Voyage to Alaska – The Blog

Let me start with a little preface on this one… Trish has convinced me to write a blog about our Alaska trip because of a few reasons. First, we have a lot of time on our hands. Second, we have a computer handy. Third, she assures me that you guys like reading my blogs, and if you’ve read this far, I’m assuming that she’s right. Lastly, we have a lot of time on our hands… really. I’d also like to note that this blog will probably be posted in a huge chunk, because, well, we’re in Alaska, and the internet sucks here.

This is Sunday, 19 September, 2010. Our adventure started 3 days ago, on the 16^th. We woke up at the unimaginable hour of 4am, or something like that, and we headed off to the airport. Our flight was pretty good, and it didn’t take us long to get to Seattle. Once in Seattle we met up with Jerry, the guy who works for the limo service we booked. Now before you go off on a rant wondering how I could afford a limo to take me from the airport to my hotel, no, I did not win the lottery. Trish bought a Groupon, making the limo company the same price as a cab. Unfortunately for us, the limo service also uses SUVs… wtf? I would expect it from “Discount Dale’s Limos etc.” but the limo service we booked had a legit sounding name… and last I checked, SUVs are not luxury cars. Anyways, the day as just beginning so we checked in and roamed Seattle by foot. Nothing super exciting to report there. Seattle is still a city, it’s still got pike market and it’s still got rain.

17^th 11am Game time. We grabbed a cab and headed to the dock. Looking out the window we spotted the ship at the end of one of the side streets, looked like a pretty big ship. But then it dawned on me… we still had to go down the hill to the docks… and the ship was just about our height. When we got to the docks, the ship dwarfed everything around it. Crazy big thing.

We were herded like cattle (or sheep, your pick) on our way into the terminal. First line up for baggage drop, then line up for security (kinda like at the airport). Then line up for room keys. More lineups on the gangplank. Line up for some mimosas and champagne. Line up for hand sanitizer??? Ok enough lineups we’re on the ship already! Oh wait, it’s lunchtime and everyone wants to eat lunch! Lineup at the buffet… wait for a table to free itself up… so many people on this thing. Though I’d like to point out that the buffet dining room is on the 10^th floor of this crazy big ass ship and is the size of hmm… probably a football field. Possibly with bleachers. The food was pretty good though, I don’t recall what I ate, but it was good because I don’t remember it being horrible.

Finally our room was ready so we headed down to set up our luggage. If you’re reading this far, you’ve probably read my China blog. And if you remember from that blog I was complaining about how small my room was, because it was pretty ridiculously tiny. Well folks we have a new record!!!! This room is even smaller, no windows either cus we took the el cheapo inside room. The whole back wall is a mirror though, because it makes it look bigger I guess. The bathroom in this thing is also tiny, barely enough room for one person in there. And if you open the bathroom door while someone is using the closet, bad things happen.

Once we’re all unpacked we get visited by Palton, our room guy… He’s got some sort of title that makes him sound cool, but I can’t really recall it right now. He’s like our personal housekeeping contact. Anyways, Palton lets us know that our supper is at the sit down restaurant called Trellis at 8:30. When we booked we had the choice between 6 or 8:30, do we picked the late one. We had some time to kill before supper so we roamed the ship. There’s a casino, an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, 8 hot tubs, a running track, a shopping mall, a movie theater, a real theater, a fancy restaurant that costs extra, some meeting rooms, a gym and a spa. Trish and I grabbed a couple’s pass to the spa for the week because it seemed like a good way to spend time. We then promptly used our couple’s pass and spent an hour at the spa.

They’ve got an herbal steam room, which is really hot and steamy but it doesn’t smell much like herbs… I guess they gotta cheap out somewhere. They’ve got a dry sauna, which isn’t very dry. The benches are stone everywhere and they provide hoses to wash the stone down. Sadly the benches make puddles, and the water doesn’t evaporate very fast. There’s a Turkish bath, which is pretty much a steam sauna with some sink in the middle to splash cold water on your face. And finally there’s some heated benches, which are pretty relaxing.

After the spa we headed down for supper, where we found yet another line up!!! Woot! We love lining up all over the place. It’s our favourite sport! Please note that MS Word has underlined favourite as being misspelled because I added the U in there and word is too stupid to know the proper spelling of the word. Anyways, we lined up only to get turned back once we got to the head of the line! Why you ask? Because we were on the 5^th floor and our table was on the 4^th floor… Right, ok, the restaurant is so ridiculously huge that it has two floors. So we make our way down a floor to be greeted yet again by another line. Great. We’re slowly making our way to the front when two old people who look completely lost just wander up to the front, pretty much pushing through people. Once they get to the front the guy gets seated… WTF?!?! I guess it pays to be rude around here.

Food… If you’re familiar with my blog, I spend a lot of time talking about ridiculous things and food. Mostly food though, because there’s not that many ridiculous things that happen every day, yet you typically get three meals a day. So more food than ridiculous things, unless you’re in a strange situation where everything is ridiculous. Then again, we’re on a ridiculously huge ship filled with ridiculous people, so things are looking up. Back to the food for now. Our waiters are Filipino as is our bar waiter style dude and the wine girl. I guess that wasn’t exactly food, but the next sentence will be. I ate a lamb shank, and Trish had salmon. Before we ate those we also got appetizers and soup. The soup was really salty… as was Trish’s salmon… I guess a version of “Young Richard Newton” works in the kitchen here. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of salt, but my dad really likes salt. He’s been good lately though, cutting down on the salt. But really this story isn’t at all related to my dad, I just thought I’d mention that when I had my soup it reminded me of the soups my dad used to make a long long time ago, in this galaxy. Anyways, all in all, the food was good. Pretty fancy for an all you can eat style of a place.

Saturday the 18^th – at sea. If you ever wondered what it would be like being stuck in a huge hotel with a tiny hotel room, look no further! Take a cruise. You get the added bonus of swaying. The ship doesn’t sway much because it dwarfs even the waves, but you can feel it. We woke up kinda early because breakfast stops at 9ish. There’s food available at almost all hours of the day, but what food is available varies. If you want waffles, that closes at 9. So we got up early, and ate some waffles. Yum. Trish didn’t like the seat we chose and the swaying of the ship was getting to her. So after breakfast she grabbed a Gravol style pill. We hit the gym to try and burn off some of the calories we ate. After cardio we started lifting some weights, but our workout was cut short.

