Catch Up.....6 weeks and counting

So, its been a while.....a bit of a catch up for you all!
Shortly after my last post I came down with a case of the Dengue Fever, a sickness that has become epidemic in this part of mexico, and is spread through mosquitos. In fact, within 2 weeks, 2 people in Benja´s family contracted the sickness as well, his oldest daughter Paulina, who contracted Dengue on her 13th birthday has spent the past 3 weeks in hospital, they weren´t sure if she was going to make it.  I was lucky, mine only lasted a week, and the downtime was minimized by my quick action in taking the emergency antibiotic that we brought with us from canada. There is no cure or treatment for dengue other than to kill off any bacteria in your body, and get plenty of rest. It is a brutal disease, killing many children and elderly people everyday.  Its nicknamed ¨breakback fever¨ as one of the symptoms is an intense pain in the bones and muscles of the body, mostly concentrated in the neck and back....it seriously sucks...my whole body was in excrutiating pain, even my fingernails were throbbing. The fever is the second worst thing compared to the pain...a constant high fever of 104F for 4 days straight....and thats with acetaminophen to keep the temperature down! Next is the inability to keep anything down, including water....ugh....so gross...so, Im glad that its over, and that I and the other people I know have managed to pull through alright. Damn mosquitos!!

Since being sick, we have been keeping rather busy. We managed to complete the ramp and have been skating in the evenings when its a bit cooler out. Still, due to the heat, we are only able to skate for about 20 minutes before we need to take a break and mop the sweat from ourselves. We have been surfing as much as possible, but the past week or two there have not been many waves, so we have been paddling out to an island and back to get our daily excercise and build up our muscles.

Last week we celebrated halloween with a small halloween party in the back of Benja´s place. About 30 people attended...it was a blast. Halloween here is so different than in Canada, prettty much nobody celebrates it!!! Everyone outside of the party was looking at us like we were freaks because we had costumes on. Owen dressed as a ghost with a huge sombrero, and I dressed as a native girl.
In mexico, they celebrate the day of the dead which falls on the 2 of November. The festivities are most extravagantly celebrated in Morelia, more inland, and unfortunately in Melaque, not much happened. The cool thing though, was that to try to keep the tradition going, the highschool kids have an alter competion, where they all build the traditional style alters to honour their deceased family members. The alters are elaborately decorated and contain items that the deceased person liked when they were alive. They also contain offerings of food and drink, and incense. Its really cool. I will post some pics when i can find a computer that will let me upload them.

As for now, our time in Melaque is almost over. We planned to leave yesterday to go to La Ticla, a small surf town on the west coast just past Colima, however, we have changed our plans and will leave on monday so that our friend Benjamin can join us for a week. It should be fun. After a week in La Ticla, we will move south along the coast, working our way next to Rio Nexpa, then on to Zihuatanejo and Puerto Escondido. Wish us luck!!! We´ll keep you all posted on where we are and try to put up some pics as soon as we can.
xoxo