Stardate 020080329: Colorado

In Spring Break, in Finland I guess it would be "hiihtoloma" we went to Colorado, to go snowboarding and a bit of sightseeing. Here they have all these holidays from the university. Not like in Finland, that you just have to take your own holiday if you want to go somewhere :D hehehe. Anyway, this trip was another road trip, since we drove to Colorado and eventually all the way to Denver.

First stop was Durango, a small town close to the border of Colorado and New Mexico. We stayed in a cheap motel there and went skiing in a place called Purgatory. Quite funny name :P The slopes there were amazing! I rent a snowboard and Gerardo got skies, and we were enjoying the sun shine and snow for two days there :) I burned my face completely though. The sun was a bit stronger than the spring sun in Finland...

View from Purgatory

That was my snowboard in Durango

American flags...

The resort was really high! About 3 km... :P

After Durango and Purgatory we headed to another place called Pagosa Springs. Near that there was a skiing resort called Wolf Creek. It was also a really cool place! Although I think I liked Purgatory more... This one had too many pumps all over :P No coolio... But, the weather was amazing also there all the time. Sun shine every day, more burning my face..

In Pagosa Springs we also went to some natural hot springs! There were like small pools like in a spa (like Eden or something) outside but it was all natural heated! It was really cool to thing that we were sitting in a water that had come from deep underground and was heated by magma... :P Some of the pools were as hot as 45 degrees (celsius)....oh my god :p I couldn't stay in all of those really long since they were soooo hot! But it was really nice and relaxing experience, a bit like going to sauna after snowboarding the whole day. We payed about 17 dollars to go in, not so bad.

After skiing in Wolf Creek we drove to Denver. It was a nice city, didn't appear really big though. We were walking like insane there (of course). The first day was sunny and warm, but the other one was kind of cloudy and crapy... Anyway, we were walking in downtown in this pedestrian area with all the shops. Then we walked some 4 miles to a City Park which was really beautiful place. There was also a Museum of Nature and Science which had really cool exhibitions. We went to one about Space, one about Egypt and then there was a special exhibition of Gold. It was interesting too :)

But, I think the most cool thing about this museum was the Space part :P We could see ourselves in infrared, you could see the body heat and so on as red. And....my fingers were completely blue!! :( Well, it's not really a surprise, but it was kind of shoking to see it :P Even some couple were commenting about my cold hands but warm heart! :D

Well, here are some more pictures.

From the way to Denver...

...From the road as well

Downtown Denver!

Denver..

From the City Park..

And finally, a view of the city!

Stardate 020080315: VLA (Very Large Array)

The reason for my existence, the one reason why I wanted to come to New Mexico in the first place.. Yes, it indeed sounds geek. I wanted to see the Radioantennas in Socorro, the same ones appearing in many movies, such as The Contact, 2001 Space Adventure etc. And yes! I finally did it and went there! :D It was reeeeeally cool! The antennas are insanely huuuuge. We were driving about 3 hours from Las Cruces to get there but it was all worth it to me at least :)

The VLA site had a small museum telling about the construction and history of the site, a small gift shop, walking tour and god damn strong wind :P Well, maybe for many people it wouldn't have been sooo special...but for me, woooow, I loved it :D

So, here are some pictures from there:

A sign beside the highway

You couldn't use the cell phone and yes, well, it was good that we didn't take our microvaweoven with us....hmmm

And that's me! Damn the thing is huuuge!

This was kind of like a "garage" for the antennas

On the way back to Las Cruces we noticed a ghost town near Socorro. It was called Kelly Mines. We decided to see how it was, and it was really a ghost town... no people whatsoever.. All the buildings had been torn down, the only thing remaining was an ooold mine tower or something and some ruins. Well, I wouldn't want to be in that place in the dark :P The view from the Kelly Mines was amazing. The location was reeally high..

Kelly Mines

A view from the Kelly Mines

Stardate 020080306: Hiking and Snowboarding in NM!

After the party party party end of December it seems that my life has settled down again. I haven't been doing much anything else but working every day until late. Actually it's really nice because my job at the Astronomy department is in fact really interesting :) And plus I'm feeling more geek every day...so I guess I'm fitting in to this department quite well. Although I wouldn't have guessed that I would be programming ever in my work, but well...you learn something new every day!

