Monday, 25 October 2010

Mexico City - didnt get raped, mugged or kidnapped..actually the safest place i've been!

Day 1

So met a lovely german gentleman called Gillian who was a 37 year old diver/IT guy who one day dreams of giving up the suit... and settlin in indonesia with his own diving school!!! gotta love it... so me and him both wanted to take the overnight bus to mexico city, which was agreat idea coz trying to do the cheap 6peso bus ride up there, needed gillian spanish skills as about 8 different people from guadalahara told us differnet bus stops to catch the bus to the bus station (which is like 20 miles out of the city centre - remember the aweful bus journey with the german lady eggghhhrrrrrrrccchh)
so eventually after dancing around the plazadeindependance with a fucking deadbody onmy back(my rucksack) we found the bus stop  hoppedon and within 40minof gillian telling me hislifetimeplan, we were there..booooom bobs your uncle in the mexican stylie of efficent buses 510peo later wereon a bus to mexico city... totally passedout..well i thought i was awake throughout partsof the journey due to cronic back ache of the eats..but as I got shooken up by gillian.. screaming "were here, were here shit!!" it appears with the dribble down my face and being toldi was lightly snoring means i slept the whole 7 hours!!! ha ha and we even gotin earlier..soit was 6.30am and I was in the middle of mexico city bus station! something i needed to prep for, you know as people tell you the stories of being ganged raped down the street, held by knive point for your mcdonalds, granteed to get kidnap 1 in 3 taxis!! ha ha ha

Well I can tell you people, THAT MEXICO CITY IS THE CLEANEST, FRIENDLIEST,MOST HELPFUL CTY I HAVE BEEN TO!!!
So me a gllian grabbed a coffee (he had two) and workedout our bearing on what to do, and it was easy... you had to queue in thismassive taxi line, but once you got to the front you pay the lady to what zone you wanna go to, an easy 83 peso for both of us... boom your in a cab being driven to your hostel.. and you don't get ripped off by the driver! fricking awesome! no pulling me out by my hair and cutting off my ear to be sent home to motherdear for a ransom. So easy and so safe.
Right now the other challenged i had to deal with at 7am!so the reason why i came to Mexico City is because tony and few other people told me about this awesome corona festival that was happenng that day, Pixies, temper trap, white lies, regina specktor and few more other awesome bands.. but whilst trying to catchhim throughout the few days.. the first email i got was he wasn't going coz he couldn't find a ticket, then it was were not going to go but were going to the pyramids (which was something i was well up for doing anyway) but as I got to the hostel at 7am.. and no idea where he was, or what he was doing, plus didn't want to wake the old geezer up if he had been out the night before....so being the true independant girl that i was couldn't be assed sitting around and waiting (patience is not a virtue i possess)...though the gig would have been awesome  (seen all the bands before anyway) but probably would have raped me of about 1250peso (which i do not have as i have spanked quite alot of mola so far!!! buying a fucking camera..strippers and drinking lots with Dario was an expensive yet worthy cause)..so it got to 10, and met yet another german guy called Flo, what a beautiful name!! and he was well up for going to the anthropology museum and the museo of modern art!perfect as that was the reson why i was coming to mexico city... finally going to rape my brain with culture and art!! and you know what it was everything I expected it to be!


So got the metro to the chetepec park, which is like the sie of central park, and contains lots of museums and a zoo... whoo... right so to all my beautiful people in london, so this is going make you throw up in your managers office bin..to ride the metro here in mexico city... no matter how many changes or zones...it's 3 pesos a go!that's 16p to ride the metro, where it's clean efficient, had a seat everytime, and whenit's rush hour, they have a section only for women and children!! how unbelievable is that's it was soeasy to use and sometimes there were people by the maps guiding you were to go!! Also they love domino's pizza, at every station for 20 peo you could pass by a stand and pickup a small individual sized pizza! queue is always fricking huge they coz the fat mexicans love that msg shit!! ha ha so would i if all i fricking ate was tacos!!

