Hostels, hostiles, and pyramids

MEXICO CITY – This city is too big to know in four days, especially when I’m growing tired of sightseeing.

Yes, those are beautiful old buildings. Yes, the city has a great history. Yes, I would like to stay here longer. No, I can’t.

The pride of my time here was getting to visit Teotihuacan (http://archaeology.asu.edu/teo/), the ancient city of pyramids and temples that was built hundreds of years before even the Aztecs came to dominate the highland basin. The Pyramid of the Sun is the third largest pyramid in the world and climbing the steep 248 steps to the top made my lungs well aware of it. The view was spectacular from up top, with little monarch butterflies fluttering around seeming to comfort visitors by promising they never have to climb those steps again.

I went halfway up the slightly smaller Pyramid of the Moon, as far as visitors can go, and met an older German woman while I sat on the steps looking out over the Avenue of the Dead. She asked me where I am from, and when I said Alabama, this was her response:

Oh, Susanna, don't you cry for me
I come from Alabama,
With my banjo on my knee.

So there I was, sitting on the Pyramid of the Moon, getting serenaded to “Oh Susanna” by some German woman. She said she has friends in Montgomery. Bamaragua, friends. Bamaragua.

I made my excursion with four Australians I met at Mexico City Hostel (http://www.mexicocityhostel.com/), a five-story hostel in a fantastic colonial building near the Zocalo, the city’s main plaza. It can hold 100 travelers and the mood there went anywhere from international university co-ed dormitory to an all-out madhouse. My Australian friends were all normal (by my slightly more eccentric definition) and I also made friends with a banker from Vermont, a businessman from London and a jazz singer from Amsterdam.

Then there was the Slovenian kick boxer who slept in my room. He had no cartilage left in his nose so he could push it in flat on his face. His knees and elbows were banged up and red I think not from his past battles but the current ones he was looking for on the street and at our hostel. He was upfront in drunk, broken English saying he was looking forward to the next time he could fight someone. He accused a Japanese guy of stealing his wallet but it was found stuck in the couch in the lobby before anyone got hurt.

As for the Japanese guy, the first time I saw him he was napping on one of the bunk beds in my room in the afternoon. He slept on the top bunk near the doors that led to a small terrace outside and I passed him to step out and check out the view of the city. I opened the door and I as I was closing it turned around to see my dorm mate laying there with eyes wide open, wider than you can open yours, staring fiercely right at me. Underneath his chin a yellow teddy bear he was clutching tightly beneath the covers was peeking out at me. He didn’t say anything.

“What. The. Fuck,” I thought to myself before closing the door.

An older man from New Zealand was also staying in our hostel. I don’t know how long he had been there, but I never once saw him leave. He would either be in the lobby reading or upstairs watching movies with a group of younger travelers. I only spoke to him briefly, but he told my Australians he was just traveling the world to have time to think to himself. Getting out and actually seeing and doing things, he said, is just an afterthought.

I couldn’t get one good shot of the Zocalo because there was some large event recently where they are only now dismantling the huge tents that take up the plaza. My shots are mediocre, and I forgot to bring my camera with me much of the time I was walking around the historic center. At least I have some good shots of Teotihuacan. I also have great shots of my Australians. (That, yes, I will one day get to put up.)

Speaking of which, my Australians are some of the finest cunts I’ve ever traveled with. Did you just gasp? I learned by hanging out with them that in Australia cunt really is a term of endearment, interchangeable with the word friend. Someone tried to tell me this before, but I thought they were joking. It may have changed my life, or just promised me a whole lot of trouble for when I get back to the States.

My next post will come seven hours south of here, in the city of Oaxaca, my Australians in tow.