Besides working I've gone hiking two times and even snowboarding once during these two months! We went hiking to the Organ mountains, just next to Las Cruces. In fact you can see the mountains every day just walking anywhere here :P The view is nevertheless really beautiful, and like I probably have said before, the weather here is always nice, always sun shine and no clouds. So you can imagine how beautiful the view is from up there! Or wait, you don't actually have to imagine because I have some pictures from there :D
Oh my god, my jokes are getting worse every day...

View from the mountains..

God damn bugs spoiling the fun..

More view from the hike

Well well, as hard as it seems to believe, I did go snowboarding here in New Mexico! How is it possible? Well, in America everything is possible :D hehehe! Just kidding.. Anyway, the state is actually quite big and when you drive up north it actually gets cold! Yes, there can be even snow up there :D We went to this place called Santa Fe, which is by the way also the capital of the state of New Mexico. There's a really nice skiing resort there, really really high...feels like you are above the clouds or something. I don't know if you can notice it from the pictures but it's damn high :P

Thinking that it would be summer all year round here, I hadn't brought my winter clothes, my snowboarding jacket or anything with me here initially :P So (what a pity) I had to go shopping :P heheh :) I bought some really nice snowboarding clothes and payed maybe third of the prize I would pay in Finland... Yes, it's ridiculous how cheap it is around here... Not to mention the hair cutting in Mexico... can you believe that I paid only 7 euros for it... :P

Anyway, here's pictures from Santa Fe, the "pro-snowboarder" :D

Oh! And yes, it was freaking cold!! I was freezing to death there :P I guess I've used to warmer climate here already or something...or it's just my normal freezing always..

Stardate 020080123: Mexico & Cuba

During the holidays over Christmas I was traveling with Jaime and Hide for 4 weeks! 3 weeks in Mexico and one week in Cuba. On December 16th, me and Jaime packed our backbags and headed to Juarez to take our first bus of so many. We met Hide later on the way. The idea was to travel mainly by bus and stay few days in each city we would reach. So, our first goal was Puerto Penasco, a city on the west coast of Mexico in the north... Well... everything didn't really start smoothly... During our bus trip (that was btw something like 12 hours) we got to an immigration check point. An officer came to the bus and asked everybody's ids. I showed my passport and he was taking a look at it a looong time. He asked me where I was going and I said that around Mexico for the holidays. Well, he gave me back my passport and it was fine. Or was it.. It was something like 2 in the morning and Jaime has decided to sleep on the bus floor with his sleeping back. He came in the front to get his passport...soon he came back again and said that the officer had said that we have to take our stuff and go with him! I was like what the fuck!! So, there we were in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, freezing to death, and had no clue what was going on, and the bus left... Well, we ended up in a border patrol office and were told that we should for some reason have a visa.. we thought that we would have to pay him something or he would take us back to US. We ended up paying something like 20 dollars, got our visas, and were taken to another bus. So it ended up ok, although the impression of the trip wasn't so good in the beginning.

Finally we got to Puerto Penasco, stayed there for few hours and took another bus to Hermosillo, the capital of the state of Sonora. We were staying in a cheap hostel, had some hot dogs from the street, and went to the zoo. I saw for the first time of my life a giraffe! It was cool! :D

Sunset in Hermosillo

Hotel Washington D.C. in Hermosillo :P

After Hermosillo we took a bus to Bahia de Kino, a beach resort quite close to Hermosillo. The place had amazingly beautiful beach. Although it was crowded by American tourists with their fancy beach houses. There was also a small village with locals. We were staying over night at some woman's place who rented rooms. It was really nice because she gave us many good tips! Next day we wanted to visit an island near by and decided to ask some local fishermen to take us there. Eventually we ended up hiring one the fishermen to take us to the island. It was really nice day, warm and sunny, and most of all with amazing view!

