Hola amigos y amigas, estoy en Mexico
ahorra, y estoy teniendo un bueno vez :)
I arrived in Mexico City, and waited a
few hours for Karen at the airport, and eventually found her and made
our way to the hostel. The first thing you notice about Mexico City,
other than the size of the city as you're flying in, is the crazy
amounts of traffic. There are so so so many cars here, and the
traffic is pretty crazy and packed at all times it seems. Apparently
the city has made a concious effort to improve the subway system in
the city to try and get cars off the road, but there's still a fairly
large population who drive.
We arrived at the hostel and Karen was
fairly jet lagged, and I was pretty tired myself, so we didn't get up
to a whole lot other than heading to a restaurant called El Hiquito,
which is on Calle Bolivar in the Historal Centre of Mexico City, near
our hostel. The place was a pretty nice little spot and had a very
large and diverse menu. Fortunately, they also had an English menu,
but it was fun to attempt to figure things out in Spanish too. I've
been trying to learn a bit of Spanish, but it has been a bit of a
battle, and coming to Mexico is a good enough to begin trying harder,
as there aren't a whole lot of people here who seem to speak English
very well. Ah well, all is good. I just ended up having some tacos,
which are nothing like the tacos of Canada or the US, as they come in
a soft tortilla shell here, and don't have the fixings that the tacos
of Canada does (lettuce, tomatoes, shredded cheese, ground beef,
etc.) although they are still pretty good. After adding a whole bunch
of amazing and delicious spicy salsas, we finished up dinner and went
for a little wander around the streets, taking in all the people
wandering the streets, and admiring the large illuminated signs and
flags on the buildings in the Zoloco Centre. Apparently Mexican
Independence Day is coming up very soon, so everyone has been getting
excited and dressed up and decorating for that. We only wandered
around for about 20 minutes, checking out some potential nightspots
for the next night, and then were pretty much ready to head to bed.
The next day we decided to just wander
around the historical centre, first stopping at the main square. We
were almost immediately stopped by a young group of Mexicans one of
whom spoke English, and quickly asked where we were from. In my bad
Spanish I answered them, and their whole group was quite excited to
see us and wanted to get photos with us, so out came about 8 cameras,
and an ever changing group of people per photo. It was a pretty quick
rush, and we almost felt like celebrities, as all these youngsters
were taking photos with us. After about 6 or 7 minutes of that, and
attempting to speak in broken Spanish with them, they went on their
way and we just continued on our walk.
We basically wandered all the way
around the historical centre, and into the North East outskirts of it
before realizing on the map how far off we were from the areas we
wanted to check out. It's always fun to get off the track a bit
though, and we saw several interesting shops, selling numerous
costumes (would be great for Halloween, but too big to haul some of
them around in my bag!), cheap suits, and of course loads of food!
Another thing you notice about Mexico is that the people are quite
large, as they eat, and eat, and eat, and eat some more! This we
would surely find out over the next few days. We ended up stopping in
a small little alleyway, where they spoke no English, and managed to
order some sort of soup. I believe it was called Sortida, and it was
actually quite tasty, although the chicken was kind of bad quality
and just chewy. It was a pretty large bowl and for about 2.50 CAD, it
definitely hit the spot. After our little stop there, we continued
on, and eventually made our way over to the Palace of Fine Arts,
where there's numerous artistic events held, and I'm told the
acoustics are quite amazing there for concerts and operas, and such.
After passing that area, we tried to make our way over to
Independence Square, and were a bit lost, but some Mexican
businessman stopped by and helped us find our way, while chatting for
a little bit with me in Spanish, which I'm slowly slowly slowly
learning!
After finding the square, and watching
the youths all running through the water fountain, soaking their
clothing, laughing and playing with their friends, we started to make
our way back to the hotel. While walking on our way back, we were
again stopped by some youths, asking us where we're from, apparently
we're very obvious tourists! One other very interesting thing I
noticed was the huge lineups to get into both the banks, and into the
bookstores....kind of random indeed?! Apparently Sabado (Saturday),
is the Mexican banking and book buying day! We also made a stop to
watch some very talented opera singer on the street, performing, and
it was quite a treat. I try to make a concious effort of stopping for
street performers now, especially after reading a Washington Post
case study that you should definitely check out.
Goes to show that you never really know
what you're missing out on in this fast paced and busy world! After
the steet performance, we finally arrived back in the hostel, and
just kind of hung out, having a little nap, and lounging about. We
eventually made our way back out for a bite to eat, but the food
wasn't the absolute greatest.....up to this point, Mexican food was
pretty hit and miss! I had some Castillo tacos, which weren't the
tastiest, but at least the salsas they provided were quite “picante”
and were able to spice it up enough that it was tasty. After our
little feast, we decided to go wander around and find a good night
spot, and we settled on a little upstairs bar called Elma Matter,
where there was some loud live music going on. We found a spot, and
enjoyed several cervezas and the music for a few hours, not
understanding any of the words of course, but it was still a pretty
fun and popular place. When we were ready to leave, the staff
wouldn't let us go, as there had been a fight outside, and they
wanted to make sure it was safe for us to leave, such nice people! We
finally made our way back to the hostel, and had a somewhat early
night, as we had planned to head to the Aztec ruins the next day.
The next morning I ended up waking up,
and realizing there was some NFL on, but I didn't want to force Karen
to watch it all day as she had a limited time frame in Mexico to
visit things, so we started making some plans to head to Teotihicuan
and were all set to go, when I finally heard back from my friend
Horatio, whom I had met in Norway the previous year. When I met him,
he told me I had to come to Mexico City, and that he would show me a
good time and show me around, so I had tried getting in contact with
him several times, but no answer. Fortunately, this happened to be
the day when he finally got back to me, and informed me he would be
picking us up at 3:30 pm and to not eat. We were starving, so we
decided to go for a little snack and just hang out killing some time
until Horatio showed up, so we found a little restaurant and ordered
some tacos, expecting them to be a small order and not fill us up,
but of course, being Mexico, it was a larger than expected order and
we were barely able to finish. We just hung out after that until
Horatio showed up, and upon entering the car, he informed us he would
be taking us to the wrestling that night. I had really wanted to go
see the wrestling in Mexico City, but the staff had told us the best
night to go was on Friday night, and that the wrestling on Sunday
wasn't as good, but Horatio disagreed with that assessment, and so we
were on our way!
We stopped by a small restaurant near
the wrestling stadium, where Horatio began to recommend and explain
several of his favourite Mexican dishes. He ended up ordering us some
Pozole, which was this tasty soup, and some Chicharron, which is some
fried Pork skin, and showed us how to mix all the ingredients
together, and we had ourselves an amazing feast. We were pretty full
from our late lunch, but still managed to finish the delicious dish,
plus several cervezas. Afterwards, we were on our way to the
wrestling stadium, where Horatio managed to get us some front row
seats, by bartering with some scalpers outside. He informed us that
you can't actually buy any of the good seats from the box office
ever, and that you have to go through these scalpers almost always to
get a good seat. Good thing we had him along to negotiate things. I
think the hostel charged about 500 pesos or something like that for
the wrestling night out, and we were able to get front row seats and
several beers for that same price, thanks to knowing the local!
We arrived at the event, and
unfortunately you aren't allowed to bring cameras in, and they are
especially vigilant in checking foreigners for cameras, so we didn't
even bother taking them out of the car, yet they allow people to have
their phones inside, which allows you to take photos
anyway....strange indeed! Fortunately, Horatio had his iPod that we
could take photos with, so we were able to get several pics from the
day. We settled in, and were treated to about 2 hours of hilarious
and awesome wrestling. The guys actually hit each other pretty hard,
you could definitely feel some of the blows. They were all quite
acrobatic, as well, which was a bit surprising given the dimensions
and shape of some of the guys. Horatio informed us that we were
sitting in the “bad guys” corner, and that the rules of the
wrestling didn't really apply to them, as they were allowed to have
more than one guy in the ring at a time, without the referee doing
much, yet as soon as the “good guys” would have more than one guy
in the ring, the referee would almost immediately kick their 2nd
guy out...hilarious stuff. The female wrestlers were pretty
entertaining as well, and all in all, the whole night was so great.
Horatio and his friends sure do put back a lot of beers, and we were
struggling to keep up with them at times, but managed to keep our
own. He also tried to get us to try another Mexican specialty, which
is pork skin that's not fried, and you eat it raw with some chile
sauce. I can't say I particularly enjoyed the taste or texture of the
pork skin, but at least I gave it a shot. It was such a fun evening,
and I'd highly recommend any visitor to Mexico City to take in some
of the “Lucha Libre”.
After the wrestling finished up, we
stopped outside for some street tacos, even though we didn't really
have any room, Horatio insisted we try some...and of course they were
delicious, but damn we were so full...eat eat eat! After hanging
around for a bit, chatting a bit more, it was time to head back to
the hostel, as Horatio had to head home to do some homework still,
and then be up at 6 am to head to work. I understood why he took
awhile to get back to me, as the guy is ridiculously busy. He works
at his private dentist practice from 8 am until 12 pm, then he goes
and teaches dental classes at the university from 1 pm until 7 pm,
and then has his masters classes from 7 pm until 10 pm....the guy is
just nuts! So he dropped us off, and we were thankful for him showing
us around a bit, and agreed to meet up the next night after he was
done class.
We were up at a decent hour the next
day, and chatted a little bit with some of the other people in the
hostel. The hostel didn't really have the greatest common area, and
there wasn't a really social atmosphere there, so it was a bit tough
to meet any new people, which was a bit odd considering I'm so used
to doing that all the time, but ah well. We did manage to at least
chat with a few people over breakfast, but then didn't really see
anyone the rest of the day. We dediced to head to Teotihicuan that
day, and explore the ancient Aztec city. Rather than going through a
travel agency, we just decided to do it all ourselves, which is
definitely the way to go. We hopped on the Mexico City metro, which
was surprisingly cheap, definitely the cheapest metro I've
encountered anywhere in the world. I guess it's heavily subsidized by
the government, to try and reduce the amount of vehicles on the road,
which there is still plenty of. I was reading that Mexico City was
once so polluted in the air from the vehicles, that the air was
considered to be unsafe for humans for 255 days a year, crazy!
Anyway, the metro was about 25 cents per ride, which is ridiculously
cheap! We grabbed the train and arrived at a station called Potrero,
where we were able to catch a bus to “los piramides” for the
cheap price of 37 Mex or $3 CAD. The bus ride was pretty bumpy, and
it sort of reminded me of a ride in Albania or Sri Lanka, with the
potholes being large enough and the suspension shoddy enough that I
was airborne several times during the ride! I tried to speak a little
with the gentleman seated beside me, but my Spanish is muy malo
todovia (still very bad), so we had a very short conversation. He
helped us make sure we got off at the correct stop though, and I
continue to be amazed at how helpful the Mexican people really are.
We arrived at Teotihicuan, paid our 57
peso entrance fee, and were on our way inside, but of course had to
pass through the first “gauntlet” which is a term I use to
describe the numerous vendor stalls and salespeople shouting at you
to come buy a bunch of junk. We also turned down the offer to have a
tour guide for the place, as there were enough tablets with English
written on them to have an idea of what you were looking at and the
significance of the ruins. One of the most annoying things I found at
the ruins was these little whistle devices that the vendors were
selling that sounded like a wounded dog or some sort of monster. It
instantly reminded me of the annoying Vuvuzuelas from South
Africa....oh my god these things are so annoying!! Of course, several
parents had bought their children these horns, so we were subjected
to the annoying sounds throughout the day, but oh well, can't
complain too much I suppose!
We wandered down the Calzeda de los
muertos (avenue of the Dead), and stopped by to walk up the rather
impressive Temple of the Sun, where we were treated to some
incredible views of the surrounding area, not to mention exposure to
many tourists. I'm become to accustomed to ignoring locals trying to
talk to me, thinking they are salespeople, that we actually we were
being yelled at by one of the security officers for going up the
wrong way on the stairway to the top, oops! After correcting our path
and having a laugh, we reached the top, and had to laugh at all of
the people huffing and puffing, people are so out of shape here! We
hung out on the top for awhile, and then made our way over to the
Temple of the Moon, where we were only able to climb up about half
way, due to repairs and restoration work being done on the upper
half. After hanging out there for a bit longer, we toured around some
temple that was being restored, and then decided to exit and make our
way back to the city. Unfortunately we came out of a different gate,
so we weren't too sure where to catch the buses back to the city,
and had to walk a ways down the road to the next gate, and received
several awkward looks from Mexicans driving by in their
cars...apparently people don't walk on that road or something?!