Me and flo who is actually turnsout to be such a dude... spent 45 day chilling in Puerto esocndio... just surfing, smoking weed and watching epic amounts of the series Kalifornication (which reminds me that i have to download that...david duchovny sex addict..school girl dream) but also getting over from his epic break up with his crazy girlfriend! So bless think i was some agony aunt that day for him...but all good coz you can't be sad when you go to the zoo!! yeah.. saw some sad panda's having a poo, saw a bear that looked like he was gonna commit sucide.. but the monkey were fucking cool!! they love it... you spend most the time trying to take photo'sof those crazy basterd and like a childon ADD just kept running out of shot, swinging around on their mates testicles.. ha ha the small ones are the best.. very mischievious! so then we walked to the anthropology museum, which i hear is one of the best museums in the world, not for art but for understanding the history of mexico, and boy was that bad boy fricking huge!!!!


A cheeky 51pesos later, and we didn't know where to start, but basically to cut the story short, you go from the Aztecsin the north allthe way down to the maya'ndown south, it covers every bt of ancient mexico.. from the north to the south! it's that and as I havn't seen any of this shit yet (which is the whole reason why i'm in mexico.. is for a frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera pilgramage,
plus all the crazy mayan/aztec history stuff) it kinda got my juices going,and was very intrigued...but after 3 hours got the classicmuseum backache and felt my brain had been exposed to many cermis pots and crazy aztec sculptures..but you lucky people  get to see all tis stuff coz i know have a camera...whoo so enjoy!




To the museo de arte moderno, which so many cultured mexican told me i'd be crazy if i didn't go to mexico city and see this place. So here i was.. a crazy 20 peso (£1) to get  okay it was no tate or guggenheim, but the one thing that i will say about mexican modern art is..... that okay I have seen more crazy avent guarde shit, but this stuff tends to come from cosmetpolitain places where artist can be exposed to all kinds of other cultures or can travel to other places (most europeans and westerner) to find inspiration for their art... it's easy to think outside the box, when you leave the box and get to soak up all kinds of ideas from other cultures. But I liked about this particuar Modern art museum is that is still very mexican. From their contempoary mexican artists they are still so proud of their hertaitage and culture that this is what is expressed through their art. The bottom floor had a permenant collection, to which I saw the actual famous freida Kalhol painting that I had admired for years "two frieda's" (little jizz in my pants) but also lots of the typical brightly coloured paintings of mexican life and people, also using traditional handicrafts made comtemporary versions of those handicrafts (if that makes sense?)but the art was very beautiful, mexican and something to definitely provoke the mind. The two exhibitions on the top floor very comtemporary that the one from a lady seemed more like an illustrated ecosystem from the national science museum, with video installations of garbage dumps..random, but the other was a cool insight of the 1970 mexicocontemporary art scene (when they started to thinkout the box) so you got lots of crazy polaroids and faces with eyes cut out stuck into the grass of someones back garden..it was cool! and again something to soak up and put in my art portfolio! the outside had lot of scupltures which attracts you down to the gift/book shop...dangerous grouds.. flo had to pull me away before my weight of my backpack tripled!

So came back to the hostel..hostel Amigo...fricking recommend this hostel to anyone... has a great bar that you could just stay there all night, shows a film from 6.30pm- 8pm and free dinner at 7pm, so grabbed the free dinner... and then spent the night in the bar gettng wasted talking to the most retarded english i've ever met! Yes typical football loving, here for two weeks to get cunted, your a fucking welsh twat (even tho they are from eastbourne!), giving you the numourous stories of when where and how they shit and piss themselveson a night out!! ha ha it's so tragic, when you meet these people..you realised their the ones that give british people a bad name!!
Day 2


Determined in my hungover state not to waste another day, just whippedout of bed..still drunk, put my cowboy boots on as today was sunday... the day when all museums are free!!! ha ha ha so bumped into tony in the hallway, showed gillian how to catch the metro, then fucked off on my tod with just me and my Ipod. You see when you've been travelling for while sometimes..you just needs some me, myself and i time, and today was one of those days... "no hey were you travelling, what you doing??" nope  I was a women on a mission... I had to see as much art as I could... and man what a day... first of all I went to the bella Artes and saw all the murials, absolutely breathtaking seeing the Diego Riveria's murals that was orginally for the rockafella centre, but because of the anticapitalism statement the painting was not comissioned and he was asked to paint it in this glorious building, there were some roberto Montenegro's and 6 other mexican artists.. which as you can see are stunning and absolutely huge, you have to go across the building to look at each painting!



