Mexico City, Finale

I'm on a flight between Stockholm, Sweden and Vienna, Austria, so I figured it'd be a good time to finish a story about...Mexico City. Yeah, it's weird. Deal with it. The faster I get this done, the faster I can get onto writing about this trip, which was pretty epic and strange at the same time. Okay peeps...last part in the series.

So after the excitement of the Dutch upset over Brazil, it was time to head back to the old DF. The busride entailed some truly horrible movies being dubbed into Spanish, but all was good otherwise. We arrived into Mex City's south bus station, after going through some really nice suburbs like Xochimilco. After a long cabride where the driver didn't know where to go but I somehow did, we arrived at our fancy hotel, directly across the street from El Angel, the Monumento de Indepencia, and 3 blocks from the sleazy Zona Rosa.

After settling in, we headed off to our one goal of the day - the Archeological Museum that was closed the last time we tried to go to it. We took an unmarked taxi this time, supposedly the safest cabs in the city because no one knows they're cabs, so they won't rob them. Or something. All it turned out to be was ridiculously overpriced. Folks, when a Dodge Aries is the best you can do it a city, something's not right. This was precisely the type of thing that made Mex City so...strange. Awesome, but strange. Even stranger was getting charged MORE for the ride back, even though it was the exact same