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Published: June 30th 2008
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Hi all!
Well we caught an early bus from Zacatecas to Guanajuato. We had to get up at 4am as the lady told Rob tickets would be on sale at 4.30am. Then she refused to sell them til 5am so not sure what was going on there. We were sitting in the bus terminal feeling pretty sleepy and grumpy, right next to a donkey childrens ride (you know, the sort the kid sits on and it moves around and plays music). It kept firing up with some jingle and repeating the same phrase in Spanish every 30 seconds. I was honestly ready to go up to it and kick it or something until Rob gently led me away to some far off seats like a crazy person...
Both towns (Zacatecas and Guanajuato) are amazing but if pushed for time we´d recommend Guanajuato as it´s more compact for walkers and just utterly, utterly charming. It´s also a very chilled out little town with both Mexican and foreign tourists strolling around and enjoying the sights, and it has a lot of outdoor restaurants and music, and a crazy network of underground tunnels. It´s very old. I´m not sure of the exact
age but it´s about the same as Zacatecas and Rob read earlier that that was started as a mining town in the 1500s. It´s really the architecture and colour that I´ve been waiting for, the Mexico that was in my mind. It certainly wasn´t to be found in the dusty streets of Los Mochis!
We´ve caved a bit and have started giving some beggars money. It just feels terrible sitting enjoying a nice dinner when people are asking for just a few pesos. There is so much poverty here and so many wealthy people too. There´s a noticeably bigger gap in wealth than there is in NZ, maybe closer to the levels we saw in Africa.
I´ve been struggling a bit with hypertension the past few weeks but it´s a lot cooler here still as it´s high up, even though we are pretty much in the centre of Mexico and near the tropic of cancer. I find I feel pretty good in the evenings. I feel a bit sorry for Rob as he´s had to slow things down a lot for me, but then again he helped get me into this predicament, hehe.
We went for a few drinks
in a really funky lounge bar last night. That was only our 2nd time heading out after dinner since we hung out with some new friends at the hostel in Creel - some fellow travellers from France, Texas and South Africa.
Tomorrow we get a 5-6 hour bus to Mexico City at the very respectable time of 9.45am. I´m pretty excited to be going there as I read it´s the most populous city in Latin America. I did read this in a 1970s National Geographic though so my info might be slightly out of date! One must-see for me in Mexico is Frida Kahlo and Diego Reviera´s house. We saw the house that Diego Riviera was born in and spent his early childhood in here in Guanajuato but unfortunately it´s closed on Mondays. It has some of his paintings in it so that was a shame. I´m not as much of a fan of his stuff as I am of Frida Kahlo´s but it would have been nice to see. We also want to see the Aztec pyramids near the city.
We plan to stay in Mexico City for 3 nights then have 6 days to get to Cancun
before our flight to Cuba. We come back to Cancun again after Cuba so no rush to do anything there.
I must say that I have maligned the toilets of Mexico somewhat. They have been perfectly respectable here on the mainland, even on the buses, nothing like the ones on Baja. The bus terminals are much nicer too. Although the hostel we stayed in last night had a toilet seat that wasn´t attached so that made for some logistical issues as it kept sliding around. It also had a semi see-through door that didn´t reach the ceiling but we´ve given up all pretence of privacy or dignity really. We decided to change to a different hotel at less than half the price for tonight. The first one we stayed in was recommended on Thorn Tree but I suspect they recommended themselves as it was probably the worst one we´ve stayed at for the most money. There only seemed to be two other people staying there as well! A nice couple from England that we chatted to for a while.
Rob has been smelling less like a taco since we left Baja too, which is lovely. He keeps cracking jokes
every time I feel the baby move that he can feel his taco move too. Sorry, the humour has become a bit low-brow with mostly only each other to talk to!
Since leaving Chihuahua (Zacatecas and Guanajuato are much les dusty) my feet are starting to look a bit more respectable again too. They were getting disgustingly filthy no matter how much soap I used, and also kind of wrinkly and swollen looking. Really not pretty. I feel bad because on the whole Mexicans are pretty dressed up but jandals are the only thing cool enough in most places! Rob still gets a few looks when he wears his San Francisco Slugs t-shirt too, it´s so funny. I hear they dress up even more in Cuba but if they think we´re slobs then so be it. We´re here to remember the experience, and not for them to remember us.
Well I will leave you with some more photos. This internet cafe has compact flash card readers so no need to have a CD made for my camera, woohoo! Rob has gone walkabout with his one but we have mostly been taking photos of the same stuff anyway, although obviously
he has the photos with me in it and vice versa.
Missing you all!
XXX Krista,
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Katja
non-member comment
But where oh where are the chihuahua's?!
Surely they should be piled knee high on the streets?