The best and worst of Mexico

Day 119

Current Location: Puebla, Puebla (Mexico)

Total Countries visited: 3

Total Miles Driven: 19,265

Hello everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend !  I just arrived in the town of Puebla a few hours east of Mexico City... Finally a city that had some planning going into it - it's flat, the streets are wide and straight, they are numbered so that addresses are easy to find (my GPS got there on the first try !!!), it's easy to park, I love it !  Not that I hate getting lost driving through narrow curving slopes, but you'll understand my relief in the following section.

Driving update

Driving today around Taxco, I finally came upon the following two realizations: (1) Large Marge might have been the perfect vehicle to travel in the US, but she is too big / tall for Mexico travel; and (2) Driving in Mexico is generally very frustrating and I don't like it.

Mexico has some very fine highways connecting some of the larger cities - those are great, smooth and fast, just like in the US.  The main problem is that they are few and far between.  You are lucky if the two-lane highway lasts more than 100 km - then you're back on small bumpy roads or you are stuck in traffic somewhere.

The smaller roads are just annoying.  They seem to make an effort to pass through every small village possible instead of going around them.  And Mexico is infatuated with speed bumps.  Just today, I probably passed more than 60 speed bumps.  Of course, speed bumps do their work - everyone slows down - however they are realllllly annoying.  Especially when they come at the end of one of the above-mentioned highways.  In one instance today, I saw a sign for speed limit of 110 km/h (about 70 mph) - then 100 yards later there was a speed bump because the highway just ended.  Needless to say, I missed a couple of the speed bumps (only a handful of them give you advance warning).  Ouch.

Also, there is construction everywhere.  Today, a trip that should have taken me 2.5 hours took me 4.5 hours - most of the delay was due to highway construction and city traffic.

An other (minor) annoyance is that many of the highways have tolls.  And these are not the children's type of tolls like we have in the US.  These are manly tolls - every half hour or so, literally you have to shell out between $5 and $10 for the road - only to be stuck in traffic when the toll road reduces to one lane a few miles later.  Frustrating !!!

None of the above is really that big of a deal - it just delays my travels by a few hours here and there, pushes my patience a bit and costs a little money - minor inconveniences.  What is really a big deal is city driving and parking.  That truly has been a nightmare in the last 4-5 days.  As many of the cities in the heart of the country are built on hills, streets are impossibly narrow and it's incredibly difficult to park.  And the drivers...

There is no such thing as courtesy when you drive in Mexico.  Mexican drivers make Texas drivers look like little those cute little horse carriages in Central Park.  The only predictable thing about them is their unpredictability.  They could turn in any direction from any lane without advance notice - turn signals are not used consistently, so I stopped relying on them.  If you want to change lanes, good luck.  As soon as the driver who is in the lane you wish to turn into sees what you are trying to do, he will accelerate and close the gap.  The only way in is to force your way in - and hope that the driver behind you is smart enough not to hit you.  If you wait for someone to yield to you, you might as well forget about Christmas.

I fathom that for many Mexicans their car maintenance budget is far below the priority list.  I have seen dozens of vehicles stalled or broken down in the middle of the street or highway (causing traffic jams, of course).  Most of the heavy transportation trucks are double trucks tied together, and always filled to capacity - given the weight, several of those trucks go extremely slowly - - - imagine driving up a curve at 50 mph and you find yourself approaching one of those trucks going at 10 mph... the reaction time is very short.

And then, there is Mexico City.  It took me 3 hours to drive the first 300 km - and 2 hours to drive the last 10.  Traffic was ridiculous.  And of course, there was no parking anywhere near the hotel - everything was low clearance and Large Marge could not fit into them.  So I drove aimlessly through incredibly narrow and crowded streets, with scooters and pedestrians buzzing around and in front of me, until I spotted what seemed to be a parking area on the left.

And that's when I incurred my first accident (one involving another person).  I turned left from the right lane, and someone hit me on the side (of course they didn't stop to let me pass).  It was 100% my fault - blame it on the stress of driving in the city.  I pulled over while the other driver stayed in the middle of the road (blocking it, but she didn't care) - and examined the damage.  Nothing ! Large Marge had no damage at all.  I still wonder how that's possible because I definitely felt a hit.  And when I looked at the other car, there were dozens of scratches - the lady driver picked one of them and claimed that it was new, caused by me.  Oh well - I paid her off with a ridiculously small amount (I'm pretty sure I didn't wanna deal with insurance and cops), and  she drove away.  I am glad, things could have been a lot worse.  Either way, I hereby officially declare that I will never drive in Mexico City again.  Ever.

