan have a complete passion for saving the turtles (and town a few businesses so they  minted!) they contribute loadsa money to the project and help recruit people like me who are just up for doing crazy shit like this! So to say thank you they invited us round for a phat meal!! And when I say Phat, I mean no joke a platter of garlic 15cm long Prawns! (Becky, Luci, Lisa, Kirsty and Carys it what our dreams are made of, no more can I look at an iceland prawn platter the same way) and a buffet of Mexican rice, salsa, fresh salad and homemade tortilla!! And I got to wash it down with a much cold pacifico beer as i wanted!! They are the most lovely well travelled, cultural and phenomenal people I've met so far in my travels, and we sat in pure luxary as they let us be welcome in their billionaire holiday home, which has commissioned murials on the ceiling, art from all over the world but mostly mexican. They let us play on their Ipad and there other Mac laptop! Seriously an amazing evening...so hospitable...with good food and good people.
So then at 9pm it was patrol time and we were out on our rounds... from 9pm-1.30pm we collected over 8 nests!!!

Day 3

More scrubbing of the Sarajevo shit shack.. and I nominated to clean the bathroom downstairs (tiles are pretty much the only household task I can manage) So I don't know what the fuck these guys used this for.. but it wasn't a toilet!! they're was literally concrete splattered 6ft across the walls, 4cm the thick mud in all corners of room... and the toilet was an actual BIOHAZARD.. there were at least 2000 black worms squirming around in it (they looked like the crazy black shit that came out of mulder's eyes in x files!!blergh).... so I refused flat out to clean that bad boy and the others agreed!! But with Skunk Anasie blaring out of my ipod, a chisle in one hand and a metal scourer in the other... I commended myself on such an awesome job.. and the mexican's workers all asked how I cleaned it.. I pointed at the fucking tentnus inhibitted HIV ridden chisel I used.. and knowing the scary fact that, I think some of the scary scummy water that I used to clean it all off with might have entered some of my open wounds.. so if I'm in hospital in a few weeks time dying of limes disease you know why!!!

(this is the toilet clean.. after my attack with a chisel!!)

But hey 2pm came and the german's told me that they were go to take a kayak to plantanitos! So yeah what a fucking adventure we took the big kaykak all jumped in and paddled down the esturay, as we paddle upstrem it dawned on my many times about the motherfucking crcocodile that sleep on the side of the bank!.. yes there are crocodiles on the banks and thank god they sleep in the day and there are lots of fish and mammals for them to eat so they wouldn't eat me  my chubby ankles!! There were lots of times where we had to jump out of the boat and drag it across the sand banks over to other parts of the water, this is when I constantly kept touching my ankles out of fear!




Till (the german guy picked up the biggest yet cutest crab I've ever seen, it was huge, red and blue with these little indicators eyes that popped up and down looked like something from the galapodies islands!! so cool, this place is swarming with huge dragon flies, gecos's, lizards casually walking around, moths the size of your hands.. and bright yellow butterflies they always fly around in twos!! it's fricking unbelieveable and i have to keep pinching myself to remind myself it's real! So we finally found the concrete staircases and docked the boat in the rock...

we the clambered up the dodgy made stairs and then walked this small dirt tract round the cliff edge and finally we came to Plantitos village.We all sat down in a sweet beach side restaurant. The german guys were hustling a local for cheap jewerlley and cabana's (hammock) which you can get here for 300 peso's which is dirt cheap!! we sat down, chilled and eat an epic dinner me and catalina went for the garlic prawns, as we were the worst bitten out of everyone..

We thought the garlic might poison those little basterd..! but the meal was beautiful and I washed it all down with a beer! we also had a lovely tanned wrinkly old mexican come and seriande us at the table.... bless he was whipping out some classic mexican tunes on his spanish guitar and cracking some high notes!! you could tell all the other mexican families were gettng well pissed off with him!!! I asked him if I could have a wee go and whipped out some of my classical tunes.. which seemed to confuse him.. i think it was coz i had a vagina!!
So we kayaked back down the river and this time it was much quicker coz the tide was in so no basterd sand banks.. also the thought of getting dark and being in crocodile infested waters make you paddle like a maniac!

So we got ready to go on patrol and by 9pm a hugh fucking thunder and lightening storm came over us!!! So we had to sit and wait it out... so me,the germans and Rhiaro played a game of wizard.. only to half way through we realised Rhiaro was slurring his words.... then as the game went on he was fuckin making no sense then it twigged as i walked in him on early sneaking something into his coke... that he was wasted!! so on our own in a thunderstorm with a drunk mexican who is meant to be looking after us!! can.. So Till called a plan, 3 of them went looking for eggs while me and Rebecca watched Rhiaro, as at this point he was passed out and dribbling on himself!! Can so Rebecca watched a film on my laptop and I planned the whole of my mexico trip day by day!! whoo storted!

Day 4

Spent the whole morning catching up on emails!! chilling on gordan porch and skyping my favourite people and also showing off the cracking view!! Then chilled then at the pool and finaly started the book simon gave me. went out out 8.30 and collected 5 nests all we got 13!

Today was the first time for me, when we released the hatched turtles into the sea!! wow it was incredible, we took 3 boxes of all these tiny black baby turtle just crawling all over each other... then you wait for sunset, because as the sun sets.. and it becomes dusk it's less likely they will be attacked by predators..
ahh it amazing to see.. some don't move at all so you just keep picking them up and moving the near to the water...others go for gold....and you watch them get swept by the tide into the sea! so beautiful...also the reason why you don;t just put them into the sea is beacuse they need to smell the sand so that when they grow up to 8 years and started nesting, they will always come back to the beach... to be honest photo' are the best way to see this miracle so please see below!

