Now the adventure is really starting! Bright and early on the 20th, I caught the local bus to the Greyhound terminal, got the Greyhound from San Antonio, Texas to Laredo, Texas, crossed the boarder into Nueva Loredo, Mexico, got my tourist visa, then got a bus south to Monterrey.

I had an extra bag of stuff with me and my backpack wasn't quite set the way I wanted, so I spent the first two days getting that sorted out. I also just took a few walks around Monterrey in awe of the fact that I had finally actually jumped off that cliff and was falling into the abyss of adventure. This is cool!

Monterrey is ok; it's just a normal big, dirty, bustling city (except that all the signs are written in Spanish!).

On Wednesday I went to nearby Saltillo which is very nice. It's very quaint and much like the old Mexican villages of the movies. There is a beautiful old cathedral at the center square with a big fountain (in the square, not the cathedral). Of course, Saltillo has a million people, so it's not really a village.

From Saltillo I went north to Chihuahua. This is a big city with an old, colonial feel to it. I've discovered an excellent street food: elote, which is corn on the cob with butter, a crumbly white cheese, and hot sauce on it.

From Chihuahua, I took a train thru the Copper Canon to Los Mochis on the Pacific coast. The views of the canon were really spectacular—like the Grand Canon except green. I met a nice couple from Boston travelling on the train. The man is a doctor and his German wife is an accountant or something at MIT. I also made friends with two nice, young Mexican women who are students at a university in Mexico City. I got to practice my Spanish with them a great deal, altho one of them spoke English pretty well.

From Los Mochis, I went down the coast to Mazatlan. This is a really great town. It is very touristy but is also beautiful and fun. There are internet cafes on practically every block.

While here, I climbed the second highest lighthouse in the world—the highest is on Gibralter. The view of Mazatlan from the top was fantastic! I was there at sunset and took probably half a roll of film.

I have gotten slightly sick these last couple of days. I think I am thru the worst now, but I felt slightly feverish for a few days. I have a thermometer and have been checking my temp: up only 0.8 degrees above normal—not much of a fever. Otherwise things are still going great.

Next I went east to Durango. I must admit that part of the reason I went is it has such a cool name. It sounds like something out of the old west, and in fact, it is the movie set capital of Mexico. More old westerns were filmed here than in any other town in Mexico.

After Durango, I went southeast to Zacatecas. It had one of the world's most productive silver mines for a long time, and the Spanish definitely exploited it. The town is the loveliest, most old European-like town I've been to so far. While there, I toured the mine and took a cable car up the mountain that overlooks the city. I had to walk back down because of some problem with the cars.

From Zacatecas, I went further southeast to Guanajuato. Wow, do I like Guanajuato! It is even more lovely than Zacatecas. I played chess with an American expatriate who lives here, got lots of great photos of the windy streets with the colorfully painted houses going up the steep hillsides, went to a mummy museum, and toured the museum/house where Diego Rivera was born. And my favorite museum off all is the one dedicated to Don Quixote.

From Guanajuato, I went to another nice small colonial town, San Miguel de Allende. San Miguel was just a one night stop-over on the way to Mexico City.

Mexico City: I am staying at a great hostel right on the main square of the city for only $10 a night. I have met so many great people at this hostel—some are REAL travellers who've done things that impress even me, like sneaking in to Burma when it could have landed you in a jail you don't want to be in.

I've also done some less impressive things with these cool travellers, like playing cards and talking about home. It's been almost a month on the road for me now, and I miss the small things, even while seeing the grandiose ones.

I spent one day at a place near here called Teutihuacan. I met three nice young Swedish travellers there and we spent the day together. The Teutihuacanis thrived centuries before the Aztec civilization even existed. There are two very large pyramids there; the Pyramid of the Sun is one of the world's largest. It was interesting to see all those intricately carved ruins, in spite of all the hawkers who all had a special price, just for me, for all their trinkets.

I got pickpocketed one day while riding the subway. The Hidalgo station is notorious for it, so the only things I had in my pocket were a museum ticket stub and a napkin into which I had blown my nose. I felt the guy's hand go in and out of my pocket, and I could only wonder what gringo snot goes for these days.... ;->

Mexico city is this hemisphere's—some say the world's—largest city. It is dirty and smoggy and the subways are often packed full with people. But, it is busy, energetic, and bustling with life, and is definitely the political focus of the country. There are great museums displaying the many ancient cultures that struggled here, and now out on the hot cement blocks of the main plaza, there are indigenous dancers and protesters keeping those cultures alive.

From Mexico City, I went west to Guadalajara. You can't help but sing the song when you say that name. I met a friendly Israeli couple as soon as I got here, and we hung around together the whole time I was here. Guadalajara is big and very cosmopolitan; there are lots of book stores and many people speak some English. It's like the best of Mexico City without much of the worst.

We went out for a day-trip to the town of Tequila. We toured a couple of museums about the making of Mexico's national drink but were denied our tour of the factory (and accompanying free samples) on account of arriving too late. The dry, rolling hills covered by the spiky blue-green agave plants were pretty.

The Popocatepl volcano is giving its biggest eruption in 1200 years near Mexico City now. Too bad I left, I could have watched the glowing lava flow down the mountainside.

After Guadalajara, I went east back towards Mexico City to the town of Morelia. It is a pleasant small colonial city, a lot like San Miguele. This was a stopover on my way to the Monarch butterfly sanctuary in Angangueo.

The Monarch Butterfly sanctuary was truly amazing. The Monarchs migrate south like birds to escape the winter. (Kind of like me!) There were butterflies flying thru the air everywhere. Big clusters of them collected on the branches of the pine trees to the point that I thought the limbs would break. At some places where there was water on the ground, they collected like a bright, living orange and black carpet.

Back in Mexico City where I will spend Christmas. Some people would freak at not being able to be "home" for Christmas, but it doesn't bother me that much. I enjoy missing all the gaudy commercialism of it. The Mexicans, tho, never seem to tire of blaring the same Christmas carols from every store, over and over and over again.

I did a day trip to the city of Puebla. It is another nice colonial Mexican city. Many of the buildings have a characteristic style of tile—very pretty. I had the famous local dish: chicken mole, called Mole Poblano. Yes, it is spicy, chocolate chicken, and it's very good.

I got actually stay-in-bed sick on Christmas Day. Well, everything is closed and I wasn't going anywhere anyway!

Went south from Mexico City to the beautiful city of Oaxaca (pronounced wa-HA-ca). It is an old, colonial town with cobblestone streets, a big plaza, and a cathedral in the town center. There a many indigenous people in southern Mexico and you can feel their influence in the town.

I did a day trip out to a small town to see the hemisphere's biggest tree, called El Tule. Ok, this is one big tree. It was fenced in like a zoo animal with throngs of people taking pictures of themselves in front of it.

I also went up the mountain to see the ancient ruins of Monte Alban. The "city" was arranged in a big square on top of the mountain and the views are great. The rocks used to build the temples are a grayish black and make a beautiful contrast to the amber of the tall grass growing all over the site.

I spent New Years Eve with the Israeli friends I met in Guadalajara a couple of weeks ago. We just went out for coffee and cake, then hung around their hotel room to ring in the new year. I was pretty low key, but we could hear the revelry out in the town square.

On January 1, 2001, I left Oaxaca for the southern Pacific coast. I have been travelling long and hard, and now it's time to relax on the beach for a while....