¡Mexico City Continued!

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¡Hola Everyone! I hope everyone is good! I have so much to tell from my last post that this may be a bit of a ranting drawl but I will try to keep it to a minimum and just give you the highlights.. The last time was in Mexico City after we had just arrived... p.s. I cannot upload photos very easily at this internet cafe so I will upload some to facebook and try again somewhere else!

So - Mexico City was excellent - we made our way to the Museo de Antropologica in the Chapultepec park which is a world renound anthropology museum studying all the Central/South American indiginous peoples. Its very impressive - the photo of the giant pillar supports a massive roof on its own and is a gigantic water feature at the same time. Getting there was our first time on the Mexico City Metro and was rather interesting but worked really well - it costs 3 pesos to get on the tube and once you are on you can go anywhere in the city - thats about 30p to travel the length of London twice over...it was REALLY hot though! The peddlers take advantage of the cheap fares and get on and off trains selling all types of things from corn snacks to sweets to plastic childrens toys to general unneccessary items - fortunately foreigners seem to be overlooked altogether!

After the Museum we had a wander in the park which is rather large - similar in scale to Central Park if not bigger. Everybody goes out for a wander and to socialise on Sundays in the park so the place was packed.. as we wandered by a crowd of about 300 people we saw yet another clown (something that was beginning to be a common occurence) who decided that a tall white englishman was exactly what he needed as his assistant for the crowd. Much to my objections, I found myself in the middle of the crowd dancing with the clown (baring in mind that on our first day my Spanish wasnt the best!) and generally playing the fool with an Argentinian man, a spanish woman, another mexican and the clown. It was pretty hilarious though. Sarah delighted in laughing at my expense, as did the other sunday strollers! What an introduction.

After I managed to pull myself away from the clown (fun as it was), We got back on the tube and headed for a quieter part of town called Coyoacan which is where the Frida Kahlo museum is and a great little market where we had our first mexican food - Comida Corrida - a set meal of spaghetti soup followed by rice followed by enchiladas and then a custardy thing. It was pretty good for 2 GBP!

We were still pretty wiped out from all the travelling so we headed back to the hostel, on the way we took in the incredibly wonky cathedral in the Zocalo which has been slowly sinking since it was built 500 years ago (as Mexico City is built on a dried up lake bed) - the pendulum in the centre shows how much it is still moving despite massive engineering works underground to try and support it!

We also experienced our first rain once we got back to the Hostel - for about half an hour... Once I had got out of the shower the whole place was dry - I think I forgot to mentino that this place is really quite hot!

In a very tired fashion, we retired early and got some sleep. Unfortuately the sleep was interrupted by the ever present and ridiculously loud alarm from down the street! I was NOT a happy bunny!

We got up early with all our gear and hopped on the Metro to the bus station where we got a ticket to Oaxaca... The bus was absolutely incredible - better than any bus I have ever been on in the UK - air conditioning that worked, some dodgy spanish dubbed films - and plenty of space for my legs! It took an hour to get out of the City - it is truly massive on a scale like nothing I have ever experienced (later a couple we met from Mexico said they had lived there their whole lives and had only seen probably about 30%). We started climbing up into the mountains that surround the city and that is pretty much the way it stayed for the full 6 hours! We climbed Higher and higher and the towns gave way to cacti, rocks and an environment not too dissimialr to the surface of Mars. When I say cacti, some were as big as houses or as tall as a 3 storey building!

Eventually we Arrived in Oaxaca which is at about 5000ft above sea level - a totally different feel to Mexico City - colonial feeling, cobbled streets, much smaller (although still quite big) but generally lovely. That is where my next (in about 20 mins) blog will be based!

I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Love to all

x

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Comments

[Heather]

I really enjoyed your post about Mexico City, Oaxaca, etc. I haven't been to those parts, but I loved Mexico! My blog is looking for travel reviews, photos, etc, to share. If you have the time, check it out at dirty-hippies.blogspot.com, or email me at [e-mail]. Continued fun on your travels! Heather