All the above venting probably helps you understand my joy upon arriving in Puebla - with its wide streets and light traffic, and parking aplenty.

All right - now for the fun stuff.

Trip update

Zacatecas

Zacatecas is one of those old colonial cities in the heart of Mexico that truly gives the country its richness of history and culture.  The city is packed with beautiful baroque buildings and churches, especially the main cathedral downtown.  You can see the cathedral from everywhere in the city, so it is difficult to get lost.

I had a great time in Zacatecas.  Life there seemed easy, people were happy.  Everything went at a leisurely pace, nobody seemed to be in a hurry... the markets open late, somewhere around 10:30am, and the shop owners spend most of the day chatting with each other - I enjoyed walking through the city and enjoying the warmth of the locals, tasting their food.

Zacatecas is built in a valley, surrounded by huge mountains.  It has enjoyed most of its growth due to the silver mine that is located just above the city.  The mine is no longer in operation, but is now open to tourists as a museum.  The mine tour was great and helped me understand the terrible conditions that miners had to deal with (most of them were indian slaves captured by the Spanish, including children and women) - there were on average 4 fatalities per day in that single mine during the worst of the Spanish occupation of the mine.

Zacatecas also boasts of having the only nightclub / bar in the world that is located in a mine 300 feet below ground.  Isn't that cool ?

Incredible facade of the cathedral.

Happy chubby Zacatecas girl.

In the mines.

Nightclub deep into the mines.

Fantastic view of the city of Zacatecas.

Guanajuato

I am completely, utterly in love with Guanajuato.  It is the most unique town that I have ever encountered in my entire life.  And this town takes the cake as the most Mexican as well (that I have seen so far).  You won't find a Taco Bell up there.  Everything about Guanajuato is either really cool, incredibly gorgeous or otherwise amazing (or all three).

My guidebook had warned me that parking in Guanajuato was a nightmare - but somehow I decided to try anyway.  The city (like most of the cities I have seen in the center of the country) is once again built in the mountains - however, unlike other cities this city was built for pedestrians.  There are only 3 major streets that travel above ground - the rest is a maze of tunnels that pass underneath the city.  It is impossible not to get lost in those tunnels - they twist and turn, and you never know where you are going to come out.  One cool thing is that they hold car races annually in there - I would love to see that!  Either way, I really loved driving in the tunnels, but that didn't help my situation.  I kept coming out in the same spot as I had been before, and I was looking for hotel in another part of town that was rumoured to provide free parking to its guests.

Well, as I learned to do in my high school chemistry classes (I wasn't always listening) - if you want to get out of a labyrinth, you need a strategy - a random path won't cut it.  So I decided to follow the "always turn right" strategy and see what happens.  Guess what, it worked !  I found a different tunnel exit that was just a few yards from the hotel!  Unfortunately, Large Marge did not fit in the "free parking" - so I followed an even better strategy - which I shall name "get a hotel outside of town and take a taxi" strategy.  That was my best idea all week.  The hotel was great, with plenty of parking, and only a 10 minute cab ride from Guanajuato.  Then I was free to explore the city on foot without worries.

And what a city it is !  It has impossibly narrow pedestrian-only streets going all over town, and I enjoyed walking through those for a bit.  I also fell in love with the main garden area downtown - it had terraces and mariachis all over the place, an opera house, a gorgeous church... it doesn't get any more charming than that.

Last but not least, Guanajuato is home to the museum of the mummies.  The story is that some time in the late 19th century, there was a massive epidemic (I forgot what disease) and so many people died during that time that they mostly filled up the city cemetery.  Around 100 years later, as cemetery space was running out the authorities decided that all the families of the deceased needed to pay some kind of "rent" in order for their loved ones to rest in peace.  All those whose families did not pay rent were disinterred and stored elsewhere.  What happened though is that through some kind of chemical reaction due to the soil composition, many of those bodies did not decay but instead became mummified - their skin hardening but keeping structure.  The museum of the mummies is a repository of some of the most gruesome of those mummies - those that had died of horrible pain, and those that were buried alive.  Touring the museum was a life-changing experience - gruesome (the most gruesome was a mummified foetus that was buried with its mother) but amazingly interesting at the same time, as I was looking at the facial expression of those people who were frozen in agony until the end of time.

