Mexico
My visits to Mexico have been working ones but I must mention that there are some very good and popular beach and holiday resorts on the Yucatan peninsular. But my own experiences have mainly been in and around Mexico City and Puebla where our manufacturing plant was located. The journey by road to Puebla takes about 2. 1/2 hours and on the way of of the city you pass the municipal rubbish tip which is world famous for the size and number of people who make a living scavenging and recycling on it. The pictures below, however foul-looking, hardly do the mess justice. Overall it is run by the local mafia who actually charge people a weekly `fee` to obtain permission to scavenge there. However on to Puebla which is a pleasant colonial town and much more relaxed and less stressful than Mexico City. As with the capital there are volcanoes on the horizon and the journey between the two towns takes you fairly close to Popocatepetl one of the biggest and best, reaching to 17,800 feet and regularly erupting.
Driving back to Mexico City you go through a pass between two mountains and being quite high up get a view of Mexico City surrounded by a series of volcanic peaks with a huge brown one in the centre. This in fact turns out not to be a real peak at all - `just` the filthy polluted atmosphere sitting above the capital. From this and the rubbish tip you will begin to appreciate that Mexico is not the cleanest or best presented of countries. However it does have plus points. Once you escape the capital there are fantastic historic sites to visit like the Mayan pyramids of Chichen Itza on the Yucatan peninsula and the Aztec Teotihuacan pyramids which I visited and climbed (yes unlike the Egyptian pyramids you can climb up these) as they are not much more than an hour`s drive from Mexico City. Indeed there are masses of pyramids to be found in various shapes and sizes, built by a number of civilisations.
Also within driving distance of Mexico City is Piedra Herrada, Valle del Bravo where hundreds of thousands of Monarch butterflies overwinter before starting their incredible migration up the eastern seasbord of north America. Occasionally these large spectacular butterflies `overshoot` and manage to cross the Atlantic arriving in the UK as migrants but have made the trip so many times that they are on the official British list. In 1933 there were 40 and in 1981 there were 135 sightings. I have seen them in Central America but not in the UK. But there are plenty of other interesting wildlife species to be seen in Mexico like, for example the coatimundi, iguanas, spoonbills, snakes, pelicans, parrots, drug gangs and orchids.
Before I visited I had never experienced Mexican food - back then there were no Mexican restaurants in the UK (how things change). So you can imagine my shock being taken out to a local restaurant from the office and being presented with a menu in Spanish. I went for fajitas which are now a staple at home but the culture shock of having to `roll your own` was a bit of an eye opener. The other thing that they office warned me about was traffic accidents. If you get involved in an accident even if you are in no way responsible get the hell out and away because as a foreigner you are automatically to blame. I was staying in the Pink Zone where street entertainers created paintings using spray cans whilst igniting the butane propellant! I bought an exqusite obsidian (volcanic glass) carved man`s head which you can see in the photos. Earthquakes are another interesting regular feature of the city of course
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