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1st of October 2008 - Learning More about Mexico

I splash out and breakfast at the hotel restaurant - huevos rancheros, scrambled eggs with hot salsa, crispy fried potatoes and of course refried beans on the side - and try to get some more information together about travel in Mexico. I hadn't really registered how my information resources had been depleted - I traded away my Hostelling International book somewhere in North America and lost my copy of the Practical Nomad somewhere else.

I've gotten kind of complacent about my ability to get a picture of an area, because everywhere I've been I just talk to people and opportunities present themselves. But here, of course, the language barrier means I can't rely on people for that kind of information, at least until my Spanish gets a lot better. I didn't buy a guidebook for the above reasons, and frustratingly a lot of the good travel sites seem to be premium. I have a bunch more bookmarks to try, but decide to update the blog and catch up on email for now.

Ciudad Victoria has been a perfect or a very bad choice for my first destination, depending on how you look at it. I haven't seen a single non-Hispanic person in town since I arrived, and I haven't yet met anyone who speaks English. That means I've had to work harder on the language than I would otherwise, but also limits my options as far as gathering information.

On the way back to the hotel I'm struck by the spirit of commerce in the town. On every corner, every road, every niche between buildings there's some kind of business. A rough side-street with grass growing up through the tarmac has shops for the repair of shoes, tools, mobile phones. It's a different kind of business here, what seems like the real expression of American free enterprise. You don't join some big organisation or look for help from somewhere else, if you have a couple of square feet of space and a makeshift roof, you start a business.

The major streets around the bus station are lined with stalls and little wagons selling tortas, flautas ("flutes", essentially long thing burritos), gorditas, drinks and dulces (sweets). At every intersection there are men waiting to approach the stopped traffic with newspapers, bottled water, straw hats and handmade toys.

Of course there are the familiar corner shops too, often with ancient rust-flecked tin signs advertising soft drinks and magazines that may or may not still exist, and larger corporate intruders like the huge Grand Supermercado, pretty much indistinguishable from any chain supermarket. I buy my dinner from a franchise just for variation, a cavernous restaurant attached to the Super. Their No. 1 combo is four gorditas (little round pita-like pockets) filled with meat, green beans, crispy potatoes, cheese and different spicy sauces.

I'm taking reasonable health precautions and seem to be doing okay so far - drinking only water from my filter bottle, no ice in drinks, no fresh salad. I've had a little mild stomach pain but I think only from the unfamiliar spicy food. I'm expecting to get sick at least once, it seems to happen to most people, and I'm not going to overprotect myself - I will eat from street vendors as long as the food doesn't look really festering. Security vs experience, as usual, and if I'm going to give up experience I might as well just go home.

Tomorrow hopefully I can find some more information on the area and worthwhile places to go, and I'll get back on the road the day after. For now I've got a Victoria Cerveza on the go, and a pineapple tart to munch on, the evening is cool and Mexico is just fine.

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