la silla de ruedas

so i seem to have hit a metaphorical travelling wall, rather like the marathon wall you apparently hit around 20 miles. i still want to be here, but it is tiring - on friday night i plan on leaving guzman where i returned to on monday, for oaxaca, to check it out for jobs, and to do another week of spanish lessons. this is all good and will be useful, especially the job hunting, but it is essentially more of the same - getting on a bus, getting to a hostel, having the same old chat with the same old travellers, then doing another homestay with another mexican family and still not having my own place to stay with my own stuff in it and my own bathroom and my own meal times, and maybe radio 4 to wake me up in the mornings. i know that i wanted to get away from having my own stuff and the materiality of london life, but after 4 months of moving around it would be nice if i could teleport back in time for a while to my own bed and my bike and my routine. i keep hearing about the snow in england - i love those crispy blue sky mornings with frost and everyone`s wearing scarves and hats and gloves. i know the reality of being there is not the rose tinted vision i have of it from here in my travelling wall state, the grass is always greener, the snow is always whiter etc. anyway, that is just a small insight into my psychological state today.

to continue the ongoing saga of pickles in south america (slightly wrong title in fact as mexico is not in south america, but anyway).

last friday i arrived in guadalajara and met up with my friend jen and her fiance joe. i spelt his name without an e in a previous blog, which apparently makes him a girl, which he isn`t - sorry joe. jen and joe live in california, they like riding motorbikes, and would like to also open a restaurant called jjs. joe works for google which is very interesting. he is very clever and knows the answer to lots of random question we thought were answerless, like what would you do if you were driving in a horse and cart and you got a flat tire? they are such big tires that you can`t carry a spare on the roof. he explained it would most likely be the spoke that broke as they are wooden, but if the actual iron wheel broke you could staple it back together and do other technical things that made sense when he explained them but i can`t remember them now. he is from detroit which is also interesting as i am still reading middlesex which is mainly set there. i also learnt about what the dust bowl was in america - it was when a huge cloud of dust blew over loads of the southern states because they had been trying to grow too much wheat due to the depression and the soil wasn`t good enough and too shallow, and it all blew away. and apparently you won`t be able to plant anything there for another 1000 years or so. jen works in recruitment in california but doesn`t like it as her boss makes her hand write christmas and labour day and thanksgiving cards to their clients all the time. they have 2 cats who get on well.

so they had done the sensible thing and booked a nice hotel in the centre of downtown guadalajara (which i will refer to as gdl from now on as it far too long and stupid a word to keep typing). i on the other hand had booked a hostel a bit out of downtown gdl. i am so over hostels..... when i got back there around 1230 on friday night after dinner and drinks, there was a huge party going on in the hostel garden, and i had to have a top bunk which i don`t like - it makes me feel ungrounded. so i put my ear plugs in and read my book and felt really middle aged but also didn`t really care because i suppose i am now middle aged. the next day - saturday - we went for breakfast then did some good middle aged sightseeing and museums etc. gdl is quite grotty and i didn`t exactly fall in love with it, the way i did with most of peru and bolivia. the people are not as friendly as in other parts of mexico, but that is inevitable with any big city. the taxi drivers don`t have a clue where anything is - whenever i had to get a taxi from downtown to my hostel, i had to show them my map, which they studied for quite a while, then kept asking other taxi driver on the way if they knew where my street was. they obviously don`t make them do the knowledge like in london. i know that things happen differently (ie slower and bit more confusingly) in mexico, and that`s fine, but even when i asked to be taken to the bus station i had to show him where it was on a map.... it could i suppose be my still crap spanish that is the problem.