You can still see the agony.

Creepy and incredible at the same time.

Beautiful view of the city.

Beautiful church near the main garden.

Narrow streets everywhere.

Tunnels underneath the city.

Opera house - beautiful on the outside.

Inside the opera house - just as rich as the outside.

Mexico City

Aaahhhhh, Mexico City... Second largest city in the world... And definitely one of the craziest !!!  As I mentioned above, my Mexico City adventure did not start so great - but it did get better, and I got to enjoy some of the truly unique things about the city.

First, the crowds.  The city is so crowded, everywhere you go. There are over 20 million people living in the cosmopolitan area surrounding the city (and there are 5 million vehicles that drive on its streets... ugh).  And it shows.  Markets are jam-packed, streets are jam-packed, night clubs are jam-packed, you see the trend.  At first, it is really fun to see so many people in the same place, but it gets old quickly... especially on a Saturday night where you are just looking for a quiet place to sip a beer and listen to some music - all the night clubs and bars were completely packed with people, making it impossible to relax.

Plus, it was COLD.  Temperature on my last day dipped as low as 45 F (8 C) and it was raining.  I didn't come to Mexico to freeze off my bum !

My favourite adventure in the City was lucha libre - mexican wrestling, which is in many ways the ancestor and big brother of American wrestling.  For $8 a ticket, I was wildly entertained for over 2 hours.  There were 3 on 3 fights of big guys and small guys (the small guys were especially talented at flying kick maneuvers), there were a few girl fights where they were mostly pulling hairs and kicking in the groin, there were midgets fighting too (all the midgets ended up being caught and thrown around by the big guys and left the stadium on a stretcher)... I loved it !  There is an interesting culture about the masks - most luchadores wear their own colourful mask which is a symbol of their personality.  One of the regular fight rules is that you cannot remove your opponent's mask lest you be disqualified.  However, a fighter is allowed to challenge another to a fight "to the death" - at the end of which match the winner will unmask the unfortunate loser.  Once a fighter loses his mask, he is never allowed to put another mask again.

I also went to a soccer match - Cruz Azul, one of the local teams, was playing.  Unfortunately, it was near the end of the season and Cruz was confirmed a playoff spot so the action left a bit to be desired... But as with many other sports, the fans are the exciting part - and they were great !  Screaming spanish epithets at the opposing team (great to brush up on my street lingo), throwing stuff at the field, they didn't stop for one minute.

My third adventure was Teotihuacan, the great ruins just an hour outside of the city.  Teotihuacan used to house over 100,000 inhabitants at its heyday - so the ruin city is huge.  One of its pyramids, the pyramid of the Sun, is the third-largest in the world (the top two being in Egypt).  From the second largest pyramid (pyramid of the moon), I could get magnificent views of the ghost city and its main avenue, Avenue of the Dead.

Otherwise, I spent most of my time walking around the city's very numerous plazas, seeing the gorgeous churches and other spanish-influenced buildings, and trying to blend in the crowd.

Mexico was not my favourite place to visit - it is just a little bit too crazy and disorganized for me... It has a wonderful arts and culture scene, a stunning variety of popular events, night clubs and bars, but it is also a mess of crowded streets, pushy vendors and dirt.  And there's the crime, which I did not see but definitely felt - it is said that there are on average 4 kidnappings PER DAY in the city - thugs hijacking your cab and stealing all your possessions.  I felt a definite sense of relief when I finally managed to get to the clear highways outside of the city limits, as if I had conquered a beast that wanted only bad things for me.

Lucha Libre.

Even Yoda got into it.

And the winner is... Monstro !

Market at the Zocalo.

Big Crowd at the plaza de la revolucion.

Several beautiful nude statues in the Zona Rosa.

Cruz Azul means blue cross - the crowd was definitely into it. 

Pyramid of the sun - 3rd largest in the world.

And here is the moon god about to open a can of wrath.

Stunning view of Teotihuacan.