We arrived at the next gate, and asked
the security staff where to catch a bus, and the guy responded in
Spanish, none of which we understood, so we just kind of hung out
near the gate, until some bus showed up, and hopped aboard. The bus
was about 15 years newer than the bus we took to the ruins, and was
only 1 peso more expensive...go figure! We hopped aboard, and made
our first stop in the nearby town of San Juan, where police and some
man with a video recorder boarded and walked along the bus. Being the
smartass that I am, I thought he was some tourist and had a laugh
that he was filming his bus walk, so I gave a big wave and smile to
the camera....then after inspecting the bus, he got back off....so I
guess he was doing some sort of work for the police, oops. At the bus
stop, there were several pictures posted of men who had robbed or
hijacked buses in the area, so I guess it's been a fair bit of a
problem, and they had a heavy police presence at the stop to ensure
no armed people would board the bus (yes, everyone was patted down by
the police, as we were when we got on the bus heading to the ruins,
crazy!). I actually chatted with one guy at the hostel, who had been
on a night bus coming from Guetemala to Mexico, and he said their bus
was stopped and robbed at gun point, he was even pistol whipped twice
in the head during the robbery! Crazy...hopefully I don't run into
any issues while I'm travelling about, but who knows.
We arrived back in the city, took the
metro back to the hostel (having only paid 138 pesos for the whole
day of ruins exploring, as compared to the 350 pesos tour groups were
charging) and just wandered over to grab a small dinner, as Horatio
wanted to meet up that night for dinner. I ended up having some
fairly tasty enchiladas, which were good to hold me over for the rest
of the evening. We just went back to the hostel, watched some
football, and waited for Horatio to show up and grab us. He ended up
taking us to a restaurant that we had actually already been to,
called El Hiquito, but made sure to order us his favourites. We
started with some beers with Micheladas, which is a bit of lime
juice, salted rim, and sometimes worchestershire or tequila or sugar,
and is mixed with the beer. He then ordered us some queso fundido con
campiones, which is a pot of melted cheese with mushrooms, that you
slather onto some tortillas...mmmm. After that, he made sure we had
the special of the house, which was this amazing taco dish...mmm so
damn good. So again, we ate and ate and ate until we were stuffed,
that Horatio sure likes to eat!
We just chatted for a few hours, and
Karen and I both decided we needed our teeth cleaned, and Horatio
said he could do it for us the next morning for about $30 CAD, nice!
He also wanted us to go check out the Mexico vs Costa Rica futbol
match at Azteca Stadium the next night, and called up his friend Hugo
who was planning on going to the game, and asked him to take us to
the game, which he was happy to oblige to. Horatio told us he would
pick us up the next morning at 7:30 am, and take us to his office to
have the cleaning done, so we called it another relatively early
night, and headed back.
He was about 30 minutes late picking us
up in the morning, and I was out running around trying to find a bank
machine that would accept my card, as strangely enough, Scotiabank (A
Canadian Bank), wouldn't accept my Canadian bank card, wtf!! So after
running around and being unable to find a bank to get some money for
the cleaning, we were on our way to Horatio's office.
We popped inside his small little
practice, and he quickly got to work on my teeth first. It was an
interesting experience, as Karen was allowed to just sit in the chair
next to me and speak to both of us while he was working on the teeth.
I was a bit surprised at how hard he scraped into my gum lines to
clean the gums, and was a fairly bloody mess when all was said and
done, but nice and clean nevertheless. After Karen had her teeth
cleaned, we were on our way back to the hostel, using the nearby
metro. We basically had several hours to kill until Hugo was going to
pick us up and take us to the futbol game that afternoon, so we just
kind of hung around, grabbing some coffee from a nice little Lebanese
coffeshop on Isabel la Catolica, and then grabbing a little bite to
eat.
Hugo had never met us, and didn't speak
much English, so it was meant to be a bit of an interesting
experience having him pick us up, so Horacio told him we would be
waiting outside the hostel at 4:30 pm and that I would be wearing a
Mexico futbol jersey. So we were outside maybe for 2 minutes when a
man just walked up and said “hola!” and we knew right away it was
Hugo. We walked over and hopped into his car, and began the drive
through crazy traffic to Estadio Azteca, which is Mexico's largest
stadium, the host of the 1970 World Cup and the 1986 World Cup where Maradonna scored the
famous goal(s). It is also the 3rd largest stadium in the world next to stadiums in North Korea and India, and is the only stadium to host 2 World Cup finals. Awesome!
 |
| "Speak or Speak"...effective advertising... |
 |
| Ughh even the Steelers are popular in Mexico |
 |
| Great park job by Hugo |
 |
| Jax Jaguars fans too...where's the Bengals fans!! |
 |
| Pre-game tacos mmm |
 |
| World famous Aztec Stadium |
 |
| Inside the enormous stadium |
The game itself was pretty quiet, with
not too many chances, but eventually the new Mexican idol, Javier
Hernandez aka Chicharito, managed to score the go ahead goal, which
eventually stood up, and Mexico became the first CONCACAF team to
qualify for the next qualification round for the World Cup 2014 in
Brazil, so there were a lot of happy Mexicans. One of the more fun
parts of the game was yelling with the crowd everytime the Costa
Rican goalkeeper had a goal kick, yelling out
“ooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh Puto!!!!!” Great times. After the
game, and numerous cervezas, it was time to head back and meet up
with Horacio for a late night snack before heading back to the hostel
for the night. We had tried to book flights to Chiapas, but then the
prices were a bit higher, so we decided to head to Cancun, but then
the Interjet ( a cheap Mexican airline) website wouldn't accept
either of our credit cards, as it only would allow us to enter postal
codes in the form of US Zip codes...thanks a lot shitty airline! So
we decided to just head to the airport the next day and try and book
our flights there.
 |
| Game Time |
 |
| Always time for a little Mailman |
 |
| Hugo with broken glasses and a new futbol |
We were up at a decent hour the next
day and on our way to the airport to buy tickets. This is the first
time I've ever actually bought a plane ticket at the airport! We
ended up having to pay a bit more than the online price showed, and
ended up taking an earlier flight than we had initially planned on,
but all was good, and we were on our way to Cancun. I've been to
Cancun twice before, but both times had the all inclusive resort
experience, and this time around I wanted to experience more of a
laid back backpacker way of travel, so I decided we should head down
to Playa del Carmen, about an hour south of Cancun, and hang out
there. We arrived in Cancun, quickly found a bus to Playa, and were
on our way.
After looking through the guidebook a
bit (Karen's not mine since I don't use them!) we started wandering
down the main walkpath, and were quickly asked by a man if we needed
a hotel room, so we decided to check it out and found a pretty darn
nice place for about $34 a night. It was a huge room, with aircon,
cable, and two beds, and it was even cheaper than our small room in
Mexico City, plus only a block from the beach, win! So we grabbed
that, although the owner did try and talk us into taking the
penthouse suite, for an extra $7 a night, which was incredibly huge,
but we decided against going with the excess, and just took our cozy
and brightly painted room. After settling in, we wandered around
Playa for a little while, just browsing, before picking up some
cigars and a few cervezas to hang out on the balcony with. After
enjoying those, we asked the gentleman who had showed us the hotel
room for a recommendation of a good Mexican restaurant, so he took us
over to a nearby place that was probably owned by his cousins or
something, but the food was actually quite delicious. I ended up
getting some chicken with mole, which is a brown sauce made up of
beans, chili, and chocolate..mmmm.
After a few beers and a nice dinner, we
decided to have a quiet night in, and just went to bed relatively
early. We ended up sleeping in a fair bit later than expected, guess
we were a bit worn down from Mexico City or something, and had a
relatively quiet day just wandering around and exploring Playa del
Carmen a little bit, before finding a spot to watch the Thursday
night NFL game. Poor Karen, never having watched American Football
before, and now she was being bombarded by the sport on a tri weekly
basis ha ha, but she was a good sport and hung out with me throughout
the matches. We decided to head off to Chitchen Itza the next
morning, which required a rather early bus ride, so we had another
early night.
Geting up for a 7 am bus ride the next
day was a bit more challenging than usual, after being sleepy bums
for a week, but we were up and on our way to the station to catch the
early bus ride. The ride itself was about 4 hours, and most of the
bus got off at a place called Coba, where there's some really amazing
ruins in the jungle, that people have compared to something like an
Indiana Jones movie. Unfortunately, we never did make it to these
ruins, but I've heard nothing but great things about them. We had
thought about doing an organized tour to Chitchen Itza, but figured
we could just do it on our own and save some money.
We arrived at Chitchen, and paid the
two entrance fees (seriously, they couldn't just combine it into one
fee instead of making us go to 2 seperate booths), while being
hounded by guys offering guided services in English for 500 pesos. We
kept saying no, and the one guide offered us the Spanish price (400
pesos), but we still declined. That being said, if you add up our
entrance fees, buses, and decided to take the 400 peso guided tour,
the total of the day would have been 1070 pesos, whereas most travel
agencies were charging around 1300 pesos or so for the tour, so you
could save yourself a bit of money doing it that way. We passed
through the first gauntlet of salespeople, selling heaps of useless
and tacky souvenirs, that some people must foolishly buy, as they
continue to sell them in droves. After getting through there, we
managed to spend about 2 hours wandering around the massive complex,
all the while being hounded by salespeople. The place was a rather
impressive sight, although so many parts of it were cordoned off, so
you don't really get much of an experience in exploring ruins. I
don't know how much more a guide would have offered that you probably
could just find while reading on the internet or whatever, but it was
still a neat place to visit.
 |
| Main temple of Chitchen Itza |
 |
| Mexican man having a siesta under the scaffolding |
 |
| Asian/Mayan Tourist |
 |
| Room of a 1000 pillars or something along those lines |
 |
| World's oldest game of X and O's? |
 |
| The observatory where historians believe the Mayans developed their plans for the main temple to celebrate astrology |
 |
| Iguanas everywhere |
 |
| The Nunnery |
After finishing our tour, we had about
an hour and a half to kill, and popped by the restaurant for some
delicious and cheap tacos, and were lucky enough to have just missed
the rain storm that suddenly appeared, soaking several people (Wet
Tshirt contest!!!). After our tasty and reasonably priced meal, we
were ready to get back on the bus and make the long trek back to
Playa. We arrived around 9 pm at night, and just grabbed a dinner,
and wandered around a bit, checking out the night spots without
actually entering any, before just heading back to the room for the
night.
 |
| Cochinita Pibil Tacos with Picante Salsa Verde mmm |
We were up and about the next day,
heading down to the beach for a few hours to catch some sun, and
relax, before deciding to head into Cancun for the night for some
proper partying. I know Cancun gets a lot of attention for its
beaches, but the one at Playa is also very very beautiful and quite
relaxing, with no people trying to sell you junk or anything. It was
a real pleasant treat, and staying only one block away for such a
great rate was equally as lovely. We had thought about hanging out
and going out in Playa for a night, but as much as Playa's nightlife
seemed to be okay, there's nothing quite like Cancun nightlife, and I
figured Karen should experience at least one night of it, so we
sorted out a bus for 7 pm and were on our way into the city. We
arrived at the bus station, and I was fairly disoriented as I'm used
to just staying in the Hotel Zone, and not really having to navigate
around much, so we tried to find a bus into the hotel zone to stop by
Senor Frog's for some dinner and a little warm up period. We asked
where we could catch a bus at the terminal and the guy pointed
towards the corner and told us to take the number 1 bus in. At this
point, my lack of direction ended up taking us across the boulevard
and waiting in line to catch a bus, that was going the completely
opposite direction. Fortunately, a Mexican man was kind enough to
stop and ask us where we wanted to go, and provided us with some
directions (these Mexicans are so friendly!), and we were able to
eventually find our bus.
We arrived in Senor Frogs, grabbed a
table, and enjoyed the lively festivities and food and drinks of the
place. The last time I had been there was during Spring Break, and it
was a bit more of a crazy atmosphere, but it was still decently busy
and we had a pretty good time. After several drinks, and trying to
coax Karen into using the waterslide, which she declined, we settled
up our tab and were off to catch the bus into the downtown core.
Again, my lack of direction caused us to get onto a bus that went the
opposite direction (damnit, Cancun is just much easier to navigate
when really really drunk apparently), so we ended up at the end of
the line, and the bus driver told us that we were at the last stop,
but I managed to talk to him in some broken Spanish and let him know
where we wanted to go, so he just told us to stay on the bus and
continue on.
