In a new state: Sinaloa. All Aboard!

Just arrived at the Fiesta Hotel in Los Mochis. Tomorrow morning, the tour will start. They're picking me up to take me to Topolobambo, but I'm not quite sure what/where that is. A little research necessary. 

I just got this screen grab from Wikipedia. Well, I haven't seen the sea for a while. And maybe there'll be seafood. Hotter than hell here. Grateful for the hotel's air-conditioning.  

Ok, I guess I'm going to brave the heat and see if I can get something to eat close to here. 

Oh, I wanted to tell you about the woman I met on the bus that was taking us to the plane this afternoon. Her name is Marcela and her daughter was with her, and her ex husband. I think they went to NY (or perhaps that's Mexico City; I may have missed a couple of details here and there) to pick up their daughter who has been studying dance in New York for two years. 

Well, Marcela offered me a lift to the hotel. They were all lovely: Marcela, the ex-husband, the daughter, the son. We kissed and exchanged phone numbers and here I am. 

Mexicans are great!

Bilbo, Fear and A Lesson about how Watching too many Series about Narcos can Warp your Perceptions

I feel like Bilbo when he first set out with the dwarves. I don't want any adventures. They're too uncomfortable. And I've experienced something Bilbo never had to deal with: sometimes I make my own adventures with fears and tears, when there's a valid reason for what I'm dealing with -- but I just don't know what it is. 

So, here's the story: I booked a very expensive tour for a week, where the travel is between the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Chihuahua, along a 400km track. I took the first class option one way and the executive option for the return trip because there was no first class option coming back. It cost nearly $3000 for the week with all hotels, transfers and some meals. That was fine. I have already told the story of the difficulty I had paying for the tour in an earlier blog entry. 

Then, after being in constant contact for a number of days with my agent, Yumi, where she was attentive to my every question, with replies of "We're here to serve you, whatever you want", etc, etc, ad nauseam. So, it seemed to me, that after they'd got my money, I didn't hear any more, though they did say I would have all the necessary information a week before my tour started. Well, my tour starts Thursday. I fly to meet the tour on Wednesday. It's now Monday. And nada!

I had a troubled sleep last night thinking about how I didn't know what my hotels would be, what my seats on the trains would be, and it is three days before the trip starts. I decided to send a message to WhatsApp to Yumi as soon as they started work today at 9 a.m. No response. It's like the WhatsApp number had died. 

I started to think: S.C.A.M (or E.S.T.A.F.A. en español). $3,000 down the drain. 

I asked Eduardo, the receptionist if he'd try to contact the company. I tried calling their landline. Cut off three times. No response from Yumi via WhatsApp. No response to my email. I had the office address. I decided to take an Uber there and find out what the bloody hell was going on. 

I arrived at what looked like a prosperous house in a residential suburb. I saw a bell and rang it. A nice-looking, muscly, young Mexican man came out. He asked me what I wanted and I told him about my "paquete" on El Chepe. 

This is where all the Narcos episodes I'd ever seen, and also all the series about Pablo Escobar, all came flooding into the front of my brain. I was there alone, the young guy invited me in to a house that appeared to be empty, and I was terrified. He showed me into an "office", which really looked as if no office work had ever occurred there. There were no post-it notes, paperclips, no pictures of workers' families on desks, no papers anywhere. Everything was clear and clean. I couldn't even see any computer screens or a printer. The only thing that made it office-like was the big desk I was sat at. 

Another man came in and spoke to me in English: a young man, strangely enough, called Eduardo. (80% of the young men I have met on my travels, are called Eduardo.) I was in contact with Eduardo at reception in my accomodation via WhatsApp at the same time. (I'd wanted someone to know where I was last seen, should I become a desaparecido; I'd told Alex, but I thought he might be too far away to do anything to save my life, should it become necessary.) I connected Eduardo, the hotel receptionist, with Eduardo the El Chepe Xplora agent on my phone.

The fight or flight response was still pumping cortisone throughout my body at this stage and I was extremely agitated. Don't know why I accepted a glass of water from Eduardo. I was damn sure that I wasn't going to drink it because I suspected it would be drugged. He did look at the untouched water in the glass quizzically before I left.)

Anyway, I waited in the office while Eduardo went off at various times to get the printout of the tour that I was after. (I was right. There was no printer in that "office". It seems that the printing had been done somewhere else and Eduardo had called for a courier, or someone, to bring the documents.) 

So, then it was out onto the street again with a sheaf of papers in my bag, to call another Uber to bring me back here to the hospedaje, all in one piece, but still shaking like a leaf. 

Back in CDMX: A lesson about how to get around

I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get back to Mexico City in time to catch my flight to Los Mochis to begin my "paquete" on El Chepe. I have paid for a tour which includes the return train (Los Mochis to Creel and back to Los Mochis). The distances are long in Mexico, and I didn't want to miss out on getting a seat on a flight. (I've done my time on long-distance buses, and I'm not a young person who can bounce back easily from a shitload of missed sleep.) 

