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Published: February 25th 2007
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View of Popocatepetl
My scenic lunch spot on our day of volcano hiking. Since I was last in touch at the beginning of November I spent a month livng in Mexico City with Sarah, a friend from university, and her housemate Mandi. I loved my time in Mexico City, I thought it was a great place - easy to get around, loads to do and really good fun. Because it has grown so much so quickly and swallowed up surrounding villages and towns, there are parts of the city that have remained as quaint, sleepy villages even though they are near the heart of one of the world´s biggest metropolis´.
If you read the guidebooks about Mexico City there are dire warnings about how polluted it is, that its completely gridlocked, how bad the crime is and how you should never get in a taxi after dark. However, I didn´t find it anything like that. There was occasionally a bit of a haze over the city, and the traffic can be a mite on the aggressive side but nothing anywhere near as alarming as the Lonely Planet doomsayers were predicting!!!
Crossing the roads in Mexico City was a bit of an artform in itself though - well, unless I was out and
Mexican market
We grabbed lunch in a typical Mexican food market when we visited Taxca about walking with the girls, where miraculously traffic jams seemed to part Red Sea-esque!!!! However, the Freitag looks seemed to be lost on the good people of Mexico City and so I had to try and trust the pelican crossings!! It seems in Mexico that a green man doesn´t mean you actually have right of way, just that it is probably the time to cross when you have the best odds of not being run down. Also, when you get to the last few seconds of crossing time the little animated green man who is pleasantly walking suddenly starts beeping furiously at you and running!! A hint methinks of the best way to cross the road!
In Mexico I was booked on a language course during the week, and was able to head out and about at weekends and do a bit of travelling. One of the highlights was climbing a massive volcano called Iztaccihuatl, which gave us incredible views over to its bigger brother Popocatepetl (about 5500 metres tall) which you aren´t allowed to climb because it is still active!! I still seemed to be in the hiking groove from my trekking in Nepal, so ended up taking
off up the mountain to see how high I could get in the time we had on the mountain. I ended up having lunch above the clouds with an amazing uninterrupted view across to Popocatepetl. Unfortunately, as I had the bag with all our food in, it meant that Sarah had to go without her sandwiches - bit of a faux pas!!
Another weekend saw us take a trip to the silver mining town of Taxca. The steep narrow streets and lovely Zocalo made Taxca a very pleasant place to explore, and we all managed to snare a few bargains when shopping for silver at the markets.
Another fun trip out was to Xochimilcho, an area at the south of the city which is built upon a series of waterways. I snared a place on a “lancha colectiva”, and spent a very pleasant hour or so being punted around the waterways watching the traders furiously trying to sell their wares and listening to the mariachis.
One of the reasons I enjoy travelling so much is that it allows me to experience things first hand and dispel any stereotypes or preconceptions that I might have had before arrival.
However, the more I travel, the more it seems stereotypes are there for a reason - because they are on the whole true!! For instance, the stereotype of the sleazy Mexican male has most certainly been proved correct in my time here!! Our nights out have often seen the girls approached by locals with sharp shirts tucked into their high waistlines, hair slicked back using dangerous amounts of gel and mobile phones attached to their belts in their own “holster”, (yes, I know back home wearing your phone on your belt in its own leather case would be something reserved for your Dad, but here everybody is at it!). Looking in from the outside this is even funnier as most of the guys are a good couple of inches shorter than Sarah and her friends!!
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