Americans 'Wrong About Mexico' Says Travel Blogger

http://everything-everywhere.com/2012/08/26/4-things-americans-get-wrong-about-mexico/#more-14813

Mexican Computers Rather Frustrating

I'm back in Mexico nearly a week but haven't posted til now because of typical frustrations with Mexican keyboards and cybercafe computers.

There's also the not insignificant problem that Google has completely redesigned the ¨dashboard¨ of Blogspot, and I find it extremely difficult to navigate my way around.

I guess this settles it:  I'm going to have to get my own laptop!  I can't afford to spend hours relearning to blog on strange machines everywhere I go.

I arrived in Veracruz yesterday following a five hour first class bus trip from the capital.  Located on the Gulf of Mexico about halfway from Mexico City to destinations in the Yucatan, the climate here is hot and humid--a bit of a shock to my system following several temperate days and nights at Mexico City's altitude.

So I'm well on my way to the peninsula but already am leery of the idea of Cancun, where it's likely to be just as hot & humid as here.  I already miss the cooler mountain air.

I'll stay here another day at least to get my bearings and figure it out:  should I continue east where it will be just as muggy as here but where there are also ancient Mayan ruins to check out?

Or should I re-think this journey?  Maybe with an eye on points further south, perhaps to Chiapas state and northern Guatemala?

I'll keep you posted!

Mexico Rediscovered

It's my last morning in Mexico at the end of two weeks of rediscovering the attractions of this vast, diverse country.

It's been a chilly couple of days and nights here in the capital with gloomy overcast skies and some substantial rains.

Already I'm making plans to come back here--maybe over the busy Christmas holidays some year.

Before then I will try to get my photo software happening so I can share some of the thousands of photos I've taken of my travels in Latin America durimg the past two years.

Check Out Blogs of Authors

If you haven't checked them out already, I have links to the writers and authors I've been referring to in recent posts:  David Lida, Daniel Hernandez, Jim Johnston, and Chuck Thompson.

You can find those links in the right hand column a little bit below.

I don't have anything for Tony Cohan, but if you're interested in some very fine, nearly poetical essays about two Americans' lives in Mexico in the late 20th century, you can buy his books at Amazon.

La Antigua: Busker Central in Central America

I haven't written much about buskers or musicians in Central America mainly because there hasn't been anything to write about.  Unlike in Mexico where there is a whole mariachi troubador culture on the streets of its colonial cities, in El Salvador or Honduras you can go many days without seeing someone with a guitar or violin.  When you do encounter street musicians, as you do in Granada, Nicaragua, it's somewhat of a pleasant surprise.  And when I do bump into the occasional street band, as I did in Gracias, Honduras, I always donate something to the cause.

But in Antigua we are in a whole different league.  It helps if you can picture the massive crowds here--not only of weekend trippers from Guatemala City and other parts of the country, but also foreign tourists from Europe and North America, high school and college kids from America, and denizens of the large expatriate Western community who now make Antigua their home.  With crowds like these on a typical Saturday, it can pay very well to play on the street.

This city just reeks of cosmopolitan prosperity with its restaurants, bars, coffee shops, hotels, travel agencies, boutique stores, and regular markets.  In a region where bookstores are oases and second hand English language books sell for $10 or more, there are so many books in English available, and for almost nothing,  that I'm close to hyperventilating as I type this dispatch.  La Antigua definitely has anything you could possibly want, especially for someone like me who has come from a markedly much poorer place such as western Honduras.  If you want McDonald's or Burger King or Subway or almost any kind of pizza you desire, it's all here.

With crowds the way they are and with the sort of conveniences you can find here, maybe that's partly why the local buskers can do so well in this town.  And it seems even foreign travelers can hang their hats for awhile and make a living with a song and a guitar, or--as in the case of "Takeshi"--by painting Japanese calligraphy.

Check out the following website from a young  Japanese guy I just saw on Antigua's streets who had a huge crowd around him:

http://takeshi.henjin.com/

Takeshi sings original songs, plays guitar, and sells his CDs, but his main attraction is he paints your name in katakana/hiragana (Chinese/Japanese script) on a strip of white paper for five quetzales (60 cents).  He has a big sign written in Spanish telling of his voyage around the world which encourages donations, and he wears a baseball cap and t-shirt promoting his website.  Flyers ("take one!") are available so you can look him up on the web. . .and link him to your blog!

I can report that the kids loved this guy, and their (mostly) affluent local parents were fascinated by him.  Of course I was pretty fascinated too.

When I think back now to my experiences in France and Switzerland of the 1980s,  I regret that the CD was barely invented then, that there was no such thing as a "world wide web", and that it didn't seem economically feasible to busk one's way around Central America, Eastern Europe, Africa, or any other so-called "third world" area.

Now it looks as if maybe "third world areas" are among the only interesting--and lucrative--places left to go as an itinerant troubador in this increasingly homogenized, globalized world.

Grilled Meat--Made for Wisconsinites!

I tell people I´m from Wisconsin--often they know someone who lives in Milwaukee or someplace else in the dairy state. And so I tell them that Wisconsin people like to eat grilled meat, which they do very well here.

Last night I had an excellent meal of grilled beef & sausage with the usual staples: refried beans, tomatos, cheese, avocado & tortillas. The tortillas they make here are smaller but thicker than what you find in Mexico or Guatemala--just two of them were enough with all the other grub that came with it.

They love their fried breakfasts here, too--eggs many styles and all the extras that go with it. But maybe my favorite meal is the big lunch (the main meal in these parts), usually featuring soup and choice of meat with rice, beans, salad, juice or coffee (and sometimes dessert). Expect to pay $4 to $6 for a great feed in this part of the world! Yum. . .