Adios Juarez, Hola Chihuahua (like the dog but it's a city and a state)

We have moved on from the border, with it's soaring temperatures and arid climate. I read about the heatwave across the eastern part of the US this week. I've been sweating in 40 degrees for the last 2 weeks so I can look down my nose at these things now. I actually checked the highest temperature ever recorded in Ireland and it was only a pitiful 33 degrees... For those of you who like to know these things.

For the life of me I can't remember what we did the last few days, let me ask Isabel.

I shared a torre in Pockets with Issy's brother on Wednesday. Pockets is a pool hall/bar in Juarez. And a torre (lit: tower) is a massive tower of beer that has a tap on the bottom. So that was a good laugh. Isabel's friend Monica joined us with her husband Saul. I was told I had to order some food because I hadn't had dinner that day.

The following evening Rafa (Issy's bro) joined us again and we hit another famous bar type place. Mayela was kind enough to be the chauffeur, mind you she compounded my thoughts on the driving over this part of the world :) We were all ID'd heading into this place San Martin. The bouncers (who all wear guns and carry night sticks) laughed at my shoddy Irish drivers license and let me in. Poor Isabel had to go back to the house and get her's. We all laughed afterwards.

This time or beers were served in

5L bottles in a big copper basin of ice. We ordered some stake nachos which not surprisingly were nom nom nom like all the rest of the food in Mexico so far. The draw of San Martin is that it has a lot of traditional Mexican music. While we were there only the Mariachi and Banda bands played inside. I think there was another type of music being played outside. We didn't stay out particularly late but all the Mexicans were singing away.

What was great for Isabel was that two of her friends who she thought she wouldn't see were coincidentally getting back into town before we left. On Friday night we met Perla and went over to the fancy side of Juarez for some food with Mayela and Rosita. Juarez is a sprawling metropolis. It took us 30 minutes driving or so to get there. Apparently it takes an hour and a half or more to drive from one side to the other without traffic. There seems to be no city planning, and if there is whoever is in charge isn't doing a good job.

On Saturday we met back up with Monica and Saul for discada. It's kind of like a Mexican version of barbeque, even though barbeque us also popular here. It's a big concave disc that is cooked outside over a fire (in this case with gas). Bacon was cooked first, which was then removed for later. This was followed by Mexican chorizo cooked with a tonne of onions then steak pieces and chili of some sort (whatever the big green ones are called). This was all cooked for ages and at the end a bottle of beer was added. Since the whole thing was contained in the disc it made the final product quite saucy. This was then eaten on tortillas with guacamole. If I've missed anything that was more or less the gist of it. I also got to sample real tequila afterwards which was a lot smoother than the ditch water served at home.

Sunday was a lazy enough day. Gloria (Isabel's Mam) and I watched the football and some more of Isabel's friends came to visit. Her friend Gizeh (pronounced his-ay) joined us for cake and biscuits with Perla. I was only there to be paraded and the girls yap yap yapped away and did some good catching up. We forgot to give them their gifts from Ireland, whoops. The rest of the evening was spent packing...which isn't really exciting enough to write about.

Rafa and Gloria saw us off to the bus the following morning. The bus to Chihuahua was nicer than any bus I've gotten back home. Unfortunately

I had to watch xmen first class and green lantern in Spanish. My Spanish is coming along, but not that good yet. The view across the Chihuahua desert was fantastic. Lots of mountains, lots of desert. Everything got greener the further away from Juarez we got, not like the green at home or anything. When we finally made it to Chihuahua after four hours the difference in temperature was already noticeable. A cool 30 degrees C. Even more obvious was the increase in humidity.

We've only been in Chihuahua two days and are due to get the train tomorrow so letting you know what we've done shouldn't take long considering I slept all afternoon yesterday.

We got to walk around the downtown area and got a feel for the history of the city. We also got to eat at a seafood place... for those of you up on their geography you'll notice that we are currently nowhere near the sea. Food was still good though.

It has been threatening thunder and lighting in both Juarez and Chihuahua for days. Isabel's aunt Zulema brought us for food in a cafe perched above the city with a great view. At the same time the lightning kicked of over head. It was pretty spectacular. I've done more pics that I must upload when I get to a PC.

I'm currently lying down watching CSI New York and have to be awake in 6 hours to go to Creel... So bed time. I'll be more exciting and less tired next time I write.

I hope everyone knows the story about any typos and poor formatting at this stage since I'm posting from my phone :p good night!