Taxco

Finally, my last stop before Puebla was Taxco, the silver capital of the world.  Most of the silver mines in Mexico are not around Taxco, but Taxco is where all the artisans and other professionals melt and mend the silver into beautiful jewelry.  2/3rds of silver jewelry in Mexico is from Taxco.  There are literally hundreds of silver shops selling everything imaginable (I even bought a few pieces for myself).  And on top of that, it's a pleasantly walkable city with narrow winding streets, and an amazing market in the middle which sells meat, vegetables, clothes and everything else for rock-bottom prices.  Taxco is a very fun place to go shop and waste a few hours of a perfectly sunny day.

They really do sell everything.

Pretty streets with white buildings, most of them silver shops.

That's it for now, I am about to go visit the city of Puebla... and after that (I cannot wait) I am heading for the coast where it will be warm... next blog will hopefully be from the beach !

Hasta Luego,

DMR

Altura y cultura

Day 113

Current Location: Zacatecas, Zacatecas (Mexico)

Total Countries visited: 3

Total Miles Driven: 18,588

Hello all !  It's been a while, how are you ?

I am currently in gorgeous Zacatecas, in the heart of Mexico.  The view from my hotel roof deck is amazing - check this out:

A blogger in action.

Since last time, I have been to two absolutely amazing places.

First, Real de Catorce.  This place has mystic and religious meaning for many Mexicans, some of whom walk hundreds of miles there each Spring as pilgrimage.  Its location is incredible, and so is its history.  It is nested over 9,000 feet in the mountains and the only way to get there is through an old mine shaft that is over a mile long.  Then you find yourself in the "village in the sky", as the locals call it.

The full-time population of Real is under 1,000 but if you count tourists and transient species, it is somewhere around 2,000.  The village was originally founded in the 18th century when silver was discovered - and it was built up for 15,000 residents who lived there through most of the 19th century.  Then, price of silver plummeted and the village was almost completely deserted, only to be rediscovered by tourists and spiritual seekers in the 20th century and beyond.

Therefore, most of the town is in ruins, and the current residents only occupy a small portion of the original site.  It is a most eerie atmosphere - and as I was wandering the streets, surrounded by ruins and children playing, I did feel some kind of energy, as if all those ghosts of silver bonanza had never left.

Mine shaft entrance to Real de Catorce.

View from my hotel

Perrito.

I thought they were cute.

View from the ruins above the city.

I thought I had seen it all.  Then, this morning I went on a horseback riding tour up the mountains, around 10,000 foot high.  I'm not very good at horseback riding (and the guide made fun of me a few times), so it was pretty scary - the road was steep, treacherous and the horse was eager.  But I survived, and the danger was fully worth the amazing views of the city in the mountains and surrounding ruins.  Check this out:

Horse is not used to that much weight !

This smile is hiding a bit of panic - or is it ?

Wow.  There is really no way out but through the mountains.

Gorgeous, isn't it ?

As I have another day in Zacatecas, I will keep that part for the next blog post.

Otherwise, I am doing great - I am healthy, and happy.  Mexico isn't at all what I had been expecting, for the better.  I was expecting dangers and perils at all corners, and I haven't seen any of it (keep fingers crossed).  I was expecting locals who distrust the gringos, but they have been helpful and friendly everywhere.  I was expecting to see wretched poverty...

Yes, most people I meet are poor - perhaps some make the equivalent of a few thousand dollars per year, many make much less.  But I haven't seen misery just yet.  Everyone is busy, working the family shop, making food on the street, working as tour guide or otherwise.  There were a few beggars, but not any more than I had seen in the USA.  People here manage, and they seem happy and healthy.

So I am mixed in my emotions - part of me feels bad that they do not live in the luxury that I am used to, but the other part envies their ability at happiness and life in such impossible places.  They are truly amazing people.

On that, I go eat.

Hasta Luego !

DMR

It's a jungle out there

Day 111

Current Location: San Luis Potosi, San Luis Potosi (Mexico)

Total Countries visited: 3

Total Miles Driven: 18,234

Hello again, from the beautiful town of San Luis Potosi, in the state of the same name.  This is now my 6th night in Mexico, and I am really starting to get the hang of it.  Where at first I had been feeling out of my comfort zone, I am now starting to feel at ease and letting loose a bit more.

Language update

It's amazing what a few days will do.  I feel a difference every day, in what I can understand and the complexity of what I can say.