I understand that people don’t want to shower before they go to the gym because they’re gonna shower after they go to the gym, but deodorant exists for a reason! There was a guy using the workout machines who reeked of BO… and I do mean reeked. If he just walked by his stench lingered in the air for a few minutes. But he would use a machine and not wipe it down so the machine stank after he was done with it. And the stink never really left. So we did.

We used the spa again and then had some lunch at the buffet. Nothing special. We headed to an art auction after lunch, the idea was to get some free champagne, since booze on the ship isn’t really free. The auction was somewhat entertaining, they would tell us about a painting, then tell us how much the “land” price was. But wait… out here on the water you can save so much money, and since this is the last Alaskan cruise, we’ll give you an even better price and we’ll throw in the frame too! So I’m expecting really cheap paintings. The first painting goes on the block for $2000! What a savings! Wow this is dirt cheap, I need three of these! Ok so I’m probably not their target audience cus the guy in front of me raises his little bidding number thing. So I’m expecting the auctioneer to go on a rant and ask for higher bids but instead he smacks his mallet and “Sold!”… That wasn’t very exciting. A bunch of paintings never sold, and nobody tried to outbid anyone else. How was that an auction? That was just some guy taking his sweet ass time selling a pile of paintings to people who would have bought them anyways. Lame. And the champagne didn’t taste any good either… Though I don’t really like champagne.

Supper came around and it was formal night. So we got dressed up all fancy. I wore a tie. So, tying a tie is pretty simple in theory. I’m good with knots, and understand the knot that makes a tie work. But theory and practice aren’t always the same. After a few bad attempts on my part and a couple failed attempts on Trish’s part, the phone rang. It was Palton (remember the room guy?) he was asking me if we were going to supper. Of course we were, I just needed to tie this tie. So Trish gave it one more shot and I ended up with a slightly crooked tie that was better than all our previous attempts. Once we got to the dining room, everyone was seated already cus we were a little late. But hey, no line up! Now we know the secret. Anyways, I went on a little rant when I talked about yesterday’s supper so I missed some key points. Number one, we were seated at a table by ourselves. Other couples shared tables here and there, but we got our own table. Two, our table was meant for 6 people, and they sat us across the way from each other. Three, the room was loud so we couldn’t hear each other. Four, we convinced Richard our head waiter to let us move our chairs to sit next to each other. Five, Richard decided that he would surprise us with chair placement every night since our table was so big, but he would always seat us next to each other. Six, Trish bought a bottle of wine because the Sommelier girl said she would keep it on ice for Trish even if she didn’t finish it that night. Ok recap over!

So we got to the table and Richard had indeed seated us pointing in a different direction but next to each other. The wine lady came almost immediately to pour Trish a glass of the wine she didn’t finish the previous night. And on the menu was even more lamb! As for the tie, apparently I didn’t need to go through all the trouble. Some guy across the way was wearing a plaid flannel shirt. That’s totally formal… I guess they don’t really enforce the dress code, it’s too bad though, it would have been nice had everyone been dressed fancy.

The food was delicious, Lawrence our sous-waiter stopped by and chatted with us. Apparently both our waiters and the wine lady find us amusing because out of all the people there they seem to spend way more time chatting at our table. I had the rack of lamb and Trish had the Chilean sea bass. Again, not things you’d expect from an included menu. Desert was an ordeal. Everything on the menu had dairy apart from the apple pie. The pie isn’t very interesting because it’s available every night. There’s a nightly menu and an “always available” menu. I didn’t want to have to resort to the always available menu so fast. I ended up with some apple pie and coconut sorbet after much discussion with Richard our waiter. He seemed to think that desert will always be an adventure for me, but he seemed kinda happy… which is odd.

The 19^th – Rachel’s Birthday (our old neighbour from Alta Glen). Rachel is not on the cruise, but it’s still her birthday. Ketchikan, Alaska. We arrived at 7am, or so the captain would have us believe. We were asleep, but we definitely got there before 8:30am, a time when reasonable people get up. A quick breakfast later we’re heading off the ship. This place looks like a tourist trap merged with a tiny mountain town with a side of fishery. The only thing completely new to me was the airport. I can hear you thinking “Airport? What does he mean? That’s not new…” or something along those lines. Admit it, you were thinking it. Now the reason this airport is new and cool is that it’s on the water. No, not like Japan where they build a land airport on the water. This is a water airport. I’ve seen hydroplanes before, but not this many of them and never this many flying, landing and taking off in such a short time frame. You see, Ketchikan apparently doesn’t have much in the way of roads out, so most of the stuff comes from boats or planes.

Apparently there’s something to do with jewels in the area, cus every second store was a jewelry shop. And everyone had coupons for free gifts just for walking in the store. I’ve never gotten so much free junk for so little effort before. We also bumped into someone who plainly assumed that everyone walking outside was from the cruise ship. She stops a couple walking outside with their two kids and asks them what’s down the road. The man starts to answer and she spouts out “Oh! You’ve been down there? Is there anything interesting?” to which the man answers “I live down there.” Hahahaha, you should have seen the look on her face before she started apologizing and making excuses. We found some cool stuff, and interesting locals. I think some of the “locals” are actually just people who go there to work during tourist season. Looks like the main industries in Ketchikan are fishing and tourist. I’m not sure what brings in the most cash.

We hopped back on the boat for lunch, spa and snack… There really isn’t tons to do on the ship. Sure they have tons of activities, but they seem kinda geared towards retired folk and the elderly. I honestly don’t really want to go to the casino or play bingo, nor do I want to learn how to mix cocktail drinks. And all the cool things to do on the ship cost extra (not that gambling is free, but you kinda expect to spend money when you gamble). One thing that sounded interesting was learning about diamonds, so I went to that, but it turned out to be “here’s how to find a good deal on diamonds”. And not really explaining much about how things really work.