Day 5
Was the day from hell woke up at 7am  to try and skype someone in OZ, got to gordan's house after my eyelid and lip being complete raped by mossies(so I looked like the elephant man when that blew up!) set myself up and my computer crashed and there was no access to the internet, so riddle back to camp and hauled my ass back into bed and slept till 11am.. and had crazy fucked up dreams from my malaria tablets actually was contastly pinching mysel f in my dream becauseit felt so real and wanted to wake up frommy nightmare.. only to wake up scratching the crapoutof my whole body!! damn those fucking mossies!!)
So I concluded that this was just going to be a bad day, so a swallowed a chunk of concrete and just excepted that it might also be a case of acute PMT to the max... !When I did wake up at 11am everyone for some reason was also passed out....so went to eat something and boom the door to the kitchen was locked!! and Seca (an 8 month puppy who is my best friend here)  was going nuts as she hadn't been fed..all things know one had showedme where thing were kept..so had to wake up one of the germans and ask about all this crazy stuff!! (feel like I'm constantly twat, always bugging them or have to ask them for any line for any sort of communication  that happens here. and if anyone knows me, the one thing I hate being is a nuisence to people and being here that's exactly how I felt with two langauge barriers! fucking great). So the mood i was in I isolated myself to the swiming pool to calm down, and read the whole of simon's classic teenage horror book that Simon gave me on my leaving do!

Absolutely hilariuos and entertained me with it's big bold font and generic american horror for 5 hours while I soaked up my vitamin B!
I headed backto camp at 3pm as I was told we were gonna clean the nests... After all 7 of us squigged into the car when we got to base KM4 I was ever so nicely told by Rhiaro, that he needed 2 WOMEN to clean bags!! (yeah that's right not men,women because of course the only job, WOMEN can do is clean!! - never say that to a women suffering acute PMT!!) So in a strop me and Catalina, did the joyous women task of clean plastic bags in a fucking rip tide, in a fucking tropical storm... it was so bad that the tide would get sucked up 30m making the beach dry then at 30mph would come in full force and blast down on us!! in the end we started pissing ourselves coz it was so ridicuolous and so tireing battling the waves that it just became funny!!! Then I finally got cleaned at least one of the nest's.
This is how you clean a nest:

*So you dig the whole nest up, this will be complied of broken shells from where the turtles have surfaced,turtles who are trying to surface, unfertilised eggs, dead turtles who didn't make it, eggs that are undeveloped and you can feel a wee turtle in them, and last but not least maggots which have been eating the dead turtles and eggs mmmmmmmm mmmm mmmmmmm!
 *Then you separate all those catagories and count how many in each one and record it! (apart from the maggots)

*Then you haul that into wheelborrow and it gets dumped somewhere
(please do bare in mind that I was doing this in a full blown Tropical storm wearing my specticles, enough said)

When we got back I was done!! Ate a packet of watered down soup and then hid in my bunk and watching 'kick ass' the highlight of my day !!
9pm came round and I had to pysch myself up walk 8km in a massive tropical storm, and to make matters worse I had to walk all the way up to 3km with just Till (the german guy) and Rhiaro (which was a barrel of laughs as non of them were in the mood to talk to me and when I asked any questions they ignored me as if I didn't exist!!) So that was it, I was done for the day (and kinda felt like packing my bags and fucking off!)..I found myself drawing pictures of beer and glasses of wine in the sand... fucking realising that all I was gagging for was just a converstaion and to get absolutely fucking drunk as a skunk with someone and laugh about farting with someone.. anyone!!! (there's a no alcohol and drugs ban on the site...kinda make sense as you can't be wasted when on patrol! So when we got back to camp.. i thought fuck this it not worth dying inside for!.. so I told rhiarro that if we only collected 1 nest, then what's the point in all of us going out, and that I was pissing tired and just wanted to sleep... funny enough ll the german's felt the same yeah!! and we won.... we got our bedtime.... Man I slept like a dream and preyed I'd wake up the next day without the massive "rod up my ass!! "

Day 6

Twas a good day, woke up feeling like I could take on mike tyson!! ha ha  Sprung out of Bed said 'gudentag' to the germans... had a fabuous egg breakfast and was determined to do something!! Amazingly as if God actually exist.. Till popped his head round the corner... as I was about to start round 2 of the sajervo shit ..HIV infested toliet,... and told me that all the germans and the staff were going to a nearby village to pickup some food and concrete or whatever.. (I don't care I just heard everyone was leaving!!whooo hoo)
Thankfully decline as I only had 50peso to my name and was waiting on the beautiful gordon to take me tomorrow to las varas! So I thankfully declined and said I'd be fine on my own to clean the shit shack!! ...when they left I couldn't tell you how much fun I had! I whacked on my ipod.. stripped off to my bikini (it was actually not raining that day!!) and started scrubbing down that motherfucking bathroom... I used a fricking rusty knife to scrap  all the mud/poo that was in the corners.. washed it all down with bleach dancing around to a bit of kylie mingoue!!! Fuck yes..and hour went by and they were'nt back..sweet..grabbed the paint brush and roller and and painted the whole side of the one wall, scrubbed down some green moldy stuff that was growing on another side wall then attacked that with a paint brush... and before I knew it...5 hours had past.. I had had listen to all the cheese in the world.. take that, damage, bit of madge...threw in some sterophonics for being welsh sake and i was covered head to toe in white paint!! So everyone cameback around 6!! because Rhiarro apparentely had to go to hospital to get his appendix out (I thought he had been a massive pig and ate too much shit the night before uh oh!! alsomight have explained the other night??)
So took it upon myself to grab my netbook... and sit on gordans porch to keep in touch with the outside world! Man if there is one amazing memory that I am going to take away from this place is Gordan and Susan's amazing welcoming hospitality and their amazing view from their porch... you can sit in absolute paradise and watch a the bloodshot sunset through the palm trees floating down and melting into the sea!! Absolute bliss...even more bliss when they keep offering me beer!! Spent a whole 3 hours discover the book of face I neglected for over 2 years when I was working my socks off and chatted to people I havn't spoken to for ages... Then their was a flashof lightening and boom...power cut!! so headed in complete darkness back to camp and got ready for patrol... Slow night only got 4 nests.. and walked 12km... but finally had a fucking awesome conversation with Hermillo! Hermillo is the turtle expert here and is a small round smiley mexican who loves turtles.. and talking utter filth!! Yes finally a hilarious yet educational conversation! Hermillo told me about a special kinda music that's called 'porno-corridos'. To your average non spanish speaking person it sounds like that typical spanish music.. accordians, trumpets, double bass and some geezer with dirtytash singing joyously..but actually it's like their version of gangster rap, talking about fucking/hating women, making love to their donkey, shooting people for drugs the usual 50 cent shit!!  ha ha hilarious. Also he informed me that the mexican Navy would be down in a few days, as they help them out from time to time,catching poachers.. well as you could imagine 'jizzed in my pants' at this thought... which hermillo found hilarious to inform me that most the men in the navy are 'maeade'! this means a straight guy who to fuck men up the bum!!! ha ha ha hilarious..He told me that there's lots of this kinda  men in mexico who are known as 'maeade' have wives and family but love to have bumlove with men, I said surely they are just GAY!! ha ha he agreed...Also the word 'maeade'is the mexican name for the dung beetle..ie something that is awlays around poo !! ha ha hilarious!! But when their is a 'maeade' their is also a "Putos" these are the straight guys that like to recieve!! Seriously people... maybe it's just easier to be gay!!! well enough of the mexican smutt onto day 7!!

