Enchiladas verdes - Mexico 2005

Where did I stop yesterday? Oh, yes, I wanted to tell you about our adventure with the police in Mexico City. It all started with a blocked highway. Actually, we had intended to take the 132, then 150 and finally the 135. Much to our dismay, the 132 was closed due to God knows what and we had to take the non-scenic route through Mexico City.

Of course, we got lost. There are no rules, no proper street signs and you just cannot find a sign or any indication, anything that would lead you out of the city. In the end we hired a taxi driver and asked him to guide us to the highway to Puebla (the 150) by driving in front of us. We agreed on a price and off we went. He was good and we soon saw the sign for Puebla. There was a big roundabout and...

For some reason the police stopped us. They didn´t seem to care at all if they created yet more traffic chaos around us, no, they stopped us in the middle of that roundabout. Rule number one: You don´t want to be stopped by the police in Mexico City. If you get stopped.... speak little Spanish and do not attempt to speak English and overwhelm them. Ok, the one policeman had a note pad and I thought first he wanted to draw us a map how to get to the highway to Puebla but I was so wrong. In neat numbers he drew the amount of money we had to pay. I dared to throw in one of the few Spanish words I remembered in all the excitement and asked why. The man gestured to above and it seemed that we had run a red light. Of course, there was no way of proving him wrong or whatever. Needless to say we did not want to pay that amount of money - about 160 Euros and we tried to explain that we didn´t have that kind of cash with us. It was half true - because we both did only have about 400 pesos (40 euro) and 33 US dollars in our purses. They seemed to be satisfied, took our money and let us go. They even stopped the traffic so that we could get into the right lane.

A few blocks away, we stopped and checked if we still had all our things - driver´s liscence and all. Turned out we couldn´t find the copy of the contract of our rental car. Silke then walked back to the roundabout on foot to talk again to the police men. She went on foot because we didn´t want to give up our "valuable" position towards Puebla. In the meantime I found the copy of the contract and got out of the car to yell after her. Of course, there was no way in hell that she could hear me over all that traffic noise. About 20 minutes later she returned. The police men had been nice now but, of course, no copy of the contract which rested well in my backpack.

Laughing and cursing at our luck and bad luck we continued our trip to Puebla and then to Oaxaca where we still are.

Today (Friday) we went to Monte Alban, a few miles out of Oaxaca. It´s a famous pyramid site, one of the most visted ones in Mexico. We started rather late, around 9 a.m., after another delicious breakfast. The temperatures were not too high, somewhere in the 70s but the sun was burning down and I got my first sunburn. It looks kinda ugly but it doesn´t hurt.

Monte Alban was beautiful but when we arrived there were already lots of tourists. We climbed a few of the pyramids which were not as high and steep as the ones in Teotihuacan. The site is up in the mountains and you have a gorgeous view on the valley and Oaxaca.

Tomorrow, our plan is to visit a "petrified waterfall", about two hours drive outside of Oaxaca. I´ve seen photos and postcards already and it must be breath-taking. Report will follow.

That´s it for now. So far our adventure is just that... an adventure. And we both love it.