Kat & Marty

Crossing into Juarez was quite an experience. Mainly for it´s complete lack of incidents. No one even wanted to look at our passports let alone try and extort all our money and we had to actively seek out a building to get our visitors visas sorted out. Trying to hand in our visas for departing the USA turned into a bit of a drama as we couldn´t find the USA border control building but after crossing the border back and forth we eventually found it. We walked straight into the arms of a taxi driver who whisked us directly to a bus terminal and before we knew it we were safely seated on a lovely bus (much nicer than the US ones) headed for Chihuahua.

Chihuahua is a cowboy town famous for a political leader/outlaw named Villa who rustled cattle then became a folk hero. We arrived too late to see his house preserved as a muesem or the bullet riddled car he was assinated in that is parked out the back. Instead we wandered around in culture shock trying a series of failed Lonely Planet Guide addresses for restaurants that were either closed for the day or shut down entirely. Eventually we settled for what must have been the most expensive pizza parlour in town. Our little shredded meat pizza hardly justified the $20 US bill but that is what you get for being a tourist at times.  Our little hotel - which we were so pleased did still exist - was pretty and pink and the rooms were rustic. By rustic, I mean modernish but all furniture was on an angle like it was sinking into the ground of the second floor, and was of the type we would see in an Australian or NZ Salvation Army 2nd hand store. We were very comfortable none the less and just happy to have a safe corner to sleep away the short night in.

Our night was short as we were up at 4:30am to catch a train through to Los Mochis on the Pacific Coast. Once we were there at the train station ready to go, a geologist named Nancy translated for us that a landslide in the Copper Canyon meant the later end of the railway was closed. Instead we stopped at Creel for the night. We got there around lunch time and after booking into a lovely bed and breakfast and dinner hotel (which was rustic in a much better sense of the word) we took lunch at a proper Mexican restaurant and had genuine burritos and tacos. They were good! When we were replete we decided to go for a walk out of town to the local Indian Cultural Reserve to a lake. Walking out of town, a dog with half of it´s tail missing attached itself to us by walking in front of us then watching where we were walking and bounding ahead of us. One could technically say we were following it. In true Indian fashion we named it the first thing we thought when we saw it: Go Away. Go Away was actually a very smart dog who looked like a sheepdog mix. Our walk took us past a brightly coloured and well maintained cemetery to a 400 year old Spanish Church which we were able to enter and take photos. The dog followed us in and looked politely disinterested when we tried to shoo it out. We then walked over a hill and into the next valley to the lake. Walking through the valley was surreal as storm clouds massed up above us and the Indian subsistence farmers all stopped in their tracks to stare at us. Some stared at us from doorways of their small but pretty farmhouses while others paused in their manual work. I was pleased to have the dog with us for safety. The lake was pretty and had people fishing in it. We rested our legs then turned to walk the 7km back to our hotel. On the way home it rained hard and we were soaked through so the hot shower back in our room was bliss. We took our phrase books and dictionary down for a drink before dinner and sat down in the common room. Ironically it was one of the first times we felt in the mind space to be social.

Sociality was a good mindset as after two days of mainly Spanish my ears pricked up at the sound of spoken English. I immediately commented it was the first English I had heard in days and Sonya and her husband Randy from Hueston (spelt wrong!?!) sat down to eat with us. Another lass next to us joined in the conversation - Leanne from Perth, Australia. Sonya and Randy are also on the road for a substantial amount of time though they are concentrating on Mexico rather than try and take the whole continent by storm. Leanne is on a 6 week trip through Mexico before returning to the UK and deciding what to do next with herself. S & R were in Creel with good friends of theirs from Mazatlan where they had been residing the last month. Eduardo is a Mexican lawyer and his partner Kym is a photographer from the US. We were invited along for after dinner drinks with them which we readily accepted. Drinks turned out to be beers with Tequila chasers. The night became more and more enlivened and conversation was waxed lyrical. We discovered Go Away was also a friend of Sonya and Randy`s but they were much kinder in naming him: Crio (spelling again!). Marty and I both felt extremely happy to meet some fellow travellers we could identify with. The night only ended when the bar closed at 12 so we shot home to our rooms before coaches turned into pumpkins.