So one free museum... onto the museo deigo Rivera which was conviently across the Allende Park, and as it was sunday everyone was out the park with their kids... sexy partners..eating and chilling, reminded me alot of what me and my friends would do on the day of Sabbath! (meow) it was aweosme windig in and out of everyone soaking up the sunday vibes, but also stubbled across some kids break dancing so of course with my b-boy tendances had to sit and watch it all!! sick.. check this out!
 


Finally got to the mueseo de deigo riveria, and wellthought there would be a museum of his work, but actually it contain a few sketches butother quite alot of mexican artist that seem to make a regular appearance in most galleries i've been in, But there was some awesome contemporay art downstairs... some guy had ripped off adverts from multination companies like Mc donalds and nike Ads with it's "just do it campaign just changing the wording to highlight the capitalism of it all, and on the other side was some crazy installation made from worn down sambro's. but as you turned the corner...WWHHHAM there it was Diego's famous "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park" (how awesome i saw this...on a sunday next to alameda park! was very content,and breathtaking!


Onto the ruins that Roisin told me to see... Templo Mayor but on my way back to the park..I saw a crappy photo stall that sold kodak batteries..and crappy 35mmm camera from the 90's but glaring at me... like as if my eyes were meant to see this shit... was 4 packets of 600 polaroid film (anyone who knows me knows this is gold dust in my eyes!!) just sat in the corner of his red velevet covered stall!! At first I couldn't even find the guy who own the stall.... but when he popped his small wrinkly old face out...i instantly started bartering...and this dude knew his stuff..in spanish I could understand he was saying it was discontinued..worth lots of money... so the film was 150peso a packet... i tried my hardest to barter 200 for 2, but i got a bargin at 250 peso for 2... which is £12 back in ye old english pounds.. and on ebay that shit is selling £20 a pop!! so yes..bargin at my end.. and skipped off chuffed to bits to my next destination!!



Templo  Mayor ruins is right next to the epic Catherdral in Zocalo.Now the crazy thing about this is when the greedy spanish invaded mexico city, they destroyed all the aztec temples and built this magnificent catherdral to stake their land... and how karma has repaid them, a you can see that one sideof the catherdralis sunken down into the ground! ut its crazy beacuse only 90 years ago did they discover that temple Mayor ruins were literally  buried under the national building next to the catherdral, so they have only just discovered it,and are still discovering this amazing site ( the archiogolists were on the site excavating as we were going around), so I had to pay for this bad boy,but felt I should as the money is probably going to help the excavtation..and bloody hell you get your moneys worth...christ it's deceptively huge!!! it's incredible to walk around and discover what all the chambers were used for... and then there's the museum which you need at least 1 1/2 hours of your time! One part of the museum is deadicated to Moctezuma II who was the aztec leader who welcomed the spanish was then kept captive and killed by the spanish as they claimed the city for themselves...(i'll say it again white people are fucking greedy scum!!) but some of the aztec jewellery and art is phenomenal, the headpieces with the feathers are huge!! after strolling around following the signs tow which part of the museum i had to go that i had been i there for nearly 3 hours... and suddenly,like out of nowhere i got a bad case of dehydration sporting on and the realisation i'd been walking around for 7 hour with no fricking drinkso in a desparate atempt to leave the museum..i fricking couldn't find the way out!!! aaahh it was fucking scary every turn i did became a dead end or back trackedto where i was before ....at this point i started freaking out, felt like that 4year old kid lost in marks and spencers and can't find your mum!!! after half an hour I found the exit...somedickhead decided to block off the orginal exit (to allthe signs i was following) and we had to exit out of this crazy wooden door.. which I would not have spotted if it was for a fat mexican lady trying to squeeze through it!!! pphhew I was out and had to scout pacelike 500muntil i was actually out of the ruins!!! ha ha ran to a street stall and downed alitre of water and sat down for hal anhour to get my vision back !! can, won't be doing that again!!
 

