yeahyeah...i know

as a bit of a cop out, i (too) am gonna do the Friday Five even though it's now Sunday morning...heck, Danelle didn't do hers until almost midnight and Diana just did hers last night...you get the Sunday version...and who's going to do a Monday version ;)

1. What's the last place you traveled to, outside your own home state/country?
Spent eight days in Mexico City and Mérida in March, right after the mongo snowstorm. Rainy in the capital and hot as HELL in Mérida, but way better than the snowmelt here.

2. What's the most bizarre/unusual thing that's ever happened to you while traveling?
A lot of crazy things have happened. Unfortunately, the most bizarre thing will have to be a separate blog because it's a bit long and so f**ked up that it deserves its own.
I will recount a crazy one though...
About eleven years ago, I was in the main fruit/vegetable market of San José, Costa Rica when the police decided to perform a sweep of permit checking of the vendors. Well, the majority of the vendors were selling illegally...so they ended up throwing much of their merchandise at the four cops doing the sweep. You should have seen the terror in their eyes; I have never seen so much fruit fly! I ducked into a doorway and watched them get pummeled with tomatoes, apples, and even papayas (which are the size of cantaloupes in Central America). It took about a couple minutes to restore order, but I will never forget the sight and smells of that fiasco. And with my usual bad luck, I left my camera at the hotel that day...
One of the most surreal experiences I've had traveling was when Lois and I were in the Cancún area for a visit. We had rented a car to check out an (out of the way) Late Classic Maya site called 'Ek Balam', which means Black Jaguar in Yucatec Maya. After lunching in a small town north of the site, we decided to take a different route back, thinking it would be shorter. HA! Of course, looking at the map, we believed we could catch the main highway if we just headed east from this town (Tizimín). The road, although very narrow, was well paved...for about an hour. Apparently, the gov't was still in amidst of a major paving campaign; the road disappeared...signs were non-existent...and we were mired in mud with an old, blue VW Bug. We passed through a town at around sundown...hoping to find the main road again. And in the middle of this tiny Maya town, was a three story high, green pagoda! We were like, WTF?!? We asked a local where the main road was and he told us, "Just go back to the 'palace' and hang a left." He was right...and we got back to Cancún...we just never figured out what a green pagoda was doing in a Maya village...too strange!

3. If you could take off to anywhere, money and time being no object, where would you go?
Either all of South America or Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.

4. Do you prefer traveling by plane, train or car?
Mostly by plane...but trains (although slow) are romantic...and car trips are fun in the U.S. and parts of Mexico (driving can be harrowing though).

5. What's the next place on your list to visit?
Maybe a jaunt to Texas for a reunion...Monte Vista to see those Murphy girls and the Great Human Rash of the Valley ;). And if things don't fall through, London in December for a few days.