Mexico – THE ONLY ERIKA IN THE VILLAGE

Tacos vs. Tostadas

When I first arrived in Mexico City, I used my Lonely Planet guide to find a place to eat. What was I looking to experience? The famous Mexican Taco of course!

Until now, I have been raised a naïve kiwi girl. I thought that traditional Mexican food was the Tex-Mex version that can be found in the shelves of our supermarkets (Ol’ el Paso kits ring a bell for anyone?) and when I felt I had found the Lonely Planet recommended taco place I was raving about how good my taco I ate there was. I only realised my mistake when I returned days later. I saw the place I was actually directed to by the guidebook and discovered that the hard shell taco-resembling meal I had eaten was actually a Chicken Tostada. Nevertheless, I went back to the original hole-in-the-wall and made two pacts to myself:

1. Don’t rely too heavily on Lonely Planet (But use its suggestions to find better, cheaper options nearby!)
2. Learn about Mexican food!

Does this prove the stupidity of tourists…or just of me? Is this a common occurrence? This experience really helped me to see that for a cultured, well travelled girl I am really quite un-cultured and inexperienced. No longer will I assume ANYTHING.

I am happy to say that this experience was the beginning of my ferocious passion for cooking and eating Mexican Cuisine.

Until next time,
Love Erika xx

Mexican Road Trip

Today’s plan was to visit the Museo Nacional de Anthropologica, which is apparently the best anthropology museum in the world. It isn’t really a major interest of mine but I thought it would be a good idea to check the place out. Roseanne also wanted to see the museum so we flagged down a bus (I am not sure if there is such a thing as a bus stop here) and headed towards Bosque de Chapultepec.

To be honest, my major interest in the anthropology museum was actually an interesting ritual that happens right outside the museum (due to financial benefits from the museum’s tourists no doubt). There is a large clearing in which a large pole sits right in the middle. Every half an hour, men wrap ropes around themselves and jump off, detangling themselves slowly while playing music until they reach the ground. It’s an insane native coming of age ritual which seems to be a cross between bungee jumping and a maypole dance.

I filmed this…Take a look on my Flickr set ‘Mexico’ to see it.

Although I took some good photos of beautiful old relics at the museum, it was essentially information overload. I don’t suggest going unless you are really really into anthropology. It took me four hours to get through less than half of the museum…at which point I gave up.

After returning to the hostel, Roseanne invited me to spend some time at a local friend’s place drinking. Tonight, we saw how the Mexican elite live. They spoke English, drove us everywhere, paid for everything and had flashy apartments. These guys were gentlemen: opening doors and bottles for us whenever necessary. According to them, that is how all Mexican men treat women…but in my experience in the streets of Mexico so far I don’t think I would call Mexican men ‘gentlemen’ as such. After spending the night in the comfortable spare room at Carlos’s apartment, we returned to the hostel in the morning to shower and have breakfast, to then head on a road trip to the town Cuernavaca – the purpose of which was just to have a party.

The drive to Cuernavaca was a huge wake up call as to how crowded Mexico City really is. The traffic is awful! We left at 12pm and spent the next three hours in traffic, still in Mexico City. It only took us an hour after that to get all the way to Cuernavaca once we had left the traffic behind. We spent long periods not moving anywhere. Carlos even had time to play table tennis on his phone while driving.

When we arrived in Cuernavaca we stopped at a great little pizza joint with a huge old-fashioned pizza oven for an early dinner. It literally beat the whole of Italy in the pizza competition, but maybe that was just because I was so hungry from the drive. Our night in Cuernavaca was hilarious. I tried to keep up with the Spanish and they all translated for me when they felt like it. Also, I managed to understand the rules of all the drinking games so that was enough really! When I woke up at 9am the guys were still drinking…Mexicans party hard!

City of the Gods

The day after our bender, very early, we decided it was the appropriate time to take a tour (with the same crazy tour guide) to see the ancient Mesoamerican site Teotihuacan. We had a few stops while I was still half asleep to view various churches and ruins that weren’t all that exciting at that time of the morning. Until we reached a cathedral that was so beautiful that I had to perk up and take some pictures.

Eventually, we started heading out of town toward the main attraction, which was about an hour’s drive. When we were sufficiently in the middle of nowhere of inland Mexico, we stopped at a little place with a buffet lunch laid out for us. I have today had my first Mexican dish which was too spicy to handle! It was an onion and fresh chilli salad, and on second thought, it should have been obvious that it would be insanely spicy. We also learnt here about all the things which can be made from the cactus plant.

