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.

Bogotá, Colombia

This is my 250th blog post. Quite the milestone. So I thought I'd push the boat out a bit.

It's the first time I've been outside Europe or North America since 2015. I had a meander around South America back in 2012, but that started south of here (in Ecuador) and then progressed further south. This was always unfinished business. Perhaps the crucial change since 2012 is that I've learned to speak Spanish and so things are going to be a bit easier for me this time round. Indeed two of my UK-based Spanish tutors, Alejandro and Leonor, are colombiano and colombiana respectively. Hi guys. 

I'm going to be subjecting myself to total Spanish-language immersion during the whole of this trip: everything, absolutely everything, that I say or hear or read or watch will be in Spanish. If people try practising their English on me then I'm going to pretend to be Hungarian and feign incomprehension. Even my diary is going to be in Spanish until I get home. The exception is of course this blog, which will continue in English, and I hope you all appreciate the sacrifice I'm making.

I've been surprised at how few other foreigners I've encountered. Inevitably you see tourists at the top of the cable car and in the main city centre plazas, but I've generally been the only foreigner on the buses or on the streets, even in the posher and richer barrios. As such I've also often been, and this is a novelty for me, the tallest person in sight.

Which brings us to the thorny topic of personal security. Here there are many barrios into which one does not go at night, and some barrios into which one does not go at all. Lots of drug cartels and paramilitary groups and so on. Sometimes there are armed police and indeed armed soldiers on every street corner, and it's an interesting question as to whether that's reassuring or not. I tend to think it is, if only because those police and soldiers are never going to see ginger gringos ("gingos"?) like me as a threat. 

And it's easy to overstate the dangers. The dark days of the 80s and 90s are long gone. There are at least half a dozen US cities with a higher murder rate than Bogotá, and I've spent time in all but one of them. The exception being Cleveland, Ohio. (I'll get there eventually.)

All joking aside, I love Bogotá and I love Colombia and I wish I'd come here sooner. More to follow.

Cable car view, coming down from the Montserrate mountain to the east of the city 

Panorama photo looking east from the top of the mountain

View to the north

Sunshine after the rain, just round the corner from my apartment

Bogotá cathedral overlooking the Plaza de Bolivar on election day

Looking west towards the mountains in La Candeleria

Hurrah for affordable countries...
...where you can stumble off a long-haul flight and straight into an airport hotel like this, for not much money at all.

Edd vs Food #130
Rice, meat, beans. It doesn't really matter what it's called or where it's served.
And all meals are improved by putting a fried egg on top.
This has been proved. By science.