As expected, this was the “leftover” day. Having done everything around here, our main mission of today was to kill time and survive the heat. We slept in in the morning and had breakfast at the hotel as always. Afterwards, we took a public van towards the northern part of the city where we had the intention to visit the Maya museum. It was extremely hot and when we arrived the entrance cost was pretty high compared to our motivation. The place was very new and fancy and empty. Nevertheless, we saw a poster for alternative cultural cinema in the museum and as this secured us 1,5 hours of AC, we went in.
The chinese-french production was a weird, alternative and different movie of the kind I like, but I was the only one. Also, it was even a bit too cold inside.
Tired and stupidified by the movie and the temperature, we took a taxi back to the center, not really up for doing anything. We walked around the main square for a bit and went back to the hotel to cool off and relax in the pool. The cooling off worked okay, the relaxation was more difficult – I wish Bluetooth speakers were forbidden for people with an IQ under 75!
However, we had time to write, to draw and relax a bit until the sky went black at dawn and it started raining a lot for 5 minutes. We enjoyed the rain in the pool and took a shower afterwards. I had my dinner from yesterday in the lobby and afterwards we went out for some music and drinks to Mercado 60. The rain hadn’t cooled off the city at all, we even felt it was hotter than yesterday.
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Now that this trip is basically over, I think is a good moment to write down some general experiences and thoughts about this trip to Mexico:
1. Mexicans are very nice people! Wherever we were, people were usually very helpful and sympathetic; in hotels as well as in taxis in buses or on the street. Unlike what one would expect, they are a little timid and polite at first but then warm up, smile and are happy to talk and help.
2. Mexicans drive much better than you would expect them to. Traffic is a pretty predictable and quiet thing, even in the big capital. People don’t drive too fast or too weird, people generally stop at red traffic lights, people let pedestrians and other cars pass the street deliberately.
3. Even if I personally didn’t experience this as much: there are thousands of different names for different foods, and all are basically the same: tortilla, meat, frijoles, at least 5 types of hot sauce. Also, everything is spicy. Even when buying fruit on the street they will ask you if you want some chili on it.
4. Mexico is intense in colour, sound, taste and smell.
5. Mexican streets are very clean although there are NO wastebaskets. Having something to throw away is a real problem because you cannot find any bins on the streets. No idea how everything can be that clean and what people do with their waste.
6. There are certain times for certain foods on the street. No Elote or Esquite before 5 pm, no grilled meat before dinner, but grilled meat only for lunch inside the market.
7. If you ask for the way, the answer is normally very difficult to understand, as they don’t use right or left but rather point into a direction and say thing like “5 squares from this corner”.
8. Every building is equipped with signs of what to do in case of an earthquake and with a green spot on the street which indicates where to stand to be safe. Mexico is classified as a highly seismic place, as 5 different tectonic plates collide towards each other on the southern coast. We have been told that there are very small earthquakes all the time but you don’t really notice them. Only once, at the airport of Tuxtla, we could feel a light movement but weren’t sure if it was an earthquake or the building shaking for some other reason.
In Yucatan, the sign for earthquakes is replaced by a sign for hurricanes.
9. Mexicans, apart from corn and beans, love “topes” – speedbumps. Every journey, no matter how short in kilometers, will be eternal because the driver has to slow down to 3 km/h every 500 meters to cross a speedbump. These are ALWAYS located next to little shops or restaurants and generally built by the people owning these places. The idea is to slow people down, make them see what you offer and this way convince them to stop.
10. Time is relative. I have experienced the famous southamerican “ahorita” before in Ecuador and Peru and it’s not different in Mexico. “Ahorita”, literally “now”, can mean 3 minutes, 30 minutes, 4 hours, or never. Nevertheless, for example busses, taxis and vans were always very punctual (more than the planes actually).
11. Mexico is much less visited than I thought. I have mentioned it before; we almost didn’t see any tourists and the few ones that were running around in temples or city centers were mainly Mexicans or at least South Americans. By the number of people who have been to Mexico lately, I imagined a country completely prepared for tourism and crowded by white people with cameras. Exactly the opposite was the case. We have seen many many places with no tourists at all and there is still a very strong indigenous culture.
12. The Spanish haven’t killed it all. In almost all the regions, people still speak their Mayan or Aztekan or Zapotekan languages, stick to their clothing and rituals. Nevertheless, all these languages and traditions are in danger and one can only hope that the consciousness about the value of these cultures comes before they have disappeared completely.
13. Mexican street vendors are much less annoying than vendors in most other countries, especially in Asia. If you say “no thank you”, they will leave you alone and go on. We also learned some useful formulas watching how locals respond to people offering you things you don’t need or asking you for money. My personal favourite was “Otro día con mucho gusto” (traduced something like “Another day, I will love to (…give you money/buy something)”).
14. Mexico has 7 climate zones, that are created by the location of regions in very low and very high altitudes, and by the influence of the Pacific ocean, the Carribean and the Gulf of Mexico. We have experienced temperatures of 16-28 degrees in DF and Oaxaca, 28-39 degrees in Mazunte, 12-26 degrees in Chiapas, 30-40 degrees in Yucatan. Any of these zones is currently in the raining season, so thunderstorms and rain from 5 pm until night were normal and expected everywhere, although people have been telling us that they missed rain this year.
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Tomorrow, we will be heading back to DF, to reunite the shrinked group and spend one last day in the capital before flying back home on Wednesday.
