Sickness & Dogging...

We left Guanajuato and headed towards the great gathering of the Monarch butterflies in El Rosario, supposedly one of the most incredible natural spectacles on the planet. Millions of Monarchs arrive to over winter in Mexican sanctuaries each year having migrated from as far north as their summering haunts in the Rocky Mountains. The weirdest thing is these migrations take longer than the average lifespan of a typical Monarch - about two months. So the butterflies that return to the over-wintering grounds are the great, great grandchildren of those that left the previous year. Think about this navigational feat next time you’re lost returning from the pub. And blame a distant ancestor for not telling you the way home.

Alas, we never quite made it to El Rosario. En route in Morelia we enjoyed a fortifying breakfast of ‘huevos revueltos con chorizo verde’, which for any Dr Seuss fans out there was the living incarnation of ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ (no sign of ‘Sam I Am’ however). It was delicious but perhaps not entirely unconnected to the violent bout of Montezuma’s revenge that Fi then suffered over the next 48 hours in Zitacuaro, our base close to the butterfly reserve. The poor woman was ‘firing from both ends’, like an innovative cannon, in our hotel room which only had a shower curtain separating the bedroom from the bathroom. The simultaneous evacuation of stomach and bowel created a harrowing symphony of many movements.

As a consequence we didn’t get to the butterfly reserve, the prospect of a three phase bus journey over several hours along mountain roads didn’t really appeal to Fi in the context of her unstable and unpredictable bottom. So I played nursemaid, procuring mineral water and fruit for my suffering (some would say long suffering) lover in her hour of need until, stuffed full of Imodium, we caught the bus to Mexico City and the madness of the megalopolis.

We got tantalising glimpses of the extent of the smoggy, suburban sprawl as we approached the Terminal Poniente in the west of the city, the metropolis melting off into the murky air. Outside the bus station two elderly and mangy dogs were unselfconsciously enjoying a dry looking fuck by the taxi rank. Dogging Mexican style.

Emerging from the clean, efficient metro at the Zocalo the first thing that struck us was the wall of noise from the festive street vendors. Like a football crowd in-between recognisable or co-ordinated chants, where every fan is roaring out their own thing, the hawkers competed in a deafening, cacophonic bedlam to be heard. We sought sanctuary from this pre-Christmas commercial gauntlet by checking out the Diego Rivera murals in the expansive Secretaria de Educacion building. The highly politicised slogans were stirring stuff from ideologically simpler and more idealistic times. My favourite was one which read ‘True civilisation is when men live in harmony with the earth and with each other’. Can’t exactly imagine that coming out of Bush’s mouth now can you?

Other propaganda pieces included a great image entitled ‘The Capitalists Dinner’ depicting honourable workers offering up produce to the ugly, stern faced bourgeoisie. They were sat humourlessly around a banqueting table accompanied by a crying child. Cryptic eh? Another showed a beaten and bleeding member of the gentry surrounded by triumphant labourers – ‘The Defeat of Capitalism’. After getting our fill of the somewhat unsubtle but beautifully executed and creative cant we wandered a little aimlessly through the adjacent streets only to stumble on the building formerly used by the Spanish Inquisition. Now nobody expects that…