Day 7

Woke up at 10am.. did my morning ritual of breakfast, take "Pyscho" Seca for her morning walk and feed her.. Absolutely love that dog!! Then decided to give myself a project as there was paint left! So decided I was going to redesign Hermillo Door!yes and art project! So solvent off the black marker peny last remaining bug spray ( coz it clearly is good for something else as I have 152 bites all over my body!!) with that said  and started on prepping a stencil of a turtle to spray paint on the door!..So sat by the pool all morning soaking up the sun using hermilo's swiss army to stencil out! Gordan then apeared and said he was ready to take me to Las Varas!! YYYEEEAAAHHh fianlly I can live like a normal person and not poo noodles anymore... So off we went to go get me some bug spray, caladryl (my second best friend to seca- cools your bites) tampons and motherfucker food!! whooo hoo
Drove through the pot holes...the collapsed bridge from the floods (like a whole tarmac road vertically dropped down into the river), through the small villages.. and finally to Las varas.. which is the first place I've seen that has a pavement!! crazy times... Right so went to the not so manky supermarket this tim and  actually the little town is quiet cute.. bought  Caladryl from a pharmacy, went to this amazing fruit and veg shop where I bought 4 bags of the most amazing fruit and veg for 158 peso (which is around 7quid which is absolutely ridiculous for getting 2 weeks worth of fruit and veg!) then went to a massive supermarket and bought 6 bags worth of food inc sun lotion, shampoo conditioner etc for 600 Peso (£30) and ven had a sweet little mexican boy came and help me with my shopping!! then over to the hardware store where we picked up 3 massive pots of paint for our project make 'Sarajevo shit shack not shit' anymore by brightening it up and doing some murials!! that cost a mere 150peso... and also bought a chisel so I could do some sculpting. Then the creme de la creme was when we jumped back into the car and the wonderful and patience Gordan drove us back to camp, Till saw on the side of the road this one house with was in the middle of nowhere (texas chansaw massacre stylie)cutting up some massive carcass, so as all the butchers were shut in Las varas, Till used his awesome spanish skills and talked to the people while I stood fasinated by the huge spine they were chopping into, the intestines that were half falling off the table, and them throwing all kinda of reminese into this big black pot of boiling shit!!! ha ha the crazy old lady was nodding and was pointing at the hanging pieces of meat and what we would like to buy... Till bought the biggest strip of pork loin I have ever seen, and I bought a massive chunk of pork thigh which she cut off for me I paid 40 peso's for it...amazing !
That night we all had a fest!! and finally i could repay back the generousity of the germans by offering up my famous Gucamole, and I made myself an amazing braised pork in the spiciest salsa sauce ever hmmmmm that I braised for over 3 hours in loads of fresh chilli...amazing and tasted so goooood...
After as the sun set we realeased another load of hatchings into the water!! then out on patrol at 9pm!Good day!

So I'm now on day 9 and I have swang into a full blown routine, I wake up about 9.30am take Seca for her morning walk up the beach let her do her thing (poo and pee all the way up the beach)attempt to play fetch but with a 8 month puppy who has ADD is hilarious.. then I come back, feed and water her then have my classic egg in toast.. the days spent either chilling by the beautiful resident pool (which we have onlt till Oct 1st as there'sno one here at the mo) reading a book, or painting and doing up the Sarajevo shit shack while listening to my sexy ipod, then a communal evening dinner hanging out with the german's then patrol at 9pm!
I'm now settled in and not so bothered anymore by the language differnec between the German's and me...at first it was unbearable and kinda upset me the lack on conversation I was having in a day.. drives you insane) but then actually when you think about it if I was here with 4 of my british friends.. and I spoke a little german.. I wouldn't change all my conversation to try and inc to just one person... so it's cool and excepted, and they are also the loviest group of people always including me with what they are doing, I always have the chose I can go with them or enjoy my own company...so it's kinda cool now I've adjusted to it. One thing that has totally helped my out with this experience is my ipod... I literally wake up in the morning sticking it in my bikini pants (not like that!!) and walk around all day rediscovering bands...it's bliss!



