The Little Neighbourhood Of Las Palmitas Has Become Mexico's Biggest Piece of Graffiti Art...

It used to be that the little neighbourhood of Las Palmitas in Pachuca, a hundred or so miles from Mexico City was known only as a poor and violent community.
But now, thanks to the efforts of the local and national government bodies, organised graffiti artists have executed the biggest mural in Mexico and restored some pride back to the folk of the now very colourful community.
We painted two hundred and nine homes said the project director Enrique Gomez. It's been a community effort as each household participated in some way.
Way to go Las Palmitas.
If you can dream it, you can do it...

Richart Sowa Lives On An Island He Made Himself From 150,000 Plastic Bottles...

No man is an island and very few of us
have one of their own but eco-architect Richart Sowa knowing full well he'd never have the money to buy one, decided to make his own.
Out of 150,000 air-filled recycled plastic bottles, lots of wooden pallets and sand.
He's build a three-storied house that has all the mod-cons he desires and a little ferry raft also made from plastic bottle to ferry himself and his supplies to and from the shore.
Power comes from a land based solar system, he has a composting toilet and the desire to grow his own vegetables and to be self sufficient
Named Joyxee, the island moored off Cancun in Mexico is Richart's third island, his story is here and the British born Robinson Crusoe didn't find his Girl Friday by her footprints in the sand but on a social media site.
How things change but nothing changes...

The Western Grey Whales. Magnificent Mammals That Migrate 14,000 Miles Annually...

These magnificent whales migrate fourteen thousand miles every year just because it's what they do and it's what they've always done.
A study of three Western Grey Whales, each fitted with satellite monitored tags were found by Russian and US researches to have traveled from their primary feeding grounds off Russia's Sakhalin Island, across the Pacific Ocean, down the west coast of California to Baji, Mexico and after not so much as a quick cup of tea, head back home again.
There's thought to be around one hundred and fifty of these wonderful creatures left in the oceans of our world and they've been monitored along with the Eastern Grey Whale since the 1990's. Five have perished in the last decade in Japanese fishing nets and their future remains precarious, having to contend with commercial fishing, shipping and oil and gas fields.
The Western Grey's descendents date back thirty million years. With a bit of luck they'll be around a few million more... 

The World's Most Extreme Loo Has The Most Amazing Voo...

This bizarre loo with a voo has been voted the most extreme place to do your you-know-whats in the world.
Evidently the world's most scariest loo is on top of an open lift shaft on the fifteenth floor of a building in Guadaljara in Mexico.
The toilet sits on a sheet of glass. Sheet!
But that's another story.
This totally terrifying toilet is perched on the edge of a 2600 meter high cliff in the Altai Mountains in Siberia.
To use it you either have to be very brave or extremely desperate.
This precarious privy perching over a precipice is used by the brave staff who work at the weather station at Kara-Tyurek. They are visited once a month by the postman who always knocks twice and who collects weather data. A helicopter delivers food, water, wood for the stove and of course, toilet paper.
People have been using this loo with a view since 1939 and there's been no fatalities recorded but it's not known how many folk have just been scared to death...

Fred On Everything...

Fred Reed is a very funny, wonderfully and indecently defamatory, erudite and extremely opinionated, commentator on Life. As he sees it.
He's as he says, a keyboard mercenary, been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Harpers and Playboy.
He's no journalistic bunny.
Fred lives in Mexico, where apart from other things, he writes this wonderful newsletter called Fred On Everything.
Have a look here or here at a recent issue.
He's easy to subscribe to.
I hope you'll enjoy his scurrilous commentary...

The Marvellous Three Thousand Mile Migration Of The Monarch Butterfly...

The magnificent Monarch butterfly is not able to survive cold climates so each year literally millions and millions from areas in the US and Canada travel up to three thousand miles, migrating to Mexico and Southern California.
And who can blame them.
They somehow know how to get to exactly the same trees in the same neighbourhoods as their butterfly ancestors have done in previous years. And they will take four generations to get there.
The first generation will die after laying the eggs for Generation Two. And Generation Two will die after laying eggs for Generation Three.
And then, Generation Four does not die after a few weeks, no, they live to migrate to the warmer climes and will live for up to eight months.
Then next year, Nature will repeat the whole process.
Marvellous isn't it...