Now we’re getting ready to go eat supper, it’s 8:20, so I’ve still got a few minutes. Trish is still complaining about the ship swaying, I don’t really feel it anymore. Though when we first got off the ship, I felt a little odd because the ground wasn’t swaying. Trish wants me to help tidy up our tiny ass room because while we’re gone to supper the maids are gonna come in and do a turn down service. I guess they have nothing better to do…

Supper was good, steak for me and seafood gumbo for Trish. We get a 4 course meal every night, so much food, too much food really. We’re here to have a good time and since they have good food, might as well enjoy. This meal, like the others before it came with desert, and like every night, it had dairy in it. After 3 nights of watching me eat sorbet and ask about dairy free desert only to be told that everything has copious amounts of dairy in it, Richard decided to try and get me something good. So he asked the floor manager to see if they could find me a dairy free desert for tomorrow. We’ll see how that turns out. Anyways, time for sleep.

Cancun Underwater - Fishy Paradise

I woke up yesterday morning and packed up the things I was bringing on the boat. Trish got herself ready for a day at the spa and we were out the door. I got on the bus and got off once again at the wrong stop. I had to walk 10 minutes to get to the dive shop. You think I would have learned from the day before, but no... not that smart.

I got to the dive shop and a few people were there already, getting their gear together. The lady asks me to fill out some forms, so I do and I hand them back. She looks at them and says "Oh, you can't go diving today." WTF?!?! She explains that because I haven't been diving in 10 years and I don't have my certification number and I don't have my log book that there's no way she can let me dive.

Great, now what am I gonna do, Trish is at the spa, so I have a day to kill. And I can't go diving, awesome... just great. So as I stand there with a dazed look on my face thinking this through, and she looks at me again. "You could do the recertification today and then dive tomorrow?" Nope, I leave tomorrow. "Well.... maybe I could talk to the dive master and he could test you in the pool. It would cost extra though. ok?" So... apparently with enough money everyone will bend the rules around here. Ok I say, how much? $10 US. That's cool with me. She also tells me that I'll have to fill out a new form saying that I dove last year. Apparently you have to recert if you haven't gone diving in the past year.

I go to the gear rental place, get geared up, and the dive master takes me to a tiny pool. I get in, he gets me to clear my mask. Then he gets me to take my mask off and put it back on, then clear it. Then he makes me take my regulator and throw it away, then find it and start breathing again. It's not super hard to find your regulator underwater, but it is a little tricky seeing as it's attached to your back. So I do all his tests and he's really happy and tells me I can go diving today, no problems. WOOT!

So I get my stuff together and hop on the boat. The photographer chick presents herself to me and tells me that she's going to be taking video of us today. Her name was Aline, which is mexican-ish, but her english was pretty much perfect. Turns out she spent 8 years in california, pretty cool. So she asks me if I would be interested in the video and I tell her yes. She tells me she'll pay special attention and try to get me in the video a lot.

We got set up while the boat was heading to the reef, the dive master went over the rules. Basically stay together and the few symbols that will keep us alive. It's not like you can explain much underwater, all you have is hand gestures. Since we don't all know sign language, there's just a few signs you need to know. OK, not good, my ears, my regulator, my stomach, look here, low air, go up, go down, and how to tell how much air is in your tank. Then he told us all sorts of symbols for fish. I only remember baracuda, because it's the hand gesture you would make if you pretend your hand is a monster trying to eat something... that's baracuda for you.

So we dive in and sink 50 feet to the bottom. This is my first time diving in really clear water, and really warm water. The lady at the dive shop asked me if I wanted a wet suit. The water is really cold she said, I recommend a wetsuit. I asked how cold. 24 degrees... celcius. I just told her "I'm Canadian". That seemed to settle it, she stopped trying to rent me a wetsuit.

So at first the water was piss warm, but 20 feet down there's a cold undercurrent. Cold in this world is 24 degrees celcius. I found it refreshing, cus honestly diving in bath tub water was making me a little claustrophobic. I dunno, water to me should always be cold. So yeah, never once did I think "Oh this is chilly" at best I was dreading the top 20 cus the water was too warm. When I first got to the bottom I had a little bout of vertigo. The weeds were all rocking back and forth with the current, but the rocks were standing still. The weeds covered so much more area than the rocks that it made it look like the rocks were moving back and forth. My brain did not like that, the ground is not supposed to rock back and forth.

In any case, the vertigo didn't last and everything was cool after that. It was pretty awesome down there, not as many fish as I would have hoped, I saw a few grunts, the stuff we fished up the other day. These grunts were yellow instead of white. Same family, different fish. The coolest part about the first dive was that he took us through a cave in the coral. It was just a tunnel, but it was really cool.

The next dive was way better, we got to the bottom and there was fish everywhere. They weren't really scared of us either. There was cow fish, that look cool and have a triangle shaped body instead of flat. Lots of grunts again, and mixed in I saw some big blue ones that people couldn't name. There was some four eyed angel fish or something like that. Then we saw a manta ray. It was buried in the sand and Francisco, the dive master, started playing with one of it's wings. The ray obviously did not like that so it took off. It's really cool looking.

We saw a couple more rays during the dive, and then Aline pointed out a big fish to me. Turns out it was a puffer fish. The thing was huge, as long as my arm, I wonder how big it gets if it puffs up... ouch. Then we saw a barracuda, it swam into a cave. Francisco made the pacman chomp chomp sign and then put his hand up kinda saying stop. He followed into the cave after the barracuda, I went up and over. On the other side of the cave we saw a crab in an alcove. That was pretty much it down there. We came back up and hopped on the boat.

I was taking my gear off and Francisco came up to me and pulled a big rock out of my suit saying "souvenir" before tossing it back in the water. I had seen him pick up that rock but I had no clue why. I never even noticed when he put it in my buoyancy vest. Turns out he decided I was floating up too much so he put a rock in my pocket.

Anyways, I had a really good time. Trish had a great time at the spa too. We've been basically chilling since then. Our legs are still dead from that Ek-Balam trip. So hurty. They should put an escalator or something on those pyramids.

Now we're chilling by the pool, they kicked us out of the room. And we're spending the day here cus our bus to the airport doesn't leave for another four hours.

Tonight we hang out in mexico city and fly home tomorrow morning. Since you're reading this I'm going to assume you weren't here. This assumption is pretty safe because I'll only be wrong in one case, Trish. So with my assumption that you weren't here I just have to say "Sucks to be you." I hope you had a great week at work... I know I had a great time in Mexico.

