Just the beginning...

This morning marks my third away from home, if you count the plane ride at the crack of dawn on Tuesday. Though, I´m not even sure if counts as dawn... Mexico, so far, has lived up to the few expectations that I had prior to my arrival. During my first couple of days, I have seen the hustle and bustle of Mexico City (albeit from the inside of an air-conditioned bus), wandered the streets after dark, enjoyed some of Mexico´s finest coffee (so says the ex-pat), and explored the leading city of Mexican Independence. Today, I head to the town of Guanajuato, where I will stay with a family, meet up with my brother´s friend Jorge, and immerse myself into el Festival Internacional Cervantino.

My flight to Mexico City went pretty smoothly considering all things. I had a brief layover in Salt Lake where I had to run from one gate to the other. This may not seem like too big of a deal, except missing one flight could have had some drastic implications on my other flights... but that´s another story. Upon arrival, I snagged some pesos and deftly navigated the halls of Benito Juarez until I found the bus station, where I began my journey to Queretaro--Mexico´s self-proclaimed cleanest city.

An aside: I was incredibly impressed by the bus service of Primera Plus. I strongly recommend them to anybody traveling in Mexico, e.g. fellow Bondermans, my mom, etc.

Once in Queretaro, I hopped off of the bus and went to buy a taxi ticket. It´s a pretty efficient system and it certainly seems to cut down on fake taxis (and subsequently crime) in the City of Queretaro, which I guess isn´t the case in Mexico City. After 10 minutes of wandering around, I found where I needed to go to actually get into a taxi and explained to the driver where I wanted to go. He nodded to reassure me that he knew exactly where I wanted to go, but I had my suspicions. We made small-talk in Spanish (sort of...) and I´m pretty sure that he said he just spent the last six months in the same town that my girlfriend grew up in. Small world, huh? Anyway, we continued to drive and drive as the sun went down. Eventually, he dropped me off somewhere in the city center, because he couldn´t find where I wanted to go... Luckily, I inherited some pretty sweet skills which have enabled me to read a map and know which direction is north. I hiked about 10-12 blocks until I finally found the place I thought I would stay...

However, when I got there, I looked at the room, and it turned out that I couldn´t even stand straight up without hitting the ceiling AND I couldn´t stretch out on the bed. I probably would have been able to deal had it not been for the 12 straight hours of sitting... Plus, the place wreaked of smoke and I don´t think that my spoiled Seattle lunges could have taken it this early in the trip. So in my broken spanish, I tried to explain to the dude that I wasn´t going to stay there. He was kind of pissed, and I´m pretty sure that he didn´t want to understand me. I left, the sun was down, and I was dead tired. I was dead set on finding a bed irrespective of all things, so I went down the street to find that the rooms cost 500 pesos (approx. 50 bucks). Cognizent of my `budget,´ I kept going. Finally after the 4th try, I found a place with low rates due to remodeling. It was a pretty sweet deal until I was woken up at 7am yesterday morning to a bunch of little hijos screaming at some guy talking to them through a megafone...

Anyway, I´ll try to load some pictures from Queretaro, then it´s off to Guanajuato. Oh, and I apologize for the misspellings--the keyboard is pretty old and sticks...