¡Viva Mexico!

We were originally planning to spend two weeks in Mexico before moving on. A week at Playa Del Carmen to learn Spanish and a week exploring the Yucatan and then we were heading down into Central America. When we first arrived in Mexico we both liked it immediately and joked that we may not leave until it was time to go home. Well in the end we spent 5 weeks in Mexico (minus 3 days in Cuba) and what can I say? We love Mexico!

We’ve seen a lot of the different sides of Mexico; the tourist friendly, English speaking Yucatan Peninsula; the almost non-English speaking but lovely San Cristobal de Las Casas; the craziness that is Mexico City; the laid back life at Puerto Escondido and a blend of the country and the city at Oaxaca. Everywhere we go the people are friendly and the food is amazing. It’s just a great place!Below are some unexpected things we’ve learned about Mexico while we were there:

• Mexican eat a lot of corn and not just in tortilla form, the most common type of street food around is grilled corn and esquite (corn kernels served with chili, lime, cheese and mayo). But sadly for Mat the corn they eat here is not sweet corn, it is a white corn which is chewier and drier and not really sweet. For me it is delicious.
• The whole world should have Laundromats like in Mexico. Mexican laundromats wash, dry and fold your laundry for you. All you have to do is drop it off in the morning and in the afternoon you pick up a bag of sweet smelling clean clothes. It is so convenient and cheap too, they charge $1 per kilo of dirty clothes.
• There are speed bumps all over the country, but they are not normal speed bumps. Mexican speed bumps are called topes and they are made up of little metal bumps embedded in the road and they are a bitch to go over.  And on some roads there are literally topes every five or ten metres.
• Frijoles aka refried beans are delicious and are found in many types of Mexican food. Neither Mat nor I are huge fans of beans or legumes but we both really like frijoles and we’re looking forwards to making them at home.
• There are a lot of police around in Mexico than in other countries and they carry giant guns. It was a bit disconcerting the first few times we saw them.
• Mexicans are obsessed with clowns. We have seen many many clowns in Mexico. It is mystery.
• Chilli sauce and lime are served with everything, including popcorn, potato chips and fruit. Mango with chilli sauce/chilli powder and lime is delicious.

We are already planning on coming back in the near future for the Day of the Dead celebrations.

Steve’s house

We were supposed to go to Colombia after Mexico City, we had a flight and accommodation in Bogotá and everything. But after two cold high altitude cities we were not really looking forwards to going somewhere where their motto is ‘Bogotá, 2600 metres closer to the stars’. Plus it was going to be raining there and the cost of flying back to Central America after Colombia was ridiculous. So we decided to stay in Mexico.

More specifically we decide to go somewhere that was hot and had a beach. We headed to the Pacific Coast to the little town of Puerto Escondido. I found a small B&B just outside of town run by a long-haired tattoo-covered ex-pat called Steve. He greeted us at the door with no shirt on, apologised for the mess in the kitchen and told us he’d been up all night with the previous guests drinking and said he usually welcomed people with more class. Followed by ‘not really, who am I kidding’. Then he showed us to our room and offered to take us out to breakfast after we settled in.

We ended up walking to the market and having breakfast with Steve and the other guests, Sharn and Sebastian. We went to this great little eatery that made delicious, cheap, fresh food, it was so good we ended up going back there practically every day. After breakfast we walked around town for a bit before heading back for a day of napping and relaxing by the pool. Then for dinner we had our first home-cooked meal since leaving Belize, we made fish tacos with the fresh fish and vege we picked up from the market, I need to learn how to cook fish properly because Sebastian grilled the fish to perfection. It was a delicious end to the best day ever.

Steve’s house was great; we felt most at home there compared to anywhere else since we left London, it was like staying with a friend. It was a nice change. We didn’t do too much, Mat took some surfing lessons and I cooked a few meals. The rest of the time was spent hanging out with Steve, enjoying the pool or just relaxing. The best thing was Steve had a sweet little kitten called Grey which he adopted. Apparently the kitten showed up one day and was pretty much just skin and bones and was trying to catch bugs to eat. It took him a week of luring her with food before he could even pat her. Eventually he tamed her enough to take her to the vet for shots etc and now she sleeps with him every night. Amazingly that was only three weeks before we arrived, the kitten we saw was healthy and even had a bit of a fat belly. It was the cutest little thing ever and even Mat liked to hold it.Sadly after 3 days in Puerto Escondido the rain started and after it rained continuously for the second day straight we decided it was time to move on. Being rained in at a beach town is not much fun. So we ran away to Oaxaca…on a tiny little airplane. I was disturbed that I was taller than parts of the plane. But it was either this for an hour or 7 hours in a van where there is a 50% chance that someone will throw up because the roads are so windy. No thank you! The flight was fine and kind of exciting but I did get a little bit queasy when we started flying through the clouds, small plane + clouds = lots of shaking up and down. It was kind of being on a small roller coaster, my stomach dropped a few times.

High altitude, part 2

The other city that was high and cold was Mexico City. I did NOT know that Mexico City was built on a plateau at 2,400 metres up before we got there. Surprise cold again! There are a lot of stories about how dangerous Mexico City is, people getting mugged, shot, kidnapped or worse. It’s not safe to catch taxis; it’s not safe to go out at night. All of it rubbish. We were there for 5 days and it was just like any other big city, be vigilant in crowded areas and don’t walk down dodgy looking alleyways. There are some dangerous neighbourhoods which you want to avoid but that’s the same anywhere. We caught several taxis and no one ripped us off (taxis are really cheap in Mexico city) and we went out at night and did not feel unsafe.One of the nights we went to Arena Mexico to watch Lucha Libre, Mexican masked wrestling. The luchadores (wrestlers) are dressed in colourful tights with matching masks. They kind of look like angry cape-less superheros. The wrestling is mostly done in teams of three, sometimes there’s one-on-one fighting, sometimes all three luchadores from one team gang up on one guy from the other team and other times there’s three separate fights happening at the same time. It was chaotic and quite unexpected, sometime it was hard to decide which part of the action to focus on.
A lot of the fighting seemed staged and almost choreographed, Mat tells me they practice different maneuvers so it looks impressive but doesn’t hurt them too much. Despite of this the fight was still jaw-dropping to watch. These guys climbed up on the ropes and belly flop onto their opponents lying on the mat. They used the elastic ropes to launch themselves superman style into each other. And what is the most disturbing to me is they launched themselves, once again superman style through the ropes, off the stage to crash into their opponents who are trying to escape. I don’t know anything about wrestling but I am pretty sure it is not normally this insane!

We bought a couple of souvenirs before we left…