Cancun voyage - Hot nights and hotter days

Last night we headed to grab fish tacos before our fishing trip. We went to this tiny shop that Erick our host had suggested much earlier in the week. Getting there was a small ordeal because as we waited for the bus a cabby stopped by and wanted to drive us. After negotiating a price that was almost the same as bus fare, we got in. The problem was that he couldn't understand where we were going. Possibly because only locals would go to the shop we wanted to go. He dropped us off at a sea food restaurant in the tourist mall thinking most likely that the directions we gave him were somewhat wrong. I thought we were near the right spot, so we paid him and got out. Turns out we were about 10 minutes walk from where we needed to be. Doh!

Well the tacos were totally worth the confusion and the walk. The food we got was pretty awesome. After eating the tacos we headed off towards our night fishing tour. Grabbing the bus this time we headed off. The problem with buses are that the stops are pretty far apart. So when Trish saw a dive shop we figured we must be in the right spot or at least close to it and got off the bus. Turns out we were about 10 minutes walk from where we needed to be. Hmm, deja vue?

On the boat we met some crazy people, Steve, Allan and Andrea. We kept ourselves entertained while they played music from the 70s to the 90s including some pretty terrible remixes. Turns out they're from the bay area too! And Allan actually has a fishing boat. Apparently I may have found a bay area fishing buddy. Anyways the night tour was advertized as fishing and food and lots of partying. What a load of crap. The fishing was pretty bad. With 15 people pulling up fish the average was about 2 fish each. Most of the fish was "white grunt" whatever that is. There was one grouper, and a few "jacks". The jacks looked like small tuna to me, but they assured me it wasn't tuna.

We went to the front of the boat to fish because there was no room in the back and Steve, Allan and Andrea joined us. We kept ourselves entertained through quite a few hours of bad fishing. From the description we thought they would cook fish as we caught it, but it wasn't so. They started cooking the fish on the way back to the dock. It took us about 90 mins to get out to their marvelous fishing spots and the same on the way back. Cept on the way back we had food instead of bad music to keep us entertained. The food was fish lasagna and garlic butter fish and veggies. So they made ceviche special for me. It was practically midnight by the time we ate but it was fantastic. Best fish ceviche I ever had. If you don't know that ceviche is, it's raw fish cured in lime juice with onions, tomatoes and a few herbs and spices.

All in all we had a good time. Mostly because of the company rather than the boat tour and fishing. Steve owns a house down here and spends almost half his time in Cancun. Allan and Andrea are newly married and on their honeymoon. They're pretty hillarious people and we had a great time making stupid jokes. When we got back to land Steve offered us a ride with his personal cabby and seeing as Allan and Andrea were staying in the same resort as us, we gladly accepted. Steve didn't even let us pay for the cab ride, I think he might be a little loaded. Anyways, we traded info with Allan and Andrea so that we can keep in touch when we head back to the bay area. Maybe I'll finally get to go fishing in the bay!

Today we visited Ek Balam, the tour was a lot like the Chichen Itza tour except way less touristy. Instead of hundreds of people checking out the buildings, it was just us. And instead of millions of tourist traps and souvenir shops there was one souvenir shop in the parking lot and it was well priced. Trish bought a nice pair of sandals for less than $15 and I think we still overpaid a little. The best part of Ek Balam was that we were allowed to climb up the buildings. We went up the tallest one and took pictures of the others. That was enough excercise for us. Those buildings are tall. I'd say at least 4 stories up if not 5.

On the tour, instead of taking us to a super touristy boutique of knick knacks he took us to a farmers market. Trish and I were pretty much the only ones buying stuff from the locals, everyone else was looking and thinking they might get sick if they touched anything. We bought some veggies to cook with the fish. And then the guide told us which limes to use for ceviche and pointed out a cool looking melon that we should try. The guide even told me that if we come back next year, he can hook me up with iguana and armadillo meat. He told me the locals eat that stuff, but they never sell it in shops or restaurants because nobody would buy it.

Well, now we're back and we're cooking the fish. Well, Trish is cooking, seeing as I'm currently blogging. As a last note, if you had to pick between Chichen Itza and Ek Balam, I would do Ek Balam while you can still climb the buildings and get up close to the stuff. Everything in Chichen Itza is roped off. But they are both very different and both very much worth visiting.

Tomorrow is scuba diving!

Chichen Itza - The water magician by the sinkhole's edge

We woke up early yesterday and headed to the meeting point. Some guys picked us up in a van, we were the first people in the van, but that didn't last long. Stop after stop, people piled in. Then we stopped at a shopping mall where we all got out and followed this tour guide guy. This guide was in a hurry because he wasn't waiting for anyone. We pretty much had to rush to keep up with him as he trekked through the mall and up some stairs. I had completely forgotten that we were supposed to have breakfast, but at least the tour guide didn't. What was supposed to be a continental breakfast turned out to be "Pick anything from the menu except the two really expensive dishes." Trish and I ordered what we thought would be good and waited patiently for our dishes.

When the waiter came by my dish was covered in heavy cream and Trish's had a pile of ham. Awesome! I wasn't even sure that this was what we ordered. Trish thought it was similar to what we had, so instead of bugging the waiter, we traded. I can't say it was the best breakfast ever. I was kinda authentic, there was eggs and salsa, and crispy tortillas, so it was more mexican that most of the food we had so far, but it wasn't anything special. Nothing to write home about, but totally worth blogging. Or something like that.

After breakfast the guide ran off once again. Trish was using the facilities at the time, so we got downstairs a little late. They already had people lined up and going into different buses and vans. We had to ask someone which bus was ours, and they pointed us to a van... ugh. The van was cramped and fit 14 people, including the driver and guide. The ride sucked, I hate seats where my knees have to be much higher than my butt. My legs hurt after the ride.

First stop on our itinerary was a cenote, which is an underground cave filled with water. It was pretty cool, with stalactites and some greenish water. The cave was huge, the water was kinda murky and had fish in it. Trish and I were thinking about swimming in there. The pictures they show on the web look way nicer than the actual deal. Maybe it was just this one cenote that was crappy though. In any case, the water didn't look very fun to swim in, so we didn't.

