I cannot think anymore, I won’t even proofread this text but will try to give you some information about this first, incredibly intense day in Mexico.
We left the house at 9 in the morning and went to the city center to visit the market. Esmeralda’s brother accompanied us and his wife joined us a little later.
The market was exactly what one imagines when thinking about a Mexican market. Everything was sound, everything was smell, everything was colour. Infinite amounts of fruits and vegetables of all types on a gigantic space. Then raw meat. Then all spices and weird plants to cure every different type of desease through different rituals. Then all toys, then saints, then alive animals, then vegetables again.
After the market, we took two metros to the flower market, where everything was colour and smell again.
For lunch, we went to another taqueria where I had a taco with a piece of meat. I could see the kitchen and talk directly to the cook but actually, after what I’ve seen of the market and the restaurants I cannot eat anything ever and am mostly starving all the time. What I did try o the market however, were some fried grasshoppers…
In the afternoon, we visited the fine arts museum with very convincing mural paintings expositions. After this, we walked around the rest of the center of this 30 million city. Zócalo, post office, two churches, alternative patio…
Esmeralda’s brother had to leave at some point but two of their (extremely well-trained) friends showed up to substitute him. We somehow felt that the Mexicans didn’t trust us to be alone here without some Mexican bodyguards.
The evening ended on the Garibaldi quare which is famous for the Mariachis, the typical Mexican musical groups that play the songs you wish them to play if you pay them.
Basically everything we had to do here in Mexico happened in the next 3 hours: First a round of tequila, then an hour of private Mariachis, then a game of toque toque, where increasing electricity if sent through everyone’s hands in a circle until you can’t stand it anymore.
From 6 pm on, I was basically asleep in some kind of zombie mode where I just followed and walked and existed without really feeling good about it or caring about it (Jet-lag is a bitch). Groups of Mariachis were all around us, playing all at once for different groups of people in the bar and on the square, one worse than the other and the volume increased from hour to hour. At some point I decided to at least get my box of rice with tuna from my backpack and have dinner so I would more or less survive the night. But nevertheless, there was much too much cigarette smoke, time, and noise!
We got back home at what would have been 7am at home, but was only 12 here and could finally go to sleep.
