Sunday, April 15, 2012

Rain, rain go away, this is Colombia it's supposed to be warm

Teresita Rosita has arrived in Colombia!
It's all a bit exciting - she's being a proper backpacker now, staying in a hostel, meeting travellers from all around the world, and exploring a new city with the fresh eyes of a tourist.



Teresita Rosita is in Bogotà, capital of Colombia and with an average temperature of 16°C, and unfortunately for Teresita Rosita she has arrived right on rainy season and it's been rainy!

Rainy and cold.

Teresita Rosita went walking her first day out in Bogota and after half an hour she was drenched to the bone, wishing she had some waterproof shoes (preferably of the gumboot variety), and that jeans weren't quite as absorbant as hers were proving to be. So she went back to her current home, got changed and tried again, and this time she had more luck. Well this time she jumped in a taxi instead, and went to see an Australian friend who just so happened to live in Bogota, what a happy coincidence...

Unfortunately he had to run away and work as the common people tend to, so Teresita Rosita stayed with his flatmates and enjoyed her first Colombian fiesta/rumba. It involved lots of aguadiente - the local drink enjoyed by the Colombian kids and lots of dancing... And at 3am when she went home Teresita Rosita felt like she had arrived in the right place.

And so her time in Bogota has unfolded, wandering the damp streets, perusing the street art that covers all the old area of town, going to the gold museum to look at lots and lots and lots and lots of gold, much of which supposedly hung from peoples noses and ears and lips.



At the Botero museum, Teresita Rosita saw lots of fat art, fat pears, fat violins, fat pigeons... What would Terisita Rosita look like if she was a Botero painting?


Big is beautiful as they say...maybe she should have stayed in Mexico a bit longer.

Then when night fell, Teresita Rosita set out with various groups of people - Danes, Germans, Belgians, Argentinians, Canadians, Colombians... They went drinking, they went dancing, they went exploring, they always tended to stay out a little too late as well, so Teresita Rosita was starting to get used to functioning with very little sleep.

And there was the rain. It rained and it rained and it rained some more. Pretty soon nothing Teresita Rosita owned was dry, but it didn't really matter because as soon as she left the hostel she was sopping wet. The roads became rivers, the potholes became lakes, and passing traffic became trecherous moving water falls.



So when on her last day in Bogota there was hints of blue in the sky, Teresita Rosita decided it was time to climb El Cerro de Monseratte, a 3000m mountain overlooking the city. Teresita Rosita joined the rest of the Sunday pligrams and started the steady, steep climb past all the food and trinket stands that the Latinos love to set up during these sorts of events. And it was pretty steep going. That, and the air was a bit thinner than she was used to back in Australia, so soon Teresita Rosita was huffing and puffing along with overweight Colombians, resting to take in the view whenever the clouds cleared slightly, until she made it to the top.



There she was met by the sounds of Sunday mass from the church atop the mountain as well as the next front of thunder, rain and lighting, this time a little to close for comfort. So she, waited and waited and waited, until she lost feeling in her fingers and toes and then she took the cable car down instead.

And so the rain continues, a lovely sound when you are safe and sound in a warm bed, but after 5 days of it, Teresita Rosita said enough was enough - she was going to the beach!

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

And now it's time to say goodbye

The time has come for Teresita Rosita to leave Mexico. So sad. So sad. Or as they say here "muy triste" ( it's probably time to start teaching you people the wonder of the Spanish language, as Teresita Rosita is gradually transforming herself into an almost competent speaker of two languages, well apart from that awkward phase she's passing through now where she can't actually speak either anymore).

So as we look back over the time Teresita Rosita has spent in this country of tacos, tequila and other things beginning with "T", there are a that have been omitted until now and now is as good a time as any to tell you about them.

First....