We eventually arrived downtown, and
tried to find some banks to grab some American Dollars, since Cancun
pretty much only runs on US currency, strange I know. We found some
dodgy street bank that charged the most obscene service charges I've
ever seen, and we finally had our money. I thought we were talking to
one of the street sellers for Coco Bongo, and when he informed me it
was only $20 for open bar, I was pretty pumped and ready to get at
it, but then after paying the man, we soon found out that he was
taking us to Coco's which is a shitty little bar that's just across
the street from Coco Bongos...damnit! But since we had already paid,
we hung out there for awhile, laughing at numerous drunk foreigners,
including one very very very large women dancing on the bar with one
little skinny dude who was just playing up the crowd...hilarious
times. After several drinks there, that were terribly watered down,
we decided to head over to Coco's for the crazy shows that awaited
us. When we arrived, we found out it was $70 US to enter for all you
can drink (I seem to recall it being $50 last time I was around, damn
inflation!), but we paid our way in and were into the crazy and
always awesome nightspot.
We enjoyed several shows, many drinks,
and some bar dancing, where Karen managed to somehow spill her drink
on some Mexicans, and then drop the rest of her drink near the bar
staff, much to their anger ha ha ha. I've been to Coco's 3 times now,
and the place just never disappoints, it's always an amazing time.
The shows, the lighting, the crowd, and the ridiculous nature of how
jam packed and how much of a death trap the place is, in case it ever
catches fire, never ceases to amaze me. After about 3.5 hours there,
we were pretty drunk and ready to head back to the bus terminal to
catch the first bus back to Playa at 5:30 am...yeah, we pretty much
had to pull an all night partying to get the next bus. We arrived at
the station, and were on our way back to Playa, arriving at 6:30 am
to our hotel, tired and very drunk.
Because of the late late late night, we
ended up sleeping until around 3:30 in the afternoon, and
subsequently didn't get up to a whole lot that day, other than
eating, having a few quiet beers, and just relaxing. I think we ended
up spending about 2 hours in a Seafood restaurant called Karen's,
that had good internet, and pretty decent food, so this kind of
became our go to spot for breakfast/lunch over the next few days. We
were still pretty worn out from the Cancun night, so we just had a
quiet night in.
The next morning, I wandered down early
to grab a seat at a good Canadian sports bar where they were going to
be showing the NFL Games, while Karen slept. I figured I would be
able to at least watch half of the early games before we wandered
over to Cozumel for some snorkeling and exploring that day, as we had
planned. When I arrived at the bar, I happened to be wearing my Rider
jersey, and the one staff member immediately told me where I could
sit to watch the Rider game, which I hadn't even realized was on ha
ha. I ended up sitting in a spot, kind of hoping I could get a
Bengals game on as well, but had no such luck. I ended up meeting a
fellow Saskatchewan man, and we talked a fair bit about football,
ended up watching the entire game together, while also tracking the
numerous NFL games on. Poor Karen showed up, and after watching the
first batch of games, and having several beers, I was kind of set on
just hanging out and watching the afternoon games, as well. She was a
pretty good sport about it, and just went and hung out at the beach
for awhile, until it started to rain, and returned and ended up
spending the rest of the day there with me.
A few curious passersby did stop to ask
us a bit about the Canadian football game, and one fairly obnoxious
drunk American told us that it appeared the end zone was shaped
differently, like a Hexagon. We insisted that it was shaped like a
rectangle and wouldn't take our answer as the truth, and I had to
laugh when the old Saskatchewan guy said “yeah you're definitely
right cause you're an American” ha ha ha. Quite a few people came
and went throughout the day, but we ended up chatting for quite
awhile with an older couple from the Washington DC area who were
pretty friendly, and hung out with them for several hours, while also
listening to the one obnoxious American talk about his life and how
he was living in Cancun and how is only goal in life was “to be
awesome”...interesting fellow indeed. Eventually it was getting a
bit late, and the American couple gave us a bottle of Grey Goose
vodka that they had barely touched, since they wouldn't be able to
take it on their flight home the next morning, and we said our
goodbyes and just went to find a late night taco stand that the
locals all eat it. It was a pretty delicious spot, and after our late
night dinner, we just sauntered back to the room for the night,
intent on at least doing something productive the next day.
We made an effort to get up at a decent
hour the next day, and catch a ferry over to Cozumel around 1 pm,
unfortunately, we somehow managed to miss it by about 10 minutes, and
had to wait until 3 pm to get the next ferry over. In that time, we
booked some snorkeling tour for $25 US, and just lounged around the
beach a bit more, killing time and enjoying the sun. The ferry ride
took about 1 hour to get over, and it was a fairly smooth sailing
experience. We arrived, and didn't really know where the hell to find
the tour group that was supposed to be taking us out to do the
snorkeling, but eventually figured it out. We were put into a
smallish glass bottom boat, insert funny sexual joke here, and were
on our way to 3 snorkeling spots. To be honest, the spots were pretty
crappy, and we really didn't see a whole lot of interesting things,
especially after having dived in some fairly incredible spots in SE
Asia, but beggars can't be choosers. I think next time I head back to
Cozumel, I'll try and find some decent Scuba diving instead. After the first snorkel, I had noticed the guide go down to the ocean floor and spear some fish and bring it back up, and then he passed it around the boat. As a joke Karen put the bucket in my face and started to tip it and I played along and pretended to try and eat the fish, but then the guide started getting all worked up and saying "no no no, poisonous!!" ha ha ha..oops, apparently it was a lionfish, but it was a dark black colour, and it wasn't anything like that poisonous fish I'd seen in Asia...oops...other than that, we just finished up our uneventful dives, had a few cervezas on the boat ride back to the ferry terminal, and that was it for the snorkel tour.
 |
| Lovely Playa del Carmen |
 |
| 100% British class |
 |
| The Beach in front of Senor Frogs |
 |
| Don't quit your dayjob |
 |
| Cozumel ferry approaching |
 |
| Playa del Carmen from the Ferry pier |
 |
| Cozumel |
After arriving back from the snorkeling, we just wandered down to one of the sports bars to watch the Monday night NFL game, more American football for poor Karen! I had wanted to go back to the Canadian place since they had good internet too, but she wanted to try a new spot that had the game on so we went there. The poblano chile chicken burger was quite tasty, although it was the first "non Mexican" dish I had eaten since arriving, but it was decent enough. We hung out there for a few hours, had a few more cervezas, and called it another night.
The next day we wanted to head off to San Cristobal de Las Casas, which is in the Chiapas state in Southern Mexico. There was a night bus we could take, so we bought that ticket for the 9 pm bus, and decided to head down to a small town called Tullum, just south of Playa. Rather than taking the bus, we found the "colectivos", which are mini vans that depart for places once they are filled up with people, and we were on our way to Tullum. Tullum is known for it's scenic ruins, right on the coastline, as well as being a quirky and fun little beach town.
We arrived, and popped by a nice little restaurant for some breakfast before heading down to the beach. This was actually the first real "desayaunos" (Spanish for breakfast) for us, other than the free breakfasts at the hostel in Mexico City, that we were actually up early enough for. I ended up having some tasty huevos Mexicanos, with a generous topping of salsa picante, before heading down towards the ruins. After having visited 2 ruin sites, we kind of figured we didn't need to actually enter a third spot once we saw we would have to pay to enter, so we just wandered on down to the beach, and spent a few hours relaxing in the tranquil and quiet area. There was hardly anyone on the beach, so it was a nice spot to come hang out for a day or two if you want to avoid the crowds, and still get some amazing beach scenery. After a few hours down there, we decided to head back into town, but not without at least stopping for a quick cerveza to cool down, as the Yucatan temperatures are hot hot hot! After our beer, it was back into town to wander around a bit, do some last minute shopping, and then catching our late night bus to San Cristobal.
 |
| Huevos Mexicano |
 |
| A big Corona for a big boy |
 |
| Amazing Tulum |
 |
| Quiet, white, and beautiful...like me! |
When we purchased the bus tickets, the average time to arrive in San Cristobal was about 12-14 hours, so we were in for a long ass ride. Of course, as it normally goes, the bus ride took much much longer than that. Karen had the window seat and was at least able to sleep somewhat well during the ride, but I was fairly uncomfortable and really didn't have much of a chance to sleep. I had to laugh early on during the bus ride, when I noticed how difficult it was for people to open the toilet door, as people would pull and pull and struggle with it, and I happened to be seated right next to it of course. So when it was Karen's turn to go, she struggled and managed to get inside, but couldn't seem to figure out how to lock it properly and as soon as we hit a bump, the door went flying open, much to her embarrassment and my laughter, but she quickly managed to shut it. The ride was fairly uneventful, until we made a stop around the 14 hour mark, and I figured it must be San Cristobal, so I told Karen we should look at getting off, and gave her the luggage tags to take to the bus driver, who looked at them and asked if she wanted to still to go to San Cristobal, and laughed and said it was our next stop.
Well after being on the bus for 14.5 hours already, I figured the next stop would be soon, but nope, it wasn't for another 4 hours! So 18.5 hours later, we were finally in San Cristobal. We hadn't really looked at booking a place or anything, and found some guy at the bus station who was offering private rooms at a hostel for 200 pesos, so we figured we would go and check it out. The place was alright enough, and we settled in there, having a little nap, since I was drained. We eventually wandered out into the lovely and charming city, and walked around, stopping for some coffee and crepes to hold us over until we could find a spot for dinner. The city itself is a very colourful and happy little place, with lots of little restaurants, mezcal bars, cafes, and tons of poor people begging for money or trying to sell things to tourists. It's kind of interesting how it doesn't matter what country you go to, but the local salespeople just key in on you when they see your white skin and come rushing up to try and make a sale, even while you're tucked away in a restaurant somewhere. They never seem to ask the locals to buy anything, guess we are all just associated with money when we have white skin ha ha...crazy. So many little kids would come up and speak in Spanish, asking for who knows what, so it was a bit easier to say no, since we could just say we didn't understand them.
After being harassed for awhile at the cafe, we made our way down to the city centre and wandered around there for awhile, before finding a restaurant that happened to serve Chiles en Nogada, which I had seen advertised in Mexico City a few times, and was curious about. I later found out on a tour in Mexico City that it's a dish typically only served in September to celebrate Mexican Independence Day.
http://www.esgamex.com/recetas/chilenogada/chilenogada.htm. Horacio had recommended the dish as well, so I figured I would give it a try, as I'm trying to eat all the different Mexican dishes that I can. We settled in, and found they also had Tamales on the menu, and I always think of some cartoon character or pop culture reference where someone would yell "that's a hot tamale!", so I had to have an order of those too! The tamales were really good, but the Chile con Nogada wasn't all that I had hoped for. It was a bit of a weird dish to begin with, considering it was a pepper inside a creamy sweet sauce, so it kind of had a weird mixture of tastes....I suppose I should at least try it once more before giving up on it completely, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. After our quiet little dinner, we just wandered back to the hostel, and met a few other travellers, who were hanging out discussing a wide variety of topics including particle accelerators in Switzerland (who says backpackers don't have intellectual conversations), Mexican cuisine, and of course the sights and sounds of San Cristobal. Karen and I hung out with them for a few hours, but most people had to be up at an early hour, so it was a pretty early night again, especially considering how tired we were from the long ass bus ride.
We were up the next morning to catch the very end of the free breakfast offered by the hostel, which wasn't really much to write about, and tried to figure out our next 2 days and what to do. We decided to just wander around the city this day, and sort out a few things, so after our breakfast was finished, we were on our way to do a tour of the city. San Cristobal is such a charming city, whether by day or night, and is easily walkable in a few hours. We spent the next several hours wandering around the narrow cobblestone streets, visiting small shops, churches, restaurants, and squares. While wandering around we did manage to find a quiet little shop selling tours in the area, and found the price to be 100 pesos cheaper than the same trip booked from our hostel, so we decided to book the Lake and Waterfall tour for the next day, and save ourself some money. After getting that all sorted, we tried to find a place to rent some bikes, but were unable to find a spot so we just wandered around on foot. After finding a quiet little restaurant with 10 peso tacos and gorditas, and stuffing ourselves, we continued to wander from one end of the city, climbing up a hill to find a church and a view of the surrounding area, and then making our way to the other end of the city where there was another hill with a church at the summit.
 |
| Colonial mountain city of San Cristobal |
 |
| Narrow streets |
 |
| Near perfect camouflage |
 |
| Gorditas |
 |
| Sopas |
 |
| Sweets and Artisan Market |
 |
| damn good gardeners |
 |
| Path to God (if you're Roman Catholic I guess) |
 |
| A simple house |
 |
| San Cristobal from the Church on the West |
After our nice little tour, we ended up back at the hostel for awhile, but it was pretty quiet, so we just laid in bed, had a little nap, and then wandered around the city for awhile until I could find a bar that was playing the Thursday night NFL game, which ended up being some English pub with fairly high prices, but it worked and we had a nice dinner and a few beers before heading back and trying to catch some sleep since we had to be up early for our tour the next morning. We were up and ready to be picked up at 9 am, but of course the bus was a bit late. Once we got inside, we were in for a long day of driving. We arrived at some caves about an hour and a bit into the drive, and realized why the tour was a bit cheaper, as the driver only spoke Spanish, so all the directions and info he was giving was a bit difficult to understand for obvious reasons. Fortunately there was an American woman who spoke fluent Spanish and English, so she acted as our interpreter. We wandered around the cave for a little bit, and it was nice, although after having visited the caves in Borneo, it wasn't quite as awe inspiring, but it still made for a nice little stop.
