Post #22,554
12/28/01 12:10:13 AM
|
Hey you're right!
Sanborns - also another and strangely named restaurant in the Zona Rosa - Bellinghausen. (I never bothered to enquire if they were formed shortly after 1945, though I thought most of those subs headed for er Argentina?)
Huachinango en el mojo de \ufffdjo at B's. Red Snapper like nowhere else! and yes, salads OK there pero muy expensivo..
(My sweetie was born in Brownsville - yeah your neck o' the woods. Liked to drive when we went through small villages - so the muchachas could see that they could be una automovilista tambien..)
Haven't been there since early '80s; always a mixture of wonderfulness and then la mordita. Loved especially the utter sanity! of Dia de los Muertos - perhaps their reclamation of pre-Catholic times: Staring death in the face, making candies, pastries of skeletons and.. eating them, as in Fuck You Death! we ain't skeerd of ya. Their version of Donne's "Death be not proud.."
But it's taken all those years to finally begin rooting out the PRI, and the general level of corp. and govt. lying almost makes us look goodish. (But not quiite) I hope they do better at banishing the scumbags than we - before they're seduced into YAN conforming consumerism, ruled by (in their case) maybe only The 2% ? As it is now: Mexico DF air causes cancer :(
Viva Zapata y la Revoluci\ufffdn! {sigh}
|
Post #22,586
12/28/01 10:56:29 AM
|
You should go back; you'd be both pleased and appalled
Sanborn's is now a chain \ufffd la Denny's -- much of the Norteamericano consumer culture has been imported. Your sweetie need not make political gestures any more; large proportions of the drivers everywhere I've been have been women. Much Pride in the announcement: all but a vanishingly few villages in the southern jungles have electric power and telephone service!
Most of my visits over the last ten years have been to the interior. Interior Mexico and border Mexico are two very different places -- and in general, Mexico varies in ambiance from place to place more than the U.S. does now; more like what we were in the Fifties. Aguascalientes (the Mexican Rhode Island, in many ways) used to be PRI, is now a mixture, with a PRD governor and a PRI mayor.
Mordida is still there, but much reduced in most places -- it's actually possible to get and pay a traffic ticket without winding up in the carcel, for tourists and natives alike; much appreciated. Anything major -- export/import, serious charges -- still needs, ah, subsidy though. Stacks of twenties are the ticket (if you carry C-notes, you're probably a druggie). I got stopped for inspection (looking for drug dealers) going into Zacatecas. The lieutenant of the Mexican Army who inspected the car was businesslike, polite, and honest -- apparently did not even notice the corner of a bill sticking out of my shirt pocket, and waved me on with a smile after a much more thorough search of the car than our side seems to accomplish without disassembly.
I truly enjoy Aguascalientes, Leon, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, and the northern parts of Mexico state. I detest Mexico City -- twenty-five million people crammed into the stupidest place in the Western Hemisphere for a major city -- and the border areas are appalling. Never been to the southern part or to the jungles. Baja California Sur can be fun, though in some places it's hard to find anyone who speaks spanish :-) If what you want is kick-back-and-relax, it's hard to beat La Paz -- stay at one of the older hotels along the Embarcadero, and watch the sun set over the bay.
But nowadays, if you try a bit, you can move and act as if you were in the United States. Convenience stores, convenient (and clean!) gas stations, decent sanitation (and getting better), and representatives of the major North American hotel chains, usually with alternate names -- Hoteles Posadas is part of the Holiday Inn empire, for instance. Not to worry. You can still get caf\ufffd de olla in a lot of places, and a few cups won't hurt you enough to notice :-) I get very impatient with people who claim they're contaminating the "real Mexico." The real Mexico is part of the Western Hemisphere; I've become convinced in my travels that from Hudson's Bay to Tierra del Fuego we have more in common with one another than we do with anybody Over the Water. When (and if) Mexico gets rich, it'll be different from the U.S. in details, but just as easy to get around in for everybody. You can see the bits emerging.
Quite hopeful, really. You should go back, you really should; just being able to pull into a Pemex without feeling as if you were descending into depths that hadn't been cleaned since around 1950 will probably astonish you --
Regards,
Ric
|
Post #22,622
12/28/01 3:09:38 PM
|
Thanks for the update
That's much more germane than any travel industry encomium. Hmmm Pemex w/o squatting with feet on the seat?
Nice about the $20 remaining in the pocket. Story - toodling through a sorta village when a guy in usual mil uniform steps out in front (I'm driving this time) .. wants to know if we'd like tickets to the ~ "military ball" IIRC (!). Was testy at the moment, thought.. OK if we're gonna die we're gonna die (asked P. for her vote too, natch) and we just slowly accelerated away. Nothing like a guy with a Thompson, receding in one's carefully watched rear-view mirror! (We died. Orneriness has kept this illusion going.. another time-line.) Another story about waking up a sleeping guard with gun on lap ... .. . carefully.
