We traveled to Mexico for a month this time. We love the country and its people so much, - the culture, the scenery, and so on...

We went first to Ajijic where we visited with friends. We spent three weeks there and met many new warm and wonderful people. It's the community that attracts us the most to the country and region.

Dear Friends and Family,

This may come as a shock to many of you but I have made the monumental decision to take a year off.

There are a number of reasons, but the major contributor to my decision has been my involvement with a guerrilla group in Bolivia, who are fighting for freedom and justice against unbelievable odds.

I have been communicating with this group for several months (see attached photo), and now, finally, I will join them.

I know most of you will think I am totally crazy but I have not made this decision lightly.

Nothing you can say or do will stop me doing what I truly believe in.

I hope to see you again when the battle is won.....

Best wishes to you all,

In December, 2002 we went to Jamaica for a two week stay in Negril at the west end of the island.

We stayed at Banana Shout, a nice small hotel on the rocks. It is right next door to Rick's Cafe, a favourite Negril sunset viewing spot at the west end. And there isn't much more than that to do in Negril. ;-)

Hi guys,

We're in Isla Mujeres Mexico (near Cancun) for a week to celebrate my birthday and are being tempted by the timeshares down here.

Please talk us out of it. What are your issues and problems? Costs?

thanks

no time to write more now - home Sunday night. Please reply by email to this address.

Hey Gretchen, long time no write. But today you are top of mind. I just finished reading "Goa Freaks".

Wow. What a fast spiral down from happy hippie to degenerate druggie. I'm so lucky to have my hubby by my side and friends like you and Art and Jill and "the boys" who managed to get out while the going was good. Yet another acquaintance of cj's from that period died within the last year after rehab didn't take. So sad, such a waste.

Dear Amiga,

Aaaah, life is sweet when I´m away from Mommy dearest.

cj and I have been living with our friend Marianne in her little Mexican style house (curved brick ceiling, walled garden, cows in the next yard) and are already quite chilled out. Weather here is perfect; the height of winter means we are wearing sweatshirts in the sunshine and sleeping well at night.

Hola Amigos,

Sorry we didn't have a chance to contact you again before we left. Everything got really busy at the end and family demands were heavy because Elaine got engaged (as you know). It's taken a while to get it together to since we got here. I've been having problems sending email (server issues) but have finally got it resolved.

Dear Marianne,

It was SOOOO good speaking with you yesterday. Especially hearing your laugh. And we really appreciated what you said about more younger people moving down there -- the market is so bad and the stress level so high in the cities, it doesn't surprise me that people are retiring younger. As you know, we have constantly debated the differences between Chapala and San Miguel and, much to our surprise, the odds are coming down heavily in favor of Ajijic.

Hi guys,

We're back and ready to go. I(cj) was busy the past weekend participating in the celebration of Dad's 85th birthday. We're anxious to hear what's been happening in your world. Let's get together soon . What's good for you?

To save telling the story again and again I wrote it up in a chatty sort of style so you can imagine that we're telling you the story ourselves.

10-May-2001

We're writing you from Manali in North india. We've been here a week and both have diarrhea and bad back pains (from the flight) and we're still jetlagged and the place is swarming with Israelis so we're getting out while the getting is good.

Our tickets are back to Amsterdam and we are trying to change the date to this Saturday. We've had enough of India I think.

So anyways wondering if you are still going to be around. We would be arriving mid day on Saturday if flights all work as we hope. I don't have our telephoen book with us or I would call you. Please email us back you tel number and what your availability is this weekend. If you're tied up, - no prob, we can stay in Amsterdam. We just have to get out of here.

Sweetie has bad stomach paims and we don't want to risk anything worse.

Dear Henk & Barbara, How are you guys? Sorry we haven't written sooner but our lives have been changing a lot lately and we haven't had much time to think about anything else. We spent a lovely quiet winter in Ajijic Mexico which is a lovely small town in the mountains near Guadalajara. It is known for it's perfect year-round weather and sure enough, every day was perfect, - clear blue skies with temperatures around 25 degrees centigrade.

Hope you had a wonderful New Years and start to the year/century/MM. Is everything/anything back to normal yet?

We had been planning to go to San Miguel de Allende for the New Year to spend with a friend there but she emailed us that it was freezing up there so we (the Whiplash Kids) did an immediate turnaround and went to Puerto Vallarta instead with a couple we met there a couple of weeks ago when we travelled to PV for a couple of days of millenial 'r & r' .

sweetie & I are just back in Toronto following a two and a half month camping trip to Eastern Canada (the Maritimes). We borrowed Sisty's pop-up tent trailer and headed east in mid-June.

hi guys, it's the Whiplash Kids checking in with final plans.

Yesterday was our 13th wedding anniversary and for that event, I easily extracted a promise from cj not to get involved in any new business project. In the morning, we took our car to a diagnostic centre which assured us that only minimal fixes were required to make it roadworthy. So off we go on June 2nd in the direction of.....the Atlantic Provinces!!!

We haven't had ready access to email lately so we haven't been writing but it's time for an update. We're back in the land of cheap email so please feel free to write us very long letters to update us on what's doing with you.

We left Oaxaca at the beginning of December with plans to spend a couple of days in San Cristobal de las Casas in the Chiapas region of Mexico and then head straight down to Guatemala where we were going to spend Christmas and New Years. Well, it didn't work out that way.