Calling time


Advertisement
Mexico's flag
North America » Mexico » Distrito Federal » Mexico City
March 24th 2009
Published: March 24th 2009
Edit Blog Post

The last few weeks of our travels have been a slightly odd period. A mental battle between enjoying the last drops of our walk-help-roam experience and wanting to get home and put in place our next chosen acts. So it was with a certain relief that we entered Mexico City our final stop. This fabulous journey of experiences, many that we will be dissecting and analysing for some time, was drawing to a close with our minds now almost fully focused on new horizons and challenges.

Mexico City is big, twenty million people big. It’s much calmer and quieter that we had pictured for such a mega-city which is incredibly set at over 2’400m above sea level. We’d been warned of nasty nose bleeds from its famous pollution and an underground transport system that had special carriages for women and children as the experience can be overly traumatic. We found neither of these (although we carefully avoided the rush hours) instead the air felt of no significant difference to London and the underground was a pleasant experience at an unbelievable ten pence for a single trip anywhere in the network. We gave the sights a good go and were rewarded with some great city style entertainment. Although the cycling shop adorned street close to the centre of town that we walked down early one afternoon heading for the large Merced market was more that a little shocking with its numerous loitering prostitutes in search of their next customer.

If when we walked 1000km across Spain we never quite found the real Spain we were seeking (except perhaps in Navarra) Mexico particularly in the south is certainly as close the Hispanic charm of old that we’ve come. Somewhat like Guatemala the Mexicans are getting on with their thing in their way without constantly looking over their shoulder. Although the further north we’ve journeyed strong influence from its powerful neighbour has seemingly corrupted some of that authentic carefree Hispanic allure. Problems appear to lie beneath Mexico’s calm exterior with native tensions still dangerously simmering from fairly recent events unbefitting of any supposedly democratic state. However, it has provided well for us during our last three weeks of roam.

So with over 25’000 words written on this blog these will be the last ones. The path we have carved over the last ten months has taught us far more than we could have hoped. Nothing more worthy of note than the safe passage the overwhelmingly decent people of this world have given us. Apart from the unfortunate bank fraud incident in Guatemala the only possessions we had stolen were two eggs, a tomato and a couple of T-shirts.

We walked, we helped (perhaps), we roamed and now its time to go home.

Advertisement



Tot: 0.113s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 8; qc: 48; dbt: 0.078s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.1mb