Also someone who I love to be around during patrols is Hermilo!! the podgy lovable mexican is the greatest person to hang out with, we have the same taste in music... and he's introduced me to a whole load of mexican ska!! anyone who loves a bit ska definitely wins my vote...  born and bred and he has educated me on so much to do with the mexican way of life... and nature.. like he's the only person I've met who could tell my in layman's terms hows tides actually work with moon... and things like how female crocodiles will starve themselves for 4 months while they have theie litter, but after a month of having them and bringing them up.. if they don't piss off after that month, she'll eat her babies! fasinating!! an amazing guy and finger crossed when I live to go to Galagdhara, (his hometown) hemight comewith me, so we can have the biggest tequilla bender ever... and of course take e to a mexican Wrestling match!! whoohoo!
Another thing that I totally forgot about myself.. is that I'm a complete dreamer (typical pieces).. From always having to work and have my mind occupied.. it's abosultely amazing when we go out for  our 8km walks.. beacuse every now and again we talk to each other but most of the time.. I spead daydreaming about all kinds of things!! (that's why I'm crapat finding turtles coz I spend half my time fanstasies about all kinda of stuff like zac from scrubs!!) So kinda cool to rediscover stuff like that about myself... and getting some aweome idea's for my business when I finally slow down on the travelling front!

So that's me, I've got another 2 weeks here before I start travelling again.. Gordan is going back to salt lake city on Wed.. so if there is a powercut ( which i definitely gonna happen) the internet will go down and no one will be able to switch it back on, so no contact for a while if that happens.. so thought I'd give you a wee insight to what I'm doing here and one I can grab the photo's off the lovely germans, then I can show you how beautiful the turtle are and how tropical and crazy this awesome place is!!

Mazatlan, Mexico

So first night got to a hotel (literally asked the taxi driver to take me somewhere and the lovely guy,literally tookme there waiting to see if I liked the room and then got all the tuff out of car and tomy room for me! all for 40peso £2!!)
soof course after a 30hour bus journey my belly was going nuts...and I literally didn't prep myself for the heat (after being on aair con bus) so bizarrely left my hotel room and in the direction of food thinking there would be lots of food vendors....eeerrr actually no... the thing is about mexico...This is the first place where I've actually travelled which is esentially digeted in poverty. The people live in cramped broken and make shift houses, kids are in the streets playing in the murky waters.. even though this is a holiday resort, where I'm staying in downtown..near the old town,my hotel is in a "working class" area which in truth is the real Mexico.
So as you can imagine as I'm wlakin around the d=streets at night trying to find somewhere to eat.. all I have in mind is that classic "when you end up in a back alley GET OUT" but the thing was the whole neighbourhood was one back alley.. in fact I got to one end of a street and there was lots of red green and white flags and tacky bunting, loada white pation furniture with a giant stage and your typical fat mexicans with massive moustashes alined with guitars.. thinking it might be an awesome restaurant.. but realising when seeing 3 leathered wrinkley old ladies clutching a box of ferreo Rosshia that infact I'd just stumbled upon someones wedding!!!  ha ha crapped myself more, I then thought fuck it I'm in over my head and ran until I saw shops I recognised till I find my Hotel! During my scramble back to my hotel, I stumbled across a mexican pizza place... so I ran in feeling like a cop out coz it wasn't a burrito..
Snatched two slices of hot meat and jalapeno's pizza (ohcome on it has jalapeno's so technically it's mexican) sat down next to some mexican teenagers with their skateboards, and scoffed the pizza down in .4 sec... but you know what was the most sexual part of that pizza.. the cup of motherfucking cherryade the lady added to my meal!! bless her she did her best to understnd my aweful spanish, which turms out it's just easier to point and say pourva voura,so i don't know if it was a part of the meal... or if she just felt sorry for me... but either way it was sexual!
Found my hotel, got into my room and breathed a sign of relief. Rule number 1 when travelling; always explore and get you bearings in DAYLIIGHT, NOT at night when you can't even see the street signs!! ha ha

So daylight came and I amazingly woke up at 10am in my hotel room with 12 hours of blissful sleep .. oh yes..no fucker waking me up in the dorm at 7am rustling with there fucking sanibags.. or no asswipe coming in at 4am and argueing with the peron underneath them coz they're making so much noise and rockin the bed (all experiences are based on real life) I actually had the best night sleep since leaving Cardiff! So anyho,up for my adventure.. back packon, computer and valuable stashed in secret places in the room. And out I go to explore Matazlan... well exploring isn;t the word, getting lost is...So rule of thumb follow the sea!. Where I am there is one massive beach that stretches 2.5miles called Player Nortes, I'm right at the bottom end where all the fishermen were,sorting out their nets and boats...and entertainng the huge motherfucker pelicans that were hoovering round for fish! Got a cheeky hola froma few of them, and jogged on round this mofo cliff edge heading down to old town.
on my wee walk I noticed how everything was completetly closed,or shut down..and it seemed mazatlan was a ghost town! But there  was a few  mexicans families which seemed like they were on holiday? So as I was walking along the long promenade (literally about 4miles of it!) I also came across loadsa a small little beaches..with amazing surf beacuse it was right of the edge of this cliff face, they were so beautiful, and the pacific Ocean completely roars at you with it's massive waves!! it's amazing how know fucker is around to appreciate it??? On my walk I also came across some cliff divers.. who literally gets the hot young mexican.. to stand on the cliff top... gets the crowd going... while his Dad run around frantically collecting tips..then when you think he is gonna jump... he steps down and his dad does it!!! what;s that about?? amazing to watch them dive into the ocean.. so so near the rocks it's ridiculous!
Finally got to old town.. and was compltetely lost on which road to go down t get to the Muesoum de Artes. ia lovely guy in a golf buggy who spoke little english pointed me in the right direction.

So Museum de Artes.. was meant to pay 20pesos to get in..but as no one was around..So I just casually walked straight in whoo hoo love a bit of free art! It was quite Small, quaint and totally abandoned, so totally took advantage of the epic air con that seemd to be blasting out of every. Man Mexico is fucking HOT!! I'm not complaining beacuse this is the weather I have always been masterbating over but occassionally when you get that cool air blasting your face, you turn into a fat american in walmart!! 

