A mid-air entry today as I fly from Monterrey to Cancun – a bargain flight that I picked up on line yesterday as I was padding around Ricardo’s posh flat (he was sick and sleeping at the time) trying to decide what to do next with my journey. Although I initially thought I would skip Cancun when I took the decision to go back on myself and do the Baja road-trip, I now think I can fit it in. I also now think that I will pass through Belize en route to Guatemala in a few days time – going back to my original route, only perhaps speeding things up a bit more. My Bamba-pass is still valid all the way down from Cancun to Antigua, so it makes sense. Plus, although I know that parts of Cancun will be horribly touristy and tacky, I’ve also heard that there are prettier unspoiled parts (I want to check out Isla Mujeres, for example, tomorrow). On top of that, a night or two of partying wouldn’t go amiss for me actually – it really does seem like ages since I’ve let my hair down and had a few drinks. I know that Sven, the guy I met on the Copper Canyon railway, is heading down to Cancun with a friend at some point this week. Therefore, I might be able to meet up with him for a night out, and that would be good. Every day at the moment it seems as if I’m having to change plans and make new decisions. It’s good for me, I think, as I am usually an eternal deliberator, and I have had to let go of that somewhat. It can be exhausting, though, and I now feel I’m looking forward to Guatemala and El Salvador around Christmas time, where I can stay with some of my contacts from back home and rest for a while.
Anyway, I think I finished my last entry en-route to Creel on the Copper Canyon. The view-point we stopped off at at Divisadero was pretty spectacular, as I hope my photos illustrate, and Creel itself, although really cold (I had to sleep in my fluffy hiking socks and was pining for my hot-water bottle!), was a great little place to stay overnight. Like a deserted mid-Western town bizarrely situated up in the mountains, it was where I came upon Casa Margarita – which has to be one of (if not the) best hostels that I’ve stayed in on this trip. It was cold and dark and Sven and I were pretty tired when we arrived there. The smell of home-cooking and the warm ambiance in the communal dining room (where a range of outdoorsy travellers were comparing notes on hiking and mountain biking over beers) soon lifted our spirits though. The price of our room (a minimal M$100, or a fiver) included a delicious dinner of warming lentil soup followed by chicken stew and rice, and the next morning a hearty breakfast which bizarrely started off with ‘rice milk’ (somewhere between porridge and custard – sweetened vanilla-y milk thickened with starch). This is evidently something aimed at fuelling you up for a day out trekking! Our stay at the hostel was brief (only one night) but it brought us into contact with some other interesting travellers and this made for some good mealtime conversations in the cosy mountain retreat, which kind of reminded me of a ski-lodge.
So on Friday morning Sven and I took off for a bit of a walk around Creel. Neither of us had time to do a proper organised excursion, but we wanted to make the most of our time there. Wrapped up as warmly as possible, we went off to explore the ‘Valley Of The Mushrooms’ and the ‘Valley Of The Frogs’ (stones in the valleys that are supposed to resemble mushrooms and frogs but, to be honest, I, er, couldn't see it). Rather like in San Cristobal, many indigenous people live in the valleys surrounding Creel (some actually in caves) and, once again, I was struck by how their poverty fails to prevent them wearing the most beautiful colourful clothing (the women in particular wore long flowing dresses made from almost iridescent citrus coloured fabrics - fabulous).
The walk also turned out to be the setting for a bit of a heart-to-heart between Sven and I, and we found ourselves talking about aspects of our lives in a way that belied the fact we’d only known each other about 24 hours. Travelling really seems to speed up your willingness to share stuff when you feel like you've found the right person to share it with (which I think we both felt we had done) - it seems to happen much more swiftly than in 'normal life'. Without going into too much detail, we had similar kinds of issues on our minds, and I think we managed to give each other some good ‘consejos’ (advice)!
