March 8, 2013

• Report # 979

  Hey everyone, I hope that the week has gone well for you all. It’s 5:30 am as I start to write this and I’m in the airport in Mexico City waiting to board my flight back to Vancouver which will leave at 6:40 am. The last couple of days here in Mexico have been super busy but very enjoyable. I woke up at around 9:30 am on Wednesday morning in Monterrey and I went to Fundidora Park one last time.

  I took more pictures of the park, even though by now I’m sure I have close to 1000, and I returned to the steel museum that I went to with my friend on Sunday. This time I had my camera, so I was able to enter and do a quick tour and take many photos. Of course the best part of the museum is going up in the elevator lift to the top of the old steel factory and seeing an amazing view of the city. It wasn’t super clear like it was when I was there on Sunday, but it was pretty close.

  After walking around up top for about 10-15 minutes I headed down, exited the museum and exited Parque Fundidora for the last time, at least for some time….. though I hope not too long. I just had lunch at Carl’s Jr. as it was super close and I didn’t want to head out and walk more to find a place to eat. I had lunch and returned home after 1:00 pm. I uploaded all of my photos to Facebook and then I quickly washed a few of my things, ensuring I was leaving Monterrey with nothing but clean clothes.

  It took a long time to pack my suitcase, but it’s around 22 kg (48 pounds) and I wanted to fit everything in decently. My friend Arturo who was supposed to come and pick me up at 4:20 pm, called me half an hour before saying that he wasn’t able to make it at that time and that it would be a better idea to take a taxi. I thanked him for telling me, though I wasn’t too happy that he just called me 30 minutes before he was supposed to arrive. Otherwise I could have taken the metro for a ways and only paid around 180 pesos for the taxi instead of close to 400 pesos (32 dollars).

  Luckily there was a taxi passing outside right away and I didn’t have to walk 15 minutes with my heavy luggage to find a taxi. The traffic was a bit slow at times, but overall it wasn’t too bad, and we arrived at 5:00 pm, two hours before my flight to Mexico City was to leave, so it worked out well. I had half a sub from Subway and used the computer for a while before boarding the plane. The flight to Mexico City from Monterrey is very quick, taking less than an hour and a half. I thought I was going to arrive at 8:30 pm, but I believe it was quite a bit earlier.

  After arriving at the airport I got my luggage and just used the internet for a while as I waited for my friend Karina and her mom to pick me up. I told Karina where I was by text and I headed outside and her mom passed for us in her car and we headed off. We drove to an Italian restaurant to have dinner and it was a wonderful meal. I had four cheese soup and pasta with chicken.

  Afterwards I was absolutely stuffed, but we were all ordering dessert, so I ordered a dessert pizza with fruit and cream cheese. I really wasn’t thinking when I ordered it, but pizza meant pizza, and they weren’t joking. They literally gave me a full plate dessert pizza that really appeared like a second dinner aside from a dessert. I believe it was definitely something meant for two or three people to share ! I ate half the pizza and saved the rest for the morning.

  Karina’s mom paid for dinner and that was very nice of her. She was super nice the whole time and definitely one of the nicest people I have met before. She told me that I would be welcome back and was just very friendly with me. It’s great to know there are still such wonderful people in the world. By the time we got home it was around midnight, and I had to lug me huge suitcase up four levels of stairs, but it really wasn’t too hard. After eating so much it was a good workout !

  I stayed up and talked to Karina for a bit, but we were both super tired so we went to bed pretty soon. I got up around 8:15 am on Thursday morning and Karina and I walked across the streets to buy licuados which are like healthy drinks with fruit and honey and milk as well for those who want it. I think I had something with strawberry, papaya and honey, and I really enjoyed it. After heading back to the house and having a shower, I finished off my dessert pizza for breakfast and then we were off for an exiting day.

  We took a few of the metro lines to get to the bus station and we arrived there very fast. It’s really amazing how many metro lines there are in Mexico City…. enough to make most other cities in the world seem like small towns. By the time we arrived at the bus station and made it up to the counter, we found out the next bus to Teotihuacan,  the ruins in Mexico State that we wanted to go and see was leaving in five minutes. I quickly went to the bathroom and we got on the bus, and in less than an hour we arrived.

