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Published: February 11th 2008
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Tim and Barb dropped us off at the airport and we had dinner with them. So much nicer to be dropped off to(or picked up from) an airport by friends or family than by random strangers.
Just a quick note about Vancouver airport, even though in the scheme of things it pales in significance to other things I have to write about (as I am writing this about a week later) but I have never been in a nicer airport. If airports at all reflect the area that they are in, then Vancouver's does a pretty good first/last impression. What other airport can you lie next to a creek (even if it is an artificial one) surrounded by plants and listen to bird calls and rain forest tracks played through the speakers? Any nerves (and there were quite a few in my case) just dissolve. And there was also an amazing aquarium with real coral and real star fish (and real fish, of course)...
Anyways, enough about the airport. Neither of us got much sleep on the plane. Just as we were both finally getting to sleep they woke us up for 'breakfast' at 3 am Vancouver time. I
was not hungry but took it anyway. A decision I would later regret as the white bread sat heavily in my confused stomach... two hours after what was meant to be breakfast we landed. The shock of arriving in a strange City in a strange country where everyone speaks a different language, is big even with a good night's sleep. Without a nights sleep, you feel like you are in a dream that could go bad at any minute, but no matter how hard you try, you can't make yourself wake up to the extent you want to. Thanks to Jono being able to say some words in Spanish we got into a taxi, and I definitely woke up when I saw the driver slip his knife under the carpet on his dashboard. Yep, we were in a different country, that was for sure. I woke up even more once he started driving. And people think climbing is dangerous. I read someone talking about being in a taxi on a Mexican highway being a more adrenalin filled experience than skydiving and white water... and I can now verify that statement.
Anyhow, we got to the hostel. It was surrounded
by a lot of amazing old Spanish baroque buildings and a HUGE beautiful church... but also a lot of shops that looked closed down, as they had iron shutters like garage doors pulled down over their fronts.
The hostel though was really beautiful. It was a transformed old mansion, with big open spaces and bright art work on the walls. Our private room was huge, clean and even had double glass doors opening out on to a mini veranda on the street front. The log beam roof was over twice Jono's height (an antithesis to the basement flat we had been living in, where I could not even do my yoga properly as the ceiling got in the way).
We only just had the energy to take in these few details before lying down on the bed and crashing out for about 5 hours, almost making up the sleep deprivation. We then went for a walk and noticed all the shops I thought were closed down, had opened up for business, which cheered me up. A street full of boarded up shops looks really depressing. We found a vegetarian taco place for lunch, and then mustered the energy
to stroll around the area we were staying. The hostel was in a historical part of town (Centro Historico), so there was plenty to look at. Our walk included a walk into the intimidatingly beautiful huge church, with. We also walked through a large park which had markets all through it and musicians and performers. Tamales, tacos, barbecued corn, fairy floss, families, guitars, brass instruments, carved fruit, fried pastries, sombrero wearing police men on horseback all helped form a positive impression of Mexico and make the highway and taxi feel like a distant memory.
Another highlight was seeing the Aztec dancers perform in the plaza near where our hostel is. The plaza was initially called "Plaza de la constitucion" but locals began calling it "Zocalo" meaning "base" in reference to a monument to Independence that started being built in the 19th century but was never finished beyond the pedestal. The Aztec "Conchero" dancers were marking the ceremonial center of the Aztec Tenochtilan. It was such a powerful, electrifying, aerobic dance with rhythmic booming drums, and we later realised, they went all day! It was quite interesting seeing them perform in the exact space where they used to so many
years ago, though now it was right infront of a big looming spanish built church. The Spanish typically built their churches over all the Axtec ceremonial and spiritual centres, which makes you look at the church differently. But then, the Axtecs built their temples over those of the people before them too, so the story just continues...
Anyway, moving right along, as it is getting dark and my internet time is running out...
Lunch is the main meal of the day, so it was hard to find a place to buy dinner. We wandered by a free concert in the plaza, where a Polynesian band with dancers transported us mentally back to Hawaii and we eventually found a Mexican style chicken shop, on a dug up road a few blocks away where we had dinner for US$2.50 each. No English translations or tourists in sight which is always cool. We ate what we thought were freshly roasted chickens (due to the spit out the front of the shop), even if they were coated in dust from the roadworks going on in front, atleast they were fresh, we thought. While we were eating we realised that they were in
fact, reheated, dust covered chickens. As the kitchen needed chickens, a man would take a steel rod full of chickens from the rotating spit, and replace it with a rod of presumably cold but cooked chickens, and carry the hot rod of chooks back to the kitchen, dripping fat on the floor as he went. A sight we did not need to see. But, it was only $2.50 and provided a cultural experience, and we did not get sick, so can't really complain.
On our way back from dinner we found a bread and pastry shop which was the size of a small supermarket and sold almost every kind of bread or pastry imaginable. You get a silver tray and walk around filling it up with everything you want, whether that may be a crocodile shaped loaf of bread or a sweet tamale.
OK, I am done for now. So much more to tell you though, and there are tons of photos to upload, which don't seem to want to work right now. So I will try to add those next time.
Adios for now.
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heder
non-member comment
wow
2 bucks fifty for a chicken! awesome, dust or not, thats good protein! and the dirt cleans your teeth anyhow. Im glad to hear that your alive and well, and that the taxi guy didnt have to use the knife. Oh and the smells must be awesome.. not from Johno... ;) but from Meh-hic-co.... love you heaps and miss you more. take care, play safe and enjoy the time. x h