I'm typing this on a coach from Mexico City to San Miguel de Allende. It'll take about four hours to cover the 160 miles or so to this "colonial jewel in Mexico's crown". It's supposed to be one of the best places to learn Spanish in Mexico and generally a pretty chilled out place to spend some time, certainly in comparison to the ridiculously populous Mexico City (circa 20 million people!)
My flight from Washington arrived into Mexico's international Benito Juarez airport about 10.30pm local time yesterday which was about 4.30am UK time so I was not surprisingly a little knackered. Immigration was mercifully quick and smooth, certainly compared to Dulles where I once again experienced that annoyingly patriotic policy of marshalling hundreds of non-US citizens into a long queue to wait for a handful of immigration desks while maybe two dozen proud US passport holders get their pick of at least twice as many dedicated immigration desks. But not so in Mexico City and I arrived at customs wth my bags pretty quickly.
Benito Huarez airport, in common with a couple of other airports I've visited, has a genius red light/green light check at customs. Basically you have to press a button which through some random algorithm causes either a red or a green light to illuminate. The idea being that if you've got a couple of kilos of charlie stuffed in your suitcase, it doesn't matter how cool, calm and collected you are, there's still a reasonable chance you're getting searched, questioned and then presumably chucked into one of the world's most notorious correctional facilities. I was irrationally relieved to get a green light - as you press the button it's impossible not to think "Hang on, am I absolutely sure I didn't absent-mindedly put a couple of small bags of heroin in my rucksack while I was packing?"
On emerging from security I had been expecting to run the gauntlet of local taxi touts but the arrivals hall was disappointingly calm and I managed to get an approved cab very easily. After a fifteen minute drive through central Mexico City I was safely at my hotel, and contemplating the twin pleasures of a hot shower and a cool bed in that order.
This morning, after sleeping like 'el morte' and sampling pretty much everything from the hotel's breakfast buffet, my original plan of catching another cab to the bus station seemed a little unadventurous and so I enquired at the front desk (in English sadly) about getting there using the Metro. The tone of the answer in no way suggested it was the sort of journey no gringo should attempt without a personal bodyguard and so full of confidence and refried beans I took the short walk to the Insurgientes metro stop.
The metro was pretty easy to navigate and very cheap (two pesos - about 10p) although the barrier at the entrance immediately ate my ticket and so I couldn't work out it could stop me going further than I'd paid for. Maybe it's just one price to use the whole Metro, or maybe it just operates on some crazy trust system.
On each of the three separate trains it took to get to the bus station there was a (different) man with a rucksack with a speaker in the back playing songs from a portable CD player at full volume. Occasionally a passenger would beckon him over and buy a (presumably bootleg) CD. It was a lot more pleasant than a tonally challenged busker and suddenly the salsa remix of Coldplay song made a lot more sense.
The bus has a number of television screens which are currently showing a Danny Glover film dubbed into Spanish. Danny appears to be playing a reclusive Vietnam vet who by a peculiar twist of fate ends up looking after a young (possibly) Vietnamese girl and by bonding with her works through some of his issues, which are explained in flashback and relate to the accidental killing of a Vietnamese child during the war. So the basic pitch is "man comes to terms with killing Vietnamese kid in his youth by being nice to a different Vietnamese kid later in life". Not entirely sure that restores the balance Danny, but I guess we'll have to see how it ends...
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