  Karina had visited the ruins before, but not for 13 years, so it was definitely time for her to see them again. I really enjoyed the scenery around the ruins as there were many cool trees, cactuses, and aloe vera plants, as well as mountains in the distance. The ruins were absolutely incredible and I enjoyed them so much. Getting to climb all of the steps was a challenge, but it was definitely worth it as the view was amazing. And just being able to see something so historical, which I hadn’t seen in a long time was very cool.

  After climbing the first pyramid Karina and I walked almost a kilometer to head to the museum which was very interesting. There were many cool artifacts and models of the civilization that had lived here so many years before. I embarassed myself in one of the rooms as we were walking on a glass floor above a display of the civilization and I touched the rail and I got such a shock I kind of yelled. Luckily after that jolt of electricity I didn’t have another shocking experience.

  We exited the museum and rested for a while and then made our way to the second pyramid, which was the huge one. I loved seeing all of the people from around the world. There were some tourists from France, Spain, Colombia, Argentina, the US, maybe Canada, places in Asia, and two guys who were filming some sort of documentary video with their ipad….. we knew they were from some European country, speaking a language somewhat like Russian, but we weren’t sure.

  There were also some tourists who were not super smart. One lady was trying to go up the pyramids in high heels, another in flip flops, and a couple had scaled up and down the pyramid carrying a baby which only appeared to be just a few months old…. if that. I even heard other people comment on how bad of an idea it was. When we got halfway up the huge pyramid, I noticed I was able to walk all around, so I walked around and took some pictures.

  When I got back Karina was wondering where I was and was telling me that a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers named “Flea” was there. Apparently I had seen him before, a guy wearing a Los Angeles Lakers cap, though seeing as I have no idea what the people in the Red Hot Chili Peppers look like, I never would have had any idea. I didn’t see anyone else say anything either, so I think Karina was the only one who recognized the guy.

  We finished climbing the pyramid, and Karina, who had talked with the Flea guy before while I was going around the pyramid asked if she could take a picture with him. He said that he doesn’t like to take photos, and shook her hand and said nice to meet you and he was off. I thought the whole thing was very odd, but I guess some people really don’t like photos. I guess since the Red Hot Chili Peppers had a concert in Mexico City the previous night they wanted to tour some places.

  We scaled down the pyramid after relaxing and taking some pictures and then we made our way to the last pyramid which we were both kind of happy that it was only possible to scale up halfway. We made out way up and I took a picture of some girls from Asia, and after relaxing for a while we made our way down and walked back to the area where the buses drove back to Mexico City.

  The ruins were absolutely amazing and I would recommend them to any person in the world. Only someone with a serious lack of cultural and historical interest would not enjoy Teotihuacan… the place is incredible in every sense of the word. Luckily we didn’t have to walk all the way back to where we had started and it was just a short walk. The buses were super convenient and we didn’t have to wait on the way there or the way back.

  I’m not too sure if I fell asleep on the bus ride back to Mexico City, but I definitely closed my eyes the majority of the way and if I wasn’t sleeping I was pretty close. We got back to the bus station downtown and we took a taxi to Liverpool where I went to buy a new wallet. After seven years, and my sporty wallet from 2006 looking like complete garbage, it was time to buy a new one.

  It certainly wasn’t cheap, as I bought a Nautica wallet for like 1,200 pesos (almost $ 100) I certainly can’t complain though as if this wallet last me another seven years like the last one, it will be a bargain. It only took me about 2 minutes to choose a wallet and the sales woman was saying how guys don’t really care too much and are super quick with those types of things.

  Afterwards we went to Johnny Rockets to buy some dinner for Karina’s mom and then we sat down on the bench and waited and I happily threw my old wallet in the garbage as well as some cards and pieces of paper that I definitely wouldn’t need. Having four empty Tim Horton’s cards really serves no purpose aside from filling up space, so I threw three of them in the garbage and just kept the one with the picture I liked the best, with the snowman. Karina’s mom came and picked us up and we got back to her place very quickly.