 |
| Caves of Chiapas...no bats though :( |
After our little tour of the cave, it was back in the vehicle for another 2 hours of driving or so (sleep time for Karen who seems to sleep all the time on all the public transport), until we arrived at the waterfalls. We began climbing up the walkway to the falls, stopping at a few nice spots to take some photos. I happened to notice several dudes walking around shirtless, and was poking a bit of fun at them, asking where the beach was. I later realized that they were simply soaked from going to the top of the waterfalls where you get absolutely drenched (although I brought a rain jacket for the day so I managed to stay relatively dry). Seeing some parts of the river and the tiny little falls along the way really reminded me of an area by Luang Prabang, Laos that I visited back in the winter last year, and Karen had also been there and agreed with my assessment. We eventually made our way up to the top, and I briefly considered taking the zip line across, but it was super cheap and I don't have the highest faith in safety standards in countries other than Canada, Australia etc. After checking out the 3 waterfalls, we were back on our way down and into the van to head on towards our next stop.
 |
| Reminds me of Laos a lot |
 |
| Waterfall obviously |
 |
| Always enjoy foreign danger signs |
 |
| Cheesy Tourist photo |
Another hour and half or so in the van, with hunger pains striking, we arrived at one of the first lakes we would be stopping at. It was a nice little lake, with a small island that we could access by boat if we chose, but we didn't. After seeing the lake for a bit, we stopped into one of the little food shacks for some very tasty tacos made on a wood fired stove, mmmm. We were a bit rushed to finish our meal though, but then realized that several people from the van were taking their sweet time, and that we didn't have to actually rush like we did. We were back in the van for some more driving, and stopped at a few more lakes in the area, including one close to the Guatemalan border...it was pretty tempting to just grab a boat and cross over, to enter country number 60, but I'll be there soon enough. After seeing the other pretty lakes, including one that had signs asking people to not wash their cars (a bunch of soap was evident on the lake, so obviously people didn't take heed of the warning), we were back on our way to San Cristobal. One thing I really noticed on the long ride back was how many speed bumps there are in Mexico. Seriously, I've never seen roads with so many speed bumps...it seems like they built the highways, and then people just built shops and villages along the highway to sell goods, which forced the government to install speed bumps to slow down the traffic through these towns.....they are present like every 20 kms or so it seems...very hard to make it very far in a decent amount of time!
 |
| Tasty lunch |
 |
| Very simple kitchen |
 |
| Guatemala off in the distance...country #60 so close by |
We finally arrived back in San Cristobal around 8 pm in the evening, after a very long day. Since we had a very early flight the next morning, and Karen hadn't tried Mezcal yet, we found a restaurant near some Mezcal bars, had a quiet dinner and then stopped for some Mezcal at the bar. For those of you wondering what Mezcal is, it's basically Tequila, except that it is made in States other than Jalisco. For a drink to be called Tequila, it can only be made in the Jalisco province. So basically all Tequilas are Mezcals, but not all Mezcals are Tequilas. We made our way back to the hostel and caught a few hours of sleep and were up at 4:30 am to catch a cab to the bus station to catch our 5 am bus to the airport blah. We arrived, and checked in, then found some comfy seats to sleep on in the main area of the airport, but then Karen was cold and wanted to go into the departure area, hoping it would be warmer. Well, it was neither warmer, and they had worse chairs for sleeping! Damn women ha ha. But seriously, why do airports put those damn handrails on most chairs, discouraging any good spots to catch some sleep while waiting!?
I was up to about 3 hours of sleep by this point, and we boarded our plane and slept the whole way arriving in Mexico City around 9:30 am. Karen's flight wasn't until 6:45 pm so she had lots of time to kill, but I decided to just spend the day at the airport with her, rather than heading to my hostel, since it can be pretty crappy to have to spend so much time in the airport alone. I noticed that my bag smelled like tequila, and upon checking inside, realized the lid hadn't held so well, so several of my shirts were soaked in tequila, damnit! Hopefully it will keep away the bugs :) After hanging out in a restaurant for quite awhile, we stopped by a pub for our last beers together, and met a rather friendly local man, who ended up taking a liking to us. He ended up leaving me his contact info, and invited me to come visit his vacation home with his family in the upcoming weeks. Being random and always up for a good story, I tentatively accepted his invitation. After several beers, it was about 1:45 hours before Karen's flight, so we said our final sad goodbyes and she was on her way. I decided to try taking the metro back to the hostel, and found it surprisingly easy to navigate my way back. I love the metro here as it is so cheap and it's always entertaining as there are people always selling things. The guys selling mixed cds are probably my favourite, as they come on for one stop, play some tunes with their cool little stereo bags, and then exit. Here's a fine example of one.
Metro Madness
I sat down to relax a bit and catch up on some writing, when about 30 minutes after I had arrived at the hostel, I looked up and saw Karen...thinking she had come back to check for her memory card that she had forgotten at the hostel, I then realized that she had likely missed her flight, and sure enough, she had. She wasn't in the greatest mood obviously, so I comforted her, and we tried to call some numbers and get her a flight back the next day, but none of the numbers the people at the airport had given her were working, as they were either out of service, or else European numbers, and the offices weren't open. Poor girl. So we ended up giving up for the night, and just heading out to grab some dinner at our favourite spot El Huequito and calling it a night since we were exhausted, and she wanted to get up at 5 am to start calling the European numbers and sort things out. Unfortunately they were no help, and told her she would have to just go back to the airport to try and sort out a new flight home.
Sunday came and went, with the entire day being spent watching football in the hostel and just relaxing and keeping a low profile. I had actually come back to Mexico City to try and arrange to have some dental surgery done by my friend Horacio, so I was trying to get a hold of him to get that done, and finally heard back from him that he would be able to do it on Tuesday, so I had some time to kill. Karen and I spent our last night together, and the next day she was off to the airport, but since I didn't have much to do, and she wasn't sure if she would have enough money for a flight home if they wanted to charge her fully, I went along to help pay if need be, and just to keep her company. We spent about 45 minutes with the AeroMexico staff, before they finally sorted it all out and were able to get her on a flight home that evening, with a financial penalty of course. After getting that all booked, we spent the next few hours eating, drinking coffee, and enjoying our last few hours together. She managed to make her flight, and I was once again alone and back to the hostel.
The next day I was up early to head off to my surgery with Horacio, although he was over an hour and 20 minutes picking me up. I've noticed a trend with him, he's at least 30 minutes late, if not more, although the traffic in Mexico City, especially downtown is absolutely terrible (it took him 20 minutes to go around the block the one day). Plus I didn't have a phone with me yet, so I had to check my FB messages to see if he had said anything about it being cancelled, but he finally showed up and we were on our way. He had his fellow dentist there to help with the surgery, and I was on my way, first having the local anesthetic put into my lower gums and the upper palate of my mouth. Then the procedure started with Horacio cutting skin from the roof of my mouth, and creating a graft and sewing it onto the gum line of my lower front tooth. Due to the anesthetic, it was all painless and it was wrapped up within an hour and 20 minutes. I then had to head off to get some prescription drugs and wait an hour or so, before a final checkup and sending me on my way. Unfortunately that hour and a bit was absolutely awful, as the bleeding wouldn't stop and the pain was starting to kick in...I swallowed a lot of blood and ended up in the bathroom spitting out blood for quite awhile, it wasn't a pleasant sight!
Eventually he was done with his other patients and was able to get me back in, but was still having trouble stopping the bleeding, so he had to put in a splint on the top of my mouth, but to do that, he had to again freeze the area, and with the skin already raw and painful, having another needle up there hurt like a bitch!! Once it was frozen (and with the help of popsicles to cool the mouth and help slow the bleeding ha ha ha), they finally were able to get the bleeding to stop, although once I was out of the chair, my Argentina soccer jersey was a bloody mess (I think Horacio might not have made me bleed as much had I worn my Mexican soccer jersey instead ha ha), but I was on my way back to the hostel to lay down and to start the recovery. There was wrestling that night, however, and if I was feeling better, Horacio told me to come along with the gang, so sure enough, rather than staying in and resting, I was off to the wrestling that night, albeit on an empty stomach since I still couldn't really eat anything!
Fortunately, the wrestling was once again super awesome! And it was cheap night, as well, so for 100 pesos, we got to enjoy several hours of hilarious and fun entertainment. Unfortunately, due to the medication, I wasn't able to enjoy beers with the rest of the group, very sad times! Plus I was limited on what I could eat, so Horacio was watching over me like a hawk, until a vendor came by with some noodles that weren't hot and weren't spicy, so he allowed me to have those ha ha. Other than that, it was just another fun evening, watching the acrobatics and shenanigans of the Mexican wrestlers (including one moment where one of the midget mascots entered the ring to try and strike one of the wrestlers, and the wrestler kicked the midget so hard that he flew out of the ring!! I almost pissed myself laughing!!). After it was all wrapped up, it was back to the hostel, and time for more painkillers to try and sleep.
The next day I was in a fair bit of pain still, and basically just bummed around the hostel for the day, other than wandering out to find cold and soft food to eat throughout the day. Since I was also on medication, it was a bit more difficult to not enjoy a refreshing Mexican cerveza! I also wasn't allowed to eat any spicy food, which is a huge bummer for me, as I love love love the hot food here! Such is life though. So basically it was just a veg out day, with nothing exciting happening.
The next day was slightly more eventful, as I got to know the German girl in my room a bit, and after sleeping in and continuing to heal, I found out that she was going to go check out the Anthropology Museum. Several people I spoke to had said it is one of the best museums in the world, so I figured I may as well go and do something productive, so we found our way to the metro, and subsequently arrived at the station nearest the Museum. Unfortunately, I didn't quite read the map so correctly, and the exit we took ended up leading us to a street where we turned the wrong way and wandered about 10 minutes in the wrong direction, before Bertina stopped to ask for directions (sometimes it's best to have a girl along, as I am too stubborn to ask for directions typically, and get very very lost, while women are more willing to ask right away), and we were directed in the right direction. We found our way to the Museum, and I was excited to see that they also had a special Samurai exhibit, as I love Japanese culture! We toured around the museum for a few hours, and I enjoyed the experience a fair bit, even though I'm not a huge museum guy. There was a lot of very impressive artifacts from the ancient Indigenous people's times, including one of the most famous if not most famous symbol of Mexico, the Stone of the Sun. We finished off the museum tour with a wander around the Samurai exhibit, which was really quite exciting, as the armour and weapons of those warriors is quite incredible and intimidating!
After wandering around until the museum closed, we stopped and grabbed some fresh fruit (easy to eat for me) and decided to walk for awhile down the massive Paseo de Reforma, with a necessary stop at the Angel of Independence, where some of the Heroes of the fight for Independence are buried. It was a bit of a fun adventure getting across the busy traffic circle and onto the landmark, although not quite as bad as the round abouts in Saigon, Vietnam! After a quick wander around, we were on our way again, but decided to stop for a cold drink and to sit down, since Bertina was having some migraines. I had to laugh at two people in the Starbucks, who were apparently hard core into their business, as they even brought a plug-in landline phone!! What the hell ha ha.
After our stop and chat, we continued walking and trying to find a metro station along the road, but as we got further and further down the road, I began to recognize where we were, and it wasn't in fact all that much further to just walk all the way back to the hostel, so it made for a nice 1.5 hour walk anyways, and we got back just in time to avoid the upcoming rainstorm. The rain actually struck every single day that week, pretty ridiculous and wet, providing a great breeding ground for the mosquitoes, which seem to have made a nest somewhere in the hostel, as I have been absolutely hammered with mosquito bites every day, damn buggers! After returning to the hostel, I just wandered over to my favourite restaurant El Huequito for some tasty chicken and guacamole, and then had a quiet night watching a movie.
The next day I was still in a fair bit of pain, but thankful for having the painkillers! I had been exchanging emails with Edmundo, the older man I had met at the airport with Karen, and he popped by the hostel and we went out for lunch and a coffee. It was another good opportunity to continue practicing speaking Spanish. I can have a fairly basic conversation, and understand the general frame of certain people's conversations, but of course the vocabulary is still severely lacking. After a few hours of hanging out, he invited me over to his house to meet his family, and since I had no plans, I accepted the offer, and we were on our way. The usually tell you to not trust strangers, but I find most of my random and fun adventures are with complete strangers, so off I went. We arrived and I spent another few hours with the family, having small and broken conversations, but enjoying myself quite immensely. His wife ended up making a delicious dinner for us as well, and I had my first taste of cooked cactus (Nopales) with the meal, mmm :) After dinner and relaxing, I was pretty tired, and made my way back to the hostel to head to bed at a decent hour, as I had a tour booked for the next morning.
