The Pyramids 15/12/09

A reasonably early start at 9pm, we thought it would be a fab day for visiting the pyramids outside of Mexico city. We caught a luxury mini van from the lovely Nikko hotel in polanco, just a short walk from Javiers house.

First stop after picking up our only other tourist from venezuela was the two Basilicas of our lady of Guadalupe. One of the churches was built in the 1500´s and the new Basilica was built in 1976. The original church is sinking due to Mexcio city being built on a lake so most of the large masses are held in the new Basilica. The largest mass in this church was two days ago and brought 7 million people from all over Mexcio to pray to the virgin Guadalupe. Most of these people have walked 800 km some on their knees to make a promise to the virgin for good faith. These pictures show the angle of the church due to the sinking.

A forty minute drive took us to the pyramids. We started our journey up a small temple of only 40 steps which although seemed like our lungs were going to give out would not compare to the pyramid of the sun.

We then drove to the mini bus and travelled to a small display centre which had obsidian stones and showed the making of tequila from pulce and mescale.

We tried the pulce straight from the agave plant (the cactus in the photo above) and then follwed by salt lime and tequila and mescale. The guide showed us some amazing tools which can be built from the leaves of the agave plant. the point of the plant can be used as a needle and thread and the leaves make thin paper that were used for thousands of years for writing and painting.

We were then shown the handcrafting of obsidian stone and then led through the silver jewelry and stone market where we bought a few nik naks.

We had a short drive to a small mexican restaurant where we had a huge lunch out of volcanic stone bowls also used as mortar and pestles. The dish had sausage, pork, beef and chicken with cheese, advocado and cactus to put in tortillas, YUMM . must admit we once again smapled the delights of mexican beer and tequila much to the delight of the waiter.

Then the real challenge began. We stupidly thought that climbing large arrangements of rocks would be great fun so Tiff, Dani and Bel climbed the pyramids of the moon and sun.

First was the pyramid of the moon.

Tiff, Danni and Bell at the top of the moon pyramid.

Kat at the bottom, refusing to come up.

View from the top of the moon pyramid looking across to the pyramid of the sun.

From on top of the moon with the sun in the background.

Next was the pyramid of the sun. Katherine decided that since she had climbed the pyramid of the sun with  248 steps a million times before she would be the ground photographer and bag lady. The rest of the girls began their climb with a time limit of 40 minutes before the bus left, they reached the top and were victorious but very puffed.

We arrived back in Polanco at 6pm after a great day but a leg massage was in need.

Polo and getting organised, 13-14/12/09

13/12/09
After our overly ambitious night of drinking and socializing we were invited to watch a game of Polo out of Mexico city. Javier has two polo horse called boots and Teddy which he plays a few chuckas on every Sunday. Boots actually has an intersting lfe story, he was found on the street as a horse that used to carry sacks of boots for sale around the villages, the polo trainer thought he looked like an athletic horse so they bought him and he is now Javiers best polo pony!!

Dani had her first ride of a horse and can now steer, stop, and go all on her own!! Boots was a great teacher :)
Tiffany had a crack at hitting some balls from the tired mare Teddy, whilst Julian and Katherine played an on the ground version of polo quite unsucessfully.

Because of our late night when we returned to the house in Polanco at 4pm we hit the sack after watching Love Actually and only awoke for an amazing Dani and Katherine creation for dinner, not a very packed day but a well needed recovery.


14/12/09
Another non-exciting day of planning and organising so that the rest of the trip could be settled. At least we achieved a full calendar of fun activities.
Tiff had a quick trip to the doctor for her cold and then met us back at the house where we headed with Javier to his office.
We organised our money and got some US dollars changed to pesos for easy spending.
We had a delicious lunch with Javiers friend Jorje where we ate yummy empanadas and the biggest steaks in history!!
We shared the smallest steak on the menu between two which was 450g of delicious fillet, they breed beef well over here, YUMMM
After lunch we took Julian to the park which had a myriad of slides, mokey bars and rock climbing, pretty awesome! we delivered Julian back to the house and headed off for a small shopping expedition to Palacio de Hierro(a shopping mall).

On return to the house we began our planning with booking of bus trips, plane tickets, white water rafting, cancun adventure and small roadtrips in between.

We decorated the christmas tree which is a gum tree and ate a delicious fish dish for dinner, luckily we couldnt make the tv work so we were forced to fall asleep at a reasonable hour.

Tijuana and arrival to Mexico city. 12/12/09

Woke up in Tijuana and was treated to an amazing buffet breakfast which ended up costing the equivilent of one nights stay in the hotel, woooopsyyy

The aim of the day was to get some horse riding in and venture down the baja peninsula for some lunch!

