Daze of the Dead

Jim woke up a new man following our Day of the Dead celebrations. Hair. Gone. It seems he’d managed to stay up until 1 or 2 am and shave it all off.

I was having an almost literal Day of the Dead, reading and snoozing most of the day away. Lazy bones.

Good day to research next steps and make some bookings.

Ventured out in the evening to eat at El Trapiche. I’m still on my ‘Sopa de Lima’ Tour of México, so that did me with some Panuchos. Jim had a burrito. £15 with 3 beers. Not toooooo bad. Sopa de Lima rating = 3 out of 5. Not as good as La Chaya Maya.

We walked out to Paseo de Monteja for a look. Took a while to find it, you’d think technology would help rather than hinder but Jim’s google maps download was upside down and had no street numbers. Gah! Regardless, obviously a lovely big boulevard with incredible huge mansions in various states of repair. Most beautiful was Museo Regional de Antropología. Extremely quiet on the road, just a few traffic wardens and couple of tourists.

Sunday we wandered to Zocalo to see the market that pops up. Various stalls selling Mayan stuff, hats, jewellery, etc. Particularly enjoyed the single guy with amp and mike in the centre of the square, giving us a rendition of.. something. “Mex Factor”.

Jim bought me a cow horn ring for 20 pesos (about a quid, and the asking price) and then felt terribly guilty about how much work had gone into it and that a pound couldn’t nearly be enough.

We laughed at a paint shop blaring out dance tracks. There’s an interesting marketing technique in Mexico where any and all shops place a massive speaker right in the doorway, facing out to the street, and play their music as loud as possible. Waldos on Calle 61 is a clear winner in the volume stakes. Jim joked about the paint shop being

…the new purple turtle, but now available in a rainbow of colours

We sat a while in la Plaza Grande and were approached by some teenagers who wanted to practice their english. They filmed us as they each took turns to stand in front of us and ask questions like ‘How long are you in Mexico?’, ‘What do you think of our city and culture?’, ‘Where do you live?’, ‘What is your culture?’ etc. We finished by waving into the camera and saying hi to their teacher Jessica. We wandered off and they came and found us again for a group photo. Aw, cute. Imagine we’ll be having to do that when we do our Spanish course in Guatemala!

By the way, what is our culture? We both described the melting pot of other cultures in London as a response to this. Cop out?

Returned later that night and found a large group dancing to traditional music, mostly the older crowd. Promptly finished at 8 and they started to disperse and wander home.

Looks like night of the living dead….

Still no public drinking or smoking, just traditional music and good, honest fun. Very endearing.

Daze of the Dead

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