The art was very regional and a good use of texture. They seemed to use sand in all their paints, parts of the pictures were chizeled out and repainted over the layers..it was cool and very mexican. Kinda Diego Rivera meets sand pit! The permenant collection, was acomplete photo series of the revolution in 1910, which may I add that on the 15th and 16th there is a huge mother fucking party going down here in mexico as it's 200 years since the mexican revolution for the Spaniards. It was interesting seeing this geezers collection, as you can totally see how the spanish came,colonised and built up the architurecture of the cities, but it's also really sad to see how the indigenious people, totally lost their indentity, had their land raped by the Spanish! it's crazy to think that the pictures taken were only 100 years ago and looks very much like mexicans in victorian dressage! Once discovering the mexican revolution via photo's I left thinking that was it of thr museum de atres..and like any fellow art lover headed for the bookshop. While perusing da books, the guy across the counter said in english 'can I help you with anything" dude the first fricking bit of english I had heard in 48 hours!! So jumped at the chance of a conversation and asked if there was more to the exhbition, To which Eric (who strangley looked like a mexican Eric Banner!! can!!) tookme to another room to show me more art by sand pieces... hhmmm crusty, bless the guy told me lots of places to go here and more importantly Mexico City! he seemed to have a bit of semi when talking about all the differnet galleries there so I whipped out my lonely planet and asked him to point out the best.. Wikid so looking forward to Mexico City!

So the museum de artes took all of 1 hour of my time which kinda sucked as I dedicated a whole 5 hours thinking it would compete with the tate! So thought i'd go for a walk to find the light house....2 hours later and I was completetly lost again in the centre of Old town.. So fuck this..I saw the sea and headed towards it. Found a cute little bar by the beach! The waiter wa so lovely (his name was Antonio and evertime I walk past the place he always gives me a wave and shouts Juan!! !! ahhh) Antonio bring me my first sexual beer of Mexico (pacifico beer) at a steal of 15 pesos a pint! (75p) and withing seconds of my first galp, he informs me that there is a Gentlemen from England called Simon who comes here often, then within seconds whips my chair from out of me, grabs my beer and like a dog... coaxed me over to where Simon was sat!! Aboslute can, there went my Shirley Valentine moment!! So I sparked up a converstaion with this 42 year old Simon, feeling really bad, as you could tell he was quite interested in watching the Man utd vs Ranger game! But as time pertruded it seemed Simon Knew Cardiff Really well, knew Charlotte Church since she was 10, totally stared talking about "the Conway" and "the Mochyn Du" pubs in my localarea... and the fact that he's an east London boy from Ilse of Dogs... just shows what a small little world we live in my friends!! He also told me all the places to eat and check out like the Catherdral, how to actual get to the lighthouse, and more importantly how safe it is here. I've noticed when walking around that people espeically men will stop and stare..many always greet me 'hola' to which I smile back and reply Hola and peg it! Being white and pastey makes you totally stick out like a sore thumb, but at first I though they were being rude, but as Simon points out that it's actually because the local people are looking. They can see I'm alone and a women and that's why they are always acknowlegding me. Since thenow been here for over 2 days I notced that MExican are the most friendly people ever! They stop their little golf buggies and help me with directions, always wanting to chat and ask where I'm from, they are their country and seem chuffed to bits that I am here!!  So After talking to simon for ages I end up fnding this guy fasinating! his been living in Mazatlan or 5 years... and actually has replicated my dream of building his own house by the beach.. It wasn;t until he showed me he fuck off massive masion on the cliff's edge overlooking the beach, did it twig this guy was a fucking Millionaire! But as he talked through his emense career in Advertising and setting up numerous businesses, that this geezer has earnt every damn Penny! and knows his shit... so as a budding Entrepenur he gave me 3 tips when starting your own business.. 1) to have the willpower and dedication to the cause 2) to have a little bit of luck 3) to always choose a Buisness partner that you can trust NOT have a relationship with! So i told him my business plan, and fuck me in all fairness he liked it and saw it working whoo hoo... it was like being blessed by Richard Branston!! he pointed out area's I needed to work on and look into, and with that handed me a serivette with his email for whenever I may need advice.. What a fucking Legend. Not only was he a legend but by the time we were on this subject we had necked at least 8 pints, To  which  can honestly say I was absolutely Cunted by 3.30pm!! So Simon being the legend that he was paid for ALL my drinks, let me smoke shit loads of his fags... and I left to go find my hotel to collapse and simmer off all the beer!!. Oh and munch a whole bag of crisps Alan Partridge Stylie!!

 

After waking up at 8pm from my drunken haze.. I decided to stroll down to the Zona Dorada (golden area) which is a 2 mile walkdown the playa Norte.. It was beautiful to watch the sun set, the sky goes like a midnight blue at the top and bright red and blood shot orange in the horizon! As I walked down the promenade there was loads of Mexican families clearly on holiday with their kids playing on the sand and soooo many couples roller blading together..or to be general, just being together snogging each other which faces off, which as I walked made me really sad! kinda got that "I wish someone was here experiences this with me,or someone to scrape the blood of my knee when I tripped off my rollerblades.. but hey c'est la vie!.. this is the route I've chosen and lets face facts I'm still having shit loadsa fun even if it is with myself and blogfans!! ha ha. So finally got to the end of the Zona Dorada, and it was a complete and utter pile of shit! It was just spain, with the big resorts and Macd's. In major diappointment just enjoyed the other 2miles back.. just watching the waves a a guy in a wheelchair who awkardly ended up at the same pace as me, so we kept smiling at each other and saying 'hola' like 52 billion times!!