Next stop, tourist trap. Shops with all sorts of crap you would never use. Why would you go to mexico to buy a blanket depicting some japanese woman? I mean really? I was totally thinking that while I was dying in the 110 degree weather that I should buy a blanket, and while I'm in mexico why not buy a japanese blanket. Makes perfect sense to me. Anyways, the silver was by weight and it was way too much by weight. This is how I think they calculated their silver prices... First the price of silver by gram, about 50 cents. They had to pour it into a mold, so double the price. Then they had to have someone darken and polish the pieces as necessary, double the price again. If you're following along, we're at $2 a gram. Then we're gonna offer the tourists a 20% coupon when they get off the bus, so add 50% now. $3 a gram. The tour guides will tell the tourists that they must haggle, add in a 50 cent/gram buffer, $3.5 per gram now. And finally, tourists are stupid and they like to buy this stuff anyways, double the price. $7 a gram. Sounds about right? Needless to say we didn't buy anything.

Off to lunch at a buffet place. What is it with touristy spots and buffets. It seems like most places have a buffet around here. And they totally cater to your generic US resident. This was some of the blandest mexican food I've ever had, in our out of mexico. No spice, no flavour. The only thing that was really tasty was the meat of the day which was ground beef with some veggies and peppers. Their version of pulled pork was a distant second. The food wasn't bad, but it was almost as mexican as a white boy eating wonderbread and cheezewiz. The only mexican thing about the food was the guy who cooked it. For a bit of fun during lunch they had three people come up and do a dance for us... they danced with bottles on their heads and stomped their feet a lot. It was interesting, but not super awesome.

Chichen Itza, it's one of those Mayan temples. It's been promoted to one of the 7 wonders of the world now. The architecture it pretty cool, and there's a few interactive things you can do. The place is built for echos, I guess sound was important to mayans. If you clap near the base of the temple, the echo coming out of the little room at the top sounds like a bird on one side and more of a growl on the other. Then in the football field if you clap in the middle you hear about 7 echos. If you do go visit Chichen Itza I strongly suggest you get a guided tour because without explanations it would be pretty boring. There's nothing to point out strange carvings like in a museum, there aren't even signs to tell you where to go. Without the guide it would have just been a large temple like you see in the books.

The most annoying thing about Chichen Itza is the souvenir stands. They all want to sell you the same crap. Some of it is even hand crafted, which is cool, but they try to scam you which I hate. They tell you it's one dollar. "One dollar, very cheap, almost free, one dollar" If you ask them about the price, it's one mayan dollar which they say is worth whatever, or they say oh it's one dollar off. And there's so many of them all selling the same thing that it gets anoying. But that's life. One funny guy did say "You need to buy your wife a present." and when I said no thanks he replied "Don't forget about your neighbors wife".

During the long ride home I reflected upon my day, and figured that all in all, the tour was worth it. It would have cost us $40 to rent a car for the day, another $40 in tolls (WTF?! two $20 tolls crazy) and $10 each for entrance fees, that's $100. Then we would have had to buy lunch, pay for gas and I'm not sure if the cenote was free, though it looked pretty free. Actually I'm not even sure we would have found the cenote. It would have cost us about $130, and I woulda had to drive. Though the drive would have been a little more comfortable. Oh and I'm not sure if there's a parking fee. Instead we paid $160 and got a tour guide out of the deal. So yeah, go with the tour is my advice.

Back at the hotel we took a swim. The entire day had been crazy crazy hot and humid, the pool felt nice. Then we went to eat at Captain's Cove. We had seafood which was awesome, but the coolest part of the night was the alligator. We were out on the waterside patio eating our food, and miding our own business when a waiter comes by with someone's leftovers. The leftovers were from a deep fried whole fish, it was pretty big but it was just a big head and bones. The waiters says something like "I'm going to feed him" with a big smile on his face. He goes to the rail and leans over. Then he tosses the fish to a six foot alligator who happily catches it in it's big jaw. Pretty cool, restaurant with pet alligator. I need one of those.

Today we're taking a night fishing tour boat thing. Not sure what we're gonna do until then though...

Cancun Adventure - Cancun city

Last time I wrote stuff we were heading to Walmart... Our adventure did in fact take us to Walmart. It's pretty easy to get there, everyone knows walmart and it's pronounced the same in english and spanish, who woulda thought? Right, so we bought food, flip flops for me (they suck but they were $2) and some dish soap and bug spray. When I was buying meat I was somewhat confused. Next time I'll buy more because everything is in kilos and everything is cheap. I got a chorizo link, the size of a bratwurst for 3.8 pesos, and another one somewhat bigger but the lady assured me it was the best for 8 pesos. Chorizo in the US is like $6 a pound... you don't get away with anything as cheap as uh... 30 cents.

We got back home cooked up some stuff. I was a little worried about my chorizo because one of them was called queso de puerco. queso is cheese. I'm allergic to cheese. not good. So I cracked it open and it smelled a little cheesy. I cooked and it didn't look like cheese at all. So I turned to the interwebs. Turns out it's head cheese! I have no idea what goes in head cheese but it's delicious. And so was the chorizo.

This morning we had a date with Erick our host for the week. This was arranged by our personal concierge Valdo. Erick treated us to a buffet breakfast that was about as mexican as me and chatted with us. Obviously he went on about how great this resort was and that we should become members, but mostly we chatted about random things. When the sales pitch came, we told him we weren't interested (the starting price was $10K) and he pretty much finished his schpiel in five minutes. Then he passed us to the guy who wanted to sell us a "come back to cancun in our resort" package, and we told him no. He said ok, thanks, enjoy your stay. We were a little confused. No hard sell, nobody bugging us. Crazy. Free breakfast though, awesome!

Trish and I then came back to our room to book our trips to wherever we're gonna go this week. The maid stopped by and started cleaning, she was pretty nice but didn't speak a word of english. After we were done booking trips to Chichen Itza and Ek Balam we headed to downtown once again. Market 23 was our goal today.

Drivers are a little crazy here, not China crazy, but still crazy. The buses tailgate people, people change lanes all the time, well really there are no lanes painted on the ground. They have weird traffic circles too. The bus got there without any accidents though. We found many little shops kinda like what you see on the discovery channel. One shop had open sacs on grain and spices on the ground kinda like the bulk food department at your favorite grocery store. Except that being outside this bulk section of food came equipped with flies, ants and bees. They probably don't charge you extra for the bugs though.

