Of Pigs and Bulls

Buenos dias everyone! I have had my last day in Mexico City, for now anyway, and its been great! Wish I hadn´t booked my flight to Merida then I could have stayed a day or two longer, but ce la vie. Spent most of yesterday wandering about checking out the sites and making use of their subway system. Which is incredible by the way. Puts the London Underground to shame. You pay two pesos to get in the system and then go where you want. its clean, quick and comfy. I think its quite a recently built thing though.

I went on trip to see a bull fight across the other side of the city with a few Aussies and discovered a few basics about Mexico. Firstly, the bull fighting season ended last month, and there was no bullfighting. Secondly, the Mexicans don´t like to disappoint you with a negative answer, and will give you all the directions you need, tell you how good it is, but omit to mention that it isnt on! Still it was a worthwhile trip just for the exploration value, and I learnt another lesson. Ordering a random dish from a cafe menu can lead to a surprises….the Aussies are still laughing at the look on my face when the waitress brought me the half a pig I ordered! I kid you not, the thing was a good 18″ long with a similar circumference. Tasty though!

I also possibly haven´t timed my visit to Mexico that well either! The Presidential elections are next week, and despite the lack of real politics in the country, that doesn´t stop the people getting REAL passionate about it! I have already strolled through a few rallies and demos, and they all get quite intense! I will ensure I´m on a beach in the middle of nowhere this time next week, as there are at least 5,000 political parties, which means there are going to be 4,999 very upset groups out there! Only problem is I´m flying into the Yucatan just in time for the hurricane season. Oh well, such is life!

Mexico City

Well I have no idea if this will work seeing as I am having to create an HTML doc in Word and my tag knowledge is pretty limited! So everyone be jolly impressed if it does work in any shape, way or form please! Anyway, I have finally arrived in Mexico City after a pretty nasty 25 hour journey door to door. Still, havent wasted much time and have been out to Teotihuacan, an Aztec ruin with the worlds 3rd largest pyramid which was cool. Have some great photos too which at some stage I will hopefully get to put up, and my traditional dose of first day sunburn. At least I will no longer get asked which country I come from….

A scarily high proportion of people in my hostel have been held up at gunpoint, and I have noticed that even the locals hide indoors after dark. Think I might follow suit there! Last night four guys were held up by some dodgy Mexican with a gun and half a roll of bog paper which has got to be reasonably unusual! At least they are concerned enough to carry supplies in case they scare their victims too much! I have also managed to upset one person so far, a French man, who insisted history is a lesson never learned. I felt obliged to disagree, pointing out that France did not attempt any sort of invasion across the channel last century….some people have no sense of humour! Ha ha! Well anyways, Im off to my next destination on Monday to explore the Yucatan. At least this flight is just a 90 minute job, and with a bit of luck I won´t have to sit next to a Pablo Escobar look a like this time, which is never nice!

Getting Ready

Only four days to go till take off, and just 2 days left at Texaco. Can’t wait, really can’t. And as usual I’m leaving half the planning to the last minute….all adds to the fun. So long as I remember passport, swimming trunks and cashcard it’ll all be fine! I have even managed to get this little website a domain name and a little place on the ‘net. For what purpose I’m not entirely sure, but I can use this bit as a record of my travels anyway, to remind myself of it all when I end up sitting in a hospice going slowly senile. It may yet turn out to be an easy way to get out of emailing each and every person seperately……..Of course, this is all reliant on me being able to update the site from Mexico, so this may well end up being both the first and last post!