Mexico 2009

Im back at work now, and slowly adapting to the Finnish time and the coldness outside. The 1.5 weeks were definately fun, and we were thinking if we should return to Mexico and South America at fall. Maybe we will do that, maybe we will head to Australia or Africa. Time will tell..

What to say about Mexico? When booking the tickets we had no idea of the country, and it turned out to be a bit different from what we expected it to be. In the time there we got to know it a bit, but there is still a lot to explore. After all we have seen, I would recommend visiting the country.

But, if somebody is thinking of traveling to Mexico, I would strongly recommend not to stay only in Mexico City. Mexico City is an interesting big city, but there are a lot of cool places all around the country. Take a flight to Chiapas as we did, or to the Yucatan peninsula like we probably will do next time. Or to the Northern parts of Mexico. Staying only in Mexico City doesnt give much image of the country, just one big metropol :)

Being able to speak Spanish probably would make life in Mexico a lot easier. We survived quite fine with English and the basics of Spanish we learnt there, but if we return to Mexico later, we will probably get a few lessons of Spanish either in Finland or in Mexico. Basically anybody outside Mexico City doesnt speak more English than a few words, so any knowledge of Spanish helps.

Thanks for all the people who have been reading the blog, more to come at Summer :)

We just landed to Helsinki.. And damn its cold :p

More to follow later..

The flight was feeling easier this way. Maybe it was because of about 2 hours shorter flight time, maybe because of a good book, or just because of getting used to flying again. We happened to take a look out of the window just at the right moment, as the plane was passing over New York. That sure isnt a small town either, looks huge even when looked from 10 kilometers altitude. Too bad I didnt get any decent pictures of the beautiful sight.

Anyway, after 10 hours on the plane we landed to Amsterdam. This time we took a train to the central station and skipped the slow bus. We roamed a while around the city, still trying to find my shoes, walking through the Red Light District and right now enjoy a beer in a bar there. Yep, this was the first place with wireless net available we could find :)

Arriving Amsterdam it was totally clear we are in Europe again. Most big cities in Europe look the same anyway, compared to for example Mexico. Besides the look, the cold but clear air also told us where we are. It was surprisingly easy to breathe again after the Mexico Citys heavily polluted air, but damn its cold in here.. And Finland will be way colder.

Today was the souvenirs day. Or actually, try to get souvenirs -day. We walked the day around the city, as I was feeling a lot of better also, trying to find some souvenirs in addition to the ones we already had.

Didnt have too good luck with that though. We found a big supermarket which had a quite impressive selection of chili sauces, so my collection of them is grew again by a few bottles. I also continued my search for shoes, but seems like it would be an impossible mission in here. The local people are small, and at least Caterpillar seems to import only European size 44 and smaller shoes into here. My 45-46 size is not available anywhere, we tried about twenty shoe shops..

Now we have everything packed, and its time to take a taxi to the airport. Too lazy to use the metro this time.. A lovely 12 hours of flying is ahead again, then a few hours in Amsterdam and a few more hours on the plane back to Finland. Urgh, we will be freezing in Finland after getting used to this temperatures. It will be -12C when we arrived, according to the weather reports..

Blah, this was not good. Yesterday morning I woke up feeling a bit bad, muscles aching and so on. We headed to the city, visited the top of the Latinoamerica Tower, the second highest building of the city for a view over the city and a few photos.

Walking back from the I started feeling quite a bit worse with some fever coming up, and decided to return to the hostel. I slept all day yesterday, with the fever probably being around 39-40C for the most of the day. Later in the evening the fever came down a bit, and now after about 20 hours of sleeping Im feeling decent and actually being able to eat something etc..

I have no idea what that was, especially because I didnt notice any other symptons except the fever.. Maybe something bite me, I had quite a lot of insect bite marks at the morning, or maybe it was something else..

Yesterday evening we walked around the city a bit, but didnt really find anything special.. Theres some kinda of city festival going on, and a lot of people were gathering on the central market square of the city, there were music performances etc.. Seems like all the pubs etc are outside the historic downtown, as we didnt find almost any of them..

