Zihuatanejo y Mexico Ciudad

Zihuatanejo

After we had rinsed off all the volcano dust and patched up Marcelle's knee we headed to Zihuatenejo, a lovely seaside town a few hours distant. Zihuatenejo (pronounced zee-wa-ta-ne-ho) is perhaps best known to westerners as the beach at the end of Shawshank Redemption that the main 2 characters escape to. As much as we tried, we didn't find Andy Dufresne or Red. I guess the law must have eventually caught up with them. They are probably in some flea-infested Mexican jailhouse as we speak.

Marcelle flying high.

The search for Tim Robbins knew no limits.

We spent a few fun days in Zihuatenejo, swimming, snorkeling and even parasailing, which was exciting. We also took a cooking class with Monica, a local who runs a school from her house. We learnt the art of making chile rellenos - stuffed chile peppers - though the chance of us successfully duplicating the dishes are remote, as the 5 page cookbook we were given contains approximately 15% of the steps that we witnessed.

Chile Rellenos 1, Erik 0.

Marcelle is always her happiest just before meal times.

Mexico City

From a small, quiet seaside village we decided to head to one of the world's largest, most bustling cities - Mexico City. With 20m inhabitants it really is a crazy place, though surprisingly green in places. The city is just packed with history - going back literally thousands of years. The historical part - also where we stayed - is built in and around Tenochtitlan, an ancient Aztec site. the Templo Mayor ruins were no more than 300m from our hostel. The city itself used to be a small island on a large lake, which was drained after the 1500's when the Spanish took over. Almost all of the Spanish cathedrals were built on older Aztec sites, often using the stones from the pyramids that they were replacing. It's strange to look at a 500 year old cathedral and view it as a comparatively recent build.

At the Basilico de Guadalupe, overlooking the city. Apparently if you are lucky you will see a vision of Mary. All we saw were people trying to sell us plastic Jesus statues.

Perhaps Mexico City's greatest attraction is Teotihuacan, an ancient Olmec city on the outskirts of the city. Built from 100BC onwards and inhabited for a thousand years (which is hard to grasp), the city predates the Aztec occupation by almost a thousand years. As said earlier, this place is old. Teotihuacan is famous for its 2 enormous pyramids - the pyramid of the sun and the moon. The pyramid of the sun, the larger one, is the third largest in the world, and weighs over 3 million tons. And it was built without the use of the wheel, boat or earth moving equipment. Yip, nothing beats slave labor for effective results. Look here to see where they are.

At Teotihuacan, looking down the Avenue of the Dead (the Piramide de Solar on the left).

With the Piramide de Lunar in the background.

To transport Mexico City's 20m people the city has a very effective transport system of buses and trains. They are nice and cheap, too - the metro costs 3 pesos for anywhere on the grid and a bus trip is 2 pesos (R1 = 1.33 pesos). It is also on these transport systems that one gets to people watch, and by people watch I mean watching everyone, and I conservatively mean everyone, sucking face. Fat or thin, ugly or attractive, it doesn't matter. Public displays of affection seem to be a national sport. On our metro trip to the bus station we were blessed with the spectacle of watching a middle aged man play tonsil tennis with, I kid you not, a midget. If there was a saliva-spread disease this city would be wiped out in 1 week, tops.

BA, pitying the fools who can't reach the top of the pyramid. And, holy shit, special effects are amazing these days.

Mexico City was also where we met our first South African on our travels. Not only was he South African, but he recognised me! It turns out that we were both at Rondebosch Boys in 1998 - though I was in matric and he was in Std 6 (which would explain why I didn't recognise him). What a pequeño mundo. We met, in all places, a toy museum, where he was painting a mural.  We weren't painting - we were being freaked out by the dolls.

Sharks, a menace even 500km from the coast.

As mentioned, the museum had some pretty strange stuff in it.

It was also in Mexico City that I had a rather memorable meal. I had been wanting to try pozole, a meat and vegetable soup, for a while, and eventually we came across a place in a market that sold it. I was expecting a thick, dark and colorful soup full of flavor. Imagine my surprise when, instead, I was served a bowl of watery slop not too distant in looks from tapeworm in dish water. The meat was pale, and had an odd quality of changing color when looked at from different angles, a bit like oil on water. The vegetables of the soup consisted of chopped up onion, cabbage and radish served on the side, all still raw. You will be pleased to know that I gave the soup a good go, eating a good 75% of it. I regretted this the next day when I read that the pozole from the market we ate in consists of pig's ears and pig's snouts. I think I will stick to tacos from now on.

No Tocar. You didn't have to tell us twice.