Mexico Part Two October 18, 2022

Every time we move it takes time to adapt. Some differences are small but interesting. Colombia puts a large scary health warning on alcoholic drinks. Argentina puts none at all (after all it is the National drink) and Mexico has a friendly warning about alcohol in small print but plasters everything else with excessive salt, fat, calories and sugar warnings (including my sugar free yogurt). Our first task when arriving in a new country is to find a grocery shop within walking distance. In Belize it was the little corner store run by a friendly Indian, who recommended the large bottles of locally produced white rum. In La Posada Colombia, La Tienda de Todas was super cheap with great red wine and sixty types of yogurt and in Las Palmas I  had to rappel up and down the side of the hill to Exito the supermercado.  While in the hotel in Cuernavaca, I found an EXXO (think Circle K) just round the corner. Once we moved into the little casita in Bella Vista we discovered the excellent Walmart Express.

 

Hotel Azul was slap bang in the center of Cuernavaca so we had history and shops and banks all on the doorstep. Traffic was always busy, and the town appeared to be in a constant state of fiesta. Sidewalks were crowded. There were street hawkers and stalls every few yards. I slipped a peso note to a one-legged man who was working the cars coming up past the hotel… I saw him the next day in the town square fighting… and I mean fighting…swinging  his crutch against a man who was attacking him. I didn’t know what the fight was about except that it was real and vicious. I saw him at his usual spot on the way back to the hotel an hour or so later and slipped him another note to try to make him feel that something good had happened which might outweigh the morning’s altercation.  

 

Another challenge in a new environment is getting cash. After we arrived at our hotel, I went to the big banks in the town centre and tried to use my debit cards. They didn’t work. Even in their plush atriums lined with ATMs my repeated attempts were greeted with the on-screen message “Talk to an assistant” and there was a long line in the bank to see said assistants. Whether it was fortuitous or karma, on the way back to the hotel I noticed an ATM in its own little white room opposite the bus stop. It used the same logo as the Singapore Post Office where I had opened my first account abroad back in 1980…so I said to myself, this has got to work. To hell with it. So what if I get robbed and I took out the maximum allowed and it did its little kachug prrr kachug, kachug prrr and coughed up the cash. I hurried back to the hotel and checked the rate on my computer fearing that I had been financially hung drawn and quartered. It was spot on the official rate, slightly above in fact.

 

The Hotel Azul had one major problem. No customers. I watched the staff meeting in the restaurant from a distance with the young owner who had inherited the place. Apart from two young American girls who like us had to use their internet outside their room and who Marney thought were travel agents and an older looking American we were the only customers. We had an non-descript evening meal in the restaurant and then breakfast the next morning which would  have clogged the healthiest of arteries. The next day there was Nada around ( no staff, people or food) except for two parrots in cages and no, we were not that hungry.  Meanwhile upstairs, the room staff were wonderful, attentive, hardworking, cheerful and even got us some coffee from the kitchen.   The decor was superb, the ambiance gentle and calming but… it was time to leave Hotel Azul.

 

Marney found a beautiful casita on one of the hills surrounding the city, a small quiet place where we could hang our hats for a little while and take a breath. We arranged to meet with the owner Bob at the property so that we could look it over and avoid the hit-or-miss method we had used before. We arrived a little early but couldn’t find anybody. Eventually, in desperation we rang the doorbells of all the casitas and a nice lady came to the gate and we explained through a gap who we were and that we were expecting to meet the owner. She spoke perfect English and agreed to give him a call. Ten minutes later Bob appeared at the front gate to let us in and show us around. He had been waiting for us at the entrance to his  home up the street.

 

This was a beautiful, self-contained little estate of eight casitas. Bob explained that after WW2, his father, upon retiring from the Army, had listened to good advice, came down to Cuernavaca and invested in property. Bob showed me a faded black and white photograph of the original barren hillside on which the casitas have been built. Now it’s part of a labyrinth of different properties along a little valley. The casitas are beautifully decorated in the Mexican style with colorful tile and they nestle among the palm trees, jacarandas, bamboo, eucalyptus, pine, ficus and medlar trees. It’s a world cornucopia of different plants as well as large fearsome looking spiders. Ants both large and small and of the leaf cutting variety diligently work to expand their empires, building little mounds of dark earth in the grass.  Bob and his two workmen work hard to keep the greenery under some constraint.

 

We looked at three of the casitas and I fell in love with No.8. Marney favored 3 and 4. #8 is akin to living in a greenhouse which I like. Lots of big windows and clever double doors which keep out the  mosquitoes. What it lacks in space is made up for by the view including giant white butterflies floating by and medlar trees heavy with fruit which our resident family of squirrels loot every morning.    They put on a wonderful balancing act before throwing themselves wantonly at the top branches of the medlar. What put Marney off No. 8 was a series of steps, one of which was uneven and difficult for Marney to negotiate but Bob, a man daunted by nothing, agreed there should be a handrail and had one installed at his own expense.

 

So, now we are in a comfortable place in congenial surroundings and ready to rediscover Mexico.

 

         Marney here…

  After we settled in Hotel Azul, we checked out the Woolworths and visited the Cathedral which was very interesting (more on that next time). Unfortunately, afterwards we went to a sushi restaurant,which we knew once we sat down, was risky but as Alan said later  “it was like Tchaikovsky drinking unboiled water”.  We suffered the consequences which fortunately were not as lethal. Looking on the bright side we learned a new phrase, the Aztec Two Step to replace Montezuma’s Revenge. Alan had it worse than me the day we moved into our casita but luckily the lovely Jennifer (Bob’s daughter) took me to Walmart when a taxi I called didn’t arrive and I was able to get enough supplies to hold us over.  The scenery is beautiful and I now have a pet squirrel (who doesn’t know he/she is a pet) who I named Tarzan since he swings from rope to tree to eat.  Below is a photo – not a good one but one of him climbing up the tree before jumping on the rope.  (Okay, sometimes I miss all the activity in Phoenix and have to find something to entertain myself.)