From the New World

In a few months Chinese builders will have erected the tallest building in the world, and they haven't even started yet. They're planning a pace of five floors a day for three months.

There I was in Shanghai. I unloaded after a relatively easy couple flights where my bags got lost but no worries, mate, China Eastern air and the liars at the Singapore airport found them. I met my cousin Max for the first batch of countless dumplings, and the city swallowed me. Shanghai is huge, gray, cold, and damp. I´m not sure what I was expecting, but I think something more like bright and cheery Hong Kong with its hills and its bay and its free campsites. Shanghai has a river, but the only way to cross it outside of the ultra-crowded Shanghai metro is on a fairy ride tunnel like a Chinese It's a Small World that costs more than I wanted to inquire. After a few days with Max and my friend the audacious and well-mannered Kathryn Grant at whose house I was so generously welcomed (big thanks Kathryn!), I adjusted and went straight to the top of the former tallest building in the world, which was really goddam big. Its elevators hit something like 60kph, and within a few nervous ear blasting seconds you're at the top, looking DOWN at skyscrapers. It was surreal, certainly called for more dumplings. It was a joy to return to China, which remains one of if not my favorite countries to visit; and it was a strange, fully globalized interlude between Melbourne and Mexico.

Then I got on the airplane and days later landed in Mexico. I got to work unpacking my bike in Cancún's straitjacket humidity. My friend Alex materialized. He has been working in Mexico for six months, and riding his bike around the country.

Mezcal and tacos.

I put my bike back together and off we were, riding away from the airport, tropics pouring buckets of rain. There were vague echoes of arriving in Perth about a year ago, unpacking my bike after arriving from Hong Kong and riding to the house I would eventually call mine in Fremantle. This time was much better though. For starters, my plan is much more exciting. Arriving in Fremantle carried uncertainty. The only truth was that I needed a job fast. I wasn´t sure what I was going to do in Australia, but I knew I had to work if I wanted to do anything at all. Makes sense, right? This time though, I don't need to work at all! I did that, and I'm going home. So far the route home has been slow going, mainly due to Mayan ruins and other distractions.

The highlight of these so far has been climbing to the top of the Gran Pirámide at Cobá. Cobá is located what I would consider deep in the junble, and it's a fairly huge site. It's most impressive item(other than this really cool blue and yellow bird I saw) is this Gran Pirámide, or, Really Big Pyramid of Glory and Magic. You can climb the hell out of this one, step by step until you get above the tree line and are on a level only eagles could dream to achieve. Then you are on the top.

Part of the spectacle of these ultra-touristed pyramids are the other tourists there. When I got to the top there were wheezing Russians, Hungarians with binoculars looking at telephone poles, Americans lying prostrate in the sun clutching at their chests hoping they can rip their lungs out and throw them in ritual sacrifice down the stairs, and there was a dude doing yoga handstands off the top steps that made me really nervous. Everyone thought was this was the most entertaining man in Mexico. Lots of people asked to take pictures with him, which disturbed his routine. He obliged, and continued though not so good naturedly. He got really mad when he was in the middle of taking a self portrait of himself clutching his one ankle while he extended his other as high as he could behind him while staring at the massive drop in front of him, and a tourist sat down on the ledge he was on between him and his camera, interrupting his portrait. He got down, scoffed loudly, and explained he was taking a picture. The guilty party laughed and moved to a much better place, in the shade.

So here we are. It's Alexander J Boon and me, a little late for discovery but with aspirations of enchiladas and avocados. We've got time and language skills, and we're heading to Belize tomorrow. I thought Albania had eagles, but Mexico is the undisputed capital of eagles. And with their grace, we will soar on their wings. And maybe catch a blue whale or two in Baja.