The next morning I was woken up by the staff, asking if I was still going on the tour and if I could pay the fee, earlier than I was told I would have to be up damn! I grabbed a quick breakfast, and we were on our way, with a very small group of 3. It was an older Argentine couple, and myself on the tour. They didn't really speak any English, and the guide had to do the tour in both languages, although she did try and speak Spanish more often, just so that I could try and learn a bit more throughout the day. Our first stop of the day was the National Autonomous University of Mexico campus and Stadium, where Horacio's favourite futbol team, the Pumas, play their home games. On our way to the University, we ended up taking the 2nd level of roadway, which provides a really great view of the massive organism that is Mexico City. It is really quite a treat to see this massive and sprawling city from the second level.
We arrived at the stadium, and were told about the mural on the side of it, done by the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. After a quick history lesson on the mural, we wandered over to the campus of the University, where another mural was pointed out to us, that is one of the most amazing pieces of art I've seen on my trip (which is quite incredible considering the places I've been!). This mural depicts the history of Mexico, and it would be impressive enough if it was painted, but it's actually completely made up of coloured stones, placed piece by piece. It took the artist over 2 years of travelling around Mexico to collect the coloured stones alone, and I'm sure countless more time to create the mural...amazing. After our stop at the University, it was onwards to Coyoacuan, which is a former Colonial town that has now been swallowed up by the immenseness of Mexico City. It's a pretty artistic and hipster like area, with quite a few nice shops, restaurants, and cafes. After a quick wander around there, we stopped by the Casa Azul (Blue House), which is the Frida Kahlo museum.
Frida Kahlo was married to Diego Rivera, and ended up surpassing him as a more famous artist. She has a fairly interesting life history, as you can read anywhere on the net. It was also fairly interesting to hear about some of the parties that Frida and Diego would host, where orgies and wild drunkeness often occurred! After spending about 45 minutes touring the house, checking out the artwork, old possessions, and enjoying the serenity of the garden, where the infamous parties were hosted, we were on our way again.
We made the drive over to Xochimilco, which is an ancient Aztec City, that is one of the Unesco World Heritage Sights. The area has an array of large canals, where one can rent a colourful boat, and float around, having a party, enjoying some romantic company, or just drinking, listening to music, and socializing. It's a fairly common area for Mexicans to come on weekends to have parties, as you can tie several boats together, and have a floating party. Some people even hold their weddings on the boats. Before boarding the boat, we grabbed some delicious quesadillas that were made with blue corn tortillas, mmmmm, and then we were on our way to the canal entrance and boarded our colourful boat. It was a pretty neat experience, although being on the boat with one couple was a bit weird, it would have been a lot better if a bunch of young people from the hostel were to gather and hang out for the day, but oh well, beggars can't be choosers! One of my favourite parts of the boating experience was how there were various musical boats floating around, and they would moor up to a boat and play music for the occupants. The marimba boat was probably my favourite, although the mariachi band boats were also pretty catch and cool.
After the boating experience, which was fairly short, we were back on our way into town, arriving back at the hostel around 6 pm. I hadn't slept a whole lot the previous night, so I was fairly tired, and still on medication, so I had to turn down the pub crawl requests from the crazy Mexican hostel staff. I just had another quiet night in, watching a movie.
The next day I was up pretty early, as Horacio was picking me up to take me to a futbol match of his favourite team, the UNAM Pumas. UNAM is the University where Horacio was schooled, and where he's currently teaching. He was about an hour and 20 minutes late than the time he had told me he would arrive (as per usual ha ha), and then we were on our way to pick up his g/f and head to the game. The first thing you really notice when pulling up to the stadium is how many police officers with riot gear there are! It's crazier than any of the games in South Africa during the World Cup were! Then when we parked the car, Horacio tells me that I have to leave my belt in the car, as I can't enter the stadium with one...ha ha what the hell! Apparently they've been used as weapons in the past, crazy Mexicans!
So sure enough, as we enter the stadium, I see the rack where people actually had to check their belts in, crazy. We entered the stadium, and sat in a section where Horacio seemed to know everyone, and settled in for the game. It was a fairly slow paced game, but the home team ended up coming out ahead, so all was good. Horacio's friends were all quite intrigued as to why I wasn't drinking beers with them, but of course the medication was the reason why...everyone drinks beer here! After the game was all wrapped up, we stopped by a street food vendor and has some huge tortillas, before a large rain storm kicked in, soaking pretty much everyone. After realizing the storm wasn't going to let up anytime soon, we just made a run for the car, and drove back in the torrential downpour. I ended up just spending the rest of the evening watching NFL, before heading out on a late night food run, unable to find any places open in the nearby area, until finally finding a tacqueria with some less than delicious tacos, and then just made my way back and called it a night.
 |
| UNAM Pumas match |
 |
| World Cups for everyone! |
 |
| Belt check in |
 |
| Street food oh yes! |
 |
| all that for $3 mmmm |
The next day was a rainy and quiet day, spent mostly recovering, sleeping, and a killing time until the football game that evening. I thought that by this point, I was completely healed up in my mouth, and decided to push the limits a bit more by eating foods that weren't completely cold, and even having a few potato chips, but then that backfired when I was watching a movie in bed, around 1:30 am and felt that awkward feeling liquid pooling in your mouth. Initially I thought it was just a bunch of saliva, but of course the taste of blood showed up shortly after, and it was off to the toilet, thinking it was just a tiny bit of blood, but no, it was bleeding a fair bit damnit! Nothing worse than laying in a bathroom stall of a hostel at 2 am, bleeding profusely from the mouth and struggling to stop the flow. I'm sure when the housekeeping lady came to clean out the rubbish bins in the morning, she must have thought someone had been murdered in there! Fortunately the bleeding eventually stopped, and I was able to get to sleep.
The next day was another very quiet day, as it was my last day of meds, and raining a fair bit again. It did end up being a very random and spontaneous day with regards to my chaotic life, as I was talking to my Brazilian friend Henrique about this New Years plans, and he told me he was going to Cuba. Being spontaneous as I am, within the next 20 minutes, I found a decent flight out of Colombia to go join him and 3 of his friends for 1 week in Cuba for Xmas and New Years! Welcome to the wonderful and crazy life of Reilly I guess :)
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful other than enjoying the first day being completely free of pain, so that was a definite bonus (especially since I had run out of painkillers). I ended up meeting a few cool Irish guys, and even enjoying my first beer with them, but wasn't up yet for heading out to check out the nightlife during the evening, and having another quiet night in bed. I had thought that I would actually be returning to Horacio this day to have my mouth checked out, but he didn't want me to come back until Thursday. It was a bit tough, as I could have headed south at this point to meet up with my mate Lenny, whom I had met in Vietnam, and who was in a rad place called Puerto Escondito, but alas I had to stick around the DF.
My first full day off the meds wasn't too particularly eventful again, other than researching some stocks, chatting with people at the hostel, and trying to get a little party started. After having several beers in the hostel with 2 American dudes, we decided to actually head out and try and find some nightlife. We wandered around the City Centre for a quick stop at a Mezcal bar nearby, to see if anything was happening there, but it was super dead. After a quick beer and some delicious Mezcal (we unfortunately didn't try the chicken flavoured Mezcal, damn), we were told to check out an area called La Condeza, where the nightlife is always happening on a Wednesday. The one American, Victor, was of Mexican heritage, and was fluent in Spanish, so that helped a fair bit trying to find a place to go and party.
We
stopped at a few pubs, and they were somewhat busy, but all the
groups of people all seemed to know each other. I have found that in
Mexico, people don't really go out to meet people as much, they are
more often just out with their friends, and stick within their
groups, so as a few Gringos, we didn't really end up meeting anyone
other than the serving staff. It was pretty funny to watch the other
American guy become frustrated that he couldn't meet any girls, as he
had these big ambitions of finding a Mexican girl for his last night
in Mexico. Victor and I, being a fair bit older, were quite content
to just have a good time and really not worry about meeting the
girls. We eventually ended up at a salsa night in a decently sized
nightclub, and he just kept trying and trying and failing, poor guy.
After several more mezcal shots, tequila shots, and cervezas, we were
all feeling pretty buzzed, and ready to head back to the hostel. We
hopped in a cab, and arrived at the hostel, and were getting out when
Victor decided he was going to stay and head off somewhere with the
cabby (they had been speaking in Spanish the whole time, so I didn't
know exactly all that was going on), and hilariously enough, the
cabby actually took him to some club and hung out with him in it...oh
the crazy Mexicans! Apparently it was a bit dodgy though.
After
getting to sleep around 4 am, I was awoken by a phone call from
Horacio at 8 am, and struggled to get out of bed and answer it. He
let me know he was on his way to pick me up shortly, and oooh was I
hurting! But I had to get up, and get the old teeth checked out, so I
threw in some mouth wash, brushed the teeth a little bit, and grabbed
a tiny bit of breakfast, before he showed up with his sister, and we
were on our way. I chatted with them a bit, attempting to describe my
evening in Spanish, but was struggling for words, that Mezcal sure
makes the head a bit foggy! We first had to drop his sister off at
the hospital, where Horacio's mother had had surgery on her injured
arm (another thing to add to his very busy schedule was helping care
for his mother while she was injured, wow the guy is busy!).
We
arrived at his office, and into the chair I went, for my checkup.
After removing the splint and checking out everything, he was happy
with the results, and my dental surgery was complete, with great
service and for an awesome price! He told me that they would possibly
be going out on Saturday, and that I should for sure stick around for
another UNAM Pumas game on Sunday, but I wasn't too sure if I would
be around, as I was meant to go to Morellos with Edmundo and his
family, so I tentatively said my goodbye and thanks, and was on my
way. I went straight back to the hostel, and tried to have a nap, but
there was a cute Argentine girl in the room (the first person to
sleep in the 10 person dorm room in the previous 6 nights!) so we had
a small conversation in Spanish since her English skills were poor,
although it isn't like my Spanish is any better. I was actually just
happy that someone else stayed in the room finally, as I was starting
to think the hostel staff was scared of putting people in there with
me ha ha ha.
After
chatting for awhile, she went off, and I tried to sleep, but just
couldn't fall back asleep, so I decided to head out and grab lunch at
the Opera Cafe, which Edmundo had pointed out to me the previous
week. It's a famous spot, as Pancho Villa had fired off his rifle
into the roof during the Mexican Revolution. It's now a very old
fashioned and trendy restaurant where a lot of artists, politicians,
and intellectuals like to meet for food and drink. The prices were
also fairly decent, so after a delicious meal and a bit of reading, I
was on my way to wander some more. I decided to go check out the
inside of the Cathedral on the Zocalo, and wow, I'm glad I did, as
the inside is an absolute stunning example of architecture, metal
work, artwork, and structural engineering. I've been in quite a few
churches around the World, and this one definitely is high on the
list in terms of beauty and structure. After the 25 minutes or so
admiring the structure, I decided to start wandering back to the
hostel, and I thought I had a good grasp on my general sense of
directions, but somehow ended up wandering down the wrong way of one
of the streets, and ending up quite a far ways away....ah well, it
had been awhile since I had been lost, so I was about due. When I
finally found my bearings, I arrived back and settled in for some
Thursday night football. Seriously, I love having 3 days a week now
of NFL, so great!
 |
| Cafe Opera |
 |
| Cathedral 2nd time's a charm |
 |
| Exploring the House of God |
 |
| All gold...Spanish gold! |
Victor
ended up joining me for most of the game, and bringing a few beers,
which we had, before he went off to find some nightlife, while I
declined the offer to join, and called it an early night, to try and
catch up on sleep again. The next day I ended up just wandering down
to grab some lunch and a coffee at one of the walking streets in the
Centre, and enjoyed some fine people watching, while also being
interviewed by some girl for her English class at University
(apparently I'm an obvious tourist without my beard or facial hair ha
ha). I was about to head back to find something to do at the hostel,
when Edmundo called me, and asked if I wanted to meet up. I still
wasn't sure if I was meant to be going to his 2nd
home or not, but when I showed up about 30 minutes later, he informed
me that he wouldn't be going until the next weekend, and that I was
still invited. Unfortunately, I had finally made the decision to
leave for Puerto Escondito, and had booked a flight for the Monday
afternoon, so I wasn't able to accept the offer.
