In late October, all of the volunteers in my cohort got
together for our Mid-Service Training (MST).
It was a great time to see everyone as well as gear up for the next year
of training. Following this, D.H., one
of my close friends and fellow Q’eqchi volunteer, and I took a vacation up to
Mexico City. If you’re like me, you may
have been under the assumption that Mexico as a whole was a dry, desolate place
filled with adobe shacks and drug lords.
Despite the fact that we were going to the city, I still didn’t
anticipate much more than your typical developing country big city: dirty,
probably kind of smelly, maybe some skyscrapers, and poor. Upon landing, I realized that everything that
I had anticipated was completely wrong.
There was a solid infrastructure, beautiful multilane highways, buses
with air conditioning and toilets, and insane skyscrapers, just to mention a
few things.
To get to the City, D.H. and took a bus from Belize City up
to Cancun, Mexico and then caught our flight out of Cancun. At some point during the bus ride, we had to
stop to get passports stamped and that sort of thing. When we got off the bus, I knew we weren’t in
Belize any more. The road had opened up
to four lanes and there were light poles on the side, things I hadn’t seen
since I arrived to Belize a year and a half ago.
Once at the airport, we just had to hope and pray that our
flight hadn’t been canceled. We just so
happened to be flying the day after Hurricane Patricia, the strongest hurricane
in history, had made land fall. D.H. is
one of those people that is almost impossible to read, but I assure you, I
appeared nervous enough for the both of us, especially once we were up in the
air. Every time the plane hit some
turbulence, I was white knuckling it.
Luckily we arrived safely to Mexico City, grabbed some authentic Mexican
street food, and were on another bus down to the smaller city of Puebla.
The day after we arrived in Puebla, we took a trip down to
the historic district. It was crazy to
be in an actually city again. There was
historic architecture everywhere and the place seemed filled with this sort of
Mexican culture and pride. Once we were
at the forts, I learned that Puebla was actually the site of the Cince de Mayo
battle with the French that we continue to celebrate today. It was really cool to see a city that had
been so significant in Mexican history and that we still celebrate today.
The following day, D.H. and I decided we wanted to go on a
hike, but we had no idea where to go for such an activity. We scoured the internet and wracked the
brains of our hosts that we had found on Air BNB. We were at this for probably about an hour
before we decided on a place called Alchichica.
Again, we hopped on a bus (yes, with toilets) and were on our way. Eventually, someone indicated that we should
probably get off, which was lucky because we probably would have continued to
travel to God knows where and had no idea that we had driven right past the old
sulfur lake.
The hike ended up being incredible! There was a ridge on the
far end away from the road that rose way above the lake and allowed for an
incredible view of the surrounding farms.
The hike wasn’t too arduous in the beginning; there was a nice little
path and the hills weren’t too steep. At
one point, though, we realized that to make it to the top, we’d have to ditch
the path. Anyone who knows me knows that
veering too far from the path freaks me out a little bit. At one point while walking along the ridge,
if we’d have fallen to the left or to the right, we’d have rolled all the way
to the bottom. The hike, though, was
just a reminder to me that, sometimes, to get the best view, you just gotta
leave the trail behind. I suppose the
same can be said for life.
The following day, we made our way back to Mexico City where
we would spend the remainder of our trip.
The difference between little, old Belize and this metropolis where I
would be spending the next five days was insane. Just the sheer number of people was enough to
blow my mind. I had come from a country
of about 360,000 to a city of 8.5 million.
We reached the city (and all its traffic) about an hour to an hour and a
half before actually making it to the bus stop; along the side of the road was
a sea of houses, buildings, and humanity.
Once we arrived, D.H. and I spent the rest of the day just getting to
see the city and taking it all in.
During our second or third day, we decided to just kick it
some. We went and visited the Anthropology Museum where we got to meet Lucy, or at least see her bones. My favorite exhibit, though, was the Mayan one. We had also heard about a Little Seoul
that was fairly close to the museum, and since D.H. is Korean, it only made
since to go check it out and see if we could find any Korean food. We found one little hole in the wall place
that was incredible! I had never had Korean food before, but it was awesome!
