Madrid, Spain

Those of you who are paying attention will have noticed that my last blog from Havana was a wee bit grumpy. Those of you who are really paying attention will remember that in the first blog of this trip, I named Madrid as my 'happy place'. Here I have fresh food, I have craft beer, the queues and rolling black-outs of Cuba are now far behind me, and God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.

Very soon things will get better yet when I land back in the UK to spend the festive season with family and friends. (I spent Christmas 2020 in Spain, but only because Covid exile left me with no choice.) 

And so Edd's Travels are at an end for 2023. It's the first time I've done two trips in one year and it won't be happening again any time soon. There'll be just one trip in 2024. I haven't decided where yet, but I can say for certain that it won't be anywhere in the English-speaking world, or for that matter the Spanish-speaking world. Watch this space some time in autumn I think. In the meantime, as the song goes, I wanna wish you a merry Christmas...¡feliz Navidad!

I only stayed in Madrid one night and there wasn't time to take any interesting photos.
So here's a pointless view from the flight home afterwards.

Havana, Cuba

There were two different blogs that I had in mind for Havana, both of them mentally drafted up before I even got here. The first was a lyrical paean to Cuba: the vintage cars and the colonial architecture and the live music and the glorious year-round sunshine. The second was a bitter rant about this ridiculous government, their 60-year refusal to grant the Cuban people any real kind of voice or economic liberty, and the wretched poverty and squalor that inevitably results.

Both blogs would have been honest, and accurate I think. In the event, I find myself caught between the two, but sadly it's the latter that wins out overall. I'm not a fan of this place.

I arrived in Havana with a big pile of Mexican currency that I hadn't bothered to change into dollars. In doing so I was following some badly out-of-date online travel advice that said Mexican currency is generally accepted in Cuba. Well, it isn't. To avoid dying of starvation I had to change the Mexican moolah into US dollars via a brief and friendly conference in a side street with various Cuban representatives of, shall we say, the informal economy. My fluent colloquial Spanish and my nerdy maths skills would have saved me from getting conned, but in fairness the Cubans didn't try. And I wasn't troubled by the prospect of getting mugged - I was more concerned that the money changers might turn on each other. It's an industry where competiton is fierce and obviously disputes are not settled in the courts.

Another dabble with the Cuban underworld came when I was doing some food shopping. Eggs are rationed here, and obviously as a foreigner I don't have a ration card. So I had to resort to buying black-market eggs. The price was a fair eggs-change, ha ha. I just hope I don't get arrested and eggs-tradited, double ha ha.

It's partly my own fault that Havana has been a bit of a struggle, because I insisted on doing my usual thing of living, commuting, shopping, cooking, and hanging my washing out to dry like a local, in an unflashy apartment in a non-touristy neighbourhood. I hadn't realised just how hard it is to get hold of pretty much anything here. There are no real grocery stores: just tiny shops selling odds and sods, and open-air markets selling semi-fresh produce. The bananas are small and spongy and tasteless; the meat was unrefrigerated and covered in flies. At least the Cuban sweet potatoes came up to scratch, although they take longer to parboil pre-mashing than their European equivalents. I'm used to 12-14 minutes back home but this was more like 20.

Anyway, the belated lesson here is that I should have just done what everyone else does, ie, sleep in a comfy Old Town hotel and eat three restaurant meals a day, occasionally venturing out on the open-topped tourist bus to see all the state-sponsored graffiti. ¡Viva La Revolución! it proclaims. Yes, long live the revolution: the next one, that is, and the sooner the better.

View from my rooftop terrace.
I don't think I've used a filter in a blog picture before, but the 1950s look was irresistible.

Big breakers by the shore at sunset.

Parque John Lennon. This is the least lifelike statue of him that I've ever seen.
Even worse than the one in Almeria.

A typical Havana street scene.
It looks like Spain would look like, if somebody had bombed the hell out of Spain..

Plaza Vieja

The Capitol

My apartment. Basic, but everything more or less works.
Apart from the wifi...

"The Good Taste Of The Beer"  - slightly ungrammatical...
"100% Selected Ingredients" - as opposed to what? Spontaneous hazelnuts?
My favourite bit is the word "brewered", which appears twice.

Mérida, Mexico

Quite a few of you will have been to Cancún. Well, Mérida is just a few hours' drive to the west from there. Or in my case, a short flight to the east from Mexico City. After a couple of months spent living mostly at altitude, and struggling to climb stairs without losing my breath, I'm finally back at sea level. Thank God. The downside is that, in the absence of cooling mountain breezes, it's pushing 30 degrees C almost every day. I hope I can count on your collective sympathy. In the absence of mountain breezes, I did at least manage to catch a few sea breezes when I made the short journey north to the beach at Progreso. See picture below. It boasts the world's longest dock (important to type that bit carefully).

