Matacanes pictures and cooking

Ok, so I finally got some pictures from Matacanes. The bare bones numbers are on my last post, but this is the one group jump that we did. Pretty short, maybe 3-4 m? I'm wearing the red lifevest on the left.



Last Sunday morning I also hit up some of the city museums in downtown Monterrey. The Museo de Historia Mexicana and the Museo del Noreste. They were both pretty interesting, but the Mexican history was very high level. The exhibits started from pre-hispanic cultures and continued to present day. They had some interesting colonial stuff, including arts and culture in México. No pictures allowed in either museum, but they had these giant statues outside (I think they are the museum mascots...).

Matacanes and PC Plumbing

So Matacanes was really fun, but very intense. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures yet, since I didn´t take my personal camera (and I´m glad I didn´t!), but hopefully the guide will send us our pictures soon. In a nutshell:

• Got up at 3:15 AM to catch a ride
• Got back home after midnight
• In between, did 27 cliff jumps of various heights. Highest was 12 m (~40 ft), with a couple of 8 m ones mixed in
• 2 rappels, highest was 36 m
• Ton of rock slides (which I loved!)
• 12 hours of walking, climbing, jumping, swimming, rappelling, etc.
• 1 soaked and destroyed cell phone (hence why I´m glad I didn´t also have my camera)

For some reason, I also ate a ton more during the hike than everyone else in my group. I had 8 Snicker´s bars, 8 granola bars, and drank about 2 L of water. Right afterwards, I also wolfed down half a roast chicken, rice, and beans. Guess I still have that high metabolism...

An interesting note on the 12 m cliff jump. On the way down, I was watching the water, and I actually had enough time to think to myself, Hm, I haven´t hit the water yet... That´s how long it takes to fall 12 m...

On the plumbing note, I had bought a washer for my house, to save on laundromat costs. There was a perfect space to hook it up in the back patio, but when I went to connect everything, I couldn´t find a cold water hookup available. So, over the course of a week, I basically had to rig together this T-pipe plus washer faucet plus hose contraption to keep water flowing to the house while also providing cold water to the washer. Very professional!

Visitors!

Thanks for all the words of encouragement! This week I got to fight the blues when I hosted my first guest. Scott, one of the volunteers from the central part of México, is a big hiker, and he came up for a week to enjoy the hiking in the mountains around Monterrey. On Sunday, my counterpart went with us to Parque Chipinque, but we took a different trail than I took last time. This time we went to a point called El Pinal...loosely translated in my bad Spanish to the Piney Spot. El Pinal is the little wooden structure at the top of this mountain. Yes, we actually made it that far!

This is the view of the city from El Pinal.

The haze and smog kind of wreaked havoc with the view. But, as the sign says, from here, you can see...nothing!

I have also started hanging out on my terrace at night to get out of the heat. Homes here tend to trap heat and literally turn into ovens, especially the second floors. Before he left, Scott surprised me with some house plants for my terrace as house-warming presents! Right now they are pretty small, but with the constant sunshine and some TLC, in two years I might have a full-fledged jungle upstairs. The jungle will compliment the turkey, roosters, and roof dogs that I can see from the terrace.

On the sad news front, our English Club was very short lived. When I stopped by our cafe on Tuesday with Scott, I saw a sign that the owner was selling everything in the cafe! She had not been getting much business, so last Friday she and her husband decided to shut down! Needless to say, just that morning I had sent out an e-mail to everyone in my center, inviting them to the club. Oops...

As a point of comparison between the US and México, here is a basket of groceries that I bought at the local convenience store. Basically enough as snacks for a couple of days: a loaf a wheat bread, a pineapple, a half-kilo of eggs (8), some nopales (cactus leaves), carrots, tomatoes, bananas, and juice, for a grand total of...88 pesos! Which is roughly $6.75. An order of 5 tacos from the local joint costs 35 pesos, so less than $3 for a very satisfying main entree.

Tomorrow I head off to Matacanes with a fellow volunteer and some people from his office. Everyone says that it is an amazing experience (think cliff jumping, rappelling, swimming, hiking, caving, etc., for 10 hours), and I'm getting pretty excited! Pics and stories next week.