OR AN INTRODUCTION to ITS PRE CLASSIC ROOTS. PART ONE. WHERE IT ALL STARTED. AN INTRODUCTION Dear reader, after my extensive travels within the Yucatan Peninsula in 2019 and 2021, I can finally start to […]
Staying fit and healthy to enjoy your adventures fully.
OR AN INTRODUCTION to ITS PRE CLASSIC ROOTS. PART ONE. WHERE IT ALL STARTED. AN INTRODUCTION Dear reader, after my extensive travels within the Yucatan Peninsula in 2019 and 2021, I can finally start to […]

Alert: This is a show-off post and a bit sweary. Also if you’re new then you really should have a look at the main site from which the blog springs. The concept if you will!
I’m brand spanking new as it were. Clean inside and out. Fresh as a daisy and raring to go. I am a self-righteous prig and smug, oh so smug.
Now folks, for the last twelve years I have been alcohol and cigarette-free for at least the first forty days of the year. I don’t celebrate New Year which I find a somewhat tawdry event and an overkill after Xmas. I can’t think of a worse way to start the year than with a hangover, bloated and foul breathed, exhausted and with a parrot definitely still residing in your mouth. This is not a sign of a great start because I’m very anal about starting my new regime on time.


OR, MY RIBS ARE NEARLY BETTER AND PREPARING SOME ART WHILE DETOXING.
Alert: Links are where the words are underlined in yellow, just click and you’ll get there!

Tough times last year trying to get out of the UK then trying to get back in, (why I came back I’ll never know, what was the matter with me?) and under terrible vicious conditions manufactured by Doris in his eternal house of horrors. Then after leaving Mexico last year being incarcerated in a ‘Quarantine Hotel’ and nearly having a nervous breakdown. Then our beloved dog Brutus got sick (while I was still imprisoned) and later died despite all our valiant efforts. Amongst the demonstrations against tyranny and usual trials and tribulations about resettling in the UK, (I always get ants in my pants after just a couple of months even in normal times) and general stress (bailiffs and all sorts of shite for nothing) and being homesick for Mexico, it seemed that I was in a dark place. So I started to look at property in Bulgaria to live a simple life off-grid growing my own veg and mushroom hunting while creating a studio to carve sculpture when another disaster befell me, in that suddenly Bulgaria became fascist too. This harsh body blow was followed by my having actual body blows when I dislocated my knee then a couple of weeks later cracked and broke ribs in a series of ludicrous strokes of bad luck. A lot of pain from both and as usual I didn’t do anything except home treatment and physio.
SLIDE SHOW OF OUR LOVELY BRUTUS R.I.P. AND THE ESCAPE IN MEXICO LAST YEAR.
Yeah, bummer finale to 21. A shit sandwich of vast proportions.
OR, TO ADD TO MY RAPIDLY GROWING INJURIES LIST.
Yes, yes I know it’s a bit extreme to have another accident so as not to write some more tricky bits to my book and blog, but I swear it’s because I am clumsy and accident-prone. I can now add breaking my ribs a week ago to dislocating my knee previously. If I had been practising what I preach in SOLO TRAVELLERS AND FITNESS then this might not have happened. No doubt there are some errors in this as I’m still on the painkillers!

. As I sobbed I tried in vain to relocate my bone by pressing it firmly (while screaming) back to where it should be, but to no avail.
OR GETTING TO GRIPS WITH ANOTHER CULTURE, THE OLMECS.
Alert: This is a light-hearted travel blog from two years ago before I publish a more serious one about the birth of the Mayan city-state empire in its Pre-Classic era! The “Mother Culture” being inextricably linked to the developing Mayans

When I say bizarre it’s more of a tragedy really, a Spanish church plonked on the top of a huge pyramid, this with a full view of one of the local temperamental volcanoes, Popocatépetl or more easily known as ‘Popo’ and Iztaccihuatl or ‘Izta’. According to one Aztec Legend, Popo was a great warrior who loved Izta. He went off to war and when Izta heard false news of Popo’s fall in battle, she died of a broken heart. When Popo returned to find his love gone, he vowed to always watch over and defend her. The shape of Iztaccihuatl mountain is that of a ‘sleeping woman’. It is also said locally, that when trouble is brewing in the world Popo becomes active
Although I had time to spare that first day and I never really fitted in to pretty old town Peubla, I did see that it was mostly the fact I was tired and dispirited by this time, and to be fair to me, most of the fucking place was closed.
My Odysseun saga has taken me all round the Yucatan peninsula and further, on various road trips. In these times of adversity I think I can safely quote Sinatra and say ‘I did it my way’