So the day begun with a drive back up to the caliente complex and back to the riding school where they had two horses saddled for us, The grooms here are amazing caring for the horses while the riders wait for their horse to be delivered and tacked, crazy but cool, Because the riding school had past experiences of people claiming they could ride and then injuring themselves in various ways, they found us the two most lazy dead to the leg horses in history, Only Katherine and Tiff had a ride which was a great idea for the others to save their legs, hahaha never have we felt so retarted on a horse. Katherine rode a huge grey beast which looked like a spanish riding horse that had given up on the accelerator and tiff rode a smaller thoroughbred cross.

After our legs nearly fell off, a man bought one of his andalusian stallions down for us to meet, with the biggest mane and  thickest tail ever.
He showed a few steps of spanish walk and then got put away.

Then we all hopped back into the car and begun our search for lobster in the Baja penninsula. After 1.5 hours of four girls trying to fit in a space for 3 we arrived to a liitle restaurant in a place called nuevo puerto (new port) lobster tacos and beers went down very well with the mexican music produced from some local mariachis!!  spanish love songs were their forte, wow did we feel special (for a few pesos)

After Lunch we headed back up the Baja penninsula to the Tijuana airport. On the way we discovered that the huge fox studios that we passed were actually where the Titanic was filmed we all swooned at the prospect that Leonardo Dicaprio may have walked on this very ground hahaha,

After clearing customs we boarded our plane and sat for 3.5 hours with mexican snacks and drinkies until arriving in mexico city. A 40 minute drive to Katherine´s Dad´s house in Polanco at 10:30 after such a massive day you would have thought we would just want to go to bed.........but noooo, we headed down a few blocks to Paulinas birthday at 11:30pm.

We ended up staying out until 3:30am which we thought was a pretty good effort. Huge shots of tequila some good music and lots of new friends....what a night.

Tijuana Adventure ...ole` 11/12/09

After awaking from our salsa experience, we had breakfast and met Laylas mother, Maria Lena. The plan for the day was to cross the border to Mexico land!!!! This piccy shows us on the US side about to cross!!

Belinda caught her first glimpse of a machine gun about one metre inside the Mexican border and nearly turned to fly home hahah, if only she knew how many she would come across in the next week!!

we booked into a hotel and Tiffany accidentally tried her worst nightmare of a drink made from tomato juice and clam juice hahaha pretty funny face but the rest of us enjoyed the new flavour,

We then all piled back into the two cars and drove up to a huge complex called Caliente (meaning hot)
Owned by only one man this complex included a huge casino, a football stadium, an equestrian centre and a zoo oh and of course a huge racetrack, we had a quick look at some showjumping horses and then headed up to meet some more crazy animals i the zoo.

As you eneter you pass heaps of camels and then it slowly unfolds into a huge array of cages and other animals. Because it hardly ever rains in tijuana there is no drainage throughout the whole city and that included the zoo, all the animals had been moved from their original cages up into smaller  cages around the clinic. There is a full time vet there that cares for the animals and despite the fact he had lost and eye and was in a neck brace due to a tiger incident he seemed pretty happy with his job haha.

We started by meeting some baby brown, black and sun bears which were only 10 months old, then went through an array of animals including, lions and tigers and bears...oh my!! and skuns, and rabbits, and monkeys and wolves and seals and llamas, and pot bellied pigs, and water buffaloe and jaguars and mountain lions and rare parrots, humungous snakes and ridiculously big spiders (yukkk)

some of our more up close and personal experience included, patting a young wolf, holding a yellow python that streched over all 5 of our shoulders, shook hands with an adult tiger and did i mention we got to hold albino lion cubs and baby tigers, we also met a rare siberian tiger cub but he was far to heavy for us to pick up!!!

After our amazing experience we had tacos for the first time, well proper tacos for the first time. Lime, coriander, raw onion and chile being the key ingredients. It was the day before a very important religous ceremony in mexico and fireworks were going off left right and centre which made the night interesting!!

On return from dinner to the hotel, we randomly met 2 western australians in the lobby, small small world!! they were engineering students from UWA but surprisingly did not snob us!!

After a wee nap we decided how often are we in mexico and proceeded to get dressed up and head back to the casino i mentioned above. A huge ordeal to park but finally got in for a good night of dancing to live music and life changing cocktails, all in all a great day.

Here is some extra pictures of all the cool animals we rubbed paws with, :)

Walk of Fame & San Diego 10/12/09

Today we headed off to the Hollywood walk of Fame & viewed the Chinese Theatre. Funny enough there was a premier where we met President Obama, it was truly amazing, he was such a lovely man & said their would be a spare room in the white house at any time.

