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Mexico here we come!
We had planned to check into our flight early but this turned out to be impossible as nobody turned up to work until 4 am, only an hour before the flight boarded. We quickly got our bags scanned through the US department of agriculture checks (the US has become paranoid about people bringing fruit or plants in recently) and checked in for our flight. We bought a coffee from McDonalds and relaxed for 45 mins or so before passing through security and arrived at the gate just in time.. at which point we obviously had to sit around for half an hour while they faffed about. The flight was as uneventful as all spirit flights and we arrived almost on time back in Flauderdale. With only an hour before our connection we quickly got on the internet and booked a hostel in Mexico then we grabbed a couple of doughnuts for lunch. (this side of security Dunking Doughnuts is the only thing for a reasonable price) Our flight to Mexico was slightly longer at over 3 hours but equally uninspiring, although the view of Mexico city from the air as we were coming in to land was rather stunning. We collected our bags and proceeded through the immigration procedures to the info desk the other side, where it turns out the guy spoke no English, after he tried to help us he eventually sent us to the other info desk where he thought somebody would be able to... Unfortunately no luck there either until someone who did speak both languages found out for us that we could get a collectivo to the metro and proceed onwards from there. Just to say we are not completely useless and can usually speak enough Spanish to get by in these situations but the staff didnt seem able to cater to our level and spoke very fast even after asking them to speak slowly and simply!! We bought our ticket with dollars as we had no Mexican money and grabbed another coffee before catching our bus. It took almost an hour to drive from the Airport to where the metro starts which gives you some idea how big this place is. After asking for directions to the metro from a couple of people we managed to buy our tickets and get a seat on the surprisingly uncrowded train, I guess people actually work here!! Getting off at the Insurgentes stop we found our hostel with little problem and quickly got settled in. We thought at this point that we should get some money and went out with that goal, it took us about an hour until we eventually found a cash machine on the bottom floor of a department store which worked with our cards, although it still charged us for the transaction. On the way back to the hostel we stopped at a pharmacy where we asked for some more malaria pills, which apparently you need a prescription to get here, luckily the pharmacy has an on site doctor who writes the prescription for you free of charge, this somewhat defeats the purpose of needing a prescription in the first place but still...Kindly the guy behind the counter told us we could get the pills cheaper elsewhere if we could find the generic ones as he only had branded ones so we decided to get them later. We then went back to the hostel and paid before going back to the metro stop where we had spied some places selling street food earlier in the day. After discovering that most of the stands had closed by this time we none the less managed to buy 10 tacos for $4 and sat at the little stand eating them along with the hot sauces and lime juice provided. They were amazing although we decided that the beef ones were slightly superior to the chorizo ones. Satisfied now we went back to our dorm room where we met the 2 men we'd be sharing with, one a traveller from Sweden and the other a political refugee from Eritrea who now travels around various countries in the world working until his visa runs out then moving on. We spent the rest of the evening chatting to them about the places we've all travelled so far and uploading pictures onto the blog.
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Ivan Hee hee aliens are cool. :o)Hi I'm a new fewlolor from the I <3 Blogging blog hop! Feel free to come by my blog and if you like, follow me back. :o) Wow you have a blue twitter bird that flies around your blog! How cool!!! I'll go follow you on twitter too - I'm How did you get that bird to fly around your blog??Jamie