My overall impression of Mexico is firmly positive. I like the food and the people and the scenery and the weather. It's just a shame that the place is doomed always to be in the shadow of its bigger northern neighbour. You get the impression that NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) basically makes it easier for American brands and chains to grow their empires further south, without any realistic prospect of Mexican businesses being able to expand northwards to the same degree.

But trade agreements are only part of the problem. Guns are legal in the USA, so they flow south; drugs are illegal in the USA, so they flow north; money from the latter pays for the former, and much of Mexico is locked in the grip of people whose income and survival depend on both guns and drugs. The 'war on drugs' continues unabated since the 80s and victory is nowhere in sight. I wouldn't necessarily advocate for the complete legalisation of all drugs, but really, somebody is going to have to explain to me how it could possibly make things any worse than they already are.

That's more than enough ranting for one blog...however, it's worth adding that while guns and drugs haven't stopped me from visiting and enjoying Mexico, they're the main reason why I didn't make any stops on the way here from Colombia. Central American countries like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have horrendous problems with gang violence. Even for intrepid carefree souls like me, prudence imposes limits.

As for Mérida? It's OK. It's the capital of Yucatán state, in the eastern peninsula, and Yucatán food is justly famous all over the world. (Back home, my favourite soup from Waitrose is the 'Yucatán' chicken & bean one; obviously Waitrose have to call it 'Mexican-inspired' rather than 'Mexican', just in case anybody's stupid enough to think that it's actually imported from Mexico.) I'm not missing home cooking too much, partly because I still have strategic reserves of Bisto and Oxo in my backpack. That said, I'm yet to have a Greggs Festive Bake this year, and it gets me thinking about home. But there's time for another blog or two yet. 

Plaza Grande

Mérida cathedral

Statue of Manuel Cepeda Peraza, a former governor of Yucatan

Regional Anthropology Museum

The beach at Progreso

Edd vs Food #136
Relleno negro, a classic of Yucatan cuisine, with all the sundries. At La Chaya Maya.
The main dish looks a bit scary, but it's basically just meat & sauce plus an egg.
When it arrived my first thought was Shaun The Sheep.
And I couldn't stop giggling for about half an hour.

Comfy apartment in Merida

Cuernavaca, Mexico

Mexico is a federal country, divided up into 31 states, with Mexico City as a separate entity (not unlike Washington DC in the USA). South of Mexico City lies the state of Morelos, and its capital is Cuernavaca. Only a couple of hours on the bus from the capital. 

Multiple factors line up to make this part of the world a bit more spicy than what I'm used to. Travelling in, you see army patrols stationed at intervals, machine guns mounted on the backs of their trailer trucks. They're not just for show. Outside my hotel, at night, I could see occasional coyotes scampering around the car park: at one point in the small hours I was awakened by a very noisy confrontation between the coyotes and the stray cats, from which I don't think all survived to tell the tale. And there was a magnitude 5.8 earthquake here just a couple of days after I left.

Looking on the brighter side, the hotel is nice, and the altitude is about 1500m: higher than Ben Nevis, but still a good 700m lower than Mexico City, so there's a bit more oxygen. Also a bit less pollution. I do miss the cool sea breezes of home, but on the other hand it's nice and sunny and warm here, and I don't miss the winter blues. Obviously I'm in for a shock when I get home (spoiler alert: within the next couple of weeks or so).

Random facts of Mexican life #1: this is not a country for coffee snobs. Quite a few places, including some branches of McDonald's, don't know what an espresso is and can't provide one. It's half a pint of murky water, or nothing. Here in Cuernavaca, I went for a sandwich and the accompanying coffee was served in the form of a mug of plain water, freshly-boiled, with a jar of instant granules on the side. The idea being that you add the granules to the water as required. This would be unthinkable anywhere in Spain, and also (nowadays) in the UK pretty much anywhere other than a truck stop. In fairness the sandwich was very nice.

Random facts of Mexican life #2: there are some important differences between Mexican Spanish and Spanish Spanish. The most salient is the verb coger: in Spanish Spanish, it generally means to "take" or to "pick up", in the sense of a bus or a train, or a Greggs sausage roll. But in Latin America it means, and let's put this politely, to engage in the act of procreation. Also there's the Mexican exclamation qué padre!, a positive evaluation that translates very roughly as "it's the daddy". This means nothing in Spain. And it's a good example of the sexism inherent in the Spanish language, because any time an exclamation includes the word madre, ie mother, it's most likely expressing something along the lines of, ahem, coger.

