Mexico City's Impressive Lowering of the Flag
What a beautiful first adventure - image
Theses are the words from my journal... I may change the way it is written on paper slightly, but I can assure you that the stories are exactly as they happened.
I learned at a young age to keep a journal when traveling, and this one is all about my very first backpacking adventure, on my own without adult supervision!
Unfortunately, there are almost no photos from this trip.. but hey we'll get creative, use midjourney and read it like a book!
I've wanted to tell my story forever, and the time has finally come to transfer these experiences onto the internet. And who knows, maybe you'll let me know whether these stories are worth making a book one day too.
I couldn't tell you what it's like today for 20 somethings to travel the way I did, if it's safer or more dangerous, but I can tell you that it shaped the rest of my life and traveling the world became a winter ritual for me and eventually for my family too!
These are the stories of my youth, stories I never want to forget. I hope you enjoy them, but most of all, I hope they inspire you.
In the last episode I lost my back-pack, slept overnight on a park bench, and met new friends...
When my bag finally showed up on a bus, my excitement for continuing the trip (that had just started) got me going again! I waited impatiently for the next bus to Nuevo Laredo where I was supposed to meet my friends Sandrine and Veronique. It was 7:30 in the evening when the bus left and at the border I had to pay $20 for some sort of an entry pass into Mexico. I didn't have enough US dollars on me, the banks were closed and no one wanted to exchange my Canadian dollars or the Money I had from France.
They let me in the country with a promise that I would come back to pay and get the "tourist pass". I met up with my friends at the station, and they had been worried for me as I was supposed to have gotten there at 5 in the morning! They got to the station at around 7pm, so you can imagine what was going through their heads at that point. Without phones or anything like that, they were able to keep faith and wait patiently! Though I'm pretty sure they were going to leave shortly after, had I not shown up.
Anyway, we found each other and got on the next bus to Mexico City around 9pm. The trip was pretty direct, a 15 hour ride with only one 20 minute stop. I don't know how the bus driver did it, but he did it. On the 13th of January we got into Mexico City. I'll remember for ever coming around a bend, over a hill and seeing the giant sprawling city that is the Mexican capital, it was really impressive!!! One moment we were in an almost completely rural country side environment, and the next, it was full cityscape... houses on top of house everywhere the eye could see!
Once we arrived we went straight to Marco's house (Sandrine's contact). It was a beautiful villa full of pastel colors, sculptures, trees, plants, and paintings on every wall. We walked in through a wrought iron gate which opened up into a courtyard with a small fountain. The home was wrapped around this center patio with a second floor equipped with a balcony and of course, more plants everywhere.
Marco welcomed us with a joint and lots of conversation. He told us about all kinds of places to see in Mexico City and all around the country. There were places to go to and places to avoid, like Chiapas. In the middle of this I started to feel dizzy and cold, yet I was sweating like a pig. So, I excused myself to sit down somewhere, just in time before passing out. Well I didn't really pass out but I was so tired I couldn't move at all. After it passed a little, I got up and rejoined the conversation. Marco had booked us a hotel in the center of town.
We went to this very nice hotel to relax a bit, Veronique was feeling ill though. She was nauseous and vomiting, so once we knew she was ok to be left alone, Sandrine and I went to walk around the neighborhood. There was a big park near the hotel and we walked all the way to the Basilica De Guadalupe (supposedly the biggest cathedral on the continent!).
On the plaza there were lots of angry people protesting against some bullshit the government is doing to the poor in Chiapas and in the city. We walked around them and took some side streets where vendors were set up on the sidewalks and half the road. Everything seems to be sold on these streets, foo, toys, batteries, random car parts and electronics, junk...
We went to the Museum of Natural History and looked up some stuff to visit like pyramids. Back to the big plaza there's a giant Mexican flag, the size of Texas (it's fucking huge, is what I mean here), police in riot gear with big guns like AK-47s or some shit like that, and all those military fools had come out of the capital building. The formed a big square around the flag, kicked out all the people who had gathered there, and began to do their mambo jumbo dance. The flag came down, they folded it and went right back into the building they had come out of. I wondered if that's something they do every day, but I did not try to find out.
When we went back to our hotel, poor Vero was still sick and making several runs to the toilet. We snacked for dinner, took showers (god knows I needed it after all that time on buses all the way from Louisiana!). After chatting a while we ended up going to bed at a decent time for 20 year old's!
The next day, Friday the 14th of January, we woke up sometime before noon with Vero feeling better. We headed down to a pasteleria to have some breakfast. Next door was this little place that made all sorts of fruit juices, and we made ourselves happy! After enjoying a great breakfast, we proceeded to recreate roughly the same walk we had done the day before to show Vero what we had discovered. It was still too early for all the street vendors to be out there, but she got the idea. We had the hotel room until 3pm so we found an Italian restaurant for lunch and went back to pack our stuff. We hailed a taxi and headed to the bus station, for the next leg of this adventure.
In the next episode we get caught up is the experience that nearly ended our trip...
My First Backpacking Trip:
Chapter 01: NYC to Mexico - Y2K
Chapter 02: NYC to Mexico - Cajun Wedding
Chapter 03: Everything is Lost
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