The pyramids are breath-taking. The site that exists today is thought to be only 17 percent of what it once was. Large mounds of earth can be seen for miles around that were likely to have been pyramids in the past but have not yet been excavated. There are two major pyramids on the site, one of which cannot be climbed up all the way as the top is damaged. At the first pyramid, some of the guys raced up the steps. You can see how crazy that is in the photo below. I walked and I was still exhausted when I reached the top!

On the top of the next pyramid, we spent a long time sitting in the cool breeze at the top admiring the view before heading back to the Centro Historico for dinner and drinks.

Wrestling Madness

Lucha Libre (a form of Mexican wrestling) is an important reason for coming to Mexico, and tonight was as good a night as any to experience the madness! I wasn’t sure I wanted to show up for the tour alone, so I thought I would do some head hunting at my hostel. A girl in my room with me said she had nothing to do that night and would come along, and by the time we got downstairs to book we had recruited a guy who had wanted to see Lucha Libre the whole time he had been in Mexico and it was his last night here. The group of us also met another girl travelling by herself and staying in our hostel on the tour.

We met our tour guide, (who was absolutely nuts) and continued to a bar to drink ‘Pulque’ before the show. Informative note: Pulque is an alcoholic drink made from various fermented cacti. It is actually better than it sounds, but only marginally.

Outside the Lucha Libre venue, we bought amazingly tacky souvenir masks because having one is kind of a necessity…

At the show, our seats were right next to where the wrestlers came in and out of the ring, It was also where the half-naked ‘ring girls’ came on and off (I think our tour guide may have picked these seats). The acrobatics which the wrestling ‘fight’ involved were amazing! For example the wrestlers were diving through the ropes out of the ring, off the ropes on top of each other and other such feats. The wrestlers also had such personalities! My favourite was ‘Pequeno Massimo’ – the token gay midget fighter. His strategy was to attack the macho fighters with kisses. Our tour guide was teaching us how to cheer for our side: when somebody called out ‘ruidos’ (supporting the ‘villains’) we would call out ‘putos’ meaning gay. The benefit of being so close to the fighters exit (other than the beautiful girls for our tour guide) was that me and my new friend Roseanne could run up and shake their hands as they finished their fights. I had one of the fighters even kiss my cheek and another give me a hug. Lucha Libre is a once in a lifetime experience – unless I move to Mexico of course!

After arriving back at the hostel, we were all keen to continue partying as we were so pumped up from the show. We got some other girls to join us and headed out to find somewhere to go. Unfortunately, being a Tuesday, the only place we could find open was a strip club. So that’s where we went. Nobody was there so we ordered a bottle of Bacardi and sat there for a few hours drinking and chatting before heading to bed.

Until next time,
Erika xx

Cultural Exploration

I woke up early today, excited to continue exploring the city I had already come to love. The only way I can really describe it is that everything about the city was so much more vibrant than in any other place I had ever been to.

I had breakfast at my hostel but then headed straight out to explore the Palacio National. The security here was intense, something I hadn’t experienced before. I was not allowed to take my breath mints in (can anyone tell me what I could do with breath mints that they were so afraid of?) and had to leave my bag in a cloakroom. Unfortunately, I left my camera in it although I could not take photos in most areas anyway. If I have an opportunity to return here I will make sure to get some great snaps of the Diego Rivera murals covering the walls of the palace. While I was wandering around on my own, a security guard followed me around for a while. Unfortunately, he only knew about two words in English so in about an hour’s conversation all I discovered was that he was a second year engineering student, he was surprised that I was travelling alone, and that he spoke very bad English.
I still have no idea whether he was following me for security purposes or just because he wanted to talk to me. At least I got my first real chance to practice my Spanish!

My next stop today was the Museo Archivo de la Fotografia, which I was really looking forward to. Although it was disappointingly small, it still contained some terrific artwork. I also tried to find another building which housed Diego Rivera’s murals in the district near my hostel but had no luck; so I stopped for lunch instead.

Finding a place to eat here in Mexico City is really quite daunting! There are hundreds of little restaurants in every area which are often really hard to spot, all with little excerpts from their menus posted up outside. As you stand outside trying to figure out if their is anything decent to eat on the menu, waiters usher you inside and to a seat before you have even decided if you want to eat there. I did manage to find a place that looked pretty nice, and I chose well because the food was great. For US $4.50 I was given soft tortillas, refried beans and a beef, tomato and jalapeno stew with orange juice and papaya. I have already given up trying to stay away from fresh fruit because it is so good. I haven’t been sick yet so fingers crossed!

