We made it to Puerto Escondido!

After five days in Oaxaca City (will write another post about that), and a six hour windy, bumpy bus ride we have arrived in Puerto Escondido. The owner of our last hostel highly recommended Hotel Dan & Carmen and we are very lucky to have gotten reservations because this is the high travel season for Mexican nationals. This place is paradise... it's so tropical with open spaces between parts of the building. I love that! It will be hard to go to another hostel or hotel after this. We have two nights in the "main house", and one night in our own private cabana. There is a full size lap pool, and a rooftop viewing deck to check the surf. You can see the entire length of the beach and city. All for just $25 a night. I'll post a photo of the view from the porch outside our bedroom door. Ahhh, now it feels like vacation!

We walked down to the beach, a short block away, and sat in awe of the heavy surf. No one was out surfing today, because it was too windy. This place is so heavy and gnarly that the conditions must be perfect for people to go out. Mike's going to go surf down at the point which is supposed to be mellower. Thus starts his dawn patrols.

Had dinner at Carmen's (yes, of Dan and Carmen) and had a great stir fry - ahh, veggies! We haven't been getting a lot of those lately. Mainly meat and cheese (and mole lately). Topped off our first night with a swim at 10pm with the sky flashing with lightening in the distance. It's so hot and humid, I might wake up in the middle of the night for a dip!

Tomorrow we're going to check out a language school just a few doors down the road. Next we'll back track a bit and fill in the details of the last week...

Mexico City

It’s obvious that we’re having a great time by the lack of time we’re spending on the blog. We’ve been going going going non-stop, and fall into bed every night exhausted (shocking, eh). So here’s a run-down of what we’ve been up to…

To get acquainted with Mexico City we took the Turibus which was a nice way to take it all in, and walked as far as what we drove (or so it seemed). Some sights…. Alemeda Central, a nice park where there are many vendors, performers, and people enjoying the outdoors. We noticed that everyone is holding hands and lots of people of all ages necking; the beautiful marble Palacio de Bellas Artes is at the end of the park with impressive murals by Diego Rivera and other famous muralists. We also went to the touristy Ballet Folklorico de Mexico inside Bellas Artes, but there were more Mexican tourists which was great to see. We checked out Plaza Garibaldi for the mariachis and pulque (original agave alcoholic beverage - from Aztec times). It was mellow when we were there, but we heard Friday and Saturday nights get crazy with all the mariachis playing and people partying.

I loved the outlaying neighborhood called Coyoacan which is where Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s house is located and is now an interesting museum. Walking around Coyoacan, I had this sudden feeling that I really AM in another country - maybe because it looked and felt much different than the more urban areas of Mexico City - and I just loved that feeling. I’m traveling again!

The Central Historico district and the main plaza, (aka zocalo) was nice. The zocalo is also the site of the palacio national - offices of the president of Mexico and the federal treasury. Inside there are amazing murals by Diego Rivera but we couldn’t go in the first time we tried because it was closed for a protest. The plaza is a place for political protests and we saw a protest every day we were there. Nothing spectacular or dramatic. Although when I saw what looked like the entire Mexico City police force marching in unison toward the square for what I thought was a protest, that was a little intimidating. Also in the zocalo is the Catedral Metropolitan, built in 1543, which has been sinking unevenly since then because it was built on an ancient lake. You could clearly see the cracks and uneven ground. Around the Cathedral There are many dancers dressed up in traditional conchero with feathered headdresses, and they dust people with sage in what looks like a blessing.

I also love walking around the markets - crazy and disturbing yet interesting. Meat, chicken and fish are just sitting out all day waiting to be purchased and hopefully cooked really well. Like most other countries the use the entire animal, nothing is wasted. We saw huge cow tongues, brains, intestines and entire fried pig skins which seemed really popular.