We found a little restaurant, nothing much to look at, but the menu looked good. Well, what I understood of the menu anyways. We sat down and scanned the tiny menu, they had obscure english translations, mostly direct translations from spanish. I got poc-chuk and Trish got ceviche, and we split some guacamole. The avocados in the guac were yellow and green, and they tasted really good, no clue what kind of avocado it was. I say kind of avocado because we found more than one kind at walmart, and if walmart has 2 kinds of avocados you know there's gotta be at least 3 or 4 kinds more out there in the world. Anyways, the food was awesome, and there was way too much of it. We didn't finish our plates and we barely touched the habanero salsa "muy picante" said our waiter when he plopped it on the table. The food only cost us 200 pesos, like $15 or something including tip. I asked Erick and he said 10% tip is customary here.

We just got back to the resort now, and I'm covered in sweat, it's gotta be 35 or 40 out there, maybe even 45-50 with the humidex factor. That's like 200 degrees for you american types. Learn celcius, it's too hot to translate in my head.

I think I'm gonna go swim, cus there's a pool right outside my door. Have fun at work tomorrow, I'll be in chichen itza. It's a mayan temple.

Cancun Vacation - The way over

So Trish and I decided to head out to Cancun for a vacation. We planned it a while back, and invited some of you, but nobody wanted to come along. Whatever, your loss. Now you can read about everything you missed! I know, it's totally awesome, it's like being there really. Anyways, Cancun through my eyes is probably way more hilarious than if you were there yourself.

SFO is far from our place, so trying to find a way to get there is always a problem. We did a hotel 1 night and park for 2 weeks once, and that worked well. But for Cancun we were leaving Friday night, so we opted for a shuttle instead. These guys pick you up at your house and bring you to the airport. The shuttle ride was pretty quiet, met a guy from New York. He wasn't very interesting. We got to the International terminal, and the dude wanted us to get out, we thought Mexico flights were domestic, but when we saw the Mexicana sign we figured we should get off the shuttle.

The international terminal at SFO is kinda boring... There was a bunch of annoying "kids" (you know, ages 20 to 25) that were also going to Cancun. Great. They were really loud and rowdy but the strangest thing was that they didn't seem to know each other much. They were really loud when we first boarded the plane, making jokes yelling at each other and stuff but when the plane took off the loudest of the bunch was out cold. He slept in the most awkward position with his head lolling forward. I hope he suffers severe neck pain. Not because I'm just plain mean, but because he really annoyed me.

Anyways, we got to Mexico city, most of the airport workers that dealt with people (this excludes maids and security) knew a little english. This helped because it meant I didn't have to break out my broken spanish just yet. Well, at least I thought it helped. The directions we got lead us to a baggage carousel where we patiently waited for our luggage. When our bags didn't show up and we were still waiting someone approached us(I didn't see many bags so I figured they just hadn't offloaded them all). I asked if they spoke english "Hablo Ingles?" they giggled, and told us yes. They directed us to our flight because our bags would be automatically transferred... hmm... when did we pass customs? Ok, whatever. Turns out they giggled because I should have said "Hablas Ingles?" and I more than likely said "I speak english?" the question mark must make it really funny. Hi! I'm not sure but I think I'm speaking english right now, do you know if that's right?

We got to the new terminal and it was the best terminal ever! The ground was dirty, the seats were dusty and the air had the smell of campfire and pooh. That's the kind of place I want to kill two hours in. So we wait because the electronic board says we should be at gate B. Seeing as we're standing at gate 19a,19b,19c and 19d we figure maybe we're in the right spot. A little while later a woman shows up at the information desk and tells us that terminal B is where we need to be, and that's trough the security checkpoint down the hall.

Mexicans have the best security. Toss your bag on the treadmill, it goes through the x-ray machine and you're done. Tada! Passed the security checkpoint the terminal greatly improved. There was food and shops, and the smell of pooh and campfire was a thing of the past. After deciding what to eat and never selecting any food we ended up in a 7-11 to buy some water. Then we headed to our flight. We were rejoined by the noisy "kids" since they too were headed to Cancun. They were much quieter this time, I guess an overnight flight and a 5am (3am our time) transfer really kicks you out of rowdy and excited mode.

The flight was ok except for a few REALLY annoying things. Apparently the chick sitting next to Trish kept elbowing her, that sucked. She didn't mention it to me until after the flight so I never did anything about it. The guy behind me kept putting their feet up into that little bag on the seat in front of you. So he was kinda kicking the back of my seat once in a while. When Trish put the armrest down between us the guy even put his foot on our armrest! Who the hell does that??!? Even people in movie theaters have more sense than putting their feet on someone else armrest. WTF?! So I elbowed his foot. He didn't move so I elbowed it harder. That got the message across. Then later in the flight he started whistling along with whatever music he was listening to... Some people are just born jerks. They probably don't even know why everyone thinks they're jerks. In their minds I'm sure putting their feet on someone else's armrest or whistling along to some obscure tune in a crowded plane is just normal. In my world, those people should be put in a zoo so that all the kids can point and say "look that guy has no manners" or "that one's funny mommy, he doesn't understand personal space". But that's life, jerks are everywhere.

We finally get to Cancun, we follow the signs to the baggage claim and as we had been warned, everyone asked us if we needed a taxi. As we were waiting for our baggage inside the terminal only the car rental shops and the tourist information people asked us if we needed a taxi. Our paper from the shuttle we booked warned us that there would be plenty of people asking us and to ignore them. We got our bags and finally we found the customs agents. Well, in Mexico city they gave us passport stamps, but this time it was the "search your bags" type of customs. The guy took our form (which said we had food with us) and then asked Trish to press the red button. The button was attached to what looked like a light post with two lights. Trish pressed the button and the green light came on spelling out PASS and so the custom agent waved us through the door. Now that's tight security. Are they using the light as an excuse? "I'm sorry sir, the light says I have to search all your belongings, please step this way. Don't mind the rubber gloves, it's all part of the process... now please take off your pants."