we went to see the palacio gobierno, which has a very famous orozco mural, called the liberation. orozco was in fact from guzman, my little town, but moved around a lot and did murals all over mexico, and also in california i think. his most famous one is called hombre de fuego, i think we saw that too but i can`t remember. the other famous mexican muralist is diego rivera, who was married to frida kahlo. i saw some of his murals in mexico city and they are much more detailed and precise - he shows whole massive histories all in one mural, a bit like those where`s wally pictures. then a strange man called xiao lin who was a volunteer guide there asked us if we`d seen the other mural there, we hadn`t so he took us to it. then he sat us down and barked at us that he was fluent in 8 languages, and was from mexico (i don`t believe him with a name like that, plus he looked like mr miyagi from karate kid), and that everyone except him was stupid, especially that group of school students and their teachers over there, who were trying to understand the mural from their guidebook. nobody can learn anything from books he said. he then said he had learnt all he knows from books, especially all his 8 languages. when i told him i was from england, he asked me if i knew what was written on the queen`s crown. not really no. apparently it`s a french motto (one of his 8 languages). finally he explained some things about the mural, which were, despite his madness, quite interesting and helpful. they depict things like the revolution and the fight with the french (they invaded in the early 19th century), the fight for independence from the americans etc. benito juarez was on a lot of them, he was the country`s first indigenous president and did a lot of good things. hernando cortes was the leader of the spanish conquistadors and appeared on some of them, as did mussolini and karl marx in one about communism and fascism. as you can probably tell i don`t yet have a full grasp on mexican history.

after this we went to a photography exhibition by edward curtis, who was an american who took amazing photos of the native american indians around the year 1900. there was a copy of a letter to him from president roosevelt who had written to him to tell him how important his photos were in documenting the fast decreasing native american tribes. they were decreasing because the americans were trying to buy all their land from them. mexico used to comprise the now american states of california, new mexico, and texas. here is a website about edward curtis, it is probably more historically informative and accurate than my ramblings
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ienhtml/curthome.html

and here you can see the speech that gran jefe sioux de seattle sent to el presidente de estados unidos when asked if they would sell them their land. i tried to read most of it in the museum, it`s all in spanish so couldn`t fully understand it, but it seems very moving
http://www.forovegetariano.org/foro/archive/index.php/t-1096.html

we also went to see some more murals at a place called el hospicio de cabanas, which also had an italian design exhibition on. joe told us some things about the drainage system in the hospicio which was interesting. we thought we could hear the sea but it must have been a fountain. gdl has absolutely loads of fountains. one had a particularly impressive fountain show on with lots of different fountain bits that kept changing direction and speed. just needed some jean michel jarre music and it would have been complete. i tried to look for a new camera but couldn`t bring myself to commit to buying one as am still in denial that mine has broken after only having it for 4 months.

we then went to el parque agua azul, in the south of downtown. there was an aviary and a butterfly house and an orchid house there. not many of these were open, mainly because this is mexico and that`s how it is. we did however see lots of girls in large ball gowns having their photos taken, and a few wedding couples too. we figured it must be quincineras for the girls - this is the big celebration they have at turning 15 - it`s a really big deal here and in other parts of central america. there are whole streets dedicated to quincinera dress shops. jen and joe posed for some similar type photos by the little lake too and generally it was all quite surreal. we then got a bus back to our part of town, which we forgot to get off in the right place so stayed on for quite a few blocks in the wrong direction. we got a bus back the right way, and a spaceman got on it at one stop. he was dressed in like a star wars storm tropper outfit, all white plastic, with a little purple cape too. he had to stand as the bus was busy, which was probably good because i don`t know how you`d sit down in one of those outfits. i guess he must have been doing some promotional work or something. everyone was giggling at him, but he kept a very straight face, you get used to it i suppose. he spent the next ten minutes wiring up his mobile phone headset, which made it even more amusing.

we hung out at jen and joe`s hotel for a bit to recover from our sightseeing fatigue. there was a very helpful man there who answered all the questions we had. i made a mental note to mention him on my blog - his name was merced. he told me that huarache is a fried tortilla with meat on it, peinecillo is a particular cut of beef, as is arrachera and tampiquena, sope is like a mixture between a huarache and a sandwich, huevos divorciados (literally divorced eggs) is 2 fried eggs, one with red sauce and one with green sauce, mollete is a type of bread. he told us a nice restaurant to eat at which we did the next night. that night we ate at sirloin steakhouse, a sort of buffet place - i had a burger. when we went in and the woman on the desk realised we weren`t mexican she sent a tannoy announcement around to get someone to come and help her who could speak english. while we were eating we kept hearing the tannoy and wondering if it meant help me with these stupid foreigners, every time.