Random facts of Mexican life #3: did you know that the letter W, ie "double-U", is also called "double-U" in Mexico, but "double-V" in Argentina and "V-double" in Spain?

Random facts of Mexican life #4: everybody has stopped reading, so it's probably best that I stop writing.

Pool at the hotel.
While I was occupying one of the deckchairs on the right hand side, a bird pooped on me.
"Fortune vomits on my eiderdown once more..."

"Graduations D'Ox-ford"
Not convincing.

Little league baseball (girls) in the northern suburbs

Cuernavaca cathedral

Palace of Cortés, begun in 1531, now a museum

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough."
Rabindranath Tagore

Teopanzolco
Aztec archaeological site not far from the city centre. 1300-1521AD.
Human sacrifices were performed here en masse. Also it's not really all that old.
It's interesting, but I wouldn't say it's anything to admire.

Edd vs Food #135
Cooked breakfast, Mexican style: scrambled eggs with bacon bits (tocino) and refried beans.
At Los Colorines de Cuernavaca

Mexico City (continued)

No, there aren't any Taco Bells here in Mexico. Apparently they've tried a few times over the years but they always get laughed out of town. (By the same token, there is no Wagamama in Japan.) In the UK, what we get served in 'Mexican' chains like Chiquitos or Las Iguanas is as much American as it is Mexican. An example is the dish of chimichanga: I've had it many times in the UK, and indeed I had one on my last day in Colombia, but I literally haven't seen it mentioned on any menu anywhere in Mexico City during the whole of my two weeks here.

It's good to have the option of delving a little deeper and sampling the real thing. The best way to do so is to be adventurous and eat the street food. If you're outside the touristy areas then you can buy tacos from the stalls at the equivalent of only about a pound each. The same applies for the quesadillas and the gorditas and the tostadas and the tlacoyos. And indeed the pizza slices. I tried to eat my way through the whole of a fiver, but had to go home and lie down after spending four quid. Bliss.  

I did have a look around the aforementioned touristy areas, because that's where all the craft beer shops are. But it's also where all the Americans are, specifically, the annoying bratty preppy American rich kids partying on the cheap between the Ivy League college and the job at Daddy's investment firm. Meh. As for the beer shops, the selections are limited and the prices are outrageous. A bottle of generic German beer (Paulaner, Erdinger) is at least five quid. Local mediocre craft brews are six quid. But you can get Lagunitas IPA in Walmart for less than two quid. No contest.

Enough of boring you about beer. Now it's time to bore you about football. I went to see Mexico versus Honduras and it was literally my first ever international match. I've never seen England play. However, that little personal milestone isn't quite as significant, for the purposes of this blog, as the fact that the match was played at the Azteca stadium. As in the two World Cups, Mexico '70 and Mexico '86. Maradona, hand of God, and all that. Bit of a footballing Top Trump card. See photo. 

An incidental fact about the 'hand of God' goal is that mostly-forgotten England player Steve Hodge swapped shirts with Maradona post-match and subsequently sold the shirt in 2022, after Maradona's death, via Sotheby's, for seven million quid. That's one way to earn your pension.

Continuing with the sporting theme, I've added an interesting new entry to the list of Things That I've Paid To See Despite Having Absolutely No Interest In Them. It's lucha libre, broadly speaking the Mexican equivalent of American WWE / WWF wrestling, as made famous by Jack Black in a 2006 film called 'Nacho Libre'. Lucha libre translates as 'free fight' but, like its American counterpart, it is of course about as 'free' as a Bach chorale. You can't improvise throwing people head-first out of a ring; they'd break their necks. I concede nonetheless that the choreography is impressive. See photo, again.

On the whole CDMX is a fascinating place, full of culture and history, very liveable, and also very affordable if you're prepared to be just slightly adventurous about where you live and where you go and how you get there. (I've hardly ever seen other tourists on the buses and metros. Cowards.) In more than two weeks here I've barely scratched the surface, and I think I'd like to come back. But in the meantime I'm going to keep on keeping on.

Random slice of Mexican street life.
From a moving bus.

Vasconcelos
Libraries are an occasional theme in my blog and this is one of the very best.

No prizes for guessing which American film/stage teenage musical is called 'Vaseline' in Spanish.
The new title gives me all kinds of ideas for sub-plots, which I'd better keep to myself.

Mexico vs Honduras at the Azteca.
Here I'm carefully taking a full-stadium view just as the first goal goes in.
(See left of pic.)

Lucha Libre.
Nuts.

Somebody has been feeding the squirrels...
...and the squirrels want more.

Another nice roomy apartment. Note the piano at the right hand side.

