Food and Fighting (Mexico, Part 2)

 

The second leg of the Taco Tour began with me waking up on a bus. I had hardly slept but now the sun was up so I could open the curtain and watch the scenery pass. What I saw was unlike any landscape I have ever seen; hundreds of thousands of tall and straight cactus, pointing up to the sky, sometimes just one big, spiky green trunk, others with several big, spiky green braches growing out from the original. The landscape was mountainous and there were several species of other succulents and non-succulents, but those cacti totally dominated, sometimes for as far as the eye could see. Sadly, this is the best photo I could get.

 

Seeing as we were only travelling up to Mexico City, for the safety reasons previously mentioned, we weren’t going to be able to see much of the desert landscapes of Mexico. Just a few days ago we had been in a tropical environment, so I was quite surprised to see the cactus this far down. In this area we also passed many Mezcal distilleries and their plantations of a species of cactus they use to ferment into a spirit.

My eyes were glued to the bus windows watching all this, except when I was interrupted by the Mexican man sitting next to me who offered some marshmallows for breakfast, and the military check point where we all got out for the bus to be searched.

We reached the town of Oaxaca (pronounced Wahaca), and even though the landscape had changed, the street food culture sure hadn’t. Here they sold all sorts of great Mexican food out on the street or inside the big food market, which is where I had all my meals. The town has a few favourites, such as fried and spiced grasshoppers, which I haven’t seen or had since Thailand. I ate a couple and they were overwhelmingly bitter and a bit too soft, nowhere near as good as the crunchy, salty ones you get on the streets of Thailand.

 

Apart from trying a bunch of local dishes, we visited some of the most euorpean-esque churches we’d seen throughout all of Central America, and wandered and rode bikes through the gridded streets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was all going of smoothly until three weeks of hard-core street food caught up with me. I’m surprised it took that long, to be honest with you. Having several rounds of antibiotics on the ready, I was eating whatever the hell I felt like, regardless of what the hygiene of some of these vendors seemed to be. It didn’t bother me that Mexico has the highest rate of death by food related illness in the world. But when it hit, it wasn’t pleasant. Especially sharing a room with someone else. I gave it a few days to sort itself out and then when it didn’t I got back on the antibiotics again, leaving myself just enough for one more round of food poisoning before the safety of Australian food.

 A descent bout of food poisoning like that will make you feel wilted, homesick and unenthused about being alive, but it’s totally worth it. Eating on the streets is as real as it gets.

The next day I sat through the six hour bus ride to Mexico City watching more of the cactus landscapes roll past and hoping I wouldn’t suddenly explode.

Mexico City is one of the biggest cities on earth with the third highest GDP behind Chicago and NYC. It’s the reason why Mexico is moving so quickly into the ‘developed countries’ category.

 

First night in the city and we went to see the Lucha Libre – the Mexican wrestling. The stats show that Mexico is a country that has a certain knack for violence, especial drug cartel related. People are getting knocked off left, right and centre here, but mostly up north. We decided the only violence we wanted to be exposed to would be that of big guys in tights and masked on the inside of a ring, in a big stadium filled with cheering fans.  Me and Fok bought wrestling masks for the occasion, and it was a good spectacle. I’ve seen the Americans wrestle in Australia, the Japanese wrestle in Kyoto, so I was interested to see how the Mexicans dance. The wrestling was pretty bad at times - to the point of being embarrassing, and I didn’t quite understand the rules, but the characters were funny and they had some moves I’ve never seen before, the atmosphere was great – electrifying, as the Rock would say, and the whole thing was like a big shot of nostalgia back to when me and the boys lived and breathed it.

Only a couple of days later me and Fok would be wandering around some of the more dodgy looking streets in Mexico City when we would come across a tattered and littered street filled by a crowd surrounding a homemade wrestling ring in the middle of the road (think hose for ropes). We watched four overweight, underskilled, masked guys beat the shit out of each other right there in the middle of the day, in the middle of the street, in the middle of a Mexico City suburb. A highlight of Mexico.

Apart from the wrestling, we saw some impressive Aztec ruins on the edge of Mexico City, the best I’ve seen in this part of the world, and saw some ruins in the city centre, which had been partially destroyed by the Spanish for material to build the big cathedral that now overlooked the site.

 

We also saw some native dancing right in front of the cathedral, which I though was a nice contrast (I especially liked the guy dressed up as death), explored the glossy business district of town and then the more gritty other side of town, two suburbs that could have been on the opposite sides of the world, wandered down busy pedestrian streets and through parks, and ate at street stalls, and at tin y restaurants with vendors pumping out the one dish.

 

The second of five nights in Mexico City I reached 100 tacos on the Taco Tally. The picture of me is about to eat number 101. I was seriously over tortillas by then, and craving bread, but we ate at where Anthony Bourdain said the best taco is Mexico City could be found, and it was good enough to re-inspire me to eat more tacos over the following days and take my final tally to 113.

The Taco tour was over.

And so was my time with Fok. For 2 months and 20 days we had shared rooms, experiences, and the ups and downs of travel. From Cuba we travelled as friends and stayed that way right up through Central America and to Mexico. At times it was challenging but it was much more rewarding than I could have hoped, so I’m proud of the both of us for how well we managed to keep it real and how great of a time we had. Thanks buddy.