So, I'm here in Mexico City again, which is not a bad thing. CDMX is an interesting place. And I am a city girl (well, I was, when I was a girl). It's just in Sydney, with a car, the state's my oyster. However, here, I wouldn't dream about driving. I know my limits, and driving in Mexico City is definitely one of them. I don't know how the drivers do it. It looks like chaos to me. The drivers seem to be very well-attuned to the driving conditions. I've only seen one accident, and it was a fender-bender. 

So, yesterday I was on the main road, Insurgentes, looking at a map, planning how to get to the Museum of Anthropology, in Chepultepec Park. And I found myself in the path of a whirlwind, who told me her name was Gabriela, that she used to be a flight attendant (trust me). She asked me where I was going, and swept me up in her path. Her husband was also being dragged along in her wake. Before I knew it, I was flying down the footpath being taught how to cross the street safely, the names of the main streets I should be aware of, and where to get a bus. She even wrote notes for me on a scrap of paper as we flew along the footpath Then, Gabriele tried to arrange a purchase of a bus pass for me ("You shouldn't take a taxi. Always take the bus"). Well, unfortunately, the bus stop we landed at had no bus passes for sale. So she went through her handbag and found me a pass she no longer used, had the hubby go off to find the machine to recharge it, and I was a card-carrying bus user. She herded me onto a bus, told the driver to put me off at the right stop, and I was away!

Got to the museum, and joined a free Spanish-language tour. But the museum was overwhelming in size and information. I started to feel a bit sick, as I followed the guide around and tried to understand the commentary, and get my eyes around the people in front of me, so that I could see the display he was talking about. Also, it was my brunch time and I thought that maybe if I had some food, I'd stop feeling sick. I slipped off and started looking for a restaurant. 

Brunch under the belt, I decided that I'd rather go and sit in Chapultepec Forest under a tree, and relax, rather than return to the museum. So, I followed the signs to the lakes, taking photos all the way. Here is one. (The monkey headdress/water pistol seemed to be a hot item among the park users that day.) 

Continued on to find the  path to the castle, which is now a history museum. I'd been here before, but it's definitely worth a second visit. And even more so because it was free for me because of my advanced age. 

So then the rain, and the adventure began. For some strange reason, I had no internet connection, so I couldn't use Google maps to plot my path back to the bus stop. Couldn't work out why because I knew I had paid for 30 days connection with lots of data. I walked around in a frazzle, as the rain started falling harder. Lots of the stalls were also selling rain coats and umbrellas, but I decided that the rain would stop soon. . . it didn't. I finally had to crack and buy the last rain protection on offer: a silver cape for 50c. 

I bumped into a guy on a bicycle going in the opposite direction. He looked like a fellow-tourist. I asked him if he knew the way to the Anthropology Museum. He told me he'd just come from there, looked it up on his phone, and pointed me in the right direction. Why did he have mobile coverage and I didn't, I asked myself. 

So, back to the main road and the place from which I'd headed to the museum. Somehow managed to choose the right side of the road to wait for the bus. (Of course, I didn't trust myself with that. I confirmed with a couple waiting that the bus leaving from that stop was going in the direction I wanted to go.) It was a long queue and the rain cape was billowing up like a parachute. I thought I must have looked a fright--what with the horn on my forehead that had bloomed after a mosquito bite yesterday--and the billowing silver rain cape, covering the camera backpack, making me look more like the hunchback of Notre Dame than an old gringa. 

When I got on the bus, I couldn't find my pass. The bus driver  motioned my on. I was holding up traffic. Later the two young women I was sitting next to told me the bus driver let me on without paying because I was too old to pay. 

The two young women sitting near me on the bus argued about which stop was the right one for me to get off. I took the advice of the more strident one and had to depend on her advice and my own feeble abilities because I had no internet and no google maps to help me get home.

The streets were full of Friday night revellers. So much raucous noise! (I'd put my cameras away as I didn't want to be targeted as a tourist any more than was patently obvious.) I put my head down, followed my nose through the crowded (and sometimes, a little scary streets) and somehow managed to get back to my digs. 

I still think it was a bit of a miracle. (Well, I have visited quite a few churches and cathedrals over the last couple of weeks!) But anyway, I did get back to my room. I asked Eduardo to check why I had to internet coverage, and he said I'd used up what I had paid for. It was on his advice that I got the package I did. I figure I'd used up all my data using Google maps. So, I paid for another package. I bought a package three times the price that he suggested was sufficient. Now I hope I'll never have that kind of adventure again.

Well, that did give me a lot of confidence! All in one day, I'd ridden a Mexico City public bus and found my way home down streets I'd never walked before. Maybe I can improve and develop a sense of direction!