Edd vs Food #134
Mixed flautas with cheese and cream. And beer.
At La Casa de Toño

Mexico City

In Spanish it's Ciudad de Mexico, generally abbreviated to CDMX. Normally in my blog titles I include the country as well as the city, even when doing so can appear a little superfluous (eg "Madrid, Spain"). But there are some occasions when it's definitely redundant and this is one of them. 

Coming here from Medellín was one of those journeys that makes you realise how small Europe is. You assume that going to central America from the northern part of South America is a reasonably short hop, but in fact it's a longer journey than Dublin to Moscow. It was a night flight with no in-flight entertainment other than a frankly titanic thunderstorm visible a few miles to the west. My arrival went smoothly, although as you can imagine, there's no option of 'nothing to declare' when you fly into Mexico from Colombia.

My first impression was that it felt like being back in one of the bigger cities in Texas: the wide streets, the skyscrapers, the familiar American chains like 7/11 and Dominos. (And of course the millions of Mexicans, ha ha.) Much as I've enjoyed my time in Colombia, it was all a bit noisy and manic there, and things here are slightly more orderly and sedate. In Medellín I was on the 28th floor and I could hear the street-level partying all night long; here I'm on the 5th floor and I sleep in peace. 

Also, while I liked the food in Colombia, Mexico is a whole new level. It boasts one of the world's most enjoyably distinctive cuisines, and I have enthusiastically plunged snout-first into it. I'm being a bit more careful with my money here because there are a lot of very rich people in CDMX and in certain places they push the price of food & beer up to UK / USA levels, if not further.

But the main thing about Mexico City is that it's big, very big indeed. In fact it's ridiculously big. It literally contains more people than Greece and Portugal combined. I'm going to have to spend a bit more time in this city than usual. There's also the fact that road-tripping around Mexico has certain pitfalls - I did a bit of homework and it made for rather frightening reading. As such, the element of surprise will be missing from the next blog. Stay tuned for more of the same.

Zócalo / Plaza de la Constitución
As in that ridiculous opening-scene helicopter battle in 'SPECTRE'.

Statues of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, in the park dedicated to the former

Looking east from the Monumento a la Revolución

Monumento a la Revolución

Palacio de Bellas Artes

View from the Torre Latino (37th floor)
Sadly it's pollution, not mist.

Agreeably spacious apartment. Not expensive.
There are some things I miss about being young. Youth hostels are not among them.

Edd vs Food #133
Forest fruits, Greek yoghurt, and espresso. On the aforementioned 37th floor of the Torre Latino.

Medellín, Colombia

Bogotá to Medellín is one of the cheapest and easiest short-haul flights anywhere. But I came here to see this country, not the clouds above it. Hence I've spent about 11 hours in aggregate on buses, with a few nights in Honda (see previous blog) to break up the journey midway.

It was gone midnight and I was already half asleep when the bus from Honda reached the outskirts of Medellín. Through the mist I could see millions of lights far above me and also far below me, the road dipping and soaring vertiginously through hills and valleys, past shanty towns and skyscrapers. It was like a dream, and a slightly scary one, given how fast the bus was going, and also given the particular history of this particular town.

Earlier this year in Vienna, I mused on how it's difficult to escape the shadows of local historical figures such as Freud and Hitler. Here in Medellín, there is only one shadow, and there's a monument to him in one of the eastern suburbs. But I will not be polluting this blog with the image of Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria.

On this issue my feelings are similar to those on Che Guevara, whose birthplace in Argentina I visited back in 2012. (Same town as Leo Messi, FWIW). Like Che, Escobar was a charismatic leader who fought with courage and cunning against the existing establishment, and undoubtedly did some good in the short term to improve the lot of some poor people. All that is true as far as it goes; but it's also true of Hitler. The more pertinent fact is that Che and Escobar were sadistic tyrants who killed everyone who got in their way, and also killed many people who hadn't gotten in their way at all. What's more, it's no secret that Escobar freely indulged his taste for underage girls, and that his henchmen were paid handsomely to carry out forced abductions accordingly. Some Colombians may remember him with fondness, just as there are Spaniards and Italians who still revere Franco and Mussolini respectively. The rest of us can continue to spit on certain graves at our discretion.

Medellín doesn't have quite the same level of historical and architectural interest as Bogotá. For me the main attraction is the range of scenic views, either from my 28th-floor apartment or from the MetroCable, a network of cable cars that connects some of the remoter hillside areas with the city centre. Because the MetroCable is intended for locals rather than tourists, it's cheap as chips, and the natural ventilation of the cars as they soar high over the city is a nice way to get some much-needed cool air. 