Thankfully, I have had multiple opportunities daily to practice on a live target.  On two occasions, I have had to hire a driver / tour guide who would drive me around and show me the highlights of the area.  Otherwise, I always have to order food and drinks, get hotel rooms, ask for directions, and last but not least, staying out of trouble is requiring some spanish language skills as well.

I had mentioned in my last post the military checkpoints one encounters traveling in Mexico.  There really are a LOT of them.  I'd estimate that every 200 miles or so there is a military checkpoint, packed with uniformed 20-somethings carrying AK-47 automatic rifles.  They stop every vehicle for a quick check, ask a bunch of questions, and search some of the more dubious (or in my case, some of the more unusual) vehicles.  At first, this really scared me but now I don't see it as such a bad thing.  In fact, they make me feel safer because they probably act as a deterrent for some of the road bandits that are roaming the country.  Plus, I have found them to be very courteous and friendly, and they always end up their interview shaking my hand or asking me if I have a job for them in the US.

Now for the language hurdles of the last few days:

• Finding a parking spot.  This one was really dumb.  Everywhere I went, I had been looking for the ubiquitous P sign that means there is public parking.  But, guess what, I wouldn't find the P sign anywhere.  Instead, there was this weird E sign all over the place (what does it mean!) - and for at least 1 1/2 days I didn't make the connection.  DUH !  Parking in spanish is Estacionamiento.
• Directional signs.  This one was not so obvious, but also caused me a bit of navigation trouble.  In one particular instance, I was looking for an address which was on street Benito Juarez Ote.  I thought I was pretty smart, because I figured that Ote was the abbreviation for Oeste, the word for West in spanish.  So I would just type W for West in my GPS, which promptly directed me to the wrong address.  I tried every which way to cajole my GPS into taking me where I wanted to go, but she wouldn't listen - until I realized that Ote stands for Oriente (which means East), not Oeste (which means West).  Argggh.

Navigation update

I have accepted the fact that I am going to get lost in this country.  A lot.  Basically, every time I need to go somewhere, I expect with 92% certainty that I won't get there on the first try.  At least that's been my experience so far...  The first round get me to the right city (most of the time), then I have to use my entire set of tools (including my brains) in the second (and successive) rounds to get me to the final destination.  Here are the main reasons for that:

• First, GPS systems in Mexico are not nearly as precise as those in the US or Canada.  The streets have many names, many directions, and sometimes there is the same street name twice in the same city but 10 miles apart.  Every time I type an address in my GPS, I get 3 different choices... I guess I need to get a 3-sided coin.  Plus, you cannot search for a hotel monument or park, because my GPS never finds it.

• Second, the GPS doesn't have any idea of the direction of one-ways.  Perhaps they change all the time, I don't know.  But I have to find my own detours whenever the GPS makes me go the wrong way (which is about 50% of the time).

• Third, I notice that in Mexico there are a lot of pedestrian-only streets - meaning that they either consist of stairs or of narrow lanes where only a bike could fit.  But they are still considered "streets" with addresses on them, and the GPS still thinks I can drive Large Marge up a set of stairs at a 20% incline.  Wishful thinking, but I can't.

• Fourth, my Mexico travel book (Lonely Planet) - although it does a stellar job at telling me what are the cool things to see - it does a terrible job of telling me where they are.  Half the time, the book tells me to "go to this place, it's unbelievable" but then give no address or set of directions.  Do they expect me to have a map of every town in Mexico in my glove compartment ?

In the most frustrating situation I have encountered yet, I drove for about 2 hours looking for a famous park in Monterrey, and finally realized that the park was not in Monterrey but in Santa Catarina, a suburb of Monterrey.  Neither the Lonely Planet or the park's own web site mentioned that semi-important fact.

Sightseeing update

The language issues will fix themselves soon enough, and I will have to learn to live through some navigation challenges... that's not such a big deal.  Otherwise, my first few days in Mexico have been wonderful.  Here are the key highlights of my travels for the last few days, starting from my side trip to Cuatro Cienegas.