I continued my busy day by visiting the Museo de la Ciudad Mexico. The building was gorgeous, and although it housed a whole range of exhibitions its focus seemed to be on Mexican cartoons! I wandered around for a while attempting to understand the cartoons and taking lots of photos.

I thought I would head to another suburb this afternoon, leaving the Centro Historico for the first time. I decided to head to Zona Rosa – not to visit anywhere in particular but because its meant to be quite an interesting neighbourhood. Pretty, full of expats, and also the main gay neighbourhood. I was a little bit worried about catching the Metro but It was actually really simple to work out and everyone was really helpful although the metro was so crowded I couldn’t actually move and found it difficult to get out the doors at my stop. After I walked around Zona Rosa for a little bit, I sat down at a little café with bar stools outside placed around the windowsills. As I was drinking my latte and people watching, I got chatting to a guy next to me who spoke pretty good English. Neither of us had plans for the afternoon so we headed to a bar around the corner to have a few drinks. I spent a couple of hours chatting to him, which was great for my Spanish, although we did use a lot of Google translate on his blackberry.

Until Next Time,
Erika xx

Acquainting myself with Mexico

My flight finally arrived in Mexico at midnight local time. I had heard many horror stories about this part of the world, and Mexico was my first stop on my own, so I was understandably quite worried about this. However, changing some cash to local pesos and taking a taxi to my hostel ended up being pretty uneventful. In fact, my fear probably caused my only problem: the taxi office short-changed me and I didn’t count my change, as I didn’t want to have my money out in the open for too long. It was only 5 US dollars which I lost though, so its not like It broke the bank. The experience did remind me to be extra careful though.

I woke up just before 8 am the next morning to bright sunshine streaming into my dorm room. I walked onto our tiny balcony to see a gorgeous view from my window. I knew then that I was going to love Mexico City and I headed downstairs to book my room for the rest of the week. I was also quite happy when I discovered that there are only 4 people sleeping in my 12 bed dorm and they are all girls who are travelling alone. I spent the morning having breakfast and thinking about how I wanted to spend my time in DF.

I headed out to explore the Centro Historical (the old centre) after breakfast to get by bearings and have my first taste of Mexico’s hustle and bustle. I wandered the streets, which were exciting and hectic although I was continuously harassed by buskers and beggars and even more so by men in general. Every time I stopped to sit down, I was approached by Mexican men who exclaimed how beautiful I was and started a conversation. These conversations generally didn’t last long thankfully due to my poor Spanish. Even men arm in arm with women walking down the street were blatantly staring and whistling. I thought that dyeing my hair brunette was supposed to discourage this? I wonder what my experience would have been had I been blonde…One guy had been very offended when I didn’t want to go drink tequila with him right then and there, assuming that I must have turned him down because I didn’t like Tequila, that there couldn’t have been any other reason. At least I know it will be easy enough to make local friends and practice my Spanish!

After my walk I found some lunch at a cute little Tostada shop. I paid US $1 for one tostada and it has kept me full all day! My budget will thank Mexico. After lunch I visited the beautiful Catedral Metropolitana where the Archbishop holds mass on Sundays. The photos which I have taken of the cathedral do not do the place justice, especially as flash was not allowed, but are available to view on my Flickr page.

Until next time,
Erika xx

Somewhere over South America

When the time came to leave Brazil, it was also time for Peter to head back home to New Zealand. Unfortunately we had different departure areas at the airport and were forced to say goodbye much earlier than we expected. I found myself wondering whether I would be able to cope without him for the next six months.

My flight stopped over in Panama on my way to Mexico. I bought some food here while I waited to board my next plane, charging my purchases to my credit card before realizing that I could have used some of the American dollars I was carrying, as American dollars are the local currency in Panama. Oops!

As I boarded my next flight and sat down, I was handed a rose made out of a napkin by the man in the seat next to me. He proclaimed that it was ‘A Rose for a rose’. I would soon learn that this was a common occurrence in Mexico, overly extravagant proclamations of attraction. However, I quite liked the attention and we had an interesting conversation throughout the flight about how he used to live in the United States as an illegal immigrant and finished high school there before being deported back to Mexico.

Next stop, Ciudad de Mexico (or DF as it is often called).

Until Next Time,
Erika xx

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