There were also lots of other famous people walking down the red carpet, we were lucky enough to be invited into the VIP section, being Australian and all.....were we met a few more awesome people...   

After a such a fun evening with celebs we wanted to experience true american food at Hooters. Burgers and Beer, Dani managed to sneek in a alcoholic beverage, a bit later the manager realised that he didnt ask us for ID, well it was too late now and Dani had "forgotten" any form of identification to show the man...drink up girls!!!

After feeling very full we had a 4hr drive to San Diego (that should have been 2hrs, except we were in peak hr traffic and Betty Sue got us lost!!) Betty sue was an addition to our trip, she said she knew her way around the US, but she was a chronic liar....infact her nose grew to twice the size in just a few days. By the way, this lady is a Satalite Navigation system, that sucked!!! we hate you betty sue!! we have attached a picture of her lovely face in hollywood.

We arrived at Laylas house in San Diego near Corronardo, which was super lovely, she then took us out for dinner at a Spanish Tapas restaurant called Sevilla, delight of the night was Sangarita which is a mix of the traditional sangria and a margarita!! yummmmm this was follwed by a yummy white sangria we all felt quite cheery by the end of it all!!

Then one of Laylas friends came to join the party and once again the underage Dani came through with the goods and managed to wrangle more underage drinks plus free entries for all into an underground salsa club!!
Oh my goodness were we in for a treat!! we danced the night away with many men who were very willing to teach us their moves, not that we are experts now but there is definate potential for superstardom!!



After returning home Katherine and Dani lived out their honeymoon in a king size single bed which meant there was spooning due to lack of room ;), Dani was loving Katherines warm stripy sleeping attire so we thought we would attach a picture!! Tiff and Bel enjoyed their luxury stay in seperate beds now known as the clouds,

Thankyou Layla for being such an amazing host, we had an awesome time with you and you absolutely have to come and spend time with us down under in Aus!!          

PS- we have a slight confession to make, we perhaps lied......... we have not met celebrities unfortunatley, apart from ourselves of course, hahah we went to a wax museum on hollywood Blvd, they were far more happy to pose with us than real celebrities haha, i think this picture may give away the fact that it was a tall tale..... MJ we love you (especially Belinda)

                              

       

Disneyland 9/12/09

Lovely early morning, Javier convinced us to head to the beach for some excercise, we declined but still accompanied him to the beach for a photo shoot. After putting our feet in the freezing cold pacific ocean we retreated to the sand. There were lots of hot baywatch guys running along the beach, and sitting in their life saving huts. We were tempted to fake drown so they could rescue us, but it was too cold.

After a fantastic morning perving we headed to Disneyland, the happiest place on earth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As soon as we entered it was magical, and decked out with amazing christmas lights. Our favourite ride was "Pirates of the Carribean" followed by scream your lungs out & get saturated "Splash Mountain". Tiff has overcome her fear of scary rides, but had no voice left by the end of the day. Our other fav rides include Indianna Jones, Matahorn Bobsled, Big thunder railroad, Jungle cruise, and Space Mountain (even though Javier and Tiff cried). Katherine introduced us to Life Changing Churros! simply delicious. Because Disneyland was so cool we decided not to leave untill 11pm. During that time we got to see a beautiful Christmas parade, with fireworks and snow.

Landing in LA 8/12/09

The trip began in Sydney with 4 very excited girls! After jumping on the plane we were prepared for the 15hr flight. After deciding we had to go to sleep at exactly 6.00pm perth time to combat jetlag .The sleeping pills worked wonders as Belinda discovered...sleeping for most of the flight! We landed in LA in the morning where Javier picked us up and took us to Cynthias house where we were staying. The house was amazing, with a view across the Pacific Ocean.

After dropping off our bags and determined not to be sleepy we headed to Santa Monica Blvd for lunch. We then went shopping on Rodeo drive, although very beautiful we were to scared to go into the shops due to death stares from the shop assistants!! perhaps we were not dressed up to standard? At the end we built up the courage to go into three shops Guess, Juicy & Hugo Boss, they were the Less Posh places. Dani was excited to purchase a lovely Guess bag!

After our shopping spree where we spent thousands and thousands of dollars, we went on a mission to find the Hollywood sign. Oh my god, drama, drama, drama...way to get killed. Just picture some stupid Australian girls standing in the middle of a busy road diverting traffic as they try to get a picture of the Hollywod sign. We did not realise there was a less dangerous senic route where we could get photos!

Nevertheless it was a great arvo and we believe we defeated jetlag...go us! :)