Cuatro Cienegas

The town of Cuatro Cienegas is as lovely as it is small.  The main reason to go there is to visit the Biosphere reserve of Cuatro Cienegas, which counts one of the largest collection of endemic species in North America.  Endemic species mean a species that live in one specific spot and nowhere else in the world.  The reserve contains so many endemic species because of its pozas, or pools of water, that do not connect or flow through to any other bodies of water... the water comes from very deep underneath the earth, it is very warm (over 100 degrees Farenheit) and full of minerals that are highly conducive to aquatic plant and animal life.

Poza Azul, blue pool of crystal-clear water.

Another cool feature of the park is its sand dunes - the area is very dry and contains huge dunes that one can climb.

Dune man.

El canon de la Huasteca

Sorry for the intentional misspelling here, there is supposed to be a tilde (little squiggly) on top of the n of canon above - plus I'm omitting spanish accents left and right, I haven't figured out the spanish keyboard on my Mac yet.

This canyon is only 10 miles west of downtown Monterrey but when you get there, you feel like you are on the moon.  There are huge cliffs of solid rock climbing up from the desert floor everywhere you look, and nothing else except for very sparse vegetation, a bunch of hippies and a handful of horsepeople.

Large Marge doing some rock climbing.

Caballero setting off towards the sun.

Gomez Farias

I think you will start seeing a pattern pretty soon.  Mexico has mountains !  Lots of them !  I guess I always knew that on the back of my mind, but my prior (biased) view of Mexico was mostly that of beaches, oceans, and palm trees.  Well, there's a lot more than that - and mountains are a huge part of it.

Gomez Farias is a tiny little town nested high up in the mountains - it has about 1,000 inhabitants and doesn't have much going on except that it lies at the entrance of another famous park, the biospheric reserve el Cielo.  This is another unique place in that it has an incredible number of species of all sorts of animals, birds, reptiles, insects, plants - it really is a jungle up there.

It was a very chaotic road to get up and into the park - it took about 2 hours to drive 17 kilometers, up the side of the mountain.  It was a very fun ride though - and at the end was a very picturesque little village called San Jose, population under 50.  The guide took me to his mom's place who lives there, she cooked for me, then one of the kids took me hiking to visit some caves.  Everyone was very friendly and made me feel welcome.

As you might expect, the life out there is ridiculous in its quantity.  It's as if God, after fully populating the rest of the world with all sorts of living things, didn't know what to do with the leftovers and decided to toss them all in that jungle reserve in the sky, thinking nobody would ever find it.  There were butterflies everywhere - hundreds of thousands.  I saw dozens of horses, chicken, dogs, sheep, roosters, a few lizards, a snake, and the biggest and scariest spiders I have ever seen.  This is also one of the best spots for bird watching in America - their intermingled songs create an atmosphere of constant chatter, especially in the morning.  And at night you can hear a billion crickets chatting with the moon.  Truly a treat for all the senses.

Peaceful scenery in San Jose.

Happy dog in San Jose. 

What are you looking at ?

Butterflies hanging out on donkey doo.

Biggest and coolest spider I have ever seen.  It's called calavera spider - because it has a skull face on top of its head.

Xilitla

Xilitla is another small town unlikely perched on the side of a mountain, with staircases that go up and down taking the way of navigable streets.

The main attraction in Xilitla is Las Pozas, where Edward James, an eccentric Englishman and poet who was insanely rich (and also probably insane), decided to build a garden of concrete statues in the jungle.  James is the patron of the surrealist movement and was close friends with the likes of Picasso and Dali.  The buildings that he designed - made of uneven angles and staircases that lead nowhere, some as tall as 30 meters high, surrounded by vines, palm trees and waterfalls, give the place an unreal feeling.  I felt as if I had just jumped into an alternate universe, one of MC Escher's drawings or in the movie "Waterworld".

Entrance of a very strange concrete garden in the jungle.

More concrete buildings in the jungle.

Not sure what is should represent.

Taking a refreshing dip in one of the pozas.

I have done so much in so little time !  I think I am off to a great start.  And I can't wait for tomorrow... I have another very unique place to visit (to be continued...)!

I will leave you now, with more urban pictures from the two largest cities that I have seen so far, Monterrey and San Luis Potosi.

Hasta Luego !

DMR

Fundidores, Monterrey - old foundry converted into museum.

City Hall - Monterrey. 

Fountain of Life, Monterrey.

Beautiful church on main square, San Luis Potosi.

San Luis Potosi is full of beautiful old buildings.