After exploring the city for a while we ended up just returning to the hostel and going to bed, and woke up pretty late in the morning. Looking for something to eat we took a metro to the Zona Rosa area, the citys "tourist district". Most of the big international chains have restaurants there, and obviously also the nightlife of the city is pretty much concentrated to Zona Rosa. It couldnt have been unnoticed that Zona Rosa is also one of the most liberal areas and the gay district of the city. The street vendors were selling gay porn movies, everything was pink and there were noticeably much gay looking male couples around...

We grabbed some tacos from a local restaurant and decided today would be a good day to visit the Zoo. Well, that probably wasnt the brightest idea, as today is Sunday, the day off of the locals.. The large park where the zoo is located was crowded with people, and so was the zoo. Besides the crowds of people, the zoo was a pretty basic one. Not among the best ones I have visited, but not too bad either. The entrance to the zoo was free, the area was quite big and the cages in decent condition. Glass walls on the cages always annoy photographers, and unfortunately the Mexicans seemed to like using them.. So, not much good pictures from there.

Back at the hostel now, going through the pictures and then thinking what to do today.. By the way, my shoes are pretty done with the walking here, as you can see on the last picture. I guess Ill have to find new ones tomorrow.

Once again we are sitting at our familiar table in the Hostel Amigo, editing pictures and emptying a big can of beer :)

We got to the airport perfectly on time, and the flight was just as short and comfortable as the one to San Cristobal. The sun was setting down when we were arriving to Mex City, and we got to observe a beautiful sunset from the plane.

The size of Mex City is hard to describe, and unfortunately its not allowed to take photos during the landing. The city just continues as far as you can see, to every direction. And, after landing the city smelled just as bad as it did when we first time arrived it. The air is noticeable warmer than the mountain air of San Cristobal, but its also noticeably more dirty. You can taste the smoke in the air, and your throat starts hurting a bit etc in a few minutes.. After an hour we were pretty much used to it again, though.

I got a few bottles of local chili sauces from a grocery store by the way, trying to get them home without breaking the bottles.. :)

Like I predicted, we didnt have time to do anything special today, at least not so far. We woke up quite late, took a shower, packed our bags and checked out the hostel. My bag has never been this full, its totally stuffed... Especially the poncho is taking enormous amounts of space in the bag. Luckily KLM allows us to have 2 checked in bags each on the way back to Europe, so the bag just has to survive until Mex City where I can get a second one..

Right now we are sitting in OCCs totally empty express bus to the airport. A decent ride after the crowded local buses, as we are the only passengers and the bus is a well equipped modern one. We should arrive the airport just in the time, lets hope everything goes well.. This was the only bus to the airport from San Cristobal today, so we didnt have much of choice...

Its feeling kinda sad leaving San Cristobal now. I have started liking the small city, and there would be a lot more to explore. Also, there would have been a free hugs happening and a pub crawl of the local CS community today, which would have been fun to attend. Somehow I have the feeling I will see this city again later, with more time to use..

The horse riding got us pretty tired, although waking up early etc might also have something to do with that.

At the evening we visited the house of a few local Couchsurfers, just to bring some requested videos from the party at Tuesday and chat for a while. They offered us a delicious vegetarian dinner and a cup or two of tea, which kinda made us even more sleepy.

A walk back from there, a Cuba Libre at a bar and now we are once again sitting on the yard of the hostel, wearing our new warm ponchos and thinking of falling asleep :)

Tomorrow will probably be a one more boring travel day, as our flight to Mexico City will depart from Tuxtla Gutierrez at 17.30 local time. That being said, we should probably leave San Cristobal around 14 so theres not too much time to do anything special tomorrow..

It was surprisingly quick to get used to riding a horse, havent done that since.. Hmm, I dont even remember for sure :)

We rode about 5-10 kilometers to the nearby village, spent a while there buying nice soft ponchos, some chili peppers etc from the market.

Heh, going horseriding on mountains without experience or the safety gear and with 10 second training in Spanish isnt probably the first recommended thing.. But it sure was fun :)