In general there's more life in the streets here than almost anywhere else I've ever been. Fruit & vegetable sellers yell out prices over loudspeakers, and you can hear them bidding each other downwards as the day draws to a close and the produce is getting past its best. When it starts to rain, there's a thunderous rattling from the rush of all the clothing stallholders to get their wares under the nearest bridge. All in all it's a bit of an assault on the senses, but pretty much everything - the sounds, the smells, the food, the music - is locally made and locally owned. I was also much impressed by some quite awesomely boisterous post-football nightlife on Carrera 70. It made the Bigg Market look like Betty's Tea Rooms.

Admittedly I knew next to nothing about Colombia before arriving in the country, although I did win some begrudging respect from the barman in a Bogotà craft beer joint when he offered me a coffee-infused stout called 'Macondo' and I managed to catch the reference to the novels of Gabriel García Marquéz. (Pretentious? Moi?) But now I'm completely converted. It's the eighth country I've visited in Latin America, it comes top by a mile, and I'll be gutted to leave. Viva Colombia.

View at dusk from my bedroom window

View at dawn from my bedroom window

Catedral Metropolitana de Medellín

Hillside barrio halfway up one of the cable cars

Looking northwest from the cable car, city centre in the distance

Amateur football round the corner from my digs

Another hillside barrio

Edd vs Food #132
Bandeja paisa at the Mondongo restaurant in El Poblado.
Main dish: pork back, ground beef, fried egg, rice, plaintain, steamed potato
Sides: beans, banana, avocado, lime, arepa (maize cake), cilantro
Drink: maracuyá juice with milk
It's safe to say that all major nutrient groups are covered here.

Honda, Colombia

It's pronounced without the 'h', as comes naturally to any Yorkshireman. The clean English 'h' sound (eg in 'her' and 'him') has no place in standard Spanish, although you do hear it in some parts of Latin America.

Honda is a small town about six hours' bus ride from Bogotá. It doesn't contain any foreigners at all, or at least it didn't until I showed up. None of the hotels inspired any confidence, so I had to settle for a 5-bedroom villa with a private swimming pool. Also I encountered several surprisingly good restaurants. I didn't find any interesting beers, but I did at least manage to get Stella Artois rather than the local common-or-garden lagers.

All this luxury and face-stuffing is costing me thousands and thousands and thousands of Colombian pesos. Fortunately, the Colombian peso is about 5,000 to the pound right now and so it still works out quite nicely. I use cashpoints operated by a local bank called Davivienda because they don't charge any fees. The most you can withdraw in one go is 400,000 pesos, ie eighty quid, and honestly it's hard to get rid of the money no matter how much you eat or drink. This is a vulgar subject on which to dwell, but let's be frank: there's a reason why I've come here rather than spend months meandering around Switzerland or Norway. Exchange rates matter. It's also helpful in terms of personal security, because my pockets never need to contain more than about thirty quid and so I can take a relaxed attitude to the prospect of being mugged.

At the time of writing, the temperature in Bogotá is 19 degrees C, and yet here in Honda it's all the way up at 33 degrees C. The two cities are less than 100 miles apart as the crow flies, but the climate varies due to the difference in altitude: here I'm only 229m above sea level, whereas Bogotá is at 2,625m (and that's before you go up another 500m in the cable car). This close to the equator, the sun is almost directly overhead at midday, and it's hard to find any shade. Fortunately I've been able to cool off in the pool. Thank you for your concern.

It's just a short one today, I'm not staying here long. Back on the road again soon.

Honda sits on a very muddy part of the Magdalena, Colombia's principal river.
It flows for just short of a thousand miles.

Catedral Nuestra Señora del Rosario

A typical roadside cafe in rural Colombia.
The buses stop at places like this so that passengers can refresh themselves.
By pure coincidence, it also means the drivers can have a fag...
...and sell off-the-books spare tickets to local randomers for cash.

Private villa and pool. It's tough out here.

Obviously I'm not going to dignify this as an Edd vs Food.
The crisps known in the UK as 'Walkers' are called 'Lays' in the USA and Europe.
Here they're labelled 'Margarita' as you see, with locally tailored flavours.
Some of them are 'onduladas' which effectively means 'crinkle cut'.

Edd vs Food #131
Beef and veg at Cuarenta Puentes (Forty Bridges), Honda.
A rare linguistic mix-up when ordering. I was sure I'd asked for chicken.
My suspicions were first aroused when they asked me how I wanted it cooked.
I didn't quite have the nerve to say "it's chicken, WTF are you talking about?"
So instead I just said 'well done please' and then they served the above.
It was lush though, so no complaints.