¡Viva México!

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.