Mexico City and Chalco

Jon:  Well what a trip ... as usual, we are never shy of adventure on our travels ... adventure is our code word for things going wrong :) ... A rather restless overnight bus ride to Mexico City, arriving at 4am.  Then the friends that were supposed to meet us at the bus terminal couldn't make it, so it meant getting from Mexico City to Chalco on public transit ... other than getting on the wrong line, and losing half an hour returning to our starting point, nothing too eventful on the subway,
no-one even tried to pick our pockets, even pickpockets like to sleep ... anyway, after about 10transfers, we eventually arrived somewhere in the east of Mexico City, from where we hopped on a collective taxi, which is essentially a volkswagon van with benches in a circle in the back of it ... this managed to take us to Chalco, and we made it to our friends house ... every house in around mexico city seems to be made of grey brick ... and Mexico city is ridiculously huge.

So rather than go to the pyramids of Teotihuacan, like all the other tourists, we ended up helping our friends at their markets, selling fruit!  Talk about shocked expressions, when people came to buy fruit, and there was a gringo behind the counter speaking to them in spanish, and selling them fruit!  What a great way to improve my spanish, and experience the real mexican lifestyle ... the Tianges or public markets, are very much a part of the Mexican way of life, and so we have experienced something genuine.  On our first day at the tianges, we had a torrential downpour in the afternoon, and our tarp was filling up Oh and after a particularly late night at the markets, I went with two friends to a late night taco stand... I don't think I expected to find myself eating
tacos at 1 am, surrounded by crazy mexicans singing and juggling knives ... how healthy these tacos are ... usually a taco stand consists of a grill or a vat of oil where the meat is "cooked" and the tortillas are dipped in the grease before being warmed on the grill ...

the next day before heading off to Veracrua, some other friends wanted to take us out for breakfast ... which consisted of driving for an our or two to find this out of the way restaurant but the food was delicious, and our gracious friends insisted on us eating until we couldn't fit another bite ... barbequed rabbit with chile ... I ate a rabbit kidney before realizing what it was

So then it came time to head off to Veracruz.  Well, this day was running on Mexican Time which is similar to Island time, except even slower ... Arriving at the Mexico Central bus terminal ... what a mass of craziness that is ... well things didn't exactly go according to plan when we went to buy a ticket and the next  bus was at 11;30 PM ... I didn't exactly relish the idea of hanging out in the bus terminal for 10 hours and then arriving in Veracruz at 5 am!! Well, after buying our tickets and sitting aorund for 2 hours, I decided to see if there were any cancellations or standby seats on an earlier bus ... well for only an arm and a leg we managed to upgrade to platinum class, and leave at 6:30pm and so here I am writing this on a first class bus, with a smelly man snoring rather loudly, and his breath smells slightly worse than rotting onions!

Michelle: A day in the life of a genuine hard working Mexican family.... 7 hours on the bus to Mexico City with very little sleep, 4 hours of public transit transfers. Arrive home exhausted but stay only long enough to put down our bags, change our shoes, and load the truck. Squeezed in amongst the fruit we head off for a breakfast of delicious tacos (probably some of the best we've tried yet). We get to the Tienges and lucky for Jon & I, we were on the breakfast run and missed the set up and carting of the goods through the market- the others are well under way by the time we arrive. Being new in town we are given the luxury of exploring the market, we came back to a very busy scene. 2 people being run off their feet in serving, so feebly at first we do what we can to help. With limited Spanish and me not knowing all the numbers in Spanish, one person with all the change and a major language barrier between us as she didn't speak English- made for some interesting times. The plan had been for us to go and see the market and return home to shower and sleep by lunchtime while the others stayed to work....  We should never bother to make plans because we never do them anyway. Turns out we were one man down as he left to help attend the other Tienges across town, taking the truck with him and leaving us stranded. We were super busy that sleep simply wasn't going to be an option. I became the expert pineapple cutter and Jon the expert watermelon wrapper and of course it was viewing time at the zoo- people would often look at us like we had 2 heads, it was pretty funny. By 2 o'clock it was evident that I'd had 2 very sleepless nights, that a cold was taking over and I was starting to weary. But with nowhere to go, the only option was to keep working. People would spring from nowhere to feed us, and we'd had our fair share of fruit, we were bursting full. At 3, a clap of thunder being the only warning and suddenly it was pouring, wet and heavy, torrential force rain- everyone was diving for shelter and grabbing pieces of plastic to cover their wares. We were madly scrambling to secure our tarps and pull in boxes, rescue signs and shield ourselves from the rain. Hoping it would pass just as quickly as it came we huddled together under the drips and continued maintaining the flooding tarps. Some people packed up and left but market doesn't end until 5 pm, we're not packing up until then so we continued to serve the brave and determined customers. By now I'm not only tired and sniffly, I'm also cold and shivering, I'm exhausted and my feet are sore, the phone has no service and so we are stuck. Eventually the rain stopped, the sun shone again and we began the tedious task of pack up- over 1.5 hours later everything was piled up ready and the rain came again, quickly this time. Leaving the stock under the supervision of a fellow stall operator we catch a taxi to the centro, only to now man the downtown fruit shop until 10:00pm... I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer so I was taken home to sleep off my cold. The others arrived home at midnight ready to do it all again tomorrow!! Yikes and I thought I worked long hours, All this in a days work all seems like too much effort in my eyes. And this is the holidays when the kids are able to help- I can't imagine when there are 3 less teenagers who have known nothing else their entire lives and 2 less (not as helpful) "Gringos" to share the load of 2 markets and a store....