A few words on Mexico. When I was last in the region a few years ago, someone told me that Mexico is technically part of North America, but as Canada and (especially) the USA don’t really want them in their top draw gang, they usually get lumped in with the Central American nerds gang for stuff like international football comps, embassy dinner parties, every cultural stereotype you could ever think of, and the like. I don’t know if that’s true or not, the guy I got that from did smoke a lot of weed, so make of it what you will.
I travelled for 600 or so miles to get to Tampico, and in all honesty, passed through what was almost entirely a fuckton of deserty nothing. I hear there are 20 million people in Mexico City and that overcrowding is a problem, they really ought to spread themselves out a bit. Not that I’d fancy living in the Mexican pampas to be fair, it does need a quite a bit of weeding, and the nearest bar is 300 miles away.
Along the route the bus was stopped at several police checkpoints. These were pretty tasty affairs I have to say. Sandbags, body armour, machine guns and dark sunglasses all round. How the Honduran migrant caravan ambled through these very serious roadblocks I don’t know. Maybe they all rented cactus costumes and pegged it through the desert, I couldn’t say.
Actually, I should say, Now I'm in Mexico, and a town with some umph, I'm beginning to feel like I’m a traveller again. The USA was such an education and a terrific place to explore, but Mexico is very raw and real in a way that the US (and I think the UK) could never be again. I’ve already decided I’m retiring from being a bum after this trip, I really am a bit too old for this shit, but one of the things I’ll miss is the immersion in the absolute reality of a culture nothing like one’s own. So in future I’ll become a proper tourist, and enjoy that instead. For now though, I'm happy to immerse myself in Central America and enjoy that as a pre-retirement privilege.
More on Tampico tomorrow, but it looks just fine as a place to start :)
Lots and lots and lots of allotment space here.
The nicer first impressions of Tampico. Entirely due to over budget belligerence on my part. The rougher end was slightly less aesthetic.
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