The Armpit of the Universe

Now in a town called Palenque, in Chiapas state. I'm being polite with the title. There are high points and low points with every journey, but yesterday I felt I'd reached the low point. Still, journey not over yet. Don't want to jinx myself into finding myself in an even worse position. 

Palenque is the closest town to an archaeological site of the same name: a ruined Maya city of several pyramids. We had two hours to explore the ruins and the forest -- in 38 degree heat. I was soaked through all my clothes. It was like walking around in an oven. 

Earlier that day we visited two waterfall sites. I went for a swim in the first one: Cascadas de Agua Azul.

What a delight! First swim of the trip. You know, I'm not a great swimmer, but when the temperature is over 30 I can be tempted. And it was very beautiful in the cool water. 

We had a limited time to visit the site, so we (a Swiss couple called Hana and Michael and myself) bypassed the restaurant where the other people on the van were having breakfast and hightailed it up to see if we could see the five cascades. 

Time passed too quickly and we were back in the bus, off to the next waterfall: Cascadas de Misol Ha. I'd already changed out of my cossie so decided to forgo a second swim, even though it was hotter than hell. I wanted my brunch by then, so after a quick reccie and a few photos, I left the group to sit in a steamy restaurant, and have a Corona shandy and a sandwich. 

Then it was afternoon, and after another long windy drive at break neck speed, we (two Mexican couples, the Swiss couple, four English lads and myself, found ourselves in Palenque, the Maya ruins. Very hot! Very, very hot! What can I say? If I'd been at home, I wouldn't have left the house. Not my kind of weather at all. But, it's always hot here. No winter. This is the tropics. Anyway, without a lot of enthusiasm, I walked around, listening to the insufferable guide, with a Mexican couple. 

I stayed last night in the nearby town of Palenque, rather than taking the four-hour drive back to Cristóbal de Las Casas with the Mexican couple, Yola and Cristo, in the photo. I had purchased my flight ticket back to Mexico City from the airport close to here, so I was stuck. I had to stay here. 

As I said at the beginning, putting it very delicately, Palenque is the pits. Last night as I walked around in the steamy cauldron of the town, unable to block out the raucous noise, I wondered what it would be like to sleep here. At least the room in Hotel May Rue has air-conditioning. It is very noisy, but it does cool the room. 

The room was too noisy. I wasn't able to sleep for the noise seeping into the room from the town, until 11. Then suddenly the noise all stopped, except for a few barking dogs, and I was able to sleep to the white noise of the aircon. 

I'm off downstairs to see what there is for breakfast. Then I'll pack and hail a taxi for the airport. 

Still here in San Cristobál de Las Casas

Today, I accomplished something I never thought I'd achieve. It was so bloody difficult to pay for a tour I'd booked on El Chepe (a very scenic voyage through a copper canyon, which can not be achieved by any method of transport, apart from that train), that I had just about given up. I thought I was going to have to travel there and put cash on a counter, to be able to book. And that was just not possible. I'm so far away and I didn't want to go there (even if I had known where the office was) ahead of time. Mexico is much bigger than I thought and it takes an age to get from anywhere to anywhere else you might want to go. It might involve a bus trip of 12 hours or more (like the one that brought me from Oaxaca to here in San Cristobal de Las Casas) or a project to find a travel agent that deals with airlines. (The majority of them, and there are many, only deal with tour packages from a certain town/city and not at all with airlines.) I knew that I couldn't book my own tickets online. I didn't have enough information.

Well, I had tried to pay many times for my El Chepe train journey on a link the Chepe Explora sent me, but my payment was rejected each time. I had to put my Telstra sim back into the phone to call NAB, to be assured that they weren't rejecting my payment. It was the Mexican tour company doing that. (Each day I use the Telstra sim, they charge me $10. Telcel in Mexico charges me about the same amount for a month!) 

Then I tried something else after the tour company, over many WhatsApp messages, let me have their banking details, bank address, business address, etc. One problem was that I had to keep putting my Telstra sim back in the phone to get codes from NAB so that they would allow my money to flow from my account (even though I'd already changed my phone number to the Mexican number on the NAB app). 

There were two addresses of twenty words each to enter in the Foreign Transactions section of the NAB app, and when I took too long, the app would shut (for security reasons) and I had to start the whole thing again. The app kept rejecting the stress marks used in Spanish words, so I had to keep starting again for that reason, too. It took me four hours, at least, today, to pay for my tour on El Chepe. BUT I WON! I managed to pay for the tour before they cancelled my booking!

Today is Monday 08/05/20230. On Wednesday, I'm taking a tour to Palenque from San Cristobal de Las Casas, and to avoid being on the road for 4 hours there and 4 hours back in one day, after hiking up and down a mountain in between the road legs, I decided to stay in Palenque at the end of the tour, and not return to San Cristobal de Las Casas. I'd seen there was an airport in Palenque, but when I tried to book a flight somewhere else from there online, every search I did showed there were no flights available. 

