Mexico: My Top 20 Red Hot Tips!

1. Befriend a maxin', chill girl who is fluent in Spanish and can hang with the locals.
2. Stay in a posada. You will make lots of cool friends. I recommend Casa Vilasanta.
3. Commit the phrases "Eres casado?", "Tienis novia?", and "Tienis hijos?" to memory. Trust me.
4. Take every opportunity to dance even if it means looking freaktastic onstage.
5. Never turn down a free shot of tequila (this does not apply strictly to Mexico).
6. Take a bus to a distillery in the town of Tequila and learn how to professionally taste tequila.
7. Do not turn your back on your camera. Ever.
8. Never turn down a shot a flambe.
9. Do not talk yourself out of attending at least one La Luche Libre match. You won't regret it.
10. If it's your birthday and everyone else has gone to bed, take a birthday shot anyway (thanks for trying, Josh!).
11. Never pass up an opportunity to speak French, even if it's spoken very poorly.
12. Make friends with the front desk people. The front desk people at the cooler hostels are especially nice. Ahem. (Melissa, we need to talk!)
13. Take every opportunity to speak Spanish, even if you royally suck at it.
14. Travel with an awesome person and you will never get lost (Amy, you rock!).
15. Take the night bus for long trips. Don't sit in the back.
16. Kindly ditch the people who judge you (this does not apply strictly to Mexico).
17. Girlfriends + long bus rides + tequila + Squirt = rockin' good times.
18. Yes, there are places to party on a Sunday night!
19. Mezcal is an arguably safe alternative to tequila.
20. Yes, Virginia, there are tall Mexicans!

Black Bottom Coffee = Liquid Crack Cocaine

As you may or may not know, I am putting my things into storage and traveling for as long as I can until I either run out of people to exploit for their dwellings or money or both or whatever. This prospect has so far been more exciting to those with which it has been discussed until tonight when I talked it all over with a friend over a nice steaming cup of liquid crack. She happens to be going on a similar adventure in Mexico except her trip, God bless her, actually involves learning things and sounds quite productive. Like, the kind of productive you can be totally immersed in another culture, forced to acclimate as best as you can and be as resourceful as possible. So now we're trying to meet up somewhere in Mexico, sometime in August, for some kind of profound experience that also includes tequila tours and .... Like, what else is there to do? Am I going to have to read the internets again to find out? Maybe I could teach yoga to the locals by day and perform in a mariache band at night. Unless mariache bands are so totally gringo that they only exist in U.S. restaurants just like queso dip. When I found out that queso dip is really just melted American cheese, it felt like such a letdown. I don't want to be the clueless American who goes to Mexico expecting THE BEST queso dip and mariache bands only to find that they are illusions of Mexican culture that exist only to satisfy the American quest for something exotic-yet-palatable. Does yoga exist in Mexico? Am I displaying my cultural ignorance by asking that question? Am I too self-aware? When did this become not fun? Why is blogging so much work? Is this really work? I can type like I'm cracked out on speed so it almost seems like nothing at all. If I could get paid to do this but be lots more interesting while doing it, that would be totally rad and that's it I'm going to be a travel journalist I just have to keep thinking slightly faster than I can type and everything will come out fine I can add the punctuation in later it's a good thing that my spelling is pretty right on that will be much less work to do later when I edit ok goodnight.

Caving and Korean Stinkyfruit

So, I went on a spelunking adventure last weekend which, much to my surprise, also turned out to be a nudist camp/naked hot tub adventure for the so inclined. (*If you are interested in participating in future events, check out The AOC's website.) This was my first event, so I don't know how crazy all the events are. I'm guessing that if there is alcohol involved and it's an overnight stay, all kinds of things happen in all kinds of tents. Just remember that bonfires purify and you should be ok. Note: Ask me how you can avoid losing your iPod! Answer: I don't know! I lost mine!

Our group of 13 went into Worley's Cave. It took roughly one hour to find and four hours to explore. It was dark in that cave...it sure was. I think the highlight was sitting around in the complete darkness for several minutes, snacking and chatting. Oh, yeah, and getting out alive. That was cool, too.

Some of our Korean friends brought a delicacy that for the sake of simplicity we will call "stinkyfruit". It looked exotic and smelled quite craptacular. It smelled like rotten meat and scared many of the weaker stomached drunks away. I, however, have a very strong iron-like stomach, especially when empowered by strong social lubricants and an even stronger affinity to show up a man any chance I get. So I ate it. At first, it tasted like the rotten meat that it smelled of. Then it started to taste like cheese. Then it started tasting sweet. At the point where it started to taste sweet, I swallowed and all was well. I repeated this experiment twice and lived. I also didn't complain about the smell until I ate guacamole the next day and I swear it tasted just like rotten meat. I would rather be a fan of guacamole than stinkyfruit because stinkyfruit costs $20 a pop from a Korean grocer and I just can't work that into my fruit budget.

I highly recommend AOC events, Korean stinkyfruit, and responsible drinking.