mi querido mexico

hola hola de ciudad de mexico! i have finally arrived here after my momentous bus journey.

wednesday morning robert and his friend mick took me to the bus stop. i had been praying to the gods of rain that there would be too much rain to leave the town, as i was growing to love living in my little wooden house on the prairie, watching videos and eating chocolate ice cream. alas, this was not to be, as a little minibus turned up an hour later. it was just me on it, i think the proper bus was somewhere in a puddle near guatemala. so i spent from 9.30 to 3pm (4pm mexican time) on the little bus, which took me across the border to chetumal in mexico. i slept, looked out of the mud splattered window, daydreamed about cycling the journey instead, read a bit of my book, and slept some more. i had taken some rice and beans with me for the journey so ate some of that, and panicked in case they confiscated it from me at the border, but they didn´t look in my bag. which was good as i realised afterwards that i also had a big plastic bag full of calcium tablets which looked very much like illegal drugs, and i wouldn´t have wanted to have a border police drug situation, what with my limited spanish ability.

at chetumal, my bus driver bought me my ticket to mexico city (not with his own money obviously) (thought i have just checked the exchange rate and realised that the 264 belize dollars i gave the bus lady for this ticket (which had gone up from 225 dollars, see previous blog) was 120 belize dollars too much for the price of the ticket in pesos... i will get my contacts in belize to go and beat her up and get that extra money back). the chetumal bus station was in a large puddle, but not large enough to drown the buses. the journey was quite uneventful, the bus was amazingly nice and the roads in mexico are 1000% better than anywhere in central or south america. i slept, thanks to valium, from around 5.30pm on wednesday to 9.30am the next morning, with a few enforced awakenings, one at 9.30pm, one at 4.30am - why oh why did they need to kick us all off the bus at that time and take it away and clean it, i do not know... anyway i ate the rest of my rice and beans and cleaned my teeth and stared vacantly around me in a valium haze during these strange awake interludes. i did panic when the bus drove off at 4.30 but i kept my beady eye on my fellow passengers to make sure noone else was panicking which they weren´t, and sure enough the bus returned, cleaner, half an hour later and we trudged back on. when i came back to reality in the morning, i watched the scenery and listened to inspiring classical music. i´m not sure where we would have been at this time, but i suppose somewhere through south central mexico. it was blue blue skies, huge sweeping green mountains, little wooden huts/bars, a few donkeys, really well tarmac-ed massive windy roads, huge lorries taking tacos i suppose from one end of the country to another. it was exactly as i´d imagined mexico to be, and the vast scenery and blue skies reminded me of parts of south america which was very comforting. we went through a few towns, god knows which ones though - it was nice to be completely unaware of where i was and just to watch it all going past. after some more dozing i woke up and we were in mexico city, getting in to the bus terminal oriente. from here i got el metro a few stops to my mexico city hostel in el centro historico, right by the cathedral and main square. all very straightforward and not at all as horrific as i had been expecting.

contrary to everything you hear about mexico on the news, in the papers, in the guidebook, this country so far seems amazingly friendly and welcoming and not at all scary. perhaps i am becoming more of a seasoned traveller (tomorrow is 3 month anniversary), and am less flappable etc, but it is definitely not an intimidating place. there are the ubiquitous guns and military police (one told me off for drinking my beer on the pavement last night so i could smoke at the same time, but he was perfectly civil about it and didn´t try to shoot me), and on the bus we passed lots of military vehicles full of soldiers going south, but i don´t know why. i know there is poverty in this country just as there is everywhere over here, and there are definitely problems, and corruption and desparation, and huge drug related problems, but these things don´t immediately overwhelm you the way they do in guatemala, or in bolivia for example. i suppose i have stayed in the mainly tourist areas and met other foreigners so far, so i haven´t seen i suppose the real mexico, but just the fact that there is a really good infrastructure of roads, buses, underground system, paved streets, museums, cafes etc makes it seem infinitely more cilivized than everywhere else i´ve been on this trip.

my hostel is very clean and tidy, and empty, i have a whole dorm room to myself, which is nice if a bit odd. i woke in the night wondering where i was. after arriving yesterday i wandered around the main square and asked a few questions at tourist information. some little school children came and asked me questions in english for a school project - i answered them in spanish and they wrote their answers in english, i helped with their spelling as i wanted them to get good marks. they asked what was my favourite food, i said pasta, they thought i said pastel, which means cake. this made us giggle. they asked how i was, and how was my family. i answered accordingly, and they seemed satisfied with my answers. i then went to see the cathedral which was beautiful and made me nearly cry (i think through tiredness rather than religion but who knows), and i saw a little parade of military men with a brass band. i sat down and got talking to an american man called gustav. he is from california and was visiting his mother in guadalajara where she plays a lot of golf and doesn´t integrate with the locals even after 16 years there. he had been on 23 different metros in his life - what a cute thing to make a mental note of - and he commented on the fact that in london everybody seems to wear black coats of varying lengths, and no hats. i couldn´t quite empathise with this view of london life, but nodded in what i hoped was an intrigued manner, but probably came across as just plain confused. we went for a beer in his hostel which was just round the corner from mine, and met 2 boys both called david, one was french so we shall call him daveed. david (number 1) was from south east london, the best part to be from, and him and gustav talked EU politics as we drank corona. as you know this would not be my chosen specialist subject on mastermind, so i concentrated on learning more spanish from the lyrics of the little band that had started playing in the hostel bar. there is music absolutely everywhere in mexico, and really really good music. these guys must have only been teenagers, but were hugely talented, - a couple of guitars, bongos, trumpet, trombone, saxophone - they played buena vista social club songs and other mexican stuff, people spontaneously salsa danced (how i wish i could spontaneously salsa dance), and generally it was amazing, and i couldn´t have wished for a more enjoyable first night in mexico. it was exactly as i imagined it would be - corona, trumpets, sombreros, dancing. daveed by this point had disappeared, he seemed not impressed at our company, and had a really good camera so perhaps he was off taking photos of things. he worked as a food aid deliverer for the UN and other such organisations. you meet a lot of very interesting people on your travels. it is always quite embarrassing how much more all these foreigners know about english and european politics and history etc. i blame the yorkshire education system, we learnt about local dry stone walling, crop rotation and the feudal system, egyptian pyramids and then monasteries in our history lessons - my image of the world is thanks to this, quite peculiar. (though i did win a creme egg from writing a prize-winning essay about the monks so i shouldn´t be too downhearted i suppose).