The next morning, slightly shabby around the edges, we went down and met our new friends for breakfast. Everyone else looked great - I think we have grown soft - and they greated us with news that the train may not be running. We went our separate ways until 10am when we would have news of the train. Marty and I took the opportunity to check out the local muesem with ancient ammorites and fossils as well as the skeleton of a dinosaur found locally.

 At 10am the news was all bad so we tagged along on a day trip to a small town called Divisadero located right on the edge of the Copper Canyon system. The Copper Canyon (Barranca del Cobre), is a network of 15 canyons that run deeper than the Grand Canyon and are somewhat wider. The difference didn´t end there as they have green covered slopes with occasional rocky outcrops. Trees, interspersed with occasional corn patches sank right to the valley bottom. The bus ride to Divisadero was windy but not too long. Only an hour. We all got out and wandered around the market stalls then bought greasy gorditos - small breads stuffed with cheese, beans, chillis and whatever you want. Strangely, they made us feel a lot better, so we walked along the canyon edge taking photos and once again enjoying the company we found ourselves in. Eventually we found our way back to pick up the bus. While we were waiting Eduardo went and bought a couple of slingshots and started up a competition with some of the young boys hanging around. When our bus came, the boys became the proud owners of the slingshots and their smiles were enormous.

That night everyone was more subdued so the time was passed playing a few rounds of yahtzee of which Sonya became the clear winner. She was also able to fill us in on a few rules we didn´t know about like getting an extra 100 points bonus for second yahtzee rolls. I think Marty might have won a lot more if we had known about that rule earlier.

The next morning the train was declared active. We had until 12:30pm so walked into the Cultural Reserve again and visited a cave where a family of Indians has been living for about 6 generations. Go Away joined us and had a great time running around through the flowers on the side of the road. The Indian family have opened the cave up for tourist visits but when we arrived they all fled and hid themselves around the sides of the cave hiding their faces from us. I didn´t feel right going inside as the dog followed us in so stayed outside with it while Marty checked out the single cavernous room. It was pretty basic but had a door in the back that went into a smaller room that they warmed up the volcanic rock walls to sleep in in winter. Entering town again we bagan to rush about doing errands. Unfortunately the dog catchers were in town and Marty saw Go Away get caught by the pound. I felt so sad as it probably meant the end of him. Creel had a pack of around 20 dogs that had been threatening people after dark so the problem needed resolving but I had fallen in love with our little friend.

The train trip to Los Mochis was spectacular. At first there were no seats available so we sat on the floor of the dining car but after a few stops we were able to sit down in the third car. It wasn´t so social but was great for looking at the scenery - plunging cliffs with gigantic, candleabra shaped cactus trees somehow growing from cracks, steep crags descending to a turbulent river bed snaking beneath us, jungles and small towns all whizzed past the windows. It was strange to see cacti growing amongst the jungle. We passed the time talking, reading and even trying to play cards. We tried tamales which are a sweet corn paste baked/streamed inside corn leaves. The most spectacular moments were at sunset where a lightening storm played to the left while a brilliant red horizon filled the right side windows. It was described as too much scenery. As we passed a lake with pastel silhoutted hills raising from it I agreed with all my heart.

We stayed on the train for a few more towns after our friends got off to retrieve their car, but we made plans to meet up in Mazatlan down on the Pacific Coast. After dark, thr train became a lot emptier. Marty was able to sleep but I was too focused on our change to a bus at Los Mochis in the middle of the night to relax. When we did disembark, we got in a taxi which the driver filled with other passengers too. A usual run from the station would earn the taxi driver 40 pesos but people are inovative when it comes to money and in Los Mochis our taxi driver´s inovation was to charge each passenger 40 pesos, so we paid a double fee to get to the train station which ended up being quite near by. Later Sonya and Randy told us they had the same problem at their stop. It is hard to get too upset when we get fleeced as people here in general earn so little. We were told later the average wage is around $8000 US a year. When the price of most things seem fairly comparable to Australia it is hard to see how people survive. They do it by living very basic lives, and living in really small basic houses/apartments. There is an upcoming middle class who earn a lot more and live a better life style but they aren't the ones driving taxis or cleaning rooms.

Our bus pulled into Mazatlan at 7am and we had a station controlled taxi fare - to our relief - for a cab to our hotel. The cab was a little golf cart which we precariously balanced our packs on the back of. The hotel we stayed in, Hotel La Siesta, was recommended by Kym and was right by the sea front. We took a back room but still had a view from a side window of the surfers surfing a point break. Hurrican John had brought a lot of rain and bigger waves to Mazatlan. Some of the boards being used were in terrible condition - we saw one with it´s nose broken off and duct taped over - but the riding was really good.

