Ruins of La Campana II

On Sunday Lea and I went to La Campana again. From there we had a nice view on Nevado (= snow covered) and Fuego de Colima. Lea had to pay an entrance fee while I was free because of my new Colima Student Id.

Fuego y Nevado nevado

Ruins and the volcanoes

Ruins and shopping mall

Fuego II

On the evening of Sunday, 21st, John came to the student housing and asked if we would like to join a trip to the South Flank of Fuego where Victor wanted to make plans for his further research with his advisor, John an Nick. Since it was the same area as where we are planning to install our volcano motion detector, it was a good chance to join them and do some more scouting and starting preparations for the installation. So Lea, Hester and I joined them on Monday. We moved the site for the installation a bit and cleared the new site of bushes. The ground is very soft (at that point dry) ash and very easy to dig. ;-)

The weather was a bit surprising. We had the first rain in almost three months and thus we were not really prepared. But with the temperatures of 2500m it just felt like a good day in Hamburg. ;-) I actually enjoyed it.

Lea and Hester in front of Fuego

Views of Colima

After Lea's (my officemate in Hamburg) arrival on the evening of the 18th we went to the center for a bit of sightseeing on the 21st. Since museums and most shops are closed on Sundays, we walked around a bit and followed Gemma's advice to go to the parking deck of a shop in the center which is one of the tallest buildings in Colima.
Here are a few impressions of Colima on a not so sunny day...

View to the north

A fountain directly to the west of the parkin deck

View to the east

View to the Northeast

View over the main square to the South

Cuyutlán

On the 14th we went to the beach of Cuyutlán. It is a bit south of Monzanillo and the closest beach from Colima. The buses of Sur de Jalisco go via Tecomán and there are only a few every day. The trip takes about 2 hours if you can get a bus that does the whole way and longer if you have to wait in Tecomán.

As you can see on the satellite images the sand is very dark. When we were there it was a bit misty so the sun was not strong enough to turn the sand hot but that probably is very different on days with clear skies. The waves were a bit strange and Cuyutlán definitely does not seem to be the place for great swimming. Anyway we had a nice time in the water, playing Frisbee or just drinking from coconuts.




Later we went to a restaurant where we watched the sunset and then returned home again.



If you have a bit more time for the trip Barra de Navidad where we went for Christmas seems to be the better choice.

Guadalajara - Año nuevo

For new year's eve we decided to go to Guadalajara and see the vast celebration a eight million people city promises...
There was not a lot going on in the main squares but it still was decorated for Christmas.


We stayed again in the Hostel de Maria which had already served us very well on our last trip.
On the evening of the 30th there were a crib, a Da Vinci Cow and a classical concert in one of the main squares. All the buildings were colorfully lit and after the concert voices from the speakers told the history of the buildings.


We spent the 31st walking around a bin in Guadalaraja and visiting the Market and the Cabañas again. In the afternoon we just hang around a bit at the hostel and in the evening we celebrated with the other tourists.

When it came to be midnight we went to the main squares again but this day the Mexicans obviously did not really feel like celebrating. There was more or less nobody in most of them and on one of the smaller ones there was a Mariachi band playing and a few hundred people were listening.
At least we found a group of tourists from an other hostel and celebrated with them. The Mexicans were kind of surprised but we had our fun. ;-)

Happy new year!