Thursday 30 October 2008

A couple of things I love/hate about Mexico

Love:

The food. The big number one on this list. Being here over the past month has reminded me of how I was when I first came here, with Pete in 2003: obsessed with eating. Whenever possible I try to eat a full breakfast of fried eggs (spicy style, a la mexicana, is my favourite) with tortillas, beans, a little salad, coffee and juice. This usually costs around 2GBP. With the rhythms of my days here, I might eat a breakfast this size around 10.30. I will be hungry again by 12.30 and thinking about lunch. Wherever possible I will seek out a cheap restaurant, and have something like tacos, fajitas or burritos. The meat in Mexico is outstanding. So much fresher than I'm used to. I have something like a taco fetish at the moment, and I am sure I will miss them when I get to Colombia. Dinner is the smallest meal of my day, which is the real way they do it in this country. I might just have a sandwich or anything I can find for cheap. But sometimes I treat myself to another sit down meal. At worst I will pay 5GBP for this. I have put on a bit of weight over the past month...
The weather. Mexico is not blisteringly hot all the time. The altitude of most of the counrty makes it quite pleasant in most places. Even quite chilly in places like Creel, Chihuahua, where I was a few weeks ago. One night coming back from a bar there I was freezing, even when wearing a jacket. And my AFC Wimbledon scarf has been put to good use various times. (Albeit, mainly on over-air-conditioned buses). I did, however, throw away the long-johns I had been carrying just the other day. I reasoned that a South American summer will probably be reliably warm enough for me not to need my watching-football-in-Edinburgh-in-February gear.

Hate:

The queuing. (Or "waiting in line", for any American readers out there). Not that I can't stand it. Just that Mexicans can't do it. It's always a bloody shambles and people push in from all angles in no discernable order, or there will be something strangley inept about the whole arrangement. Example: yesterday I was in Wal-Mart here in Playa del Carmen. Now, you would expect that in a completely agringado (Americanised) environment the queuing would work. But in the twenty items or fewer lane (incidentally, one woman was taking the piss - with about 10 watermelons) people were waiting in line for the 4 or 5 tills available, then, when they got to the front of the queue, just randomly selecting a till to go and stand behind, thus creating a second tier of queuing and destroying the whole point of the queue for multiple tills!! Deep breath. This probably sounds ridiculous. Like I am a really anal, stuck-up Brit. And I suppose part of me is, beacuse this really does irritate me!

That is all

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