We slept until lunch then went down to the not so Mexican El Shrimp Bucket which plied us with delicous starters for free before our huge lunches arrived. We walked around the plazas of the historical section, aborbing the large cathedral before going to see the newly renovated theatre. We paid to go inside to look around. There was a photo gallery showing the before photos with trees growing where the stage was in a gutted out space, then the after photos of a prettily painted building. Inside there were plush red velvet seats and box seats lining the walls up to the roof. A choreographer was rehearsing with a group of dancers and it was incredible to watch such a focused and impassioned artist at work. He knew exactly what he wanted to protray from every single dance move. I watched entranced, Marty said he organised it specially for me. We returned for a sleep before meeting Leanne, Sonya and Randy for dinner. Randy and Sonya took us to a little restaurant where we tried cerveche, raw fish marinated in lime juice, and delicous shrimps. We still aren´t really clear on the difference between shrimp and prawn but either way it was a good meal. After we went to Sonya and Randy´s local hangout, a bullfighting bar. All of the waiters and the owner too were bullfighters and the walls were covered with pictures of their brave exploits. In Mexico bullfighting is a more even fight where a group of men will wrestle a bull to the ground with their bare hands rather than spear it. We were introduced to a few of Sonya and Randy´s friends, including a published writer, Nery Cordova. He invited us all back to his house and for better all worse we all went. It was a bachelor pad full of art far out in the suberbs and we stayed out until 4am. It was difficult to communicate with such poor Spanish so poor Sonya and Randy were drawn into translating as much as holding their own conversations. Mery sent us off with a book he wrote in the front for me. It is a biography in Spanish so I don´t know how I will ever read it but it is a treasure none the less.

The next day Randy and Sonya picked us up to buy fresh shrimp at a street stall. There was a place over the road that will boil them up for the price of buying a drink. We ate with chickens wandering around beneath our feet and a huge juke box blasting us from the corner. It was fun. Beyond that we did laundry and arranged to meet for a final drink before all of us went our different ways the following day. Marty and I had plans to walk along the ocean front but ended up sleeping instead.

We met for coffee at a cafe opposite the theatre where they made delicous frappacinos. Leanne rocked up just as we were moving back to the bullfighting bar. There we found Eduardo and Kym, Nery, and also met the man behind the theatre renovations. After eating and talking politics for a while we excused ourselves. The next day we were planning to leave early for Guadalajara to make it to some markets they hold nearby only on Sundays and Thursdays. Since it was a Sunday it seemed perfect.

We made it to the bus station and straight onto a bus at 6am. We hadn´t realised we were passing through a time change and we lost an hour so missed the markets anyway. We booked into what we thought would be a cheap hotel, but was in fact still on the expensive side. The San Raphael had a huge voluminous room with piles of plaster in corners that had fallen from the roof. The bathroom had a full length window of textured glass straight out on the lobby and while Marty was showering someone stopped and had a good look, I was glad it wasn't while I was in there. Instead of going out to the now closed markets we did the Lonely Planet Guide walking tour that took us to massive cathedrals with ornate gold altars and masterful sculptures and paintings focusing on Mary, The government building with an overwhelming painting of Hidalgo, a political leader, looming down over a staircase, and lots of beautiful plazas. Guadalajara is the home of the Mexican mariachis but perhaps due to the afternoon rain we didn't see any. We tried to find a restaurant from the Lonely Planet Guide but lucked out so ate at a tiny Mexican Ranchero Restaurant instead. We thought with our dictionaries we would be ok, but ended up with a narrow miss. A lovely girl walking past while we were looking at the menu stopped and asked if we needed help translating. Some of the words we couldn't find in our dictionary were actually brain and tongue! We went back and had an early night, using the computer outside our room to download photos and playing yahtzee then watching bad American movies in Spanish on TV.