The first time we ate in the market, we weren’t sure how it worked… but it worked out. They have el Menu Del Dia which is usually only $3-$5 and includes soup, bread, rice and beans, a main dish, desert and agua frescas (fruit juice, water and sugar). The food is different here which is what I expected, but I don’t know what a lot of it is. That Spanish isn’t coming back as fast as I would like for it to! I’ve been a little more cautious than Mike in terms of what I eat and drink, but am becoming more adventurous.

We posted some photos with captions. See the link at the top right side of the blog.

Mexico City Photo Album

Here are some photos that we finally uploaded from Mexico City and before we left for our trip. We should have some titles/comments soon.

http://picasaweb.google.com/melissa.olivasullivan/MexicoCity

Teotihuacan

Photo taken at the Museum at Teotihuacan.
Ancient site just outside of Mexico City.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotihuacan

We were told by friends who had been there to definitely go to Teotihuacan. I read in the book that "it's amazing as long as you don't let the hawkers get you down". No kidding, there were people everywhere trying to sell you the same trinkets. The bows & arrows were very popular with the kids.

We walked down Calzada de los Muertos (Avenue of the Dead), Teotihucan's main street, and took in the size of the complex. The largest pyramid is called Piramide del Sol, and it is the third largest in the world. The base is 222 meters long on each side, just over 70 meters high, and assembled around 100 AD according to my handy Lonely Planet book. We climbed up the 248 very steep steps to the top. I could feel the altitude of Mexico City... at least this is what I told myself! The view of Teotihuacan was breathtaking.

We ventured outside the complex to find a restaurant recommended by our book, Restaurant Techinanco, and it was worth it. It was a quiet, friendly home-cooking kind of place. I had the most delicious mole!!! We continued exploring Teotihuacan - the Palacio de los Jaguares, Palacio de Quetzalpapalotl, and Piramide de la Luna as well as the museum.

When we arrived back into the city, I called Miriam - Karyn's step-sister who lives in Mexico City and we planned to get together for dinner that night. We had a great time with Miriam, her husband Sergio, and her sister Carmen. They took us to a wonderful Mexican restaurant, that was beautiful inside,with mariachis at our table the whole night. We had a great time with them, and look forward to seeing them in San Francisco on their next visit. Got home about 1am and crashed out.

Mexico City

Sorry it has taken so long to update our blog. Hope you weren´t worried about us. Mexico is way safer than we were told (I think by people that were never in Mexico). Everyone that has visited Mexico speaks very highly of it. Here´s a few things I´ve learned so far:

1) The water is safe to drink in Mexico City. It´s highly chlorinated, so that cleans it up, but it does have a strong chlorine taste. No issue with my stomach after 5 days of drinking the water!!

2) We can eat fruits and veggies that are uncooked and unpeeled (i.e. at clean restaurants). We are still avoiding the salads, but salsa fresca is on. Thank God! We avoided it the first few days. A taco in Mexico without salsa fresca is a sad, sad sight.

3) It´s safe. Sure there are some bad areas to avoid but that´s true of any big city and Mexico City is the 3rd largest city in the world. It seemed as safe or safer than most American cities. I even asked Melissa, ¨Does Mexico City not have any dodgy people, or do they just all blend in.¨ She thinks they blend in, so they must be out there, but we haven´t run into any of them.

4) The smog is not that bad. Way better than LA in July.

5) The traffic is also not as bad as LA. Mexico City has an extensive Metro and bus system (20 cents per ride) and has been developing some innovative traffic solutions that have made a big impact. We had dinner with the chief architect that has developed some of these solutions, so I might be biased (more on that later). Also the safest Metro I have ever been on. Police everywhere on their own soap boxes, literally.

6) Saw very few homeless people.

7) Cheap tacos rock and they are everywhere.

8) There are more police then I have ever seen. Probably to clean up all the crime that we heard so much about. Seems to be working.