We
ended up having our coffee, and then wandering down to a great beer
hall for a cerveza or two, that was packed with locals, and spent the
next several hours conversing in Spanish, eating, and enjoying the
beers, and even meeting some people at the tables next to us. It was
already after 9 pm, when Ed was asking if I liked to go to bars with
dancing or nightclubs, and I said that I liked going sometimes. So,
he decided he would take me to find a place, and we began wandering
down the streets, with him stopping to talk to people and asking
where a good place to go would be, even stopping young women and
introducing me to them and asking them where to go, hilarious! We
found two young and pretty girls who said they were going to a place
on Calle Regina, and that we should follow them, but it was such a
weird event, as Edmundo is 63 years old, I'm 28, and the girls were
22, and here we are, going to some bar. I think they were a bit
weirded out by the whole situation, and didn't seem all that
interested in having us there, so I didn't really talk to them very
much.
We
arrived at the place, and Edmundo just wandered right in, and I tried
to follow but was stopped by the doorman and told to wait in line ha
ha....apparently they didn't see him or else the older generation
just don't have to wait. Eventually I was inside, and there was
Edmundo with 4 beers and some snacks ha ha...apparently he was up for
hanging out at this nightclub! The girls were still outside, I think
leery about coming in with us or something, but they eventually
showed up and were again sort of reluctant to accept the beers or
food from him...just a strange and hilarious event.
After
trying to talk to them for awhile, and not really communicating well,
I just ended up hanging with Edmundo most of the time, while he
continued chatting up strangers and meeting new people, and trying to
set me up with more women ha ha ha...what a crazy character.
Eventually he sort of forced me into talking to a girl at a table
with a couple, and she spoke English quite well, so we were able to
have a good conversation, and flirt a fair bit. She had mentioned she
also spoke French and loved French, so I was speaking to her in that
language for awhile too. I noticed she was quite active on her smart
phone, and would keep going for smoke breaks, and I later had a good
laugh over what was actually happening.
Anyway,
I hung out with her, and her two friends while Edmundo kept talking
and making new friends with all the young people, who were then
curious about me and kept coming up to introduce themselves, so I
felt like a bit of a celebrity really! Eventually, it was late, but
Edmundo was still there, but he fell asleep at a table around 2:30
am, and the staff were going to ask him to leave, but we let them
know he was with us and continued to let him stay ha ha ha ha! Around
3 am, the place was shutting down, and I wasn't too sure where it was
going with the girl, as she had seemed quite into me, and had added
me to Facebook and told me to come hang out with her the next day, so
we got outside and she kind of started to wander off, saying it was
nice to meet me and such and that she would see me soon, yet she
still hadn't given me her number, so I finally got her to punch it in
my phone, and she told me she was just going home, so Edmundo and I
went wandering off, I put him in a cab, and it was already 3:15 am
when he went home....what a guy! I just made my way back, laughing
about going to a nightclub with a 63 year old grandfather.
I
woke up the next day, and was supposed to go and meet Edmundo and his
family for 2 pm, but he pushed it back to 3:30 pm, so I had a bit of
time to kill, before taking the metro to meet up with him.
Unfortunately there was a huge futbol match going on that evening, El
Clasico, which has Mexico City's largest team, Olympic vs Guadalajara
Chivas (Hugo's gays as Horacio calls them) so the metro was
absolutely packed....packed to the point where I couldn't even try
and squeeze into the first few carriages, with people pushing and
shoving and running to wedge in...quite the sight...once I finally
was able to squeeze into one, I could really feel and experience the
massive population attempting to use the Mexican City's public
transport..wow. Fortunately, by the time I arrived at my stop, it had
cleared out slightly, so it didn't take much pushing to escape. I
eventually found Edmundo, his wife, and daughter, and we were on our
way to a restaurant for a nice little lunch.
After
having lunch, and speaking mostly Spanish (with me understanding a
decent amount, but still struggling to speak), Edmundo picked up the
tab and we were back into a taxi to go watch his son Sergio play an
American Football game. It was a rather interesting thing to see
grown men, who weren't professionals, putting on the pads and out
playing, but it's a fairly big sport in the country, so we spent an
hour there catching the game, which Sergio's team ended up winning.
After
the game, we went back to Edmundo's house, and just basically hung
out for a few hours, chatting, watching El Clasico on tv, and
“descansar” (resting). Edmundo was doing surprisingly well,
considering he had woken up around 8:30 in the morning. After a few
hours, I decided to head back, and say my goodbyes to the kind man
and his lovely family.
 |
| Just another day in the Mexico City Metro |
 |
| Tough to find much breathing room |
 |
| Edmundo and I |
I
arrived back to the hostel, and ended up spotting a Japanese guy from
my room who I had chatted with a bit the previous day (and whom was
enamored with my Japanese tattoo and had to take a photo to show his
friends), and he was heading out with an Israeli guy for a bite to
eat, so I tagged along. We found a sushi bar, and hung out there for
a bit, then went wandering around to see if we could find some
nightlife, and ended up in some sheesha bar that had free cover and a
life band. We figured we could sit outside, where there was a nice
female dancer dancing (as opposed to the inside bar that had a male
stripper/dancer dude grinding on both men and women alike) ha ha, but
then found out we would have to pay a hefty service charge to sit
outside, booooo. So we ended up grabbing a table inside, and tried to
ignore the male dancer. It took forever to get service, so we
eventually went up to the bar when one of the server guys stopped us
and told us we had to get service at the table. Of course that took
anothe 15 minutes before he stopped by, so we only ended up having
one beer each cause it was taking so long, and then the asshole tried
to put two extra beers on the tab, which I argued over, then he was
trying to say that we had to tip 15% on the bill, and that we owed 80
pesos (the beers were 30 pesos each = 60 pesos + 15% tip = 69 pesos)
but the asshole couldn't do math properly and kept saying it was 80
pesos...so I relented, as the damn place had security guards in front
of the doors and wouldn't let you leave unless the server escorted
you. Needless to say, I wouldn't go back to the place.
We
were all pretty tired by this point, so we just decided to head back
to the hostel for the night. I was up early the next day to be picked
up by Horacio to head to my 2nd Pumas match. There was an
English girl at the hostel who had expressed interest in going, so
she tagged along and we were on our way. This ended up being a fairly
heavy day in cerveza consumption, as we picked up 28 of them for
before/after the game, to be shared amongst his friends, and then of
course had several inside the stadium, as well. The match was a bit
more exciting than the previous week's match, with more goals and end
to end action (they were playing Monterrey who is a decent team and
had won the North American version of the Champions League the
previous season). After several hours of gorgeous but hot weather,
many cervezas, and another win for the home team, which was followed
by the ever present “fire the coach, fire the coach” chant by the
home team (yes, they want to fire the coach, even after they win
games because he used to be with an arch rival team, and the fans
expect their coaches and players to only be within the Pumas
organization their whole careers ha ha).
We
arrived outside, enjoyed the huge celebrating crowd, and made our way
to Horacio's car for a few beers and laughs with the others, before
being kicked out of the parking lot and making our way to some taco
place. We had several more beers there, and some very spicy tacos,
which even brought some tears and sweat to Horacio's face (although
it didn't affect me as much, much to the surprise of the Mexicans).
We grabbed cups to go, and were on our way back to the hostel to drop
off the English girl, who had previous engagements for the afternoon,
while we were all heading to the wrestling again! On the way home,
Horacio was speeding a bit, and hit a huge bump, which basically
caused me to spill the entire contents of my to go cup all over the
roof, myself, and his labcoat hanging on the back of his
chair...oops!
We
arrived at the stadium, which was a new location, compared to the
previous 2 wrestling events, and more of a cheap and dirty
atmosphere, as it was a taller and caged in area, similar to a fight
in a pit or something. The evening was already getting pretty foggy
by this point, but again it was entertaining as hell, with midgets
being used as props, once again, and two guys even having their masks
torn off (which means they can't wrestle with a mask ever again). It
was super good fun, and a few more beers drunk, before heading
outside for one last Michelada, and then home time to catch the tail
end of the Monday night game. It was sad to say goodbye to Horacio
and his g/f, as they were so super friendly and great hosts during my
time in Mexico City. I ended up hanging out with a few people in the
hostel, and wandering out with the Israeli guy for a late bite to
eat, before trying to finish off my leaky bottle of tequila before I
left the hostel the next day, but couldn't find any helpers really.
 |
| Safari Man and myself at the Pumas game |
 |
| The crowd celebrating another big win while yelling "Fire the Coach"....I would thin you would do that after a loss not a win ha ha |
 |
| Horacio couldn't handle the spice ha ha |
 |
| Taking it out on his friend |
 |
| One last Michelada for the road |
I
ended up calling it a night, and struggling to get up the next
morning to head to the airport. I decided to take the public
transportation, which almost ended up being a disaster, as it
normally takes about 15 to 20 minutes to get to the airport, and I
left the hostel with over 2 hours to go, yet there were numerous
delays, and I didn't get to the airport until 1 hour before my flight
then barely made the lineup in time to check my bags (the lady at the
counter even asked her supervisor if I was okay for time), but I was
okay. I was all checked in, exhausted, but ready to head down to
Puerto Escondito to meet up with my mate Lenny.
I
arrived in gorgeous and sunny Puerto Escondito, and of course the
first thing I noticed was how wet and smelly my bag was.....damn
tequila bottle completely drained ha ha ha! So now I had a bag full
of tequila and blood soaked clothing to do! Fortunately I had a small
number of shirts that remained dry, so I didn't have to rush off to
do laundry right away. I arrived at the Tower Bridge hostel, and
didn't see Lenny anywhere, and just ended up plopping down on the
couch and relaxing a bit, as I was quite exhausted from the weekend
of crazyness in Mexico City.
Upon
checking into the place, the owner arrived shortly, and could be
described as absolutely fucking nuts, for lack of better terms. He
immediately introduced himself, asked where I was from, and if I
liked to play football that afternoon. I asked him if it was American
Football or Soccer, and then he scoffed at the idea of me even asking
about the American Football. He then asked if I had paid for my room
yet, which I had, and told him, then probably about 15 minutes later
he again asked where I was from and if I had paid for my room
yet...ha ha what a nut. So I ended up chatting with these Americans
for awhile, and had to laugh at the one guy's story about spending
the night in Mexican jail, as he had snuck into a hotel to wash some
clothing of his, and when he was leaving the hotel, they thought he
was stealing guests' clothing and called the police so they ended up
throwing him in jail ha ha ha....he said it actually wasn't all that
bad though, as he ended up playing cards with a few of the guys in
there, and a girl who was in the cell across from him was flirting
with him and gave her his number ha ha ha, plus they were quite well
fed! In the end they let him go in the morning, cleared him of any
wrong doing, and he was back at the hostel...funny times.
Eventually
as the afternoon wore on, and I didn't have a nap or anything, I
succombed to the idea of going to play soccer that afternoon with the
owner, and a few of the guys from the hostel. We went outside to the
owner's truck, and tried to hop inside, as he had plenty of space,
but then he told us no, get in the back of the truck....so we figured
he was going to be picking people up or something, so we hopped in
the back, while he let his dog hop in the king size cab. We started
driving, and he opened the windows and started blaring some awesomely
terrible 70s and 80s music, singing the whole way. He was flying down
the highway, and it was actually a bit scary in the back of that
truck! We eventually stopped and turned down some super bumpy road,
and he kicked his dog out, and then started driving again...so we're
all wondering what the hell is going on here with the dog, and I
joked around that because of his crazy driving, the dog asked to be
let out because it was car sick.
We
continued down this super bumpy road, being flung about, and
eventually arrived at the pitch, where we warmed up a bit. I looked
over to see the owner, Steve, blaring his music out of his truck, and
doing vicious leg kicks, karate chops, situps with punches, and
getting super psyched up!! I was already terrified of what the guy
was going to be like on the pitch ha ha ha! Then he asked us to start
warming him up in the net, as he was a goaltender, and told us about
the previous week where he split open his head on the posts, making
saves during practice ha ha ha, what a nutjob! Eventually a whole
whack load of Mexicans showed up, all of whom were quite good at
soccer, especially compared to the two American boys, myself, and the
one Englishman along for the game! While warming up, some guy
eventually came over and grabbed us and just told us to get off the
field and wait our turn...it was a pretty funny and unsubtle way of
telling us we weren't starting ha ha ha. (I had even tried to
compliment him on his hat, which was a Canada hat, but he brushed me
off ha ha ha)
So we
sat on the sidelines, not knowing what was going on until one of the
teams scored a goal, and all the opposing players came off the field
and signaled us to go on. I haven't really played a soccer match,
especially one on a full length field, so it was quite the event. I
basically don't know how to play a position, so I just ran up and
down and up and down roaming around...I think I touched the ball
twice, with poor results, and then the passes never came again, but
probably for the best ha ha ha. Eventually Steve had to leave, so we
went and joined him, even though people were still playing the game,
as we didn't really know how to get back, and we were pretty hot and
tired and getting our asses beat. So we again tried to hop into the
back of his truck, thinking no problem, but again he told us to get
into the back! Then he let the dog in, which had eventually made it's
way down to the field, and we were on our way. Then, to our surprise,
when we turned onto the highway, he started picking up random
Mexicans on the highway and letting them sit in his truck ha ha ha
ha!!! So we're flying down the highway, he's probably going 140 km/h
and we're all bouncing around in the back, hoping to hell he doesn't
hit anything, and we somehow make it back to the hostel unharmed.