sunday we got the bus to tlaquepaque (which i will shorten to tlq as it is equally ridiculous to write). tlq is a little town a few miles south of gdl, it is very artistic and ceramic, and clean and tidy and nothing like gdl. i had in fact applied for a job here, but didn`t find the school i`d applied to, plus had decided by this point i wanted to live in oaxaca so wasn`t quite as bothered. there are some nice churches, and museums and artisan type shops, and a good book shop. we went for some lunch, we ordered nachos, they brought some nachos anyway as a free starter, so we had lots of nachos, then they brought our quesadillas which had more nachos with them, then they brought our side order of guacamole which was in fact nachos with guacamole. we felt sick after this.

we went to plaza de mariachi later back in gdl downtown. it`s a grotty little street where mariachi men in their cute little uniforms hang out. i can`t work out if it`s part of the mariachi style to play out of tune and out of time, or whether they were just despondent and old. joe didn`t like them, so we said no to their offer of music, but after a while they started playing at the table next to us. we looked over and saw that they were playing for just one sad old cowboy complete with cowboy hat and bottle of corona. this was quite amusing and bizarre - cowboy looked really glum, i was trying to work out what could have made him come to that street and ask for a few mariachi songs all on his own, not as a tourist or anything - perhaps he used to be a musician, or maybe he`d just had his heart broken (that`s what all the songs are about). jen by this point was crying with laughter. i had ordered a coffee from the bar we were at, the man said they didn`t have them, but then when i looked crestfallen he went to some coffee shop round the corner to get one from there, then brought it to me as though it was from his own bar. i asked if he had any milk. no he said. mexico is so funny.

we went to the recommended restaurant later that night, which was really nice. i was convinced it was full of drug cartel mafia men as there were lots of groups of well-dressed men having their dinner there and smoking cigarettes and looking serious and businesslike. there was a saxophone player who wandered round playing his saxophone all around the restaurant. i don`t think it was kenny g but it could have been.

on sundays they close a lot of the streets in gdl for cyclists and runners which is nice, but not enough of an incentive to get me to live there. other than this the traffic is crazy, you would not want to cycle there. the people are not friendly enough for my standards - especially at the bus station, the taxi drivers may as well be from another planet the amount they don`t know, and there aren`t enough coffee shops. other than that, gdl is an ok city, and i had a nice time with jen and joe, but was glad to leave on monday afternoon for guzman again. especially after jen found a big bug in her tortilla soup - the kitchen staff`s reaction was one that implied this happened often.

i got the bus to guzman which took around 4 hours as it was the slow bus from the old bus station not the fast one i`d taken to get there originally. nice scenery once we were out of the city, mountains and the odd lake and flocks of birds. i met up with skye and her housemates marie, manu and helen, and we went for sushi. skye is a lot better but not fully mobile, she can walk with crutches, and is planning on flying back to england on saturday if all goes according to plan.

yesterday - tuesday - i did some freaking out at how much stuff i seem to have acquired, and how seriously it is not going to fit in my bag. then i accompanied skye and her mexican mum gina to her hospital check up appointment. we waited 2.5 hours (this is mexico), ate some biscuits, drank some coffee, then saw dr torres. dr torres is the mexican real life equivalent of the doctor in the simpsons. i always expect him to say skye you will never walk again, and then guffaw with laughter. when we finally went into his office he was chatting away about a madonna concert, and guffawing about something. his office is decorated as it should be with plastic moulds of various different parts of the body, some with ligaments too and posters of muscles and veins. he didn`t actually check up how skye`s leg was, but discussed insurance and that yes she should go home if she can etc etc. he then printed her out a letter for insurance purposes with details of her accident and treatment. there ensued a farcical 10 minutes of both him and skye signing the letters but realising the details were slightly wrong, so reprinting them with the right name but wrong age, then vice versa, then signing them anyway then tearing them up, then also tearing up the correct ones that he printed out. i suppose this made up for the 3 hour wait.

and today i`m going in a minute to push skye around town in her wheelchair, in a little britain type way. i will leave you with some comments and questions

where do cows and horses come from originally - ie the cows and horses over here are they originally from europe, and if so how did they get here?

how many miles is mexico from england?

i keep hearing about pirate attacks on ships in somalia, does anyone else?

i got in the national newspaper in belize - when robert´s friend mick took the photos of the flooding in belize last month, we put the photos on cd with mine and robert`s names on, and these then went to the paper, so underneath the photos they published it says photo taken by robert combs and lucy pickles. my fake moment of fame ha ha.