Some pelicans and the island where we went in the backround

Same place in Bahia de Kino, with the boat and dude who took us to the island

Me and the lady at who's house we were staying in Bahia de Kino

From Bahia de Kino we went to a place called Guaymas, a small town in about 5 hours away from Hermosillo. It was not touristic at all, although we did find a tourist information. Jaime decided to introduce himself as a Creek so that the people would speak English to us :D hhahaha It was quite funny.. From Guaymas we went for one day to San Carlos, another beach resort. It was about one hour away from Guaymas. Another resort concorred by the Americans.. In San Carlos we run into an American guy called George. He was sort of a funny guy. Well, he wanted to take us to a tour and took us to his truck and drove around. We got to really nice spots. He thought that we are both from Spain, and the fact that we spoke English to each other didn't raise any suspisions in him :P heheh! Yeah, we'll always remember Georgie from Iowa :P

View from San Carlos

Sunset in San Carlos

Jaime and George, our amigo americano

Next we went to Los Mochis. The plan was to take the only train in Mexico, to Chihuahua. First we took a look at the city a bit and went also to Topolobampo, quite close to Los Mochis. Another beach place... well, we had a nice nap in the beach and afterwards we were watching a Christmas parade there. People were driving with their boats that were full of Cristmas decoration. It was quite cool :) After we came back to Los Mochis to take the train next morning. Well, we didn't want to pay for housing so we decided to sleep in the train station. We weren't the only ones since there we quite many other people too. In the morning we took a second class train, got some student discount and felt quite happy about the trip.

The best part of the train trip was the amazing view! The tracks went through huge canyons. People were taking pictures from the windows and as a proper "Japanese' I also did my share :D Well, the minus point was that the trip took 18 hours.... you can imagine how boring it was in the end to sit there... it was already dark and we couldn't enjoy the view anymore...

View from the train to Chihuahua

View from a small place in the middle of the way where the train stopped

We finally got to Chihuahua and were really tired and dirty from the trip. We checked into some cheap hostel. I felt really crapy the whole night, my stomach was hurting and I felt like throwing up all the time... Eventually I was so sick in Chihuahua that I spent the whole day in bed and I couldn't eat anything, do anything else but lay down. The worst part is that that day was Christmas eve... I don't think that I ever had so crapy Christmas, in a cheap hostel room and sick. Although Jaime was really nice and brought me some pudding and sprite to eat something. Eventually we ended up eating in Burger King and watching a film in that day. Well, Burger King junk food really didn't help my stomach ache, but at least it was something to remember.

In Chihuahua we visited eventually quite many museums and sights, since we were staying there 3 nights because I was sick.. One of the museums was the house of Panco Villa, a famous man in the history of Mexico, a guy who was fighting in the revolution. The house was really cool!

From the house of Pancho Villa, the car where he was shot

Finally we left Chihuahua and had another looooong bus ride ahead, to Monterrey. I was feeling really shitty but we took the bus anyway...I think it was the worst bus ride I ever had! I was feeling really sick the whole way. In Monterrey we were staying at Cesar's "kingdom". Also we finally met Hide, who joined us for the rest of the time in Mexico. It was extremely nice to stay at Cesar's after traveling for two weeks and sleeping where ever, in the bus, in the station.. It felt like I got a touch of the civilization again :P heheheh

In Monterrey we saw many nice places. Obviously because we had a local to guide us :) We went for a walk by a river in the middle of the city. We saw some beautiful water falls and breath taking mountains. I have to say that Cesar was an excellent host :D The food was great and also the "program" was very nice! On top of all that his sister is a doctor and examined my stomach problems. I ended up taking medicine for 10 days and having sort of diet for my stomach to get better :P In the end it helped and I was fine again :) Although I couldn't drink coffee or eat chocolate for 10 days....... :/

From Monterrey

An exhibition of statues in Monterrey

Evening walk view..

...Christmas tree made of used laundry buckets

From the water falls

The spectacular mountains circulating the city of Monterrey; Cesar, Jaime and Hide

After enjoying Cesar's hospitality, getting some Christmas presents from his parents and tasting some excellent Mexican barbeque the three of us headed down to Mexico City. The insanely huge city with 20 million people. There were so god damn many people that we thought that we couldn't even walk there properly.

We were staying in a very strange place there. It was a hostel owned by Japanese people and also full of Japanese people. Jaime had stayed there in his previous trip and we decided to go again since we had a Japanese representative with us :D We stayed there two nights and I managed to freek out some Japanese girls because I woke up in the middle of the night screaming like hell because of my nightmare :P hehehe, I think they thought I was completely insane :D

Anyway, in Mexico City we visited a cathedral, a huge park and the Anthropology Museum which was really impressive. We also stayed there for the new year's eve. Eventually we were in a wrong place when the year changed but we found "the party" later on and it was full of people. In new year's eve we also went to Teotihuacan, an ancient mayan city close to Mexico City. It was really amazing place!! We climbed two pyramids up and were enjoying the perfectly warm weather there for the whole day :)

Mexican flag in a cathedral in Mexico City

From the Anthropology Museum

Me and the Sun pyramid in Teotihuacan!!

