Tapachula

i think tapacula can best be described as tiajuana's southern cousin. it's a major border city with guatemala, and it's super crazy and intense. almost anything you could want to purchase is on sale here. wedding dresses, motorcycles, plastic toys, soccer shirts, washing machines... there are a ton of indigenous women from guatemala here too. you can tell because they are wearing those handwoven skirts and the embroidered shirts. appearently everyone just sneaks across the border because to cross legally is $10 US. this is a photo of me that peter took. i am petting a snow tiger in parque migel hidalgo in tapachula. check out my super hot tan lines from my t-shirt. yawza! i talked to my mom and dad last night and they wanted a picture of me on the blog. here's to you mom and dad!
i think probably i make the worse decisions ever when i'm hungry. so erik and peter ran out of money in esciuntla and there were no atms, so i shared mine with them, but it ended up that we all left escuintla broke with out snack food. we should have waited for clyde and gary where the road split off for tapachula, but we were all so hungry that we decided to go into the city a little bit and eat lunch near the highway and catch them as they came in. we stopped at this sandwhich place, and i was so hungry i didn't feel like asking the guy what kind of sandwhiches he made, so i just told him i'd have two of whatever this other lady was eating at the counter. so my sandwhich was like a meat orgy. it had bacon, hotdog, hamburger and sliced ham all chopped up and friend together. then he put it in this bun with some cheese, a big smear of mayonessa and some raw onions and hot sauce. then he smeared mayonessa on the outside of the bun and fried the sandwich on the grill. i ate both sandwiches. i didn't feel good afterwards. also, clyde and garry took a different route into the city and we didn't end up seeing them so we rode into the center and found them there. then it started pouring down rain. all the guys sat at one table of this cafe and i ended up hanging out with this guy Ruben who bought me a lot of beers and some tequila. sometimes i really wish the other guys could speak spanish. there was a slight break in the rain and i went to try and find us a hotel room. the streets were flooded like rivers. it was crazy. people selling cds and cassete tapes under plastic tarps. bicycle taxis waiting to take you across the river streets. i ended up in a bad neighborhood with guys laying in puddles of water huffing paint out of empty coke bottles and then this morning i saw kids doing it. i did end up finding a good hotel room though.
this is a picture of this snack that peter really likes. peter's totally obsessed with bimbo baked goods. this one cracks me up though because it's like a chocolate doughnut called "negrito", which means "blackie" in english and has a picture of this dude with a 'fro on the front. there are no black people in mexico. anyways... hope everyone is good. clyde's sick so we're hanging out waiting for him to get better before going to guatemala. love,
-jessie