Supremely Useful
1. Grayl Bottle. When we were in Oaxaca, we stayed in a lovely place that was perfect except for a chronic lack of sharp knives and no filtered water. Most countries we've been in lack clean, drinkable tap water, which makes me realise how much I took that for granted in Singapore. However, most hostels have a filter system for their guests. This didn't, and to save buying lots of plastic bottles, we filtered our water through the Grayl bottle which Jacob's Mum kindly brought over from the UK. The bottle is hard to use, because pumping the water through the filter takes serious muscle and water sometimes spills from the bottle when you tip it, but it's better than drinking contaminated water!
Runner up:
2. Duct tape. For some reason, our adaptor has worked happily with the sockets in all countries but when we got to Guatemala and Mexico, it hung loose and would sometimes fall out of the socket. We devised a simple solution with duct tape, taping the side of the adaptor to the plug socket so that it remained anchored. Duct tape also came in handy when I found a large hole in my linen trousers - no sewing kit on us, and the trousers are quite old now and don't merit a trip to the tailor (my mediocre darning will have to do when back in Singapore) so duct taping the hole shut from the inside of the trouser was a quick fix (although the linen is now so thin in that area that you can make out the white patch of the duct tape, but it's not too bad overall!)
Supremely Joyful
1. The sunrise from Tajamulco. Our final volcano hike in Guatemala was one to remember. Tajamulco is the highest summit in Central America, and from the top we saw fields of clouds broken by numerous peaks. We brought our sleeping bags up so watching the sun rise slowly was a cosy experience.
2. Slow days on the Oaxaca coast. I never thought that doing nothing would make the supremely joyful list, but truly. We stayed in a small village called San Agustinillo, and our days consisted of waking up, going on a run, going to the beach, and buying tortillas, tomatoes, cilantro, lime and eggs from the small tienda opposite our hostel and feasting on the combination of that for lunch. Every day we'd rinse and repeat, and I wanted nothing else.
3. Run and pastries in Mexico City. Jacob planned a running route that led us round and round a leafy walking path in a pretty neighbourhood, and then we continued on to Miga Vegana, a vegan pastry shop. We got there just after they opened, and they only had yesterday's pastries available, but we were happy to wait for the freshly baked ones. We sat in the sun, Jacob had a coffee, and then we feasted on a fig and cheese croissant, a concha, and a cinnamon roll. Everything was heavenly, but the fig and cheese croissant, so warm and buttery, was truly a thing of beauty and a joy joy joy. When we paid, I asked the service staff what their favourite pastry was. "Roll de Canela," the woman said, and then smiled, went into the kitchen, and brought out a slightly misshapen cinnamon roll which she gave to us on the house!
(Also a mention, Daniel Mason's North woods was a profoundly engrossing read. Not joyful, but it needed mentioning somehow!)
Supremely Tasty
1. Banana bread on the top of Tajamulco - just when we thought it couldn't get any better, we were presented with a slice of vegan banana bread with peanut butter and granola! (This was just one of three breakfasts that day...)
2. Taco Trail in CDMX. This was so much fun - we looked up different vegan taco places in CDMX and figured out a walking route between them. We went to two places in the end (the third was closed) and tried four different types of taco in each place. After the first shop (Por Siempre Vegan) I was convinced we had a winner, and then we went to Gracias Madre and my mind was further blown.
3. That fig and cheese croissant!
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