Hide and Jaime and the "ISEP picture"...

Jaime and Hide in front of the Japanese hostel (looks like a garage, doesn't it :D)

Our initial plan was to travel to Oaxaca from Mexico City but we figured out that we really didn't have time to do it. Instead we found some cheap flights and flew straight to Merida to meet Luis, another Mexican friend of ours. Surprisingly in Merida I was sick again.... this time I had fewer, and a lot! I was almost burning because my skin was so hot :P Anyway, the weather in Merida is always either hot or very hot. It's also very humid there so we were just wearing our shorts in the middle of January. That's when I thought that something might be wrong when I was really freezing during the night :D hahah!

Luis took us to a tour in the city and also to the beach. The weather was kind of crapy because it was raining and really windy. In the beach it felt like there was a hurricane. The wind was really strong, but at the same time it was very warm. We also went to Chitzen Itza, a mayan city as well. I had a bit of fewer there but it was really impressive. And by the way it's one of the wonders of the world!

Luis, me, Jaime and Hide

After Merida we headed to Cancun, our last stop in Mexico. We only stayed there for one day but I think I really have to go there again! The beaches are amazing...white sand, green water, summer always...wow :)

Cancun

From Cancun me and Jaime continued to Cuba. Hide stayed in Cancun and was going back to Merida and Monterrey later. Cuba was something completely different... First of all the plane that we took there was this Cubana Airlines...using ooold Russian planes. Let's say that I was a bit scared when I couldn't even lock my seat belt :P Well, we stayed alive so that's all that matters I guess :D

We were first staying in Havana. In Cuba it's common to stay in local's houses which they call "casas particulares". So, we were staying in one of those, in an old woman's place. She was really nice and gave us lots of good tips. In Havana we visited some museums, and were walking around a lot. The thing that you can really spot there are the old cars and the propaganda (literally) about revolution and propaganda against USA :P

Some propaganda in Havana...

Patriotism or death...next to US embassy

Plaza de la Revolucion

In addition to all the propaganda Cuba has also reeeally nice beaches. From Havana we took a bus to Verdadero. It seemed like paradise. It was really hot day, in the middle of January! I was swimming and everything there. It was great! We just stayed in the beach the whole day chilling out :D

Verdadero

Next stop was Cienfuegos. If you don't want to take a bus it's also possible to take a "taxi" anywhere. There will be many people offering you to take you basically anywhere as long as the price is negotiated. We ended up going to Cienfuegos in one of these "taxis". We were staying in another casa particular and only for one day. It was nothing really special, we were just walking around. The funny part is that we had left some of our stuff to Havana to this old woman's place because we were going back there in the end of the week. Well, we had for some reason decided to leave our passports there too.. But we needed the passport numbers for the accommodation.. It was kind of a mess but eventually we could stay when I searched my mails to find my passport number.

Cienfuegos

Last city we visited was Trinidad, very small town with narrow streets. And amazingly many people trying to sell stuff to you. And of course it was full of tourists :P The strange thing about Cuba was that it was really difficult to buy food there. You basically couldn't find a supermarket, only some small kiosks where you can buy chips and cookies. So you can imagine what we were eating there for one week :P Well, of course we also ate in restaurants but still :D

In Trinidad we rented bikes and went biking to the beach to see the sunset. It was really beautiful! In the las day we went horse riding to a national park to see water falls. We hired some dude to take us there. It was really great :) I can't remember when i had been riding the last time :P My ass hurted soooo much afterwards..could barely sit in the plane to get back.

Biking in Trinidad

In a beach, Trinidad

Still the same beach..

From the water falls, we went swimming here :)

Finally after 4 weeks of traveling, sleeping where ever, eating sometimes, walking like crazy, we returned to VDM. And it actually seemed really nice to be back home after so long time. Although the trip was indeed really great :D

Me, Maria Luisa (the woman whose place we were staying in Havana) and Jaime