In the morning we met with Leanne who had also made it to Guadalajara the day before, to do a tour to Tequila. This is a small town that first came up with the idea of making blue agave cactus into the rather evil drink we know today as tequila. Our tour bus contained only us, one other tourist couple from England and a gentleman from Ecuador. We stopped on the way to photograph the fields of agave. The leaves are covered in sharp spines and have needle like points on the tips - Marty found out how sharp when he stood too close to one plant. The factory we visited was of Jose Cuevero, the family who instigated the law that says tequila can only be grown and made in the region of Tequila. The factory had borrowed all the romance of winemaking to present their product and we walked in past a water fountain with a huge sculpture of a dove, through courtyards with marble floors and murals painted on the walls showing the process of harvesting and producing tequila. We were taken through the factory floor and given tastings of the baked heart of the agave from which a sugary liquid is extracted. To me it tasted like prune juice. Then we were given a shot of 55% proof tequila. Everyone looked a little ill after that one. Finally we had a professional tasting of fresh and aged examples. I still don't think tequila is the kind of drink you should swill around your mouth to explore all the flavours, but I went along with it for this time. We went and had lunch at the food market which was a lot cheaper than the touristy restaurants pointed out to us. I ordered a sweet mole with chicken and my stomach has never been  the same since. On the bus ride back the driver had put up a sign saying please give gratuities. It left a bad feeling after a fantastic day as noone on the bus were from places that tip.

Back in Guadalajara, Leanne, Marty and I went and had a drink in the mariachi plaza - still strangely free of mariachis, then went and found the restaurant we had looked for the day before to eat dinner. It was one block over than our map said, but was very clean and had good food to our relief. No brain or tongue here! From here we said goodbye to Leanne as we were going in different directions.

Tuesday morning saw us onto a bus for Mexico City. Despite our idea of arriving there before dark we arrived an hour after dark in torrential rain. Our taxi dropped us around the corner from where we wanted to stay and we were petrified of walking the block to the HI Hostel on the central square or zocolo. Actually it was fine and we had no problem getting there at all. However we only got a room as they had a cancellation due to the political protests going on in response to the results of the recent elections. The entire zocolo was filled with tents of the protestors who had set them up in front of the government palace. Our room was tiny and filled up with a double bed (fortunately it was a queen on the bottom) but it had a bathroom leading to a shower room as well. I much prefer having a private bathroom, shared bathrooms just never seem that clean. After eating at a sandwhich house over the road, we crashed.

After an HI cafe breakfast of fruit, yoghurt and cold toast we went over to the zocolo and had a look in the absolutely enormous cathedral. Walking inside was like walking into another time. I was breathtaken with the height and breadth ornate goldwork covering the altars. There were many side chapels containing different saints and relics. One that grabbed my attention was a glass presentation case containing a neat pile of human bones - the bones of a martyr. These are the first human bones I have ever seen in my life and it gave me a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach.

Next we braved the Mexico City subway to visit the Muesem of Anthropology. Our LPG (Lonely Planet Guidebook) told us to watch out for pick pockets but I guess they had more work in town with the prostestors as we had no problems whatsoever. We walked down to the muesem on a road full of more protestors tents. We saw police sitting and watching tv with bored protestors - the irony was not lost on us. The muesem didn't look large to us when we first went in, but the amount of displays crammed into each room meant that we didn't have time to see everything. The main displays we focused on were the Teotihuacan, Aztec and Mayan though we flew through the Olmec and Toltec displays as well. By the end of the Aztec display Marty and I were both feeling ill at looking at so many things associated with killing people. The belief was people's still beating hearts had to be sacrificed for the sun to keep rising and many of the things on display were associated with these human sacrifices,  but most shocking was the amount of human skeletons on display. Probably the most shocking was a display of 7 skeletons found with hands tied behind their backs and necklaces of human jaw bones around their necks. The only remains (or copy of) that I didn't feel disturbed viewing was the eleborate sarcophogus of King Jakal from Palenque. The actual body was hidden under a red cinnabar dust but was bedecked with jade and the death mask was a mosaic of jade - it was stunning and in a way quite beautiful.

We ate lunch at the expensive muesem restaurant. After being served cold, overpriced coffee I accidently agreed to leave a tip and the waitress got extremely annoyed when we didn't. It is strange to be here in a non-tipping culture, from a non-tipping culture, but still be expected to tip. It is difficult to balance between the idea of being generous and feel like one is being taken for a bit of a ride. We took the subway back to the hostel and sat down in the cafe playing yahtzee and talking to an English girl who had lived in Cuba learning Spanish for 6 months.

