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Trip Start Dec 06, 2005
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Trip End Jun 17, 2006


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Flag of Mexico  ,
Monday, April 10, 2006

Had a fantastic last few days in Mexico, and for that matter, Latin America. We checked out a great local band - instrumental funk-jazz - with a saxophonist/keyboard player who had the most expressive facial contortions (most with a look of sheer pain) I have ever seen!! They played, on occasion, a style a little to experimental for me, but I did enjoy them. 7 piece band - trumpet, sax, drums, percussion, keys/sax, guitar and bass. Very bohemian, artsy crowd with lots of terrible haircuts, but I got the vibe that these people were actually the ones with some money in Mexico City.

Checked out some big Diego Rivera murals in a few places - the impressive Fine Arts Palace with a small selection of big ones, the Palacio Nacional (where I think the president and his crew work) with a few massive ones, and another building with 120 Rivera paintings, all relatively small (but by that I mean maybe 3m x 2m) 01 Crazy instrumental funk-jazz band
01 Crazy instrumental funk-jazz band
 . Lots of his paintings have socialist v. capitalist themes - unsurprising given his life history and social circles (Trotsky was one of his close mates).

Visited a big 4 km squared park called Chupaltepec, with tons of annoying vendors of local crap, a museum-castle which we skipped, and a zoo. It was a weekend and school holidays, thus there were way too many people there to really enjoy the zoo, but we briskly walked through it. I pointed out to our Dutch friend Anna how many Aussie animals there were (kangaroos, emus, wallabies, kookaburras, etc.) compared to the small amount of Dutch animals (she called a swan Dutch.....rrrright..).

Last thing we did was to visit the Corona Factory (actually, the company is called Modelo), which was great - the tour was free and included as much food and beer as we could consume in around 20 minutes! Brilliant. The tour was soured by the constant whinging by one American loser. Definitely not giving his country´s travellers a brilliant name!

And that was the end of Mexico. Brooks and I said goodbye to Anna with a phenomenal Italian dinner and headed off on an 11 hour flight to London.
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