More soon....
-Mike

Made it to Mexico City

Well everything actually worked out pretty well. We each received $100 travel vouchers, had a nice stay at the Marriot and bought ourselves a new ultra small laptop. No that wasn’t free from United. But with all the spare time we had in LA we rented a car for only $18, found a Fry’s Electronics store nearby and found a Fujitsu LifeBook 810 that is so small and light weight I could hear my disks in my back re-inflating with joy. We shipped the large Dell laptop that we planned to travel with back to San Francisco. Of course we always seem to take up all the time we have available and are always late for everything. We almost missed our flight but made it with out too much stress.

As we flew into Mexico City, we had a good view of the sprawling city and very colorful buildings. I (Melissa) was a little panicked when I got my pack wrapped in United Airlines packing tape. The front pocket zipper appeared to rip open and some of my things were sticking out. Turns out that the only thing missing is my swiss army knife. I can deal with that.

The hostel owner, Angel, picked us up at the airport and gave us some great info to orient us to the city. We got here about 9:00pm (2 hrs ahead of CA) and walked to get some food. Mike wanted to make a bet to see who gets sick first. I was thinking I might win when he started pouring on all the sauces at the table. Is it ok to eat the salsa here!? I bet I'm going to be playing this game often!

Crazy Day

Crazy day!

We were delayed in SF (The City) the entire day. It started out minor, as it usually does (10:20 am pushed to 10:35). The plane was delayed about 15 minutes because of a ‘maintenance issue.‘ We boarded the plan then had to wait for the ‘paperwork.‘ Once completed the captain announced that we were further delayed because of traffic on the run ways. We finally get the OK to pull away from the gate and then sat there for a while. Meanwhile, our flight to Mexico at 12:59pm is slowly slipping away. We finally start to roll around 11:30am, we can still make it! A few minutes later, ‘we have to return to the gate because an indicator light is on that needs to be checked.‘ OK now we see our Mexico flight slipping away into the sunset. We returned to the gate and start making panicked calls to United’s customer service to attempt a reroute. However, they won’t let us de-plane because they are hoping to fix the issue and continue to LA. After all our other flight options vanish, they announce that the plane’s engine needs to be tested and we all need to de-plane. However, the flight might actually happen at some point so they won’t release anyone’s bags and they won’t let anyone change their flights until the test is completed (‘about 1 hour,’ they lie). After the dust has settled and people stopped threatening the United employee working our gate (’Baby sitting‘ is the term I heard her use on the phone … is that the official, corporate manual name I wonder, or just slang that has developed around the airport over the years), I approached for some guidance. She was actually really helpful and nice to me and referred to me as ’a really nice man trying to get to Mexico City.’ Amazing what a friendly smile or lack of a snarl will do for some people’s demeanor. She booked Melissa and me on the next day’s flight from LAX to Mexico City first class (same flight that we just missed #817). We now had a few options, we could stay in San Francisco for the night and then fly to LA on the same flight that just screwed us, or an earlier 7:30am flight. We also had the option to see if our flight would actually leave SFO today and stay at a hotel, free of charge, in LA. This would make the chance of missing our LAX to MEX flight much less likely. So we decided to do this. However right at that moment they announced the plane’s engine test would not be completed until 4pm. People started rushing the desk with rage in their eyes. The ever helpful United employee (wish I got her name) changed us to another LA flight at 4pm, just in case our flight was canceled or further delayed.

Of course you can probably guess what happened next. Our new LA flight was delayed from 4:00pm to 5:20pm right as the departure time arrived. Luckily our originally flight was just a few gates away and started to board as we learned of this newest delay. We walked over and sure enough about 60 people had left and they still had room on the plane. Now get this, because our flight had left the gate at one point, it was no longer on ’the board’ or in the computer system, so all the newly irate people that were learning about their delayed flight didn’t even know there was an LA bound flight leaving 2 gates away at that very moment, with 60 empty seats. I wanted to run over to tell them but didn’t want any chance of missing the flight myself.