Oaxaca, Monte Alban - worth the trip, maybe still? Our fav place was Barra de Navidad, kinda like Puerto Vallarta was before Liz and Dick turned it into a full time Hollywood set. Dunno if Barra has withstood the same inclinations. Anyway - if one goes there to make comparisons - you won't discover the subtleties at all.
(Or on more modern note - that their mechanics are among the most innovative in the world [screw you again Billy for crapping up Language itself, you miserable entrepreneur-pipsqueak!]) Could give details re when P. ran the Saab into a dirt bank to avoid an oncoming idiot (no shoulders!) - and what these guys accomplished in 'hands-off at 70 mph' alignment of a bent space-frame. One part they had to make via a small picture in the manual. They put (most..) US R&R rote part-changers in perspective.
Guess you're right again - been away too long. Need to drop in for a recharge, on Dia de los Muertos.. as the dice roll. Agree re Mexico City - alas it's simply (likely irreversible?) chaos - the poor bastards. Not even Bellinghausen enough of a magnet.. Trouble is - now it'd take me two weeks to speak the language semi-properly, where once a few days would have brought a lot back :(
Fav. quote of a friend, by Juan Ram\ufffdn Jimenez:
Esa distancia infinita de volver que se corre tan rapidamente al ir.
(Para los otros: ~ "That infinite distance to return to that from which we so quickly ran ...") {sigh}
All those great Mex/Spanish-speaking poets and writers we never heard a single excerpt from! en la escuela Gringo.. We be so cosmopolitan and all. Another pox on Pizzaro, the forerunner of Corp-Am and Billy - may his chains clank alongside of Marley's - to the high-volume squawk of overblown saxophones.
Feliz A\ufffdo Nuevo, Y'All !
Ashton
{sniff}
|
Post #22,634
12/28/01 4:49:04 PM
|
The Mexico I love is the east coast
From Tampico South to Coatzcoalcos. Vera Cruz is beautiful. Angel R. Cabada's is a side road place where I met the real folks and spent some time visiting. South of Coatzcoalcos to the americities are a little different due to the tourista's. Still pretty friendly though. Never had a case of the trots, if the locals dont drink out of the tap, you dont. Agua mineral is your friend. Eat off the street vendors because they usually buy fresh early in the morning from the market as they have no cooled storage. They dont have a clue about fried biftek so dont try to show them how to cook a steak, it will only annoy them and still wont taste right. The seafood is excellent and I still cant get the right flavoring for their cocketeil de cameron served in huge sundae glasses a meal of itself. Might consider a run there again sans rug rats.
thanx,
bill
My Dreams aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be
|
Post #22,669
12/28/01 10:46:02 PM
|
Added to fantasy itinerary or maybe
.. a direction to head if Ashcroft's Amerika continues according to plan (?) I could survive there with or w/o techno assists; a great Hobbit adventure in any case. (Less'n the Yuppies get there first and $crew it up, too.)
Cheers,
A.
|
Post #22,642
12/28/01 6:20:28 PM
|
Insane travelling companions
My Mom and us kids drove from Panama City, Panama to Maytown, Illinois in a week and a half to catch a wedding once. We hooked up with another mom, with a son and a daughter, for a bit of security in numbers.
All three suffered from a bad case of Disneyland syndrome.
Other mom was joking around with border guards (I don't remember which little bitty dictatorship) and, in jest from her perspective, offered to sell her teenage daughter. Well, they didn't actualy shoot those machine guns when we blew out of there. But they had every right to, we ran a checkpoint during one of the constant little wars of the time. My mom can drive hard when she has to.
----
"You don't have to be right - just use bolded upper case" - annon.
|
Post #22,666
12/28/01 10:39:30 PM
|
Damn.. I'm usually the one who has to remind self -
Don't tease the animals!
I think I'd have been just too wary to take along a small daughter through all that territory, less'n all the kids had AK-47s except then the border crossings would have been even hairier.. and [tilt] Catch 22.
Glad you made it; yer mom be The Woman.. baaad-assed! Hmmm maybe she can help with the paint-balls on the surveillance cameras? or maybe when Ashcroft starts the airport cavity inspections..
Ashton
|
Post #22,676
12/29/01 12:26:02 AM
|
All my stories like that
are about Colombia :-)
To an American, Mexican attitudes toward the police are truly bizarre. I stood at my hotel window one late evening, watching as a pair of Mexico City police cars waited, with red-and-blues flaring, to make a left turn across Insurgentes [south central Mexico City, for those who don't know]. It took them quite a while to manage it -- the southbound traffic didn't give an inch! Did my heart good, it did.
And yet, the simplest stop by the Federales (Pol\ufffdcia Feder\ufffdl des Caminos y Puertas) is a heart-stopper. The guy may just want to pass the time of day, or it may ruin your whole year.
But yes, I could live in Mexico, even though my language skills are laughable. It's sometimes remarkable that I'm able to get along at all, but English is widespread and most people are good-humored about it. Something to keep in mind -- lots of people don't like Mexico, but I don't think anybody actually hates Mexico; possibly the Zapatistas, although the one I met denied it.
Regards,
Ric
|