So the next day minus evening hangover,again totally slept till 9am.. can finally see my face pulling back together after 2 years of working 70hour weeks!! And today Iwas going to find stuff.. And I succeeded. I took a golf cart to the internet plac for a sexy 20peso (that's £1) and skyped my best friends Ross and the sexy Danny whoo successful. Seriously when did technology get that fucking great that you can speak and see your friends for free..seriously anyone who is on Skype add me I'm under Gwenllian.Ash! Love a good chin wag and an actual english conversation! Fell out of the internet place and straight into the catherdral! so beautiful, completely painted in Bright yellow, and as you enter that typical Catholic altar with the Scared tanned face Mary covered in gold and bling!..Kat you'll be glad to know there were epic amounts of Nun's, I was in my element! So walked around then sat at the back to listen to the crazy ''hhhahhhhhaaarroooow ddee vvaaauucchhooo ssscccrraaaadddiitttcchooo" sounds from the choir then pegged it out when I relised that I didn;t believe in God and felt bad for intruding on something quite sacred! The one thing I love about Mexico, is that it truely is a Freida Khalo Painting, the whole place is painted in bright oranges, red, yellows, deep blues and illuminous green, the total opposite of dull, grey, everything has to match Britain! It's actually buzzing! I walked into market..and it's got your average Pig heads, fruit baskets, colourful cotton dresses, but everyone isn't trying to sell you stuff, there just constantly saying 'hola' to everyone. I sat down on one of the food booth and had the most sexual 'pollo taco's and a bottle of coke' for yet another steal of 40 pesos (£2.00) then ducked and dived out of the carnage to find this fucking lighthouse...!

After walking another 2 miles all up hill I found it. Little bit of trivia for you here but it's the only manual working lighthouse in the world. Yes all the others are automatic, but this one has little mexican man moving the latern around. So saw that for all of 2.5 mins while catching my breathe and downing loadsa water.. the treked on over to the port so I can take the water boat over to 'Isla de la Piedra'
So hopped onto a small fishing boat with 5 fat mexicans all singing some crazy spanish song and their cool box! and within 2 minutes reached the Island, some small mexican boy who spoke good english dragged me to go to the otherside of the island and not the commerical bit... soas they were offering a free ride I took it! and by fucking god it was beautiful, His family owned the only restrant on the otherside with a whole beach to itself! My god it was paradise, So i kicked off my flipflops went for a paddle and sat under a palm tree and read my lonely planet guide. You know those moments you alway dream of when your at your fucking computer desk, saying fuck I wish I was on a deserted beach with a cold beer in one hand and a mexican pizza in the other... Well I was! The beer was perfectly chilled and food was so much they put it in a take away box! but the view of the island and the sea was to die for!! you could see where the island tailed off a long row of a palm tree jungle that went on for miles! The owners brother in law called "Carlos" who spoke very broken english came and offered me a tour of the island for free. so as I had an hour to kill... totally went with it... I actually couldn't understand anything he said apart from 'she is working' which I think meant his sister and refurred to most things as 'she'! but he helped me with my spanish, taught me how to say all the place i was going to, and advised me not to walk into the jungle, as most girls get kidnapped in there (good job I got the free tour hey!!) Got back on the boat with the same singing mexicans, hop off and grabbed one of those sexy golf cart taxi's!!! ha ha which can I say what a fucking legend thses guys are!!! This dude totally took me around town showing me things, laughing at all the crazy people in the street... shouting at all the le in the traffic jams,making illegal moves on the road and pavement!! then to top it off...without even nat the road.. kept screming 'I have song for you, I have song for you' while messing around with the tape player, practically crashing into everything on the road... hit play and 'Pretty women' started booming fromis car!! I wet myself all the way home and told him that he made my day!!!!! I FUCKING LOVE MEXICAN PEOPLE!!

The beaches here are literally to die for, i literally spent 6 hours in one day on the playa Olas Altas, just reading my book, getting too hot so diving into the pacific ocean, where the waves are fucking huge and the surfers can actually surf.. I took loadsa pictures on my phone camera (as my camera broke day 3 in) so once I can find a way to bluetooth I can put themon my blog.
September the 16th is Mexican independance day,so like new year, theres a massive celebration on the eve of 16th. You can feel the whole town is getting ready for it. So to join the festive fun, I necked a bottle of Corona in my room, grabbed my bag and headed out for the fiesta. Man all the roads were closed off by fuckoff mexican Police with their bushy black moutashes , hence making my journey through this labriyth moredifficult.. but notice that people were flocking in one direction,so when doubt follow the crowd. Awesome hit the Catherdral and all around it was green red and white bunting, crowds and crowds of mexicans families with cute little mexican girl on their dad's shoulders wearing the typicalmexicann dress(long colourfulcotton skirts, with white laced t-shirts and their black hair in two plaits!!) so so cute. There as a massive Stage with a huge mexican flag, the acts were quite random, there was two guys with massive coconut maracas one with a tuffed deer on his head, prncing around to drumming music, and ten you ad the typical mexican band with brass accompanying a large mexican lady belting out a few classic, and shouting "Via Mexico" " Via Americano"!!

Walked through sat down and drank a beer and soaked up the festivities for an hour or so,then moved on to the Plazuela Machado, which is the local square which also had lots of festivities gong on,mostly for families, which is kind of a fantastic way to sum up the mexican culture.. If that was us brits and it was  ay of celebration, we would grab all our mates and use it s an excuse to get fucked up royally! But in Mexico celebrations are spent with family. It was awesome to see everyone having lots of fun in massive huddles, there's gran & grandad, mum & dad and all 6 of their children dancing, singing and consuming lots of dirty mexican food off the street vendours. (er one dish i have to tell you about, sarah you would be moist at the thought, was literally a plate full of mountain high cut up hot dog sauages wrapped in tortilla's smeared in that dirty cheesy nachos sauce with shit loadsa of japalpenos - Yet another heart attack on a plate)

As I didn't have a mexican family to party with I moved myself to the water hole I found before, and low and behold, Simon was there drunk as a skunk, so i joined him and celebrated the Mexican Independance Day with him drinking Tequilla, beer and menthol cigerettes! Whoo via la mexico! So as I was foxtrotted badly back to my hotel, I couldn't stop watching the crazy roads, as shit loadsa youngsters all riding on the back of motobikes, literally 4 people on one motorbike!! screaming and waving the mexican flag, loadsa of teenagers on the promanade or in the back of truck, flirting with massive hispanic boys in their dirty trucks pumping out spanish music! Even the old couples sat on the wall watching the waves whispering sweet nothings to each other ahhh so sweet.. man this place is magical. And that was the night that I fell in Love with Mexico!