Our guide the next morning spoke really good English. The tour van was full of more Australians, Israelis, English and Americans. First we stopped at some ruins right in the middle of Mexico city where some frescos of interest were pointed out to us. The most important probably being the Aztec calendar. The ruins were next to a zocolo which had the first San Fransican church built in Mexico City and also was home to a political cleanup in 1968, where a few days before the Olympic games were hosted a peaceful meeting of students and disgruntled workers who wanted political reform were shot and killed. The following morning, the bodies had been removed and the zocolo cleaned like it had never happened.

Our next stop was at an Obsidian factory where we were greeted with tastes of tequila and pulque, another sweeter and less strong cactus alcohol. We had lunch at a buffet here beneath the shadow of Teotihuacan's sun pyrimid.

Teotihuacan is an ancient site containing a sun pyrimid and a moon pyrimid. The sun pyrimid is the 3rd biggest in the world. Seeing the ancient ruins of and surrounding the pyrimids juxtaposed against the nearby buildings of modern villages was surreal. Our guide, Mariocela, was exellent. She pointed out things of interest and regaled us with many stories and facts from the pre-Aztec buildings and times. As an anthropology student she certainly knew her stuff. After climbing the pyrimids we went to the muesum which housed relics and sacrificial skeletons found on the Teotihuacan archeological site.

We got back to the hostel exhausted, but tried to catch up a little on downloading photos and blogging a little and doing laundry. I pursuaded Marty to go on a tour the next day to visit Frida Kahlo's house. Frida Kahlo was an extremely famous Mexican artist from early last century. She was married to Diego Rivera, another famous artist and was a lover of Trotsky who was a friend of Lenons but got off side and took refuge in Mexico City. Trotsky was later killed by his maid's boyfriend for his political leanings. Frida had been in a bad bus accident as a school girl and had to spend a lot of time in bed from surgeries. Her mother bought her paints to pass the time with and she self taught herself. She was also well known for her political involvement with extremely leftist leanings. Walking through her house which is now partly a gallery of her and Rivera's works and partly a muesem of their kitchen and bedrooms, there were lots of references to Mao and Lenon. Known as the blue house, it was well worth a visit for me. We were the only ones on this tour so we had the guide to ourselves and were able to ask him a lot of questions about the political situation now.

His thoughts were that the man who had got in with a 51% majority was lucky but the reaction of the man who lost has made him extremely unpopular and now he would lose another vote by a lot more. The reaction was to pay the protestors a small amount to set up their tents, and to instigate talk of revolution and civil war. Most (up to 70%) Mexicans are not even remotely interested in this happening. It still makes one pause for thought as Independence Day draws near. The usual custom is for the president to stand out on the palace balconey to make a speech, then the army does a circuit of the zocolo in tanks. With emotions running high and alcohol running freely for the prostesters, then adding armaments to the equation with Mexico's bloody history things seem like quite a volatile cocktail. Our guide however said times are different, the president has said he won't use arms to repress the people and that it is not likely to end in bloodshed. He added that he hoped not anyway and we join with him in that opinion.

After visiting Frida Kahlo's blue house we stopped by Diego Rivera's house before going down to the Xochimilco canals in the South of Mexico City and riding in a colourful trajinera (gondala) with an almost cold beer. It was a very relaxing way to spend the afternoon. At one point we floated past a tree full of dolls tied to it. Our guide told us there used to be an eccentric man who lived on a canal island and that is what he did. He is dead now but you can take a 4 hour boat ride to visit the island still covered in dolls. Creepy!

From Mexico City we took a bus down to Taxco, a silver mining town in the mountains. It sits perched on a steep hillside and despite seeing people constantly cleaning the streets it seemed quite dirty. We got in late, near midnight but found a cheap place to stay. A noisy dog woke us in the night but with ear plugs we slept well. Poor Marty has been having a bad time with low doorways and our bathroom took the cake where even I had to lean down a bit to get through. In the morning we went and explored. Our plan had been to buy a platter or cutlery set or fantastic jewellery piece for the price of the silver (as we had been told happens). Actually the artesan work was pretty standard and the price of workmanship was competitive with Australian prices. The only place that anything really stole our hearts was in a ceramic shop called Emilio Castillo. An artist had used silver plating to decorate ceramic plates with fish, stars, dragonflies or butterflies etc. They were beautifully presented but were priced in US dollars and weren't even close to being affordable for us. We considered getting a small plate but at $66 US for a saucer that would sit in a corner it just didn't sit right so no sales.