after all this merriment i walked back to my hostel and slept soundly. i woke up this morning just before ten and rushed to get hostel breakfast which finished at ten. there is no need generally to rush towards hostel breakfasts, and i won´t do it again. there was a few scrapes of scrambled egg going grey and some white bread and a toaster and some butter but no jam. the coffee tasted like mud. i went out for a second breakfast, of huevos rancheros - a traditional mexican breakfast of fried eggs on a corn tortilla with salsa and refried beans, which was much tastier.

after my 2 breakfasts i wandered to the palacio de bellas artes, a beautiful arts centre, marble and art deco inside. i was hoping there would be an interesting concert this evening, but alas there isn´t. i think everyone is preparing for dia de los muertos as there doesn´t seem to be too much cultural stuff going on this weekend. i wandered from there to a big park on avenida benito juarez, complete with a statue of benito juarez (one of the goodies of mexican history, he was a liberal, indigenous president who fought off french occupiers). there was a little stage with children doing traditional mexican dancing, and then lots of old men with red flags with words on. a lovely mexican man whose name i never found out, came and talked to me about it all, and explained it was some children from northen mexico doing traditional dancing, and that it was part of the protests against the government (what a lovely way of protesting). he asked what did i think of mexico and was it better or worse than i expected, i said much much better compared to how it was portrayed in the news. we agreed this is often the way with places, and the only way to know the truth is to visit them and get to know people and experience the culture - not to just watch the news, it is not reliable ever and only shows one side of things. he told me lots about the politics here and how it is an amazing place, and how long was i here for and what was i doing etc. i was quite proud that i could understand most of what he said, and reply in a coherent fashion. i followed the procession for a while, there was a little band and girls dancing- i didn´t fully understand what the man was saying over the loud speakers, but i understood the words workers and farmers, so i suppose it was some sort of anti capitalist government demonstration. i´m going to read my guidebook about the situation here, so will maybe report back with more enlightened information next time.

after this i wandered along avenida hidalgo and then got el metro to the bus terminal norte to sort out how to get to ciudad guzman, my ultimate destination in mexico where i will be doing my TEFL course which starts on monday. i have booked a night bus leaving tomorrow night which is great as i thought i would only have today here to explore. the metro here is orange, and more spacious and less deep than the london underground, but the distance when changing from one line to another is miles and miles. i thought i just got unlucky the first time i had to change, but every single station the platforms are absolutely miles apart. they have interesting displays in the big long tunnels, one science and astronomy tunnel, one full of book shops, one with pictures and explanations of climate change, so at least you can learn something as you walk along. i learnt via lactea means milky way, it made me laugh for some reason to see it translated so literally. my new favourite spanish word is el picaflor, which means hummingbird, i think literally it means flower biter.

after this i did more wandering, and saw a huge statue of beethoven - it is always nice to see a familiar face, though i never realised he was from mexico city... there were some workers on scaffolding working on him, maybe trying to restore his hearing, they got in my photo so i said hola and waved to them. finally, with my feet hurting, i ended up in starbucks (apologies, but it was such a nice surprise i just couldn´t resist it). this was back near my hostel area, which also seems to be the area of opticians, and gold and silver exchange shops. how fortuitous for me with my broken glasses, and all that gold that needed exchanging. so i got my glasses mended at no charge by a nice optician man.

other things i have noticed - there are lots of vw beetles here, the green ones are taxis; i am tall by mexican standards.

interesting tortilla fact: the daily tortilla consumption in mexico is 1200 million. i have not had one here yet, otherwise it would have been 1200, 000 001.

non-interesting facts which i nevertheless feel like noting at this point - population of mexico is 105 million, mexico city is 18 million; population growth is 1-2% per year, that is a lot of mexicans; exchange rate is 21.4 pesos to the pound at the moment, their economy is not doing very well; one trip on el metro costs 2 pesos, which equates to 0.09 pounds which is very cheap. i am 6 hours behind england, and 1 hour ahead of belize now.

adios amigos, espero que ustedes esten bien xx