I thought I was going to have a hard time getting to Los Mochis to start my El Chepe tour. But I learned it wasn't that the airlines were fully booked.

The  Chepe Explora tour begins on 18/05/2023. Today is 8/05/2023. I thought that I should have booked flights earlier, etc, but I found out today, from a travel agent who deals with flights, that although there is an "international airport" in Palenque, it is closed. The nearest airport is a two-hour drive away. 

(This is not very interesting, I'm afraid, but as there's no-one reading this, I can be as boring as I like, recording the frustrating details of planning travel without the insider knowledge of a local travel agent.)

I found a travel agent who can book flights by rolling up to one that never has anything to do with flights. She told me where the office of the travel agent who books flights was. I found my way there with my usual spacial/directional incapacities, and managed to get flights which will take me into and out of Los Mochis so that I can board my train and return to Mexico City after my train journey, in time to catch my flight back to Oz.

Let's hope everything goes well, that no flights are cancelled or postponed, and I get to the airport in time for all of them. Fingers crossed please!

San Cristóbal de las Casas

Here I am after a 12-hour bus trip from Oaxaca. I'm in a new state (Chiapas) and so far this trip I've been in three states. The bus journey was quite good: I had the two reclining seats to myself, no children on the bus, and thankfully, it was a new bus so the usual audio from non-stop action movies was not blasting through the bus all night. Those people who wanted to watch and listen plugged in earphones and I was able to sleep (I'm pretty sure). It was a 100% improvement on the plane trip. 

Yesterday I had some problems with the bank. I'm trying to pay for my trip on el Chepe, but the link they gave me wouldn't accept my banking details. I got the same message from the accommodation on Booking.com. They wanted another method of payment. I just paid, however, with my credit card here, so maybe they've got that sorted. I'll have to have another go when I finish this. 

I'm sitting now in the garden courtyard of the hospedaje La Estación. This is it below. My room won't be ready for a couple of hours, so I'll sit here and play on the computer. 

Here are a few photos taken over the last couple of days. The first is "Customer Service". The guy had a food stall on the opposite side of the street to the old lady and she must have signalled him, somehow (it was a very wide street) and he brought her snack over the road to her.

My waiter prepares the salsa to go with my lunch the other day. Lots of ingredients, including chapulines (grasshoppers). 

 

Well, they managed to put me in my room 1½ hours early, and here it is. 

And the view from here:

Ok, I'm off to the restaurant to get a coffee and something to eat.

Ruins and Good Food

Hope this finds you all well and happy. 

Today is Thursday, and I'm up at 3:00 a.m., probably because of the mescal tasting I did yesterday. I started this entry two days ago and didn't finish. That's why, if you came looking for an update, it wasn't there. 

I went to Monte Albán on Monday. It was amazing! I didn't expect to find ruins here like I saw in Yucatan. Actually, I didn't know very much about Oaxaca, just that it was colourful, and I should go there, but the ruins were very impressive with thousands of giant steps to be climbed up and down again. (Not my favourite workout.) I asked to go on the Spanish tour, but there were a few people on it who didn't speak Spanish, lucky for me, because I only caught half of what the guide was saying in Spanish, so I had a chance to catch up with the English explanation. There were three people from the Philippines and they helped me up and down the steps. They work in Mexico but don't speak the language. There was an American from Hawaii there too.

The rest of the van came from Mexico but quite a few of them spoke English. And here I was thinking I was going to practice my Spanish. We also went to a place where they carve wood and paint them into fantastic, mythical creatures. It's a tradition here to paint strange creatures in very bright colours. They're called alebrijes. The place we saw was a kind of collective. We also went to a famous pottery producer.

I've been shooting the people going about their business in town in the early mornings, when the shadows and colours are most eye-catching. Below are some of my favourite photos.

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Yesterday, I went to Hierve el Agua, a site of a geological oddity, a waterfall made of rock, Mitla, an archaeological site.We also visited an artisanal weaving business, and had a mescal tasting, which is why, as I said above, I'm catching up on my blog at 3:51 a.m. Alcohol wakes me up during the witching hour. 

 

I've walked through a lot of monasteries and churches and they're impressive: the architecture, the walled gardens, the quiet coolness of thick stone walls. The comedic relief comes from the  statues of Jesus dressed in lacy frocks.

That's not it exactly, not everything I want to say, but I'm aware that if I don't post this now, I may forget to do it later. The account of what I did today will have to wait until tomorrow because I think I may be able to sleep now. I haven't even mentioned the good food, but it's all very good, and it's worth coming to Mexico just for the tamales. 

Hasta luego!