Michele and I are in Mexico City at the Terminal de Autobuses del Norte. We are waiting for our bus to San Miguel de Allende. When this is finally posted (when I find some decent WiFi) we surely will be somewhere altogether different.
We’re trying to decide what to take for our lunch. For some reason, the pre-made hamburgesas stacked in the room temperature cooler just aren’t speaking to us.
Michele has been to the Consultorio Medico and reports back that the places sells just about anything we can come up with, though she wasn’t in need of any Viagra so she declined that plan. Among other questions, the doctor at the pharmacy asked her, “Are you depressed?” Unfortunately, she’s quite happy, so she missed the opportunity for some cheap anti-depressants as well. Instead, she has some groovy new hand cream and now it’s my turn to scout for food.
We’re now on the ETN bus, which has a large sign promising free WiFi so we can always be connected (Esta unidad cuenta con Internet a bordo), except…it doesn’t work.
So, I thought I would write about what I see out my window.
We’ve left Mexico City now and are in high rolling hills, with scattered farms and the odd roadside restaurant. The cows look plumper than I remember from the last time Kevin & I drove through here. And I certainly don’t remember such stellar clean highways. But that was probably fifteen years ago and things look much more prosperous than I recall from that trip.
Than again, that might be because now I’m in a climate-controlled, chaise lounge style seat of a bus and back then we were in our old orange VW Westfalia with a Canadian Tire porta-potty in the back. (I’d made a lovely green fabric cover for it, kind of like those old school toaster covers. Oh man, I haven’t thought about toaster covers in a long time. Did we really grow up with those things? It doesn’t seem possible.)
It’s funny how one’s perception of a place depends so much on how you choose to surround yourself. On that long ago VW trip, whenever we didn’t camp in the van, we stayed at some pretty basic, and oftentimes grotty, hotels.
But last night Michele and I bunked in at the NH Hotel at the Mexico airport and it was all modern and spacious loveliness.
So maybe Mexico feels richer to me because I’m approaching it from a place that is cushioned with the insulation that only money can provide?
**
We are finally in San Miguel. We’re having a heckuva time getting a decent WiFi connection, especially when we’re both on our computers. The poor hotel owner has moved us here and there in the hopes of satisfying our need for speed. Michele has stories to file, photos to load for an app she’s working on, and moi?
Well, I just can’t function without zippy internet (and yes, I’m aware that’s kind of sad, but I’m okay with that).
We think we might have to switch hotels. There are bigger problems in the world.
We’ve decided there’s only one thing sensible to do…we’re going for dinner.
