Oh dear, my blogging efforts have been lagging...sorry folks. A quick update on my last days in Mexico: After returning to Valle de Bravo from Michoacan, I spent another week and a half bouncing back and forth between Sandra and Georgina's house. While I was in Morelia, Georgina's dog Trufa had 10 puppies, and I have spent hours watching them, playing with them, generally bugging them and keeping them from their well deserved sleep. Their eyes were firmly closed when I layed eyes on them at 4 days old, but by the time I left Valle de Bravo for good, a few of them were starting to take their first peeks at the world. Good times.
To be honest, I can't remember much of the order of events in Valle. Everything seems to blend together into one block of time when I think back. I spent too much time watching queer as folk episodes on DVD, that's for sure - it rains a lot in VdB. G. and I cooked some fantastic meals, we spent hours kicking each other's ass at Backgammon and Rummy, visited with friends, trekked around town, etc. etc.
One afternoon we went to a friend's house for a dancing circle - an interesting mix of global ritual and ceremonial dances with a group of about 12 or 15 folks from town. We got in about three dances before a torrential downpour displaced the circle to a covered area, and G. and I had gotten hungry and went to get tortilla soup instead of continuing.
On Monday we headed into Mexico City - she to tend to her various familial and professional responsibilities, I to see Sandra and congratulate her on finishing the last of her coursework for her degree and being done with university. I had originally planned on taking another sidetrip from D.F. this week, but my travel funds had run very dangerously low, and I was afraid of not making it to Belize if I spent any more cash on an excursion in another direction. So, I spent Tuesday checking out some more sights in the City. I headed to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, one of the must see places for fine art that I had neglected on previous visits. The building itself is quite impressive - a gorgeous art nouveau style palace that houses some gigantic murals and various temporary exhibitions. It also contains a large stage with a famous tiffany glass curtain, which sadly, I did not see. I spent a few hours gazing at good stuff before meeting Ceci, G. and their friend Yolanda for coffee in La Condesa. Then, back to Sandra's for a night of wine and fascinating conversation with her and her roommate Chris. On wednesday I joined Sandra and one of her friends on a downtown shopping spree for decorations for the big graduation celebration. We walked around for hours looking for the right fabrics, balloons and other items..until we all had reached tired and grumpy mode. Sandra had her brother's birthday lunch to make it to and was still frantically planning for her trip to Europe which was 5 days away, so I headed back to her house and prepared for my last few days in VdB before heading out to Belize. Georgina was very tired, so I got my second chance to brave Mexico City traffic and the rather curvy, dangerous road into the hills. I must say, I did very well - and it didn't seem half as scary as the first time. I spent another four days in VdB, highlighted by a fantastic indian/jazz fusion concert, and a trip to Monte Alto, where I thought I might just make my first attempt to hang glide. Valle de Bravo is known for its fantastic hang gliding. G. and I were happily picnicking and trying to beat each other at Rummy while enjoying the fantabulous vista, when one of her pals was bringing up a group and had an extra tandem glider available. As is so often the case, we watched a huge thunderstorm roll in at that very moment, spoiling my chances of taking the offer of the tandem spot. Crap! I've always dreamed of hang gliding one day.
By the weekend, I had purchased a ticket to Chetumal from where I planned to take a bus to Belize. G and I drove back to D.F. on Monday, had a fantastic lunch in Coyoacan and a final goodbye when she drove me to the airport.
It is hard to believe that after making so many plans to be on the road, I spent a good month cruising between D.F. and VdB. I feel like this trip has connected me with Mexico in a very profound way - not just through my incredible new friends, but also through the opportunity to be able to experience a place in such detail, with such a local connection, that it feels like home at this point.
During my last month in Mexico I have felt a marked shift in the spirit of my travels. When I began, I was on the move, constantly changing gears, restless and excited. Everything was new, foreign, sometimes difficult to navigate. At this point, I feel like I have taken on a new attitude - being familiar with D.F. and VdB has allowed me to focus on things other than just getting from point A to point B. I feel like I have assimiliated into the environment, become comfortable with my level of understanding. In many ways, I felt like I was living in Mexico, not visiting. I tend to develop this feeling relatively quickly; maybe as a result of having moved to foreign countries a couple of times in my life and being forced to make a quick transition. Anyway, it feels nice to walk down the street and have someone wave hello to me, or to be able to find the way to some store in the dark, or to have people over for dinner at the house. It all feels, smells, sounds just a little bit different; I'm still a little slower than the average bear when it comes to communication in general, but alltogether things are familiar and comfortable. I don't know which feeling I like better. The excitement of navigating your way through the unfamiliar, or the joy of discovering the details in the familiar...it's all gravy really.
Well. After goodbye to Sandra and G., I was off again. I touched down in Chetumal relatively late - around 8:30 pm. Definetly too late for me to start hopping on buses south, so I began my search for a decent and cheap place to stay. I had taken out my guidebook for the first time in weeks and it led me to a youth hostel near the center of town. It was a large dilapidated, almost empty building and offered nothing but eerily stained mattresses in little cells along a rather narrow hallway. I felt like I was being committed to an old school loony bin. No sheets, so I thanked my lucky stars for not tossing the travelling sheet I had been lugging around. I mosied around downtown for a while. In the dark, Chetumal seems to have some similarities with Veracruz, being a port town with a cool little boardwalk and a rather busy downtown area. I think it doesn't get as much tourist traffic though, and the travellers that do visit have a tendency to just be passing through on their way to or from Guatemala or Belize. I was about to be one of those passersthrough, since I heard the buses for Belize started heading out of town by 9am. I had a decent sleep at the eery hostel and made my way to the busstation. I arrived around 9:30 and bought a ticket to Belize City that was due to leave at 11:45. I needed cash for the border crossing so I hopped to the nearest ATM in the bus terminal, inserted my freshly retrieved, brand new bank card, heard a funny popping sound, and waited in vain for anything else to happen. My card was gone, no cash was coming out, and the machine froze. A man who had been sitting nearby told me that the machine had allready eaten three cards today, and I was unlikely to see mine again. AAAAAAHHHH! Am I cursed? Is there some cosmic message involved here? I just could not stop myself from freaking out. I paced back and forth in front of the cursed ATM muttering to myself. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. After collecting my wits, I trekked to the nearest branch of the bank that owned the ATM's, found a man to harass and turned into an obnoxious pest, insisting that I needed my card back immediately, that I did not care about authorization rules requiring the bank to confiscate my card, and that I needed his help now, please please please. Well, two hours later, I had my circumnavigated all obstacles and was gifted with my somewhat scratched, but intact card, withdrew cash under the supervision of men armed with guns, signed some paper relieveing them of responsibility for my card and booked it to Belize. Whoa.