Well, we got a pass so out the door we went. Now I felt like a celebrity being hounded by the paparazzi on red carpet night. We walked out into a cordoned off area, on our side was the tourists, on the other side the taxi people. Instead of taking pictures they were saying "taxi! you need taxi? taxi!" Anyways, our paperwork described the guy we were looking for as a dude wearing a yellow shirt and blue pants with Thomas Moore logos on him. The guy who looked like that also had a Thomas Moore clip board. The paper also warned that the agent would only ask us for our voucher and that no money would be needed. That's what the guy did so we headed off with him. We ended up with six people all looking for Thomas Moore and so the clip board guy led us to the parking lot. In the parking lot one of the taxi guys tried to take a suitcase from a member of our group. The taxi guy pretended he was being helpful but clearly he was not with Thomas Moore. It's kinda creepy that they can be that pushy. Anyways, we made it to the hotel in one piece, so all is well.

One of the people that was also traveling from SFO to Cancun was this guy wearing a Brazil shirt. I was mentioning jerks earlier, and this guy was clearly one of em. Every time I saw him, on the plane, in the airport, at the customs lineup, it didn't matter... he was always chewing gum like a cow. He wasn't just chewing with his mouth open, he was chewing really big, as if he was trying to shove an apple in his mouth with every bite. In the taxi van he was sprawled all over until we had to cram all 6 of us in there. The he kept using my seat belt to pull himself up from slouching. And when he wasn't pulling himself up he was slouching so much and his knees were pressing on the back of my seat. When the first couple exited the cab (they were going to another resort) he started leaning forward and pointing at stuff through the front windshield between me and Trish. He would lean and then stick his arm over our seat and lean forward until his armpit was on the top of the seat. Not only that but he would cow-chew his gum the whole time. Sadly they are somewhere in our resort, hopefully we never see them again though.

So we get to the resort, our room won't be ready till noon, so we grab some food. It was pretty tasty. Then we go check in and the guy tells us that our room is on the ground floor. We ask and he says he can't change the room because it's already assigned. Apparently at this resort, you're subject to the whims of a computer. Our villa(room) is actually pretty big. Two bath, two bed, kitchen, living room. Sleeps probably 8, 10 if you have some really small friends. The master bedroom has a huge bed, then there's two doubles in the other room and two singles that are murphy beds. Murphy beds are the ones that you pull out of the wall.

The resort also has a cool scam. They validate your credit card for about $1000 and then your room key is used as a cash card. This way you never need cash on the resort, you just use your room key. You can use it at the restaurants, the bar, the pool bar, the mini mart, you can even use it at affiliated restaurants and resorts in the nearby area. If your card runs out, you can extend your credit the same way. This way you can't keep track of your spending! Awesome!

We napped and then checked out the area. The beach is rocky, big rocks with lots of sand and sea shells. The water is warm in both the pool and the ocean. The sun is killer. Super hot. I'll either get a massive tan or a massive sunburn or both by the end of the week.

For supper we hit the restaurant and it's all you can eat tacos for 200 pesos, about $15. So we got that. Trish had many shrimp tacos and I had tons of beef, pork and chicken tacos to go with my shrimp tacos. The cooks name was Julian, he cooked tacos to order. I chatted with him, he was using his broken english and I used my broken spanish. He asked me why I was speaking spanish and I told him I was practicing for when people didn't speak english. He was a cool guy, he helped me with my spanish, I helped him a little with english. He seemed to enjoy my strange requests, like mixing beef and pork into the same taco. Or some tacos without tortillas. He tried to give me directions to the market, but in the end I didn't really understand much. Though if you ask someone where to go to buy food or other things, they always answer Walmart first! Crazy. I came to Cancun to go to walmart.

Anyways, we took an evening swim and then slept. This morning we had an orientation session and the only really useful things were the maps we got and the warning about pickpockets. I also asked the guy about the best fish tacos in town, so we got directions to a couple of places. When we got back to our room there was a large iguana on our patio. So we're not complaining too much about being on the ground floor anymore. The iguana that Trish named Jorge (pronounced Hor-he in spanish) was pretty cool except for the massive crap he left on our patio. it's pretty much the size and shape of a sharpie pen. Thanks for the present Jorge.

We had lunch from stuff we bought at the mini-mart and headed to the 1pm welcome party. Apparently open bar in Cancun means all you can drink rum and coke or dos equis. Really what else would anyone want right? Oh well... it was pretty boring, we went to the pool instead and enjoyed our free drinks. One warning though, everything here is stone, and the sun makes the stone really really hot. If you take off your sandals you run the risk of burning your feet.

Well, so far so good. We're probably gonna go downtown and scope out Walmart because apparently it's the awesomest place on earth. You know... WALMART! woo!

Detroit / Chicago - Car Country!

Wow... I haven't blogged in forever. I thought I would have interesting things to talk about every week or so, but I don't. I guess that means my day to day life is kinda boring. I should get a new job, something with excitement, like a stunt man! At least my current job keeps me out of the hospital I guess. So it'll have to do.

One of the "perks" of my job is that sometimes they send me someplace to do something. I'm being pretty vague here because it's not always clear why I go places and what I'm supposed to do there. Seeing as they've sent me out twice since I started working here and neither times was it very clear what I was supposed to accomplish during the trip, I think it's a trend. I happen to like that trend of vague indications because it means I can never really fail. I mean the conversation would be something like this... "You didn't do what we sent you there to do!" "I did exactly what you sent me there to do!" "Really? What did we send you there to do?" and then the communication break down happens and everyone is happy.

Anyways, this time the flew me to Detroit to meet up with Ford. I can't really go into the details as to what we were doing as it's kinda secret. Don't bother asking on the blog because I won't reply... not that I don't read the comments because eventually I will. But I'm never really inclined to reply to them because I'm lazy like that.

The adventure starts way too early in the morning, something like 5am. I get up and go to the airport via taxi. The cab driver is the same guy that drove Rachel (my neighbor) to the airport a few months ago. He thought he drove me... the guy didn't remember me, he just remembered the building.

I get to the airport and I line up to check in. The trend in airports these days is to replace as many people as possible with computers and to charge you for everything they possibly can. So I walk up to the check in computer, it lets me PAY for my check in bag -$20 for a freaken checkin- and then it lets me pick my seat. I have choice of 3 seats, two of them are middle seats and one is the aisle seat. The only aisle seat available is in the last row by the toilets, but hey, it's better than a middle seat.

