I’m now in DF with two of the coolest guys I’ve
ever met while traveling; present tense Thomas and crazy Tusar from Australia. We bused
in at 5 am, and spent the first three hours in DF* walking around Coyoacan with
our backpacks on. The cobble stone roads were so cobble and pebbly that it
tore my shoes apart. I think we broke the record for the longest time spent
looking for a hostel. When I asked Thomas, “Why the Coyote Flaco?” His response
was, “Zoe said it was good and I think we should trust her” But after a few
hours, our stomachs groaned and we took a train to el Zocalo and stayed at
Hostel Mexico.
Tusar was quite nice with his lively attitude. He’d
comment on the weather, snap “panoramic photos” and blurt out random wails about feeling
crappy as if he had Turret syndrome e.g. “mother f*****”.
This is my third time in Teotihuacan. This time
it’s different because I climbed the pyramids with a slight hangover: it’s like
having an 8 ball roll left and right in your skull. Will I crack my skull open
if I climb the next pyramid? It answers, MAYBE.
Trains in Mexico...
puts the METRO system in Los Angeles too shame
because it’s fast, and oh so frequent. For 3 pesos (about 40 cents),
I can get across the city in 20 minutes. Mind you, Mexico City is one of the largest
cities in the world! I love it and it’s always a bit of an infomercial inside.
I tried falling asleep on Thomas´ arm on the way to the hostel but there’s
always somebody striding the trains pumping out music from their boom box in
their mochila, their backpack, to sell burnt copies of the CD. If it’s not
that, a lady will come in, make a speech about her daughter in the hospital who has cancer, etc, then ask for donations. People sell candy, medicine,
batteries, DVDs, toys... Upon getting off the bus, the show doesn’t end there.
Walking through the train station, and getting off, I often hear someone
yelling the price of his or her merchandise—gum, a toy, lotion—and no matter
where I go, there’s always food pricking my nose. The waft of cotija cheese and
mushrooms sizzling on top of a blue tortilla mix, masa, that's just been pressed on a grill is
enticing. Greasy gorditas and salty tacos al carbon with a hint of pineapple fill the air, provoking my taste buds to rise from a capricious tongue—but I
just ate! Gluttony strikes because Mexico makes me hungry. I eat pastries, ice
cream, tamales, drink horchata (sweat rice milk with cinnamon) instead of
water, and feel empty without my morning and midnight champurado (hot
chocolate condensed with corn meal). The reason why my belt buckle hasn’t
reached its last loop could be because the food is so fresh that my body uses it all. I now weigh 53 kilos and to avoid any shock, I refuse to make the conversion to pounds: I have no idea how much I weigh. Por qué? I don't need to know. As long as
I’m on break, carpe diem and carpe food.
For now on, a sandwich is not a sandwich without chile
verde or red hot sauce. Before taking a bite, I must drizzle some of it on my
torta—meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato and sliced avocado stuffed inside a bolillo
roll (sort of like a baguette). There’s something about the mélange of the
pepper’s fresh spice and the avocado’s fragrant oils that has made the torta a favorite choice for lunch and dinner, sometimes everyday, twice a day. If it has no chile
and lime, it’s not Mexican. There’s a saying in Mexico: A day without
chile, is like a day without sun. More on that later.
Stripping & peaches
After sharing two pitchers of Pulke—local alcoholic drink
made from agave that’s foamy, viscous and sweet—we went to a strip bar on the
main drag of Guerrero in DF. I told the guy that my guys want peaches! Listen,
one guy is from Australia, the other one is from Holland, they are used to
seeing blue eyes and blond hair so they don’t need that. They want to see some
Latinas, more specifically, they want to see some back i.e. they want to see peach. Tusar coined the term peach to refer to the lovely asset of a woman.
So for 200 pesos (20 bucks), we got eight beers and a table
dance (not lap dance). The girls were beautiful Latinas, but they were also too skinny and the
guys weren’t pleased. It was
a Monday night so what would you expect? A day off? RANDOM THOUGHT: Well museums are closed on Mondays... With the stripper's permission, I decided to spice things up and took over the poll; I got on stage, swung around from right
to left then fell. I tried again and didn’t do so bad, the guys were
entertained.
The strippers then sandwiched me and took my shirt off. They said,
“Encuerala!”
What? Do they think I
don’t speak Spanish? Encuerela means undress her!
And just as one of the girls
reached down to unbutton my jeans, I jumped off the stage and threw my shirt
back on. Show’s over folks. I wonder if it was the Pulke that made me do it, or
the crap tequila that we drank at the gay club, yeah there's more but to make a long story short, it was a craaazy night.
*DF stands for
Districto Federal. Mexicans use it to refer to the capital city i.e. Mexico City.