When
we arrived back, Lenny was there, as he had gone out surfing just
minutes before I arrived, so we had our cool little reunion there,
and I found that there was a big crew of them starting up some beer
pong, so I joined their group, and it was definitely a stereotypical
Aussie crew, with a bunch of surfer dudes, drinking beers, trash
talking each other, and creeping on any girl that may have shown up
ha ha, but they were all a super cool lot. We played a few games of
beer pong and were all catching up, when I heard a bell ring from the
bar area, and Lenny told me I have to immediately come over and check
it out.
So I
get over there, and find out that if you ring the bell you buy the
whole bar a round of shots and have to do a speech...well, last time
a bell ringing opportunity presented itself to me was in Phuket,
Thailand, and I can never ever resist! So after getting that round of
shots, of course I eventually couldn't resist the urge to ring the
bell. I decided to do it with a bit more style than usual, as my head
had been perilously close to it at one point and the guys warned me
to watch my head and be careful, but of course I knew what I was
doing and gave it a big bang with my head, and thus the night begun!
It
was a pretty raucous night, with quite a few very very interesting
characters in the bar, including a few cute girls. One of them was
from Canada, and her parents were from Balcarres and Yorkton (two
small towns nearby my small hometown, small world!). When I had
finished my brief but heartfelt speech for the first bell ringing, I
noticed one of the girls smiling and staring at me a fair bit, so
eventually I wandered over and chatted with her, but not until pretty
much all the other guys had been talking to her and hitting on her.
We ended up getting along pretty good, and had some laughs about the
night and the next day's plans. Quite a few of the guys, and the bar
staff had decided they would head down to some place called San Juan
and head into the mountains there where they would eat mushrooms and
hang out with a Shaman or something along those lines, and basically
they had the whole hostel convinced to go with them. I said I'd tag
along, but would likely just hang out, and one of the rules was that
everyone had to bring a funny hat, so I figured I would take my
wrestling mask, but of course wasn't going to divulge that secret.
The New Zealand girl, Sandra, had spotted a sombrero behind the bar
and decided she would steal that and take that the next day. Things
were pretty wild and blurry for the rest of the night, but eventually
I climbed into the bed around 3 am, having to be up at 9 am the next
day to head off with the hostel crew.
Well
9 am rolled around, and I woke up, but I was just so damn exhausted
and since I'm not into mushrooms, I just decided to continue
sleeping, and sure enough it was 2:30 pm by the time I woke up, damn
Mexico City wore me down! I wandered out to find the hostel pretty
much empty except for 2 people there! So I just kind of hung out for
awhile, reading and hanging out, when Sandra showed up, and I was
quite surprised to see her, but she also had decided not to go that
morning, as it wasn't her scene either. I ended up just hanging out
at the hostel most of the day, other than a run to a nearby
restaurant called PizzaTime that had super cheap and amazing food,
and has become the favourite stop for any of the people at the
hostel. It also happened to be a bit of a rainy day, so I didn't feel
too bad about just kind of lounging around. Eventually a few American
girls also showed up, and I ended up making friends with them, and
found out it was the one girl's birthday that night, so they were
heading out for dinner and some drinks, so I just invited myself
along. There was also this ridiculously crazy English dude named Tom
who invited himself along.
You
sometimes meet people who are just so extreme and strange, that at
first you're interested in them, but eventually kind of grow tired of
them, and Tom definitely fit that build. At first he seemed pretty
wild and fun, talking about his 6 years of being a police officer and
detective, then leaving to travel around Central America, and being a
bartender, and how his dad had climbed Mt. Everest and K2, and how he
was into climbing himself. He even had an icepick along with
him...freaky...I think the guy is just nuts. Later in the week, he
tried to tell me he was 19 years old, after having talked about being
on the police force for 6 years...ahhh some people...anyway, he
invited himself along and so we were off with a very small group of
people since the hostel was dead.
We
first stopped at some restaurant the girls had heard about that was
meant to be quite good, but it ended up being closed, so we went to
the main beach called Zicatela (I probably pronounced the name of the
beach incorrectly at least 12 different ways throughout the week
before finally figuring it out). We found a nice little restaurant,
had a tasty dinner and chatted a fair bit, before wandering over to a
small little music spot where they had 2 for 1 cocktails, so after a
few tasty mojitos and capraihinas, we were on our way to the “party
spot” of the night, a place called Kabalah where it was Ladies
Night, and free drinks for them until 12.
As
luck would have it, the cute New Zealand girl was there, looking
gorgeous, and we all ended up having a fun party night together.
Being the generous guy that I am, and since the hostel bar was closed
and the bell was unable to be rung, I bought some mezcal shots for
all our group, which really kicked things off...we had a super fun
time, and I was starting to figure out that the Kiwi was into me, so
I ended up spending the rest of the night with her and having a super
good time. We didn't get back to the hostel until around 4 am and
spent the next hour and a bit just enjoying each other's company
before finally heading to bed.
 |
| Mezcal for everyone! |
I
didn't sleep a whole lot that night, even though it was super quiet,
but ended up hanging out and meeting a young English backpacker who
was on his first trip overseas, and staying in his first hostel.
Sandra and I were heading down to the beach, and he asked if he could
join us and if it would be a big deal...I just laughed and told him
to invite himself along, as that's the way you have to go about
things! So we wandered down to the main beach, and ended up finding
some chairs to chill out on for several hours, and catching a bit of
sun. We eventually walked about half way back to the hostel, while
stopping to help fisherman push their boats into the water, take
photos of the area, laugh at large Mexican women taking photos by a
giant hand sculpture, and being offered drugs, cheap fishing, and
numerous other trinkets...ahh the life on the beach in Mexico ha ha.
After wandering along and arriving in the streets, thinking we might
be getting closer to the hostel, but deciding we didn't want to walk
any further so we just hopped in a cab and were back at the hostel.
Of course, upon arrival, Steve was immediately asking if we were
going to play football that afternoon, and even though I was tired,
the exercise was a good idea, so I volunteered to join in again.
 |
| Zicatela beach |
 |
| Random photo of the group |
 |
| Mexican lady by the hand statue |
 |
| Sandra being a very happy tourist |
We
ended up having a new American guy named Josh join us, and he was a
pretty super cool dude, who had just finished hiking from Seattle all
the way down the West Coast trail to the Mexican border. It was about
75 days of hiking, and some 3000 kms or so...crazy dude...he had some
pretty funny stories about his trail experience, including losing his
tent 10 days in and having to sleep on the ground most nights without
cover, as well as entering a Dairy Queen in one town, not having
showered in 12 days or so, and they thought he was homeless and
didn't want to serve him, even though he had money ha ha....also,
while sitting in that Dairy Queen, some lady thought he was homeless
and left him a $5 note on his table while he was eating...pretty
wild. So myself, Josh, and Jake headed down to the match. This time
there wasn't as many players, so it was a full 12 on 12 and I was
stuck into the back corner of defense. And damn did I get
worked...those Mexicans are fast and violent with the ball....at one
point I tried to do a header which went straight backwards and out of
bounds, much to the laughter of all the players on the field ha
ha....then I went to play a ball out of our crease, and one of the
guys with cleats went for a hard kick at it and smoked my ankle,
damnit, that hurt! That was pretty much the end of the match, just
lots of running, and being school and beaten up by the locals ha ha.
After
arriving back at the hostel, we ended up all chilling out for most of
the night, having beers, and chatting with all the new people at that
had arrived. Of course, I eventually caved and started ringing the
bell again, which lead to more expensive times, and of course several
speeches again....and it was tough coming up with new material for
each speech, but that's how she goes! After the bar closed down,
around 12 am, as there had been several noise complaints from the
neighbours in the previous weeks, there were a few of us who decided
to head into town to continue on partying a bit. Although we ended up
cleaning out the beer fridge at the front desk area, since crazy Tom
had left the key out, although we were all honest in marking down our
drinks, at least I think. Tom ended up becoming really really weird
at one point, pretending to be a gay cop, and some of the guys were
encouraging him to fake arrest me and such for a video, so that
became extremely odd.... After all those shenanigans, the few of us
remaining decided to head in for Salsa night at a club called Congo
since it was apparently Sandra's last night, so she wanted to go in,
and her friend from the orphanage and her b/f and a few others also
were keen to head in.
We
arrived in our two taxis at the Congo place, but then a few of us
heard some Karaoke being sung at a bar across the street, and somehow
ended up heading up there instead. We were the only ones other than a
few locals there, and proceeded to lay down some fairly awful karaoke
singing, as to be expected. After that was all finished up, we
stumbled over to the Congo bar, but it was only Josh, Jake, Sandra,
and myself who made it, but the place was pretty much closing down so
we didn't have much time there. We grabbed one last beer each, and
then I ended up just finding a nearby hotel to crash in for the
night, since I couldn't be bothered to head back to the hostel, and
since they were quite cheap for rooms.
After
getting a decent night's sleep, we were back to the hostel for a bit,
and Sandra invited me to come down to the beach, but I decided to
just hang out and relax a bit and head for a bit to eat at PizzaTime
with some of the guys from the hostel. I didn't actually realize it
was her last day there, so I didn't go down with her, oops! After
lunch and lingering around, Sandra returned and ended up missing her
bus because her flight booking didn't go through properly or
something, silly woman! Eventually a bunch of the guys showed up with
crates of beer and decided to hold a beer pong championship that
afternoon. I ended up partnering up with the one Scottish girl in it,
but we got our asses handed to us. It was a 7 team tournament, and
once it started to get a bit dark, it was hard to really use depth
perception to hit any of the cups. We ended up making 3 shots and
were out after the first round, oh well c'est la vie! I did at least
come up with a clever team name for us, “One girl, 1 Cup” but the
Englishman wrote it down wrong on the board, damnit! Ah well.
After
the big championships a few of us eventually snuck away into the town
for some fish tacos at this restaurant on Zicatela which were
absolutely amazingly delicious....Sandra had been raving about them,
and she definitely was right about their awesomeness. After a tasty
and wicked dinner, we wandered over to some smaller restaurant where
we had some beers and some old drunk man was trying to sell us his
homemade Mezcal. Rich, one of the English guys with us was fairly
fluent in Spanish and told him that we didn't want any mezcal after
the man had pestered us for long enough, and kept asking for photos
and kisses with all the girls, so the old man got pissed off at him,
and started calling him names in Spanish, one of which was a “fly
in soup”, and others such as “dog”, “bad friend”, etc etc.
Hilariously enough, after his onslaught of insults, the man proceeded
to pass out at his stool, then awaken, yell a bit more, and then
wander off into the streets, and pass out against a nearby light
post...crazy man!
 |
| Beer Pong going down |
 |
| The Teams |
 |
| Hilarious spot for the Scottish lass to sit |
 |
| Fish Tacos! |
We
all made our way back to the hostel after this point, and joined the
party there for a little bit more, including some more bell ringing
and cervezas before it shut down. Since it was officially our last
night, for sure this time, I just spent most of the night hanging
with my nice Kiwi lady friend, before heading off to find a cheap
hotel for the night, which turned out to be a rather hilarious
endeavour. The taxi driver found us a place that was only $10 a
night, and when we arrived we could hear through the wall next to us
some very loud noises and naughty noises ha ha ha.....then when I
woke up in the morning around 6:30 am to the sound of some man puking
his guts out, it was so loud and violent, I thought he was dying ha
ha ha! The things you experience when in a cheap hotel I guess! We
made our way back to the hostel, and I tried to nap a bit, but
couldn't so I just hung out in the common area for a few hours,
saying goodbye to Sandra, as she was flying out to Cancun that day.
 |
| Just another night party rocking at the Tower Bridge Hostel |
 |
| View from the ultra cheap hotel atthe 8 am walk of shame |
Eventually
Josh woke up, and was very very hungover from the night before, but
mentioned it could be a fun idea to make a “Spodie” as he called
it....which we call a “yukafluks” in Canada. I hadn't had one of
them since 2nd year University I think, and decided it
just might be a very random and fun idea to get in on the fun! So
Josh, myself, and Rich made our way down to the SuperChe supermarket
and found some incredibly low prices and filled up our cart with all
the necessary ingredients to make one helluva party...and only for
the low price of $75 US....for the win! We had a crapload of stuff,
and taking the taxi back to the hostel with all of it was a rather
entertaining endeavour, and then trying to sneak all the booze inside
without Steve seeing us was another good laugh, but we managed, and
prepared the concoction, and then just chilled out for a few hours,
waiting for it to be ready.
 |
| Yuk-a-fluks ingredients! |
 |
| Prep time |
While
waiting for it to soak, we wandered down to Carrizalillo beach, and
ended up passing by a spot where we found out we could watch
baseball, football, and various other sporting games, which was quite
pleasing to Josh and I, since we're both big sports fans.