my last night in Mazatlan was spent chilling i this awesome cafe catching up on emails which is cheap as fuck it was 18 peso for a herbal tea (75p) and not only do they let you use the internet for as long as you want,but the guy actually topped up my drink with Hot water! seriously can't stress how awesome mexicans are! then one final visit tomy watering hole , where simon wasn't there, but Larry (american) and Tom (german) were chilling with a few beers and friends... Yes my buddies in mazatlan were 50+, but fuck it they were the most interesting characters I've ever met, especially Tom who's orginally from Berlin. We talked about our bucket lists,and these geezers have totally done it all,sky divng, bungy jumping and bless don;t know if they just felt sorry for me, but bought me dinner and a beer!! Thank you Tom!! Which I hainteresting... I asked what was good and let Tom pick... and out came a bowl of red spicy soup stuff with lumps of random shit in it and cabbage. So Larry told me to just eat the broth, coz all the other stuff looked like cartilage... only to find out in fact it was ears nose and mouth of many animals!! ha ha but hey the broth was good! Thanked them all for they're amazing company and called it a night as it's gonnna  be a long journey gettin to the turtle place!!

oh I also had a gecho land on my head in my hotel room and finally finished the book ross gave "just kids" by patti smith and sobbed under some fuck off shades at the rather sad ending!

Decompression mofo San Fran - San Diego

So Decompression is what you get when you get out of Black Rock City and into the real world... it takes you like fucking days to readjust to the real world, things like remembering to flush a toilet. It's a bit like the "Avatar effect", you come out of BRC and everything isn't as pretty as Burning Man!!


So I'll start the decompression story at Burger King in "Sparks" the truck stop on the bus ride home to San Fran..... So we all run to Burger King.... kinda forgetting we needed money... kinda realised that we drank so much at burning man that a chicken nugget is enough to fill us up... I ran to the one mmmaaasssivveee toilet... seriouly one toilet in a bathroom that was the size of a football pitch!! weird ass... But walked out totally forgetting to flush!!


I need to tryand charge my netbook to find out where the fuck my hostel is... poor Dave is trying to skype me... but some knob jockey is playing with his iphone and fucking up my cable... and it all gets to much for me as technology is something I can't be dealing with while I'm being rushed.... At that point I have run to get back on the bus... as me & scarlet pegged it over to the bus we see Tom.. a fellow young Irish man on our bus, slip of the small brick wall!!!... as he turns around all flustered... all me and scarlet see... is  BONE!!! yes that motherfucker split his fucking knee open!!! Opened GASH, All we can see white bone and blood oozing out... So I run over like fricking mother terasa get my canvas bag out and start pushing the gash together and apply pressure Girl Guide handbook stylie!! Finally we got a first aid kit... and poured Hydrogen Peroxide over it...eerr I've never seen flesh and blood froth before!! eeerrrr... then we tried to pin it together & bandage it up with gaffer tape and try and get that bad boy to the nearest hospital!!

After all the 'cuffuffle'...me and ed were having a fag and a chin wag about mexico... and strangely as he was talking about going to Chihuahua..we turned and saw an actual little chihuahua shitting on the car park.. how bizzare!!!just thought i'd pop that in!
Poor Tom (the guy with the gash) was gonna try and hold it out to San Fran.... but being in crazy America and speaking to some americans ... I've learnt some crazy shit about the American Healthcare system!! So apparently if you don't go to the Hospital within 6 hour they'll refuse to treat it...Hence it will get infected..and then you'll have to pay them $450,000 to cut of your leg!!! so we had to do a detour to Secremento to drop the dude off to hospital, and as it was Labour day (a crazy day where they celebrate working or something) traffic was bad... so we were getting into San fran till late 10.30pm (meant to 7pm!!) so loadsa people lost their flights... I called up green tortoise Hostel begged for a room for those two nights... and bingo... all sorted..and easy does it...all the crowd where heading back to the green tortoise!

So we arrived at, what i would love to call 'My 2nd home" the Green Torise Hostel.. a carnage of a check-in with 15 odd dusty..sleep deprived burners...alongside all our fellow clean burners welcoming us home... telling us how orgasmic their shower was... and anyone who knows me knows me well... I thought fuck it i'm not showering i'm dumping my stuff and getting a beer! and thank god all my sexy crew did the same!!

At 12am....another create of pepes, 60 crush mentalcamels (awesome fags that you pop a capsule to make them menthol!!) and me, Trent, Tom , Scarlet, Mitch, Sanchez , Ed and Ed (graced us with their precence from their hotel)& the sexy jolie... drinking...shouting smoking up the good times..and reminising Burning Man 2010 till 6am in the morning!!! we were all fucked up again!!! We left the cleaning lady like 5bucks just so could continue to clean around us and get breakfast ready!!! sanchez caught his flight at like 4am.. Tom pulled and all nighter and left to get his train...and Trent found his mattress a little later than expected!!ha ha

So that is decompresion... I didn;t wake up till 12pm..and when I did, I struggled with life itself!!....only to return to my bunk with 2 slices of amazing meat infested pizza, Trent and his pizza, and jurassic Park fully loaded!! Actually couldn't deal with humans..computers and washing my entire rucsack!! can!!


So surprise surprise after a few hours snoozing..7.30pm rolled up and it was free beer in the Ballroom...whoo hoo.. and plenty drinking games to be done with!!... so the 4 burners left..me, Mitch Scarlet and Trent split onto all 4 teams and battled it out against each other!!! It was proper American.. red cups...fucking kegs..lets get drunk college stylie... Typical I ended up of the UK B side full of a loads of English Guys from London and Birmingham... which were absolute legends at firsts (although I did tell them 6 times that my name was Gwen... NOT Welshie!) but as the free beer flowed into our retched gobs.... (seriously had a few of those I'm gonna "Projectile Vomit" moments, from forcing gallons of warm beer down my gob, while being antagonised by a loud mouth tottenham supporter!!) they did that typical english twat thing where they started getting leary, one twat actually sat next to us and went through why England is the best in world...and educated Mitch on the " Great British Embassey".. to which 'Mitch attempted to look interested at him.. while glancing at me doing a massive WANKER sign over the guys head! Also the geezer continued to rant to us bunch of new found hippies...about how if " anyone who has a tattoo, is gay and a fucking dickhead!" well that didn't go down too well... and I am happy to say he finally got the message and fucked off before Trent whippeg out his kickboxing skills!! Dude seriously.. well 2.30am came and after 2 games of pool.... Bedtime!

