Day 36 - Man on a mission

Cancun...the commercialized tourist superhub that exists to please the average North American tourist.  A place of huge hotels, large nightclubs and lots and lots of restaurants.  Cancun does have a nice beach with its white sands and pale blue waters, but the ugly hotels make for a poor backdrop.  Naturally you won’t see these hotels on any tourism photos used to advertise Cancun.

This place was again the start of my journey to Panama City.  This might have been the same starting point as my last trip but I felt different this time.  Last time I was slightly nervous and unsure of myself.  It is always difficult to arrive in a country on your own where you don’t speak the local language.  As soon as you step out of the airport here in Cancun you are swamped by people trying to direct you towards their minibuses with the promise of prices “not too expensive” but in reality you can get a bus for much cheaper.  Last time I was unsure and I ended up getting pulled towards an expensive minibus and paying more than I had to.

 

But not this time, I felt a lot more confident and sure of myself this time.  Like a man on a mission.  I walked straight passed the crowd of minibus and taxi drivers and towards the local bus stop.  The minibus and taxi drivers didn’t even really approach me this time.  I guess I must have looked more confident and less easy to con into paying excessively for a minibus.  It was a small thing but it made me feel good.

Whilst in Cancun

Getting to the hostel was easy; I chose to stay at the same hostel as last time.  Volunteer workers who stay and work at the hostel for accommodation come and go with the months.  There were fresh faces behind the desk this time but I did recognize one of the volunteers from last time.  His name was Alex and if there was anything party-related going on in the hostel he was there.  At first he just walked past me with a generic “hi” but after a few minutes he came back.  “Mike?” he said looking at me.  “Sorry I didn’t recognize you at first”.  It is always nice to be recognized especially considering he has probably seen hundreds of new faces since I was last there.

I wasn’t staying in Cancun for long; my main destination was Mexico City.  I considered Mexico City more as a starting point of this trip.  But I had to have at least one party night out in Cancun.  When in Cancun, you party.  There isn’t much else to do.

Tonight’s venue was a nightclub called Senor Frogs.  With competition between the nightclubs fierce in Cancun each club has to have a unique selling point; a feature that makes that club different from the others.  The City’s was that it was the biggest, Coco Bongo’s was it had the best live shows and Senor Frogs...well it had a waterslide.

We had several drinks at the hostel before being ushered into a minibus.  The atmosphere in the minibus was awesome.  It was a really good crowd of people and everyone was in the mood for a good night.  Sometimes the minibus journey to the venue is the best part of the night.  Senor Frogs was an interesting place.  I was surprised to see a lot of older people in Senor Frogs, middle aged American tourists made up about a third of all the patrons in the clubs.  They were stood around orbiting tables making small talk with each other.

There was a stage at the far side of the dance floor.  On the stage was some guy with a microphone trying to get everyone to play games in the club such as kissing the person next to you.  This place had a family holiday camp feel to it.  It is how I imagined a nightclub in somewhere like Butlins to be like.  It even had a waterslide, a long grey tube that snaked its way along the ceiling.  The slide ended at the edge of the club where it hung over a black ominous pool just outside the club.  The drop between the slide and the water must have been at least 5 metres.  I didn’t go down the slide that night.  One of my rules of travelling is never jump into water where you don’t know the depth.  But it was a good night overall.  It is hard not to have a good night out in Cancun unless you don’t like nightclubs.  In which case it is easy.

But I didn’t return to Mexico just to party though.  I came here to travel, see as many different countries and experience as many different cultures as possible.  Maybe even “discover myself” and all that bollocks.  And this journey was going to start in Mexico City.  I decided to fly to Mexico City.  I don’t like flying internally because of all the normal stuff you hear about how you should try and be a responsible and eco-friendly traveller and avoid using planes.  Plus I feel flying within a country is cheating.  However the bus journey to Mexico City was over 24 hours long and more expensive than flying.  I decided I would allow myself to cheat just this once and that I would plant a tree when I got back home.

"A hostel in Mexico City"

I arrived into Mexico City and left the airport around midnight.  I should have arrived earlier but we were delayed in Cancun for about an hour.  I had heard Mexico City had a very good metro system and I had planned my journey from the airport to my hostel.  It involved changing at a few stations but I was up for the challenge.

However the metro stopped running at midnight.  I would have arrived in time if we hadn’t been delayed in Cancun.  I would now have to get a taxi to the hostel.  Getting taxis from the airport here is different from just hailing down a taxi and paying by the meter.  Instead you buy a ticket for a taxi from the airport at a booth with the cost of the ticket depending on which “zone” of the city you wanted to go to.  It seemed like a good system at first however I discovered a problem with it after I used the ticket to get into a taxi.

The taxi driver seemed nice at first.  He pulled out of the airport and was driving relatively calmly.  However after leaving the airport he did the Catholic Sign of the Cross and kissed a statue of the Virgin Mary that was on his dashboard.  “Why is he doing that?” I thought to myself.  I got the feeling that he was about to do something reckless and I was right.

The taxi driver started to accelerate hard and he did not slow down.  Not for junctions for cars or corners.  I guess this is the problem with paying for a taxi fare up front.  Since you are not going by the meter time is money* and the taxi driver just wants to drop you off as soon as possible so he can rejoin the line at the airport for the next passenger.

* or not money if you look at it from a literal perspective.

The driver was constantly flashing his headlights at other drivers ahead signalling them to get the hell out of the way.  We had a language barrier when it came to finding the hostel as well.  I was staying in a hostel called Mexico City Hostel which is the most generic name for a hostel in Mexico City.  I kept trying to tell the driver the name of the hostel but he just drove around the same block not stopping at any hostels.  I think because of the language barrier he thought when I was saying “Mexico City Hostel” he probably thought I meant “a hostel in Mexico City”.

I knew roughly where the hostel was and we were driving circles around the block but he wouldn’t let me off until he was satisfied he had found the hostel I was trying to describe.  After a few laps around the same block I managed to translate enough Spanish to tell him the hostel was near the cathedral.  “Ah, you stay at Cathedral Hostel” he said.  “Yeah, sure” I replied, that wasn’t my hostel but it was pointless driving around in this circle constantly trying to get him to stop.

We pulled up at Cathedral hostel and I grabbed my bags and got out.  He wouldn’t actually leave though until I got into the hostel.  I had to enter the hostel and stand in the lobby area with the night guard giving me funny looks until the taxi driver left before I could leave the Cathedral hostel go find my actual hostel.

Waking up in a new city

This made me wonder about Mexico City.  Was this city so dangerous to tourist that taxi drivers drop you off at your destination and wait until you are physically inside the building before leaving?  Or maybe he is just passionate about his job and doesn’t feel satisfied unless he gets to the destination.  Either way he was keen to leave to the airport as he screeched away from my view, on his mission to scare the hell out of the next unsuspecting backpacker.

It didn’t take me long to find the hostel by foot.  It was where I thought it was but hostel had a small doorway and was easy to miss whilst looking for it from a car window.  Especially considering the speed we were driving at.

I always like arriving at a place at night because you can’t really see the place.  When I arrive somewhere during the day the excitement just isn’t there.  After the journey I am not usually excited about arriving in a new place.  I just want to unpack and rest.  Here arriving at night you unpack and sleep and then effectively wake up in a new city.  There is an air of mystery about the place until the next day.  So tomorrow, I will find out what Mexico City is like.