Back at Casa Margarita’s, we had the good fortune of running into a man who had some connection to the hostel, and who was heading to Chichuahua later that day (this was the place both Sven and I needed to get to – he, so he could connect to Guadalajara, me to Monterrey). He said he’d give us a lift for M$200 each (the equivalent of what we would have had to pay for a bus) so we took him up on this and rode there with him in his small truck. It was a much pleasanter and more interesting journey I’m sure than the bus would have been. Sven, having a Peruvian Mum, is a fluent Spanish speaker and was able to chat away to our driver easily, whereas I zoned in and out where I could, picking stuff up and making simple comments where this was possible. I still don’t really know what the guy did for a living, but he did talk about a task he had to carry out, delivering some Chihuahua dogs up to the United States for someone’s Christmas present! The funny little mutts do come from this large north Mexican city (which is also the place to buy cowboy boots in Mexico should you ever find yourself here seeking out a pair!). However, I didn’t see any myself as all I really did in Chihuahua was pass through the bus station. The drive there was pretty, though – through much more foresty surroundings than I feel I have encountered in a while.
So it was in Chihuahua that I took a connecting bus to Monterrey (another tedious overnighter – where it was bizarrely too warm to get comfortable this time around). I had been in two minds for a while about whether to take Ricardo up on his offer to go and see him there, a lot of water having passed under the bridge since I saw him last, and not really wanting to get embroiled in some amorous tangle (there’s been quite a shift in my emotions now - and I feel less lonely and more robust). I eventually lightened up a bit and looked at it from a different perspective, though. Here was a unique opportunity to get shown round an interesting, powerful and culturally important Mexican city by someone who was born and brought up there. If I could just withstand all the ‘mi amor, mi corazon’ add-ons (which I’ve heard don’t necessarily hold the same currency here as they do elsewhere!), and make it clear that I’m travelling and not sticking around, I thought it should be OK.
As it turns out, it all worked out pretty well. The one-off cheap flight I found for today was the perfect reason to make it a very short stay, and I feel I saw as much of Monterrey as I wanted to. I got an interesting insider’s view on it from Ricardo who, again, spoke with intelligence and insight about Mexican culture and life, and sort of embodied it as far as Monterrey is concerned. The city is, as I think I mentioned previously, the power-seat of Mexico, where all the money, sway and influence in matters financial and commercial lies (mainly due to it’s proximity to the USA). In keeping with this image, it’s a sprawling but smart, very ‘Americanised’ kind of place, with malls and McDonalds, but also a kind of refinement that prevents it from being trashy. When Ricardo came to pick me up from the station with his designer shades on, in his shiny black drop-top BMW, it seemed very in-keeping with the surroundings and I suddenly saw him in his natural environment (something that hadn’t been so clear in Mexico City). Although it all made me wince slightly (all those trappings do nothing for me – in fact quite the opposite), I don’t want that to sound like a personal slight against him, as he was a total gentleman, and he also seems to be one of those people who is able to live in a certain world and yet also pass wry comment on it. He talked about Monterrey people who were just into ‘fancy stuff’ and ‘fancy places’, but there seemed to be more to him than that, and I never felt he was consciously showing off or being flash. In fact, the poor guy wasn’t very well when I met him. I think he’d had a couple of weeks of working pretty much round the clock on some project his firm is dealing with, and he explained that he was exhausted and a bit run down. Therefore, we didn’t do all that much – just a drive around the city, a visit to MARCO (the excellent contemporary art museum in Monterrey that I had definitely wanted to visit), coffee in a roadside Starbucks, and an evening of watching DVDs before his flatmates returned (I was quite glad to discover that he lived with flatmates rather than his family as I thought he might - which might have been a bit awkward). I could have been up for a night out in Monterrey but, actually, just vegging out in front of the telly was fine with me, as I was feeling so tired after the previous night’s coach journey.
So, less than 24 hours later here I am heading off somewhere completely different once again. I have no idea how I’m going to find Cancun - if I’ll go ‘arrgh!’ and have to escape immediately, or if I’ll be able to embrace the tackiness and enjoy it in the way I enjoy somewhere like Blackpool. We’ll see… The priority at least for this afternoon and evening is just to get out (perhaps a run along the beach if it’s possible) as I’ve still got that feeling of having been ‘cooped up’ inside too much of late. Plus there will no doubt be sun, so I will get to work on my tan a bit more and maybe just flop on the beach and catch up with some reading.
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