Definitely want to try it again.
After that, I put in a request to go see a movie in a movie
theatre, again, something that I haven’t done in a year and a half. It’s
particularly difficult considering that there are approximately… zero in
Belize. We saw the movie The Walk, which
I really liked – spoke a lot about following your dreams and I’m a fan of that,
so it got my thumbs up. After that, I
decided to ditch all the Mexican food and go for a personal pizza from Dominos. If there’s two things that I had a lot of
growing up, it was going to the movies and eating Dominos pizza.
At another point during my time in the city, I wanted to
search for the Clemson game. I believe
they were playing N.C. State or someone like that, so not a huge game, but,
still, all games are important if you’re trying to go undefeated. The day before, I had asked a little
restaurant near our hotel if they had ESPN.
They said that they did and that it would be fine for me to watch the
game there. I got to the restaurant
about 15 minutes before kickoff, we find ESPN, and low and behold,
football. The only problem was that this
football was not American football, but Belizean and Mexican football AKA
soccer. Turns out that in Mexico, they just have ESPN Deportes. Luckily, they had internet so I was able to
Gamecast the game while searching for the nearest Hooters on my iPod (I had
heard that there was a chance Hooters may have the game). Found the address. Got to the Hooters. Asked if they had American channels. No dice.
By the time I got back to my original restaurant to watch the rest of
the game on Gamecast, it was midway into the second quarter. You’d think that in a city of 8.5 million
people there would be somewhere that promoted American football… Either way, Clemson got the win, so I was
happy regardless.
The next day, D.H. and I headed to the ruins of Teotihuacan,
an ancient Aztec city. Before going, I
didn’t expect much more than the ruins I had seen in Belize at Xunantunich or
Nim li Punit, but these ruins were on an entirely different level. There wasn’t just one temple, but three, all
connected by a mile long road lined with ancient merchant stands. I have never seen anything like that
before. At one point, I was sitting at
the top of one of the temples looking out over everything, and I realized that
if you were to take away the tourists, this would be very similar to what it
would have looked like hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. In past trips to ruins, I always wanted to be
able to do this – put myself back in time so that I could see what the people
then saw. There, at Teotihuacan, I was
able to do that. It was incredible.
On my last day in Mexico City, November 1, D.H. and I went
into a small suburb of Mexico City called Mixquic (Mizkeek) that we had heard
was poppin’ for Dia de los Muertos. The
biggest day for Dia de los Muertos is the second, so a lot of people were still
setting up decorations, but the place was still packed. There had to have been thousands of people
there that came out to see the decorated graves and the old church. I thought it was interesting that in the
cemetery of that old church, there is a statue of an Aztec god that remains
there to watch over the dead. It was
interesting to see the ancient believes still mixed in with modern day
Christianity. We hung out for in the suburb
for a few hours trying all the different food and visiting decorated
graves. Right before we were going to
head out, there was a small parade that marched through the crowd carrying
giant figures that seemed like something out of Nightmare before
Christmas. Even though I didn’t get to
experience the big day, it was still awesome to get to dip my toes into
something that is so uniquely Mexican.
Who knows if I’ll ever have that opportunity again?
The next day, I said goodbye to D.H., who was staying to
meet up with another friend, and began my journey back down to Belize. I left the apartment about 7:00 in the
morning and arrived to Belize about 6:00 PM… the next day. That’s right, 35 hours of travel. It was rough.
On the way out, I said goodbye to the big cities, the infrastructure,
the metro, and of course, the street food.
I would miss the 60 degree weather and being able to use a toilet on the
bus, but as I sat there halfway through the 11 hour bus ride between Cancun and
Belize City, I began to think of the caldo that I would surely eat when I got
back to the village and my mouth started watering. I began to think of all the people in the
village that I would get to see again and share stories with. Yup, I was ready to be back home.
