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