  Karina and I walked to a pastry place to buy some pieces of cake, and while we checked to see if there were frappuichinos, it was kind of late, and the people in the two places we went to had already shut down their frappe machines. The guy in the second store didn’t even seem too interested in serving anyone as we waited for five minutes, and his phone even rang and he still didn’t come out. I was joking that it must have been self serve. We headed home and ate our cake and talked with Karina’s mom for a while and then went to watch movies.

  First we watched Speed, which I had never actually seen, though it was definitely a good movie. I don’t know if I’ll see Speed 2 though as Karina basically told me it sucked ! Afterwards we saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I always wanted to see. At that point I was super tired and I don’t know if I was able to process such a complex movie fully, but I really enjoyed it, and I hope they will make movies out of the other books…… all though I can say I’ve never read any of the books, which isn’t surprising since I only seem to read newspapers and articles on the internet.

  The 2nd movie didn’t finish until just before 2:00 am, and by the time I did my online check-in and prepared for the morning, it was 2:10 am before I got to bed. This is a late hour to sleep on any day, but later than ever when you have to get up at 3:45 am. I woke up in the morning and quickly put together my suitcase and carried my super heavy bag down the stairs where the taxi that Karina requested the night before awaited me. I said good-bye to Karina and thanked her for everything and headed off to the airport.

  I got to the airport super fast, in like less than 20 minutes as there was obviously no traffic on the road at 4:00 am, though by the time I got to the Air Canada line, there were actually quite a few people ahead of me. It wasn’t a big deal as I would have had to wait anyways by the gate, so it’s ok that it took like an hour to get my bag checked in and boarding pass.

  I had such a wonderful time in Mexico City and it was great to spend time with Karina and meet her mom as well who was amazingly nice as I said before. It’s such an amazingly worldly city that I would need so much more time there to truly see everything. And technically yesterday the ruins we went to were in the State of Mexico, so I didn’t actually explore Mexico City anymore in my day there, though we did walk downtown for a bit yesterday evening.

  If everything goes well with the visa I hope to make it back to Mexico soon, and I’ll definitely be wanting to visit Karina again and spend more time in Mexico City. It’s a city I would recommend to anyone as there is so much culture and history, restaurants from all over the world, very cool trees, and it’s just a super cool place. I was telling Karina the only thing I don’t like about Mexico City is the traffic, but with it being such a metropolis that is not too surprising !

  On the plane home I watched The Hunger Games, another movie I had been wanting to see. It was certainly an interesting type of film and I enjoyed it…. makes me wonder if the world could ever really be like that. I had an omelette with some fruit and bread that was served on the plane, and for airplane food I really couldn’t complain. As far as I’m concerned Air Canada has done everything they can to make almost a six hour flight feel super short.

  There is food, and drink and snack service, tons of movies to choose from, and music as well on the online entertainment system, so flying has really improved over the years. I watched about an hour of the Golden Compass, but the plane arrived, so I’ll have to finish watching that movie in the near future. The plane arrived in Vancouver 8 minutes early and I was able to pass through the customs and get my bag fairly quickly. In fact I’m here waiting for my dad right now as he told me he would probably be another half an hour as he was caught up in some construction.

  As I type this up it says Vancouver is 9 C. (48 F) It’s actually really nice sitting outside and typing this up as I haven’t felt much cool air in the last couple of months…. though I certainly won’t forget the 3 or 4 days in Monterrey in January where I was freezing without heat ! It’s exciting to be back home and to be able to see everyone and the pets as well. I will have a lot of things to figure out in terms of what I’ll be doing in the next couple of weeks, but I’m hoping I get an answer on the visa super soon as that would make my future a lot simpler and much clearer.

  There is much I could talk about today, the death of Hugo Chavez, International Woman’s Day, or what on earth I’ll be doing in the next week, but this entry is long enough, so I’ll have to save those posts for the future. For the next question:

  What is one place in the world that you really want to go that you haven’t had the opportunity to see yet ?

  I will leave you all with my final set of pictures from Monterrey. Take care and I’ll talk to you all on Monday, bye for now.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  • 4:08 pm
  • 3 Comments