Aeropuerto Plaza Mexico City

For my last day in Mexico - and my birthday - I decided to treat myself and not to return to the Centro Historico. Insteat I went to the more upscale Zona Rosa. A nice place, really, with dozens of good restaurant (and not that expensive), clean pedestrian streets, pink-colored pavement (hence the name) and a friendly, lively ...

... notoriously corrupt police. They were ordered to pay a fine/bribe of 1000 pesos each but somehow managed to haggle it down to about 800 between them, before continuing on their way. Over the course of our stay they developed a number of nicknames for me, including: Big D, Duncmaster, the Duncster, the Boss, Roman and Pav - the latter two due to my apparent resemblance to the Tottenham and Russia striker Roman Pavlyuchenko!

As is often the case, the ...

... the bone of Aztecs the Spaniards killed when the moved in a took over. Seeing some of the bones was a bit disturbing.
Around the corner, and pretty much in the centre of the biggest city in the worlds was a ruined temple. Being a student I got in for free and wandered around the temple. It was just the base of the temple, the rest of it had been destroyed by the Spainiards, the reason the base was still there was because it had built over so many times ...

... dont think I ever expected to meet someone so diverse and cultural in Mexico. Its been a great experience to get to know her, and a great first experience with couchsurfing. If you ever come to Australia young lady, make sure you let me know as I will be happy to return the favour! Final thoughts on Mexico City: Just like any city of this size (around 20 million, or so Brendan tells me) there are such contrasting areas of wealth and poor. Some parts remind me of Bangkok ...

... girls took it upon themselves to get involved with the activities that the Olinca students were doing. So, before long, there was an ACDS vs Olinca basketball game on center court with many students looking on from the floors above and the girls managed to find themselves in a game of 6-square, which is some loose variation of 4-square, but I couldn't see it. We then convened around 8:30 in a small auditorium to have an official welcome ...

... inside and clogging the entrances. We shuffled a few steps in as part of the entering horde, enough to see the famous cloak of the dark-skinned Virgin Mary behind the altar. One of the best parts of our visit to the shrine was watching the traditional dancers outside the church in the grand plaza. There was a sort of religious dance of men in cowboy hats holding crosses and wearing sequinned capes depicting the Virgin Mary. A few steps away was a traditional ...

... br>
It's a beautiful park, however the water where the water trampling is happens to be a puzzling shade of acid green, and the ice cream sold by the little old man with the rambling cart has a remarkable resemblance to frozen Crisco. It was all so enchanting that Ryan purchased for me a small Sponge Bob balloon (Bob Esponje, in Spanish).

OK, time to walk back towards the main events in the city for DOTD, perfect! We made it back to the ...

... only got about 4 hours of sleep the night before. The next day we went on a walking tour around to some of the museums, ruins, and to this giant cathedral in the center of the city. We got to go on the roof of the cathedral and ring the bells in the bell tower. We met two guys from harvard, a girl from south africa, and a girl from oregon. We had lunch with them, and then took the metro over to the bus station to buy tickets for the next leg of our trip ...

... or another. Like the main one has 4 kids sacrificed and buried at each corner to please the god of something or another.. i think it was rain god for that one, or maybe the sun god. Bit silly really. Maybe they should have tried not sacrificing sometimes just to see if anything bad happened, and then when they figured out they were all fine they could all get alng living happy lifes in peace without slicing eachother ...

So, after close to two weeks lazing in the sun, and generally blowing my budget in the American resort towns, i decided it was time to do something with my life. Not too much, obviously, but a week of spanish school was decided upon, so what better place than the biggest city in the world (depending on boundry classification)? OK, i must admit the allure of politial unrest was the driving factor behind this move, but nonetheless, i discovered the Mexico that is ...