Early on in her trip, Teresita Rosita was taken to a futbol game - a true Latin American experience if there ever was one! And as everyone knows, a live sporting event is much more about the "atmosphere" than the game itself, which is a good thing in this case because the team Teresita Rosita was going for lost (again). So instead of paying too much attention to the abomination occurring onfield, she joined her companions in drinking quite a bit of fizzy apple juice, occasionally shouting out obscenities at the players and screaming along to the intelligible chant the crowd hollered whenever the puma shaped mascot came onto the field. So highlight numero uno ...



And then there was this one time, when Teresita Rosita thought it would be a good idea to go to a 3 day music festival in D.F. A music festival of punk, ska, rock and other such genres with more than 150 000 Mexican punk/hipsters to go along with it. And you know what... it was AWESOME!!! Teresita Rosita packed her backpack, consulted her highlighted timetable, and went crazy. She danced, and danced, and drank more fizzy apple juice.

She resisted the temptation to be thrown up in the air on bits of carpet ripped off the ground by groups of overly enthusiastic youth and to go into the insane moshpits of the same youths running around in circles and smashing into each other with great vigor. Instead she ran between the many stages, saw many of her favorite Latino bands and hung out with Mexican Mel until they were both ready to collapse from complete and utter exhaustion.


And then after all her travels back and forth between Xalapa and D.F. Mexican Mel granted Teresita Rosita the one wish she had made when she had arrived in Mexico - to go to Xochimilco.

Xochimilco (pronounced zo-chi-mil-co) is a series of canals left over from when Mexico City was constructed on top of a giant lake. It is now a wonderfully kitsch Mexican tourist outing, where you hire out a brightly painted boat and get pushed around the oil-like body of water, listening to passing boats of Mariarchis, choosing between every type of food you can imagine (also served from boats), and if you haven't brought you're own esky (as Mel and Teresita Rosita had done) there are, of course, a selection of beverages offered from more passing boats. And then there's so many keepsakes to buy - sombreos, ukelalaes, dolls, bonsai plants, bouquets, etc etc etc etc. And lots and lots and lots of mexicans in their own brightly boats, drinking and eating, and occasionally falling or getting pushed in the "water".


So Teresita Rosita and Mexican Mel wound their way through the waterways, past a freaky island of dolls, supposedly to protect the owner from bad spirits, but Teresita Rosita was pretty sure the dolls would have been harboring their fair share of bad spirits, scary things!

They heard the story of the Xochimilco manatees, where a pair of manatees were introduced into the canals to eat all the weeds and to reproduce, however the locals didn't quite know what to think of these giant friendly beasts, so they just ate them...

They made friends with people of passing boats, and they ate, and drank, and generally enjoyed the experience. Yet another highlight!


And last but not least, and who could ever forget.... THE FOOD!!!!!
Teresita Rosita ate tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, tostadas, chilaquiles, empanadas, gorditas, barbacoa, tlacoyos, huevos a la Mexicana, platanos fritos, pozole, tortas, mojarra... the list goes on, but to get an idea of what it was most of the time - tortilla, meat and salsa, lots and lots of salsa.



Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, but mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, what a highlight!

Monday, April 2, 2012

The White Witch (commonly known as the fear of dying)

When Teresita Rosita had decided to go to Mexico she had thought things would be dangerous, scary, outrageous.

 And yes, the food was often a tad dubious and made her stomach feel like a washing machine stuck on tumble dry. The roads were full of crazy people who didn't know what an indicator was, and if they did, they obviously preferred the spontaneity of changing lanes at the last minute without so much as a glance over their shoulder. And there was the slight risk that she was slowly dying from the amounts of carbon dioxide/monoxide/other noxious fumes that hung over D.F on a daily basis. And sure there had been some earthquakes going on, though Teresita Rosita always seemed to miss out on actually feeling them.

Yes there were some things in Mexico that were exciting and maybe a little bit life threatening... but it wasn't enough for Teresita Rosita. If she was goijg to have an adventure she may as well make it as extreme an adventure as possible. It was time to go a little bit crazy - crazier than crowded buses, crazier than political rallies, crazier than 3 day long concerts - it was time for some extreme sports!

