Striding with a hopped-up buzz back to the US Embassy to collect our visa-stickered passports, what were the odds of bumping into the clerk who’d approved the travel permits just four days previous—within five minutes of stumbling across the Romanian chef whose restaurant we’d breakfasted in that same morning—along the same street? Too uncanny! Continue reading
toluca
27 Aug 2015 – Half a mile of Mexican boobs, knots of men in their boxers and visa victory!
An opening sequence of sweeping panoramas of metal-and-glass skyscrapers glinted in the sun, people in sharp suits carried briefcases as they vanished into revolving doors, the endless rush of traffic sped on sunlit freeways. Welcome to Mexico City. Every building had its own character and street its own identity. Peeling back the gloss, I was in a city that had a spin of its own—a wilder orbit inside the Earth’s calm blue-green whirl. Mexico City wasn’t open to the peace and tranquil that drifted around other places. Here, people raced on the roads like their lives depended on it. And cursed constantly in front of other vehicles hell bent on gaining distance first. But strangely, no one really honked their horn.
19-26 Aug 2015 – Bike-eating manholes and Karma’s divine intervention: Yusif
Scooting through the volcano studded Iztaccihuatl-Popocatépetl National Park took us nine miles on undulating hard dirt up to the cloudy top, and down quite a bit farther on the smooth stuff towards Tepoztlán—the “place of abundant copper” in the state of Morelos. Once there, Eddy opened his backbreaking sliding door to Posada La Casa De Ana B&B and greeted us as if we were one of his own. That’s what his grandfather had instilled in him from an early age towards travellers. I liked him instantly.