The next day we left for Puebla. This was a good move. At this point Marty and I were starting to feel a bit listless. We are missing all our friends and families from home a lot and were starting to find the trials of the road a bit demoralising. Also my stomach was still reacting badly to Mexican food. In Puebla we found the city streets were clean and well cared for - no horrid smells every few steps. Best of all was the Italian Coffee Company cafes where we had a real cup of coffee for the first time in ages. For dinner, in the cuisine capital of Mexico, I chose MacDonalds in a desperate attempt to get my stomach to settle. Whoever would pick that food for a healthy option, but it did help. We spent the next day wandering the streets and markets there. I picked up a lovely blanket as a souveneir of Mexico. We spent a couple of hours trying to use bad servers on computers then gave it up as a bad job and jumped on an overnight train to Palenque.

Palenque is famous for it's archaelogical site of Mayan ruins. It was where the King Jakal Sarcophagus was found that I mentioned earlier. We arrived at around 9am and took a taxi out to El Panchan. A small group of basic hotels and restaurants close to the base of the ruins and located in jungle. As soon as we had a room organised I put in my ear plugs and fell asleep. I didn't even stir when a band of howler monkeys went right past our room or when Marty went out to look at them. At 11am he woke me and we had lunch of enchilladas at one of the restaurants before going up to the ruins. It was fantastic! We were able to walk all over them and explore the central palace rooms. Unfortunately King Jakal's Temple was indefinitely closed but we were able to see everything else. The grounds around the ruins were really well kept and it was just a really nice place to be with jungle covered hills raising up behind the ruins and the howls of monkeys occasionally reverbrating through the air. It was hot too which was really nice. Walking back down to our room we almost went for a swim in a clear flowing river but the presence of two sunbathers deterred us. We had dinner at the same restaurant beneath a thatched roof by candlelight. We left before the banc started up which proved a good idea as shortly after we got to our room the skies opened up and rain poured down late into the night. We thought of going early the next morning for a swim but slept in instead.  Getting back into the town of Palenque revealed that buses to Chichen Itza are few and far between so we booked onto a deluxe bus (we have been dieing to try the top buses out as first class are really good), for a night ride to Cancun where we can take a day trip to Chichen Itza and chill out on the Caribbean beach in between.

The deluxe bus was late - not bad for our entire time in Mexico to run into our first late bus - but ironic it was meant to be the fancy one. The leg space was good. Even Marty had room to stretch his legs out, apart from that it was pretty much the same as the other buses. The hour it run late ran into further hours as the engine cut out every time the bus slowed down. The air conditioner stopped working and we finally rolled into Cancun 13 hours after leaving Palenque, drenched in sweat.

Cancun has a strange history. Back in the 70s a group of developers got together and decided to build a city entirely based on tourism. Looking around they chose a small fishing village out on the Yucatan Peninsula as it had some nice beach working for it. They built an entire strip of mega resorts along a narrow strip of sand between the Caribbean Ocean and a lagoon. The small fishing village on the mainland became a support city for the resorts housing all the staff and developing it's own markets and cheaper tourist accomodations and restaurants. We found a small hotel located out on the strip but selling rooms at downtown prices. It was basic but had a fantastic swimming pool with water as warm as a bath and had a thatched roof open bar looking over the lagoon where we ate most of our meals. Originally we planned to do a day trip out to the Chichen Itza Mayan ruins, but one sight of the ocean and we changed our minds. We hired a beach chair and hung out on the beach almost all day. The ocean water was so warm you could lay in it for hours and the strong salt made floating really easy.

We were still in Cancun for Independence Day and we went into town for dinner and the fireworks display. We were stunned by the lack of the other tourists in town. The fireworks over the town hall were great though they did seem to go off a lot lower than happens in Australia and New Zealand. The next day we were relieved to see on the news that there were no problems at all in Mexico City and the protesters were disapated. Our lovely hotel proprieter helped us book tickets to Cuba, so the morning after Independence Day we said goodbye to Mexico for 6 days.

Please check out the photos at www.katmarty.smugmug.com

PS Sorry to take so long to post this update, thanks for reading - we are missing you all a lot but are happy that we are learning so much about our world.