So strolling back to hostel through this huge book fair that was happening in the plaza of the zocola catherdral... and what do my beautiful ear hear.....trumpets..guitars.. phat bass...yes mexican ska!!! whoooooo  so spent the next hour chilling and stomping my booty discreetly to a cool bit of mexican ska!!



what a great way to end a beautiful gay day!....also on the way back tothe hostel, went into the most amazing bakery/confectionary shop that had crazy jelly day of the dead stuff with the sugar skulls..and shit loadsa of pastries and bread..just see the pictures!!


Finally headed back to the hostel....walked straight into the free food.. then got to my room to chill and random the lights were finally onsoi could actually see who the fuck was sleeping in my 10 mixed dorm (i knew it was all boys coz all you could smell was lynx and beer!!)...stood there was a cute little english boy with a lost prophets tattoo on his back!!! ha ha sosparked paconversation as i had spent the whole day in solitude..i kinda felt i was ready to speak to people again! so turns out this guy is from chippenham...and lived literally 10mins away from me in bow, bloody roman road!! small world my friend! He was one of the lucky fuckers who went to the concert and had free tickets coz he knew Delphic the band... but awesomely was living in cancun as a diver instructor, but his fellow mates john (canadian) and simon (german) all flew in to meet him and brew the gig i regret not going to!.... these guys were cool as fuck...talked about racing eachother to the teotihuacan (they were taking a ridiculously overpriced tour) me and simon were gonna be hardcore and do the metro and a bus...and as the night kicked in so did our hangovers... and as there was no other fucker apart from us 4 in the 10 hostel..we pulled that mattress off one of the bunk beds.. all cwtched (means snuggle in welsh) round my netbook and watched the universally loved, universally quoted..Anchorman!! ha ha with ice cream and a massive bottle of fresca...i couldhave actually been 19 again and in uni!


Day 3 - Teotihuacan

So gave everyone my beautiful 8am wake up call (there was no fricking windows in the hostel so you could literally could sleep in and loose concept of time) first and only time i grabbed breakfast there! Me and simon scooted our little butts out the door on our mission to teotihuacan dreading rush hour on the metro... but have no idea what the feck was going on cozthere was absolutely no-one on the tube...easy peasy lemon squeezy mate... and in the jizst of a limon after 2 changes was at terminal norte and on a bus to teotihuacan! right sowe blantly won as it was 12.30pm and no sign of the guys!! Me and simon...started treking over ruin after ruin to reach the sun pyramid... so we can get our thight masters as the ready to climb that bad boy!!! this is how big it.. no idea how many steps.. just alot...and very steep!

At one point the 19 year old Simon ran up the last two sectionsof the pyramid like a fucking labrador puppy...while gwen, the 26 year old smoker and heavy drinker chuffed my last breaths to the top.. man it was awesome.. has that creepy pompei feel to it as if you can kinda imagine what this city was like when the aztecs ruled it. so climbed down that bad boy while laughing at how ridulous some western tourist can be!! me & simon wer doning the classictravller attire.. tshirt that has been worn for 3days in a row, shorts... and flip flops...camera and mola in pockets...well i had my sexy bag rhiaro gave me...! but still you get the casualimage... ha ha so these dickheads and there were many of them, were wearing the sort of gear you'd wear fricking climbing machu pichu!! full on walking boots... t-shirts around the head..sun block on the nose..rucksacks that hold 50litres of what I may add?? ha ha seriuosly you'd think they were ready to climb everst! me and simon pissedourselves as they were all from our nations...germany and england! shame people!


So we tackled the moon pyramid which you can only go half way up but has the best view of the city. then we trucked our assesover to the muesum and we were done... 2.5hours at teotihuacan and your done..there's not alot of information to tell you about the city and allthe ruins.. but you can st and appricate how these people (the aztecs) were building and designing buildings with such precisions totheir beliefs, like the steps are the days of the calendar, the position of the sun templein realtion to the moon temple, the slanted temples and buildings of the city were all designed so that the rain water streams back into the river...oh and i'm sorry what were the brits doing...living in mud huts and eating potatoes. Really blows your mind the level of civilation these people had!