I go through security without any issues and find Peggy sitting at the gate waiting for the plane. So I tell her that I didn't have many seat choices and she tells me the same. So it turns out that she checked in 30mins earlier than me and got a completely different seat selection. Her only aisle seat was right next to mine... so we're sitting across the aisle from each other now. So the computer limits what seats you get to see or something. That's screwed up because it means that you'll have a crappy selection even if you decide to check in early. Freaken airlines, they suck.

The flight was crowded and whatnot. We finally got to the hotel, the Dearborn inn. The rooms were tiny, the place looked like a mansion. Turns out it was built by Henry Ford II. So it was probably a mansion transformed into a hotel. It was pretty nice though. We ask the desk guy where we can eat. He says we can go to downtown Dearborn and find some food there, but it's really far to walk. The bellhop offers us a ride since it's one of the services the hotel offers. Cool, let's go.

So downtown turns out to be 1.5 miles away from the hotel, and all the restaurants that the desk guy said were way too far to walk are pretty close to the ones he said "You could walk but it's far". Apparently his walking distance limit is 1.5 miles and 1.8 miles is way too far. Nobody walks in Detroit though, it's car country!

In any case, we walked. It was nice and cool out, a little humid, reminded me of home. We ate at Buddy's Pizza, they said they had soy cheese on the menu, but when I ordered it they didn't have any on hand. They did pile on the toppings to compensate. On the way back home a cop was totally scoping us out. He drove by twice and really really slow. He was probably thinking to himself "Oh! Pedestrians! Those two are up to no good for sure." Like I said, nobody walks in Detroit. He didn't stop us or pull us over, though he looked like he was going to at one point. The rest of the night was uneventful.

We wake up early the next morning to get to Ford by 8am. It's only a 10 minute walk. When we told the Ford people that we walked downtown they were pretty shocked. What's up with these people, they have legs but they avoid using them. The Ford building even has escalators, they look like they were built during the first world war, but they're still escalators. Even the ford people were astonished that we walked.

Well, it took forever to get the car ready and lunch rolled around while we were still in Detroit. So we ate sushi (Kevin totally did not like it, he barely ate) and then we left for Chicago. On the way down Kevin mentioned that we were meeting up with someone else down there. Little did we know that he would also be joining us, thus cramming 5 people in the car. Ugh.

So I won't bore you with details of the trip, because to be honest, it was boring. We worked long hours in the car, all 5 of us crammed in there. The ford people were the only ones allowed to drive the car, so they hogged the front seats the whole trip. They never even offered up the front seat after we started complaining about how crammed the car was. Most nights we got back to the hotel, went to supper and then slept. I roamed around downtown Chicago for a bit and found a few cool shops like the Lego store and a brain teaser store. So instead of details I'll give you highlights!

First I must complain about the traffic. Cyclist and pedestrians are suicidal. They run out in front of you or swerve all over the street without care. IDIOTS! Then the cars, they love their horn. If you don't hear a car honking at least once a minute, you're probably not in Chicago. And then buses. Buses live by the adage go big or go home. They think that they own the road because they can crush anything on the road. One bus was turning left from the right hand lane and cut right in front of us, Kevin had to slam on the breaks to avoid crashing into it. Let me tell you 5 people crammed in a car that is going from 40 to 0 in less than 2 seconds is NOT comfortable.

Anyways, through the crazy traffic we went to the zoo, because it was nice and open and FREE! We were only there to use the restrooms though... oh well. I did get to see lions, jaguars and a panther because the cat exhibit was right next to the bathrooms. Speaking of cats and bathrooms, there was a giant lion loaf on one of the rocks. Holy crap indeed, those lions don't mess around when they're dropping the bomb. It was huge!

There's a thing in Chicago referred to as "the bean". It's a big stainless steel sculpture that's super reflective. The cool part about it is that it's shaped kinda like a bean or a red blood cell. The shape makes all sorts of crazy reflections, and if you go under it there's a reflective funnel going into the middle of the bean and it makes things go a little crazy. I swear you could get motion sick just standing in there.

The city reminded me a bit of Manhattan because of all the tall buildings. It's nowhere near as big as that but still pretty impressive. We drove around a lot in the city but one day we went into the suburbs. I don't know who picked the suburb we went to but it must have been the rich burb. They had garages the size of houses and houses the size of hotels. Even their shops were huge. They had a giant Costco I swear you would need a golf cart to get around it all. They even had a games workshop in one of the malls with a 12 foot space marine figure standing out front! Crazy land I tell you.

Back in downtown Chicago we spotted a castle. Well a fake castle, but whatever. It turned out to be a tourist information center. How cool is that, total tourist trap "Hey a castle!" but it's meant for tourist cus it's the information center! Genius! Anyways, it was closed, but it didn't look much like a castle inside sadly. And to add to the feel that you were near a castle they had old school horse wagon rides, with real horses. And real horse poop. Horse poop smells.

Apart from the fancy restaurants (Andrea always liked to go to fancy places) and the evenings spent roaming the streets the trip was all business. That kinda sucked. The ride back to Detroit was welcomed by all. Back at the hotel in Detroit Peggy and I took a nap and a swim, the outdoor pool was great. Then we went off to find some food, more sushi, this all American diet was killing us.

The next day we started late, wasted time at the ford building and then headed to the airport. The flight back was even more crowded than the flight there. The second leg of my flight was overbooked by 12 people! I had an aisle seat again, so that was ok. I got to San Jose a bit early but I had to wait forever at the baggage claim. That's right, my bag never showed. I talked to the baggage claim girl, she called Phoenix. My bag was in Phoenix, it never made it on the plane, so now it's melting away in 110 degree weather.

Funny story about my bag though. Seeing as "it never made it on the plane". Well, I boarded a plane in Detroit, landed in Phoenix and then they told us: "If you're staying with us until San Jose, feel free to leave your carry-on on board as we'll be using the same plane." So I got off, grabbed some food and got back on the plane. Meanwhile some baggage handler underneath the plane took my bag out of the cargo hold and just tossed it somewhere?? I don't get it. Shouldn't they have just left my bag on the plane? Airlines suck ass.

The moral of this story is: If your project manager says "Hey Jonathan, would you like to go to Chicago? We really need someone to go." He's not offering you a paid vacation, it's probably gonna be boring. It wasn't boring all the time (otherwise I wouldn't blog about it) but it involved a whole lot of sitting around and waiting for something to happen.