Sarah: Guadalajara, Mexico - Machine guns...
Trip Start
Dec 27, 2007
1
5
80
Trip End
Dec 28, 2008
Guadalajara,
Mexico
Friday, January 11, 2008
Well, since i last wrote to everyone, weīve been to Los Mochis - nothing really there but went to this pretty poor coastal village called Topolobampo (no not Topolabamba), Mazatlan - lovely city, on the Pacific coast, one of most famous beach resorts in Mexico, after Acapulco. And now we are in Guadalajara - city as big as Sydney, birthplace of tequila and the traditional, iconic Mariachi musicians. (And lots of the food that Cristina told us about that we havenīt had yet!). Guadalajara is pretty cool , there are plazas all over the place - plaza de liberation, plaza de indepence, plaza de revolution, plaza de la liberty . . . na, just kidding, theyīre not all called things like that. There IS a Plaza de la Liberacion though. It is interesting learning about Mexican history as we go, and all the cities have plazas or streets or monuments or buildings called such or named after the famous national heroes - Benito Juarez, (canīt remember what he did) Miguel Hidalgo, (proclaimed independence from spain and declared slavery abolished), Moctezuma (last Aztec king) and I think thereīs another main guy or two that I canīt remember. Unfortunately donīt have any history books in English so I get most of my info from the olī Lonely Planet and what I can get from the brochures. Maybe our Mexican friends (Richard, Cristina, Hector?) can give me a history lesson??
Today in Gd it was really cuite (damn sticky keyyboard!) - we took a ride in a lovely wee horse and carriage all around the centro historico. The carriage was so gorgeous and our guide was cool, althugh he speaks too fast, like everyone here!! For me that is! It was great, only thing was I got a pretty bad headache, wasnīt sure if it was from all the fumes, or from trying so hard to work out everything he was saying.
Thatīs one thing weīve noticed the cities have in common - a layer of brown smog. You can see it when you look out across the cities and of course you donīt notice it at ground level but the fumes from the vehicles are a lot stronger in New Zealand - itīs very noticeable and iīm quite conscious about it. Was trying not to breath while on the carriage this morning but that only works for so long!! Itīs really not good for you! - breathing AND not breathing! I was a bit worried about visiting Me x City because the guide says they have a pollution scale 0-300. They already have a "donīt drive today" rule, where youīre not allowed to take YOUR car on a certain day. If it gets to a certain level they have "doube donīt drive today" and if it gets above 250 ( a handful of times a year) itīs so toxic that schools and public services close, no buses or private vehicles and only emergency transport! Apparently they are trying to develp ionised atoms that can manipulate the wind/air to move the smog out of the city - sorry I donīt know the science of it, you might have to research it if you want to know more. We were also a bit worried about crime but we met a couple of french cgirls in Los Mochis and they said that the city has spent a LOT of money in recent years dealing with the pollution and crime. They said there are police on every street corner and they felt ok, though they stayed only in the centro historico.
Wow, that brings me to another thing iīve found quite fascinating - police. Different in each place but DIFFERENT from NZ. In Hermosillo they were identified by orange vests, were frequently seen on street corners / intersections and generally looked like an unsavoury bunch of young men, oiften leaning on something and chatting or laughing - didnīt give me a feeling of being protected, but that could just be my sheltered NZ outlook. That was the city police. The state police drov round in big pick-ups and looked much more serious. On the street they wore large black puffer vests, had shaved heads and baggyish pants tucked onto little black boots. In Los Mochis they drove boy-racer cars. ( Oh did I mention theyīre all armed, very conspicuously. In NZ, normal police are not armed, apart from a baton. Althuogh after a recent fatal stabbing of a policeperson, they all now have to wear stab-proof vests.) In Mazatlan there were traffic police in brown uniforms with a whistle directing traffic in the very busy ccentral market area. And now, oh my gosh, in Guadalajara, this morning we were having our free breakfast in our hotels restaurant (yeah eat heaps cos itīs free) and two cops walked in , man and woman. They had the usual pistol/hand gun in hip pocket AND . . . a bloody great big machine gun slung across their chest. They calmly put it on the seat and sat down behind us to have breaky.
**************I HAD BREAKFAST NEXT TO A MACHINE GUN! ******************* Holy shit! All the state police carry them so iīve seen a lot of mchine guns today. Also, itīs really strange because the police wear baseball caps as part of their uniform. Thatīs funny to us because we associate that with american youth/pop culture, and it wouldnīt be the kind of connotations we would want for our police force. We are used to the authoritative "squarish/army sergent-style" hat. Interesting these little things...
Hasta luego
