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Published: February 25th 2007
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It seems somewhere along the line I've picked up some of Palin's genes and that one world trip has not been enough. So its off to Latin America for a planned 9 month adventure. First stop is Mexico, where I'll be spending the best part of 2 months before moving onto South America.
My flight arrived just before dawn, and so my first view of Mexico City was an unending sea of lights. Its obviously a big place, hella big, but its also incredibly easy to get around because of the metro they have. Because of its size there's lots to do and always something going on.
The centre of Mexico City is called the Zocalo and its apparently the second biggest city square in the world. The centrepiece is possibly the biggest flag that I have ever seen. Apparently it is taken down each evening at dusk in an exciting military ceremony - however I´ll have to take the guidebook's word for that as every time I turn up to watch it appears to be the lazy sods day off!
After arriving, I took the rush hour Metro from the airport (an experience, as I was fully
laden with backpack!), to my hostel and met up with my travelling buddies Steve and Chris, who had arrived the day before. We spent our first three or four days together exploring Mexico City.
We visited a couple of Mexican Premiership football matches, one of which was at the Estadio Azteco which is absolutely huge and lays claim to being the only stadium in the world to host two world cup finals. The standard of the football we watched wasn't the greatest, loads of flair players and not all that much in the way of tackling, and the pace of the games were pretty pedestrian. The slow pace may have been something to do with the scorching heat, but its always easy to criticize when you're topping up the tan in the stands and being kept nourished by a steady flow of ice cold Corona!
We also went on a spectacular day trip to the ancient city of Teotihuacan. This contained two restored pyramids - the temple of the Sun and the temple of the Moon, both of which were able to be climbed. It was a beautiful day when we visited and the spectacular views across the
ruiined city were well worth the climb as was the refreshing breeze at the summit.
Despite planning a 9 month adventure around almost entirely Spanish speaking countries, the first encounter I had with trying to learn the language was the phrasebook that I bought at Heathrow airport. Steve and Chris had previously spent a fortnight in Madrid, and the language skills Steve gleaned there immeadiately instilled him as the Tour Translator.
That said, we struggled massively with the menus - usually resorting to games of "menu roulette" - which was always great fun - though some occasions were more successful than others. One day we scored with a meat dish, unlimited rice, beans and tortillas for about £1.20, then the next day it was tripe soup all round!!
We also met up with my university friend Sarah, who was out in Mexico City for a year teaching English, and a couple of her teaching friends Mandi and Rachel. The six of us went off exploring Mexico city, Sarah's fluent Spanish blagging us into the Palacio Nacional for free and then onwards to Plaza Garribaldi to watch the Mariachis play and sample some tequila (when in Rome after
all!). A masterstroke of planning that would almost certainly not be seen again during the trip, saw us ascend to the top of the "Torrelatinamerica" - when it was built the tallest building in Mexico City - about half an hour before sunset. The views across the city were fantastic - the buildings just didn't seem to stop no matter how far and in which direction you looked. And, after the sun had gone down, we could watch the stream of headlights and brakelights along the main roads as Mexico City's touchy traffic system ground to a halt!
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