Me and Simon had all the time in the world to whip back and maybe squeeze in another tourist visitaion!!so we headedtowhat we thought was this cool market george and john wentotwhere they soldlion meat and all kindsof crazy food, but infact it was a mexican handicraft market, which waspretty cool to peruse,simon bought a wooly jumper...and also had to pull me away from the vintage magazine stall to which would have double the weight of my rucksack so thank you simon for that.. ( they have vintage mexican gay porn, which mostly included german aryen men with their penis's out and some late 80's playboys....also some crazy italian 1990's fashion mags!! meow!) but we also we found a kick ass taco stand that had the best tacos.. you could have thinly fried steak, this chicken stuff, chorizo, brocoli and egg fritta's and an array of sauces to smoother that shit in...also if you had the chicken or steak.. they put homemade chips in it...they were exactly how my nan use to make them... mmm the best taco i had (although with all the chilli i had to take 2 doses of bascopen that night to compensate the delicousness!)




So that night we  were on it like sonic on the booze again...lots of 50 peso beer 1.2lt beers....2 4 1 barcardi and coke... and gathering of peoplefrom the hostel and a taxi ride to some place i have no idea..to omekick ass cocktail bar that my budget couldn't stretch to so stayed on the beer!! so it was one of those nights...where we were clearly out for 6 hours or so but the only thing i could remember (in a kinda drunken Gwen's kronenberg way) was being in a huddle with some aussie... only to realise it was the lead singer of temper trap, (who were touring with pixies at that gig!!) doing kath and kim impressions with the ozzy (i gotta stop doing that!!) argueing with two fucking banker twats from London about how they could their jobs, and doing the most lame salsa dancing with george in an irish bar to which i'm pretty sure it was to some rock classsics,then sitting on the steps, salivating over george airforce one Nike ID's while he ate a hot dog!! taxi ride back and a bottle of water next to me... and it made for an interesting night to say the least!! ha ha

Day 4 - last day in mexico city... well should have left by now!!

So was meant to leave that day but ended up being coaxed by the lovely George to go to the canals with him and john..... and I actually heard this place was meant to be kick ass... so thought why the hell not! well i wouldn't advise with the hurendous hangover I had to mission it to the Xochimilco lakes where these awesome canals and hanging gardens were! So we had to take a metro to the end of the line, then a train to the end of the line, and then a taxi to the canals... so2 hours later..heart pulatations and fucking meat sweta fromthe dirty mcdonalds we hunted out before we left... we were here.. whoo George bargin the geezer on the boat for 2 hours on the boat... for 300 pesos...sweet.. so we grabbed some beers... got our sweet asses on these big canal boats that are painted in flouresencent paint..(see sexy picture) while a big fat mexicanguy pushed us up the canals with his big massive wooden stick (he let us have a goand i totally sucked at it..man it's actually hard work)..we cruised lay in the sun,smoked fags and drank morebeer...and randomly stopped of at some guys reconstructed snake farm... where if you pay 45 pesos you can have your picture taken with the snakes.. totally tourist trap we fell into... but absolutely hilarious at the same day... man that day was a chilled and ear to ear smiling day, as we glance on the other boast ofmexicans friends and families partying hard on the boats with their homemade mexican picnics and endless supplies of alcohol, cheering at us "hair of the dog" westerns sucking it all in! those boats would be serioulsy kickass for someones hen or stag do.. and dirt cheap as they hold like 15 of you!!!
So to end the awesome day after the epic journey back...me, george and john got a dirty domino's delivered to our dorm! while we crashed out to empire records and the new series of the inbetweeners....fricking heaven! good times my friend!


Day 5 - Mexico city mission to guanajauto
Fianlly left mexico city after trying to sneakout of the hostel without paying the extra night and didn;t succeed! but was on a 5 hour bus back up to Guanajuato and when i got there... had a packet of crisps and bought two massive cans of sol...and checked into my hostel...which perfectly I was the only one in my 4 bed dorm and had an actual real bed!!! luxurary as i wrapped the duvet around me and drank my beer while watching "the mist", just needed a crap film to comfortably numb my brain....but can i just say...what an ending! didn't see that coming but very Stephen King!

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