Moving On

I finished up my stay in Mexico City on Monday spending the last couple of days recovering from a hostel-sponsored Tequilla night and exploring the neighborhoods of Xochimilco and Coyoacan in the southern part of Mexico City. It took about an hour and a half to get to Xochimilco by subway and tram. The town was built on a lake and was farmed by using floating gardens that the Aztecs called chinampas. Today, there are a series of canals that you can rent a boat and float through. My guide book had me walking around town for an hour looking for a port that didn’t exist where I could supposedly find a better deal on boats.

Coyoacan is another neighborhood in the south of the city that is supposedly the oldest part of the city and is where Cortes launched his attack on Tenochitlan. Leon Trotsky spent his last days after the Russian Revolution in this part of Mexico City and I was planning on seeing his house. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that all museums are closed on Mondays so I wasn’t able to see his house or another museum I wanted to go to. Instead all I got was a picture of the plaque on the wall in front of his house saying that it was his house.  You couldn’t even see the house since it was behind a massive wall. Since all museums were closed I had a lot of free time so I spent most of the day in the square drinking coffee and reading a book. The biggest discovery of the day was I found a fruit called Rambutan which is one of my new favorite fruits. It’s red and spiky but you peel it open to find a gel-like pulp encasing a seed center. The fruit has a nice mellow sweetness to it.

After a day at Coyoacan was when the real fun began. I took my first of many bus rides from Mexico City to Colima. The bus left at 10:00 and arrived at 7:30 am. Between the guy snoring next to me, the baby crying behind me and the bus driver playing mariachi band music to stay awake I didn’t get too much sleep. I figured that’s what I was getting myself into with bus travel and only expect it to get worse when I cross over to Guatemala.

I arrived in Colima without a place to stay and figured I would find something once I arrived. I wrote down a couple of hotel addresses and pointed to the first one on the list to have the taxi driver drop me off. The hotel is a little more expensive than I wanted to pay but it’s nice to have a room to myself. Walking around town I found another hotel that I’ll stay at tomorrow night for half the price.

I knew it would be hotter in Colima since it’s close to the coast but I wasn’t expecting to sweat as much as I am. It’s less the heat and more the humidity that has me sweating. Luckily, the coast is a short bus ride away and I’ll be in Manzanillo laying on a beach in a couple of days.

Overall, this town and the surrounding area isn’t a bad spot to visit for a day or two.

Also, I´m currently having issues linking to some updated photos from here but they are posted in Picasa in the Mexico City album.