We
hung out at the beach for awhile, enjoying the lovely scenery and
some nice girls before heading back to the nearby hotel and watching
one of the baseball games before returning to the hostel, and dipping
into the punch. That stuff was basically a death mix, and we ended up
having about 7 people get in on it and get pretty banged up. It
didn't help that we were playing pool games with it, resulting in
drinking competitions...probably one of the worst drinking games ever
I might add. We decided you had to call a ball and if you made it
then you could give out the corresponding number of drinks to people
as you please, but if you missed, you had to drink the ball amount
and if you scratched, you had to drink double the ball amount....and
people were allowed to hit your cue, mess up your shots, etc....so
needless to say....missing the 13 ball and scratching was a fairly
bad move for me, resulting in 26 seconds of punch consumption...damn!
Then we made some wager on a game resulting in myself and the young
Englishman having to “beer bong” beers out of a camelpack (which
works surprisingly well!)
After
all these drinks, most of the group was pretty much done for the
night, but quite a few of the people from the hostel bar were heading
into some Reggae party night in the town, so I hopped in a cab with
two of them, but then our cab driver got lost and took us to all the
wrong places, and it was getting pretty late so the 3 of us just
decided to head back to the hostel and call it a night.
The
next day, waking up feeling like death, a few of us ended up
wandering down to PizzaTime and enjoying the deliciousness that the
place provides, then just kind of lingered around the hostel for a
few hours, until Josh and I wandered back to the sports bar to watch
some college football for a bit. After the game wrapped up (the
Washington Huskies were playing, and since Josh is a Seattle guy,
he's a big fan), we wandered back to the hostel and dipped back into
the death mix, albeit with a much smaller group of people this night,
since Rich had left the hostel. We ended up hauling it into the
hostel bar area, and sharing it with a few others, while partying
with some French guys who had just as much affection for ringing the
bell as myself. After some rowdyness, a bunch of us went down to
Zicatela for some partying at Kabolah, where my hat eventually
disappeared since I let one of the Frenchies wear it, as he had liked
it quite a bit...never trust the French! After hanging out there and
getting pretty banged up, Josh and I went with the two American girls
that had been at our hostel earlier in the week, to another party,
but didn't last much longer there, as we were feeling pretty rough by
that point. We just ended up cabbing it back to the hostel, and
heading to sleep, well at least I did, apparently Josh stayed up
until 7 am finishing off the Spodie ha ha ha.
After
waking up and feeling like death once again, it was time to head down
to the nearby hotel and start watching some American football with
Josh, so we ended up spending about 8 hours there watching football,
eating food, and drinking beer....a real wild Sunday afternoon
indeed! After eventually stumbling back to the hostel, we joined the
little party going on in the hostel bar for a little while, before
calling it a relatively early night since there wasn't a whole lot
going on.
The
next day Josh was leaving, so I lost my sports buddy, and a few
others were starting to clear out of the hostel. I decided to head
down to the Point with Wiley, one of the Aussies, who was moving into
rented apartment for the month to surf and chill out. He was only
paying $10 a night for the place, and it was quite amazing what you
can get in the area. After dropping off his stuff, we just chilled
out for some coffee and breakfast near the beach, then hung out for
awhile until he wandered back home to sleep. I had noticed a few
people from the hostel drive by in a taxi, so I wandered down to find
them and ended up just hanging out on the beach with them for several
hours. Hilariously enough, the drunk Mezcal man from a few nights
earlier happened to wander by us, trying to sell Mezcal, but he
didn't remember me fortunately. After a few hours hanging out, and
meeting a new Swedish dude, we caught a cab back to the hostel, as
the two girls from the group had a bus to catch that evening.
 |
| The point |
I
ended up heading down to watch the Monday night football game and
hanging out at the quiet little bar by myself before returning to the
hostel and hanging out at the bar, meeting a few new people and
generally just having a chill night since I had to be up super early
the next morning to head out fishing with Alexis and Josh, two new
guys from the hostel. We were up at 6:30 am, which was fairly
difficult, as I had been used to sleeping in until 12 or so on most
days, so falling asleep was difficult enough. We were picked up by
the local fisherman who was arranged for by Steve, the hostel owner,
and were put into the back of the dodgy pickup truck and took the
quick and uncomfortable ride down to the beach, where we were whisked
into the fishing boat and on our way out to sea.
The
water wasn't really too choppy, nothing compared to the waters off
Cancun when I had last gone deep sea fishing several years back
(where 6 of the 8 guys in our boat became sea sick and couldn't even
fish for the 4 hours we were out). After grabbing some bait, and
heading towards the good fishing spots, we had the lines in the water
and were trolling around. I had to laugh at the captain and his
helper lighting up joints and getting high while driving us around
for the fishing. It didn't take too long until we had our first bite,
and Alexis was up first, to reel in a nice Mahi Mahi. The last time I
had gone fishing, anything we caught was basically just pulled into
the boat for a quick photo and then thrown back into the sea alive,
however, these guys just beat the fish to death and hauled them into
the boat. I ended up being second up to reel in the next fish, which
ended up being a fairly tiny little one (exactly same as my trip to
Mexico, damnit!). Then we had another bite shortly afterwards, so
Josh got to reel in the exact same fish as mine, except about 3 times
bigger so much more fight...Then we trawled and trawled and trawled
and trawled....until bam! A sailfish had taken the bait and the
Captain immediately took the line and fought with the fish for a bit
(seems like he should have been letting one of us do that buuuuut
yeah whatever) so after a bit of fighting he gave the line to Alexis,
and he fought the fish and reeled it in eventually. I was a fair bit
surprised at how small our boat was, and was thinking that if we did
land a Sailfish, it might be tough to get it into the boat, but
somehow the helper and Captain managed to get that fish into the boat
and kill it. That was another surprise to me, as I remembered in the
Yucatan we just caught and released the fish, whereas here they
killed it and kept it in the boat.
We
trawled around a bit longer but no more bites so we headed back in,
and I suppose this is where it was a bit shady, as the Captain made
no mention about what we could do wiht the fish, where we could take
it to be cleaned and cooked, or anything along those lines. He just
simply told us that the Mahi-Mahi was the only good fish to keep, and
since we were all heading off that day or the next and didn't know
anything about cleaning the fish, we decided not to keep it. On top
of that, the guy said that Sailfish tastes horrible and that we
wouldn't want it, yet as soon as the fish were on shore, right away
there were a bunch of locals lining up and getting ready for the
fish. So the guy just said goodbye to us, and gave us money for a
taxi and that was it. He wasn't a particularly helpful or talkative
guy, and when we arrived back at the hostel and spoke with others,
they said that when they arranged the fishing trip through other
fishermen, they were told what restaurant to take the fish to, and
were able to actually eat their fish. On top of that, everyone said
that Sailfish tasted amazing...damn sketchy Mexican dude...definitely
don't book the fishing trip through the Tower Bridge hostel if
staying there!
 |
| Sunrise from the fishing boat |
 |
| Alexis working on reeling in the first fish of the day |
After
arriving back at the hostel and chilling out, trying to catch some
sleep in the hammocks unsuccessfully, Josh and Alexis were heading
into town for some breakfast, so I tagged along and met two fo Josh's
Aussie buddies. We enjoyed a decent and cheap breakfast, then
wandered down to the beach for some beers and to enjoy the sun,
before deciding to meet back up later in the evening with Josh's
friends. We wandered back to the hostel, chilled out there for a few
hours, before Alexis and I headed back in to town to grab some fish
tacos for dinner and mojitos....the fish tacos were still amazing
damn! After tossing those down, we wandered back down to where Josh's
friends were, had a few beers there and eventually made our way down
to Kabalah for Ladies night, and it was actually busier than the
previous week, and a pretty decent party. Alexis spent a fair bit of
time working on some Mexican girls, as he's quite the charmer,
especially in Spanish, while I just spent most of my time chatting up
anyone within ear shot and being that awkward tag along friend when
the Mexican girls pulled him out to the dance floor.
Eventually
I ended up meeting some Italian girl who had come to Mexico for a
wedding, and I inquired if she had a date for it, which she didn't,
so I volunteered to go with her if she needed one, as I thought it
would be a fairly random thing to do, so she ended up taking down my
contact info and was going to ask her friend about it the next day,
however, I was planning to leave by 5:30 pm the next day, so I told
her to get back to me by 4 if it was to happen....a Mexican wedding
seemed like a pretty damn good idea at the time. Eventually the place
was shutting down, so Alexis and I just grabbed a cab and went back
to the hostel, but decided to make a late night Oxxo run for some
food (Oxxo is similar to a 7/11 and a lot of the hostel guests would
go there late at night for their junk food runs. We arrived at the
Oxxo, and being Mexico, the doors were locked and we had to order
through the glass partition, so we had to try and order some food
without really knowing what was available. Meanwhile, some really
really drunk Mexican dude pulled up in a car to get something, and I
noticed his fly was down so I inquired if he was having a good night
with some ladies but he was so drunk and didn't seem to comprehend
the joke ha ha...then he got back into his car and drove off swerving
all over...oh man..what a country. We returned back to the hostel,
played an hour of ping pong and then called it a night.
The
next day I was up to check out by 12, packed my stuff, and just kind
of hung out waiting to see if the Italian girl would get back to me
about going to Mexico City for the wedding, but I hadn't heard
anything, so Alexis and I just went into the town to grab some more
fish tacos for one last time (damn I'm going to miss those tasty
eats), before he went off to do some surf lessons and I just wandered
back to the hostel to kill some time until the bus. I just hung out
for awhile, and tried to get one last order of PizzaTime for the bus
ride, but I forgot that the place was closed on Wednesdays,
damn...that's one other delightful thing I'll miss about Puerto
Escondito! After grabbing some food from Oxxo, and not hearing back
from the Italian girl about the wedding, I decided to just make my
way off to the bus station, and catch the 5:30 pm bus to Tapachula.
The bus ride wasn't too terrible, as I was at least able to sleep for
a few hours during the 14 hour journey, arriving in Tapachula at 7:45
am. And that's where things started to become real interesting!
I
knew I could catch a bus from Tapachula to Guatemala City, so I
inquired about where to catch them, and was told I could catch the
one right from the terminal I was at, but when I went to pay at the
counter for it, they told me it was about to leave and I had to pay
the bus driver directly. I didn't think this would be a problem,
since I had quite a few Mexican pesos, however, when I went to pay
him, he informed me in Spanish, which I had translated by some other
guy that I needed to pay in US dollars only, and would need to change
money at the border into Guatemalan money for the border
crossing....well I didn't have any US on me, so I quickly dashed
outside to see if I could find an exchange place to get the US, but
being 8 am, there was nothing available, so I was kind of
screwed...and the bus left without me. I didn't know long I would
have to wait, but after chatting with a taxi driver in broken
Spanish, I found out that I could catch the bus from the border and
that there was money exchange places to be found there, so I hopped
in a cab and was on my way to the Mexican/Guatemalan border.
We
pulled up into some area where signage posted said “no prepared
documents” or something along those lines, and when the taxi driver
stopped, I was hounded by about 10 guys trying to change me
money...but they said they only had Quetzales, and the rate they were
offering me seemed awfully shady. On top of that, they were telling
me that a bus would probably cost about 400 pesos from the border to
Guatemala City, even though the bus in Tapachula was only meant to
cost 250 pesos, so I was becoming really quite confused, and
irritated by the situation, especially since my Spanish was so
limited at this point, and it seemed like I was getting ripped off on
the exchange rate, so I was ready to head back to Tapachula and try
and catch the next bus out of there, but people were telling me it
wouldn't leave for another 7 hours so I decided to be random as per
usual, and exchange the money and walk across the border...why not!
In the end, the exchange rate actually wasn't all that bad, so at
least I lucked out there, but that's where things became really
interesting....As soon as I exited and paid for the cab, some boy
grabbed my bag and started walking with it towards the border, but I
asked him if he spoke English, which he didn't, so I told him I would
carry my own bags and didn't need him to guide me if he wasn't going
to be any help in English to me, so I took my bags back, then some
motorbike pulled up and offered to drive me to the border for 5 pesos
so I hopped aboard and arrived at the Mexican/Guatemalan
border....now this is where things continued to become a hilarious
event, but I'll continue that part in the next posting ;)
Adios,
Rye