Luckily Mexican Mel was just as crazy as Teresita Rosita, if not more so. So off they set on a road trip to Jalcomulco, Veracruz, home of white water rafting, enormous flying foxes (not the fauna variety) and a gazillion tiny mosquitoes (yes, the fauna variety). And even the road trip didn't disappoint Teresita Rosita with its share of dangers. There were potholes the size of tyres, bone jarring speed bumps that appeared out of nowhere, and a half built concrete highway with rocks for traffic cones, mysteriously missing sections that resulted in giant holes with severe right angle edges that required some serious maneuvering, and yes, of course no sign of where or when any of these obstacles would next appear.

But the girls made it in one piece, and settled into their lovely cabaña up on the cliff, with the river rushing past far below and the local wildlife curled up in their beds keeping them warm at night.

The first day saw Teresita Rosita and Mel easing themselves gently into their life threating escapades. A walk through the jungle with only the risk of falling mangoes, attacks from wild ferocious cows and donkeys and death by the gentle nibbling of little fish as they relaxed in pristine waterholes fed by warm waterfalls. It was a tough start to the trip.


It was during the second day of the trip that Teresita Rosita (finally) feared for her life. Now being the beginning of Spring in Mexico, it hadn't really rained that much so the river was quite low, the rapids only level 2-3. So the girls opted to go in the smaller raft with some guides in training, make things a bit more exciting.

And at the beginning of the downstream journey Teresita Rosita was glad they made this decision. They chose the wildest routes possible - getting stuck on rocks, surfing amongst the white water and generally being a little bit crazy. But then they arrived at "the white witch" - a tight corner of the river where the entire force of the water smashed against a sheer cliff - fun....

Now, as Teresita Rosita got older, her sense of mortality was getting greater and greater, and so, while she enjoyed the adrenalin rush of getting herself into life threatening situations, she also had at the back of her mind the thought that maybe this would be her last adrenalin rush ever.


So down the rapid they went. And SMASH!!! Yep, right into the wall. The raft flipped up on one side, and over the edge went Mexican Mel. With the sudden loss of weight on one side the raft tipped to the other side and Teresita Rosita found herself flung into the tumultuous water. She was instantly caught in the whirl of the water, spun head over heels into the rock, the paddle ripped out of her hands and the air knocked out of her lungs.

They tell you to relax if you're ever thrown overboard while white water rafting. Ha! Like you can relax when you believe you are going to die trapped under the crush of freezing water! And so Teresita Rosita freaked out! She struggled, she farewelled her loved ones and prepared for her watery death.




And then just as suddenly as she had gone under, her head popped up and she gasped delicious gulps of air, grabbed her floating paddle and drifted to the edge of the river.

Hmmm that wasn't so bad after all. Like she was going to die, she was only under the water a few seconds. Gee whiz! what kind of wimp thinks they're drowning as soon as they're under water. Ahhh, it's so easy to be brave when you're still alive. And so Teresita Rosita decided she better keep doing crazy things, though maybe not involving quite as much water this time.

It was time to take to the sky.  Attached to a wire 180 metres in the air, hurtling across a cañon 150 wide... why not? Teresita Rosita was obviously invincible after her earlier brush with death.



But you know what? Even after the near drowning, the risk of falling to certain death, and a drive through pounding rain with lighting bolts a little close for comfort on twisting turning roads, the thing that got to Teresita Rosita most of all was...

The damn mosquitoes!

After the first night, Teresita Rosita and Mexican Mel found themselves covered in a maze of red spots, that, as day progressed, got itchier, and itchier, and itchier, until there was nothing else to do but scratch them. And ahhhhhhhhh what sweet relief.... for a moment. And then the itchiness came back even worse than before. And that was only the first day. On the second day, Teresita Rosita had accumulated bites on her arms, her legs, her feet, her hands and so many on her face that she looked like she had some sort of highly contagious disease or the worst case of acne known to humankind.



Maybe this whole living life on the edge thing wasn't everything people said it was...
It was time for some anti-itch cream, a hot shower, and a note in her diary to buy some of the deadliest, most potent bug spray she could get her hands on.