Just a walk in the park


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North America » Mexico » Hidalgo » Pachuca
November 16th 2006
Published: November 16th 2006
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Well, I thought that I had posted another travel blog a while ago, but i was wrong, I am sorry. What can I say. You can all yell at me another time. For the time being, enjoy this one.
Well this all begins on All Saints Day, also known as November 1. After school, I hopped a bus to a town called Pátzcuaro. Pátzcuaro is a town in the state of Michoacan, about 35 or 40 minutes from the state capital of Morelia. Morelia is about 4 hours from Mexico City, with no traffic. This is also a funny concept, that is the idea of no traffic in Mexico City because this city makes LA traffic look like a Sunday night at 4 am. So I headed out from Pachuca around 4 in the afternoon, bound for Pátzcuaro. Now, the festivities in this small town happen in the Lago de Pátzcuaro (Lake of Pátzcuaro) and there is a small island town in the middle of this lake. Well, to make things a bit more interesting, Josh decided to come on Thursday, Nov. 2nd, "El Dia de Muertos", but I wanted to go early. I was meeting a friend from the fesival in Guanajuato two weeks prior called Cervantino. Anyway, my French friend (yes, bridging the gap between the frogs and the yanks) Elodie arived in the Pátzcuaro bus terminal at around 9 pm, and gave me a call on my mobile phone. Well, I thought based on the time I had been traveling I was only a few maybe 2 hours outside of Morelia, but man, was I wrong. I must also pre-empt the rest of this story with the fact that my school failed to pay me on time. I was supposed to be payed on the 30th, and this is the 1st, and still no money. The director assured me that by the time I left school, the payment would go through. May I also remind you, that the rest of my money (i.e. my american bankaccount was dry), effectively, I had the money in my pockets. Back to the story then. I arrived in Morelia just in time to catch the last bus to Pátzcuaro for the evening. When I finally arrived in this small lake town, my bus kicked me off the bus, but not in the termial, in front of a gas station on the main road. Hmm, what to do, Elodie does not have a mobile phone, and I have just spent the last of my money on bus fair to here. Also, I have NO idea where I am, a new city, and seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Might I add, that my phone is out of money, so I can't even try to call the pay-phone that Elodie called me from to tell her where I was. Hmmmm, quite the predicament.
So at 1:30 a.m. I began wandering the small city of Pátzcuaro looking for the main bus terminal, I have 3pesos 50centavos to my name, and my friend is waiting for me in a location that remains a mistery to me. Great. Well, I search high and low, I walk down towards the lake thinking maybe the terminal is down there, no...no termial, I catch (with the last of my money) a minibus to the center of town thinking maybe the termial is there....no, no termial. I am asking people, but for the most part, everyone is a tourist, and nobody has a clue as to where the bus termial is. Super. I wonder around amilessly, feeling terrible, it is now nearly 3:00 a.m. and I still have not found my friend, and she has been waiting for me in a bus terminal since 9 o'clock. I am turning into the worst travel compainion in the history of traveling (Broke, cold, and alone). At 3:15 I had given up, hoping that Elodie had done the same and was somewhere warm sleeping, and would contact me in the morning. I grab a seat against a pillar in the main square, and decide, this is where I am going to sleep for the evening. Tomorrow is a new day, and I will meet my friend then. All of a sudden, as if by magic, my telephone rings, and who is it? You guessed it, Elodie...and in spanish, and pissed I may add (rightfully so by the way) "WHERE ARE YOU?" I explained that I was in the center of the city, and that I was so sorry, I told her I will explain it when you get here, but I have no money, and can't get to the terminal, I have been looking for it for almost 2 hours. She tells me to wait, and so I do, and within a half an hour, she arrives with a confused smile on her face. So finally at 4 a.m. we were able to meet up and set off on a journey to find a hotel room and get out of the cold.
Imagine, in a foreign place, looking for a hotel room at 4 a.m. in a city that attracts tourists from all over the country for this specific night. Hmmmm, suprisingly enough EVERY freekin hotel was full for the night. We were unrelenting, however, in our search, we walked around for close to two hours looking for hotels and knocking on doors. No luck, we decided at some time between 5:30 and 6 that it was time to just try to get a few hours of sleep. We aproached a small park that was near to the lake, and about 7.5 degrees colder than the center of the city. "Well this looks nice" I said. And so we found a comfortable looking rose colored cement park bench and took residence for the night. Luckily for us, I brought a sleeping bag, and with as many clothes as I could put on, I opened up the sleeping bag and tried to use it as a blanket between the two of us to try and keep warm. As the early morning fog set in, I think I nodded off, sitting on a park bench freezing my chi-chi's off. The only reason I know I slept is because around 7:30 or 8 the sun came up, and the city sprung to life with the sounds of car horns and laughter.
Bleary-eyed, freezing and confused by what the fuck was going on, we got up, and decided to look for a warm place to grab some food, a coffee and then maybe a hotel for the night that Josh was going to meet us. Luckily for us, a hotel that we stopped in the night before was open for that night, and we booked our room, left our stuff and ran to get some food and hot cup of coffee.....or 5. The rest of the trip went much smoother, we actually had a room everywhere we went since then, but man, what a night, what an experience. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Keep 'em to yourself....haha, just kiddin'. This is me, over and out for now.

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23rd November 2006

i am not even going to read that too many letters

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