 

(this is not me!! but you get the idea of Keg party)

Then next day was meant to be spent walking across the golden gate bridge.. but I actually spent a wonderful day with Trent doing cartwheels on the beach. enough said.. solem and beautiful....yet windy as fuck!!

Got back to the hostel...had my last philly cheese steak from Busters..said goodbye to the last of a amazing bunch...and hopped on the greyhound for my 12 hour bus the San Diego.....

I have heard some crazy stuff about Greyhound buses... people having their heads cut off... fricking hillbillies harrassing you... but you know it wasn't that bad..I've had worst experiences on  the megabus!! (come one ross you knows what I'm on about!!!). I popped a sleeping pill (thanks kat for the advice) and slept uncomfortably for 6hours of it.. the rest was spent listening to my ipod.. trying to understand LA as we drove through it, it was fine!!  although we did stop at a burger king in the middle of nowhere at 3am... and that was full of inbreds.. but hey I survived.

So San Diego...

So my hotel is in the suburbs.. but I'm right next to ocean beach!! So this is me Checkin into the 'Betty Ford Clinic' of my blog...I arrive thursday afternoon...emailled and skype all the important people of my life to let them know I didn't fall and die off some crazy 30ft burning totem pole in burning man. Did ALL my washing...and even baby wiped my bag to get that fucking playa dust off.. then bam...12am out like a light..

Friday.. woke up at 10am had some bagels.. felt like fricking ernest hemmingway... writing my epic Burning man blog for 4 hours..with 4 cups of coffee and some pancakes! hoping in some way to educate the masses of my experience... so by 2pm I was like fuck it... I'm ready to face society.. grab my flip flops..and heading to ocean beach!

Not the beautiful beach ever, but beautiful enough to keep me content with running my toes in the sand... whippig out a book....i'm reading 'just kids' by Patti Smith, so inspirtional and adapt... she makes you realise that if you have a dream just follow and live it! So it was that moment I looked up... so my feet in the sand.. watch the waves crashing with the poor efforts of the surfers....crazy flock of pelicans hoovering over the pier.. and thought... "I've done it"... it was the one thing I said to people when I was working my balls off... that it will all be worth it... when I'm sat on a beach chilling reading a book... tttaaaaa daaaaa!

After a while I put on my shoes... walked across the fisherman's pier, back down to Newport Street, where I browsed a couple of awesome vintage shops, everything was so quirky there...They actually had this Vinyl/tape/videoshop called 'milk' where it was exactly like the clssic music shop that our generation grew up on.... row and rows of 80's 90's video's, Vintage vinyl and of course my favourite (becky you would have pooed your pants) tapes tapes and more tapes...David Bowie to Micheal Jackson's Bad, they had literally all the tapes I wanted to own...where did all the tapes go????? The owner asked if he could help...but the only thing I could tell him... is that "i was so jealous that this was his livelyhood!!" and he smiled back in a smug way!! too true brother!!!...

So the best way to describe San Diego,Point loma, is it's full of people cruising (not in the gay way!!) but everyones either cruising on a skateboard, cruising on a beach bike, surf board taking their time as they cruise the roads... The men are all built hespanic men with loadsa tattoo's and baseball caps... fricking high fiving and nodding! It's cool, it's like being in an episode of Miami ink! The girls are the same too petite and chilled.. like no one works!! anyway..Newport st was awesome..defo cool in a camden meet newquay kinda way. I also got some awesome chinese food from the cutest place ever...where everyone who came in knew the assistants name and she knew their order! I also got a fortune cookie that said..."That someone loves to see the light in your eyes"...so we shall see what that means!! Also followed with some numbers " 05 15 16 35 39, 15" so anybody who wants to play the lottery go nuts!!

Saturday is 9/11 day here in the USA!! and what better way that to 'Take me to the ball game'

Oh yes people me and two lovely New yorkers Rebecca and Gabrielle, from my hostel... trucked down to Petco Stadium.. to see the San Diego Padres vs the San Fransico Giants!! whoooo hooo... yes I had a $8 beer and yes I scoffed my weight in nachoss.. coated in illuminous cheese and jalapanoes while trying to understand the logistics of the game (Boy it's not as fast paced as I thought it was, and there's lots and lots of rules...but hey I saw the one and only homerun of the game...and saang 'take me to the ball game' in the 7th innings!!

Had to haul my ass to the greyhound to sort out my bus to Mexico.... a lovely 36 hours bus ride to Matazlan(to go save turtles), but have to sort it out over the crazy boarders of Tijuana! wish me good luck!

So came back to my boring suburban Hostel... I Snuck in a cheeky massive bottle of Heineken (there's a no alcohol or smoking rule!! err never go with international Hostelling) oh and went past a 'drive by shoot out'... my bus got diverted and is I pop off the bus, you could see police taping up the area...with a car with the window smashed in and like 5 - 6 bullet holes... and you could faintely make out the driver...scary shit mate!! so ran my hostel..east london stylie! now I'm ready for Mexico... whoo hoo got my lonely planet guide.. and ready to help save some turtles from some crazy cracked up Egg Stealing mexicans!!

So guys this is my last blog for a while....
as I'llbe brewing mexicoand the turtle sanctuary...and they just had a flood soelectricty is going to take a while.. my phone will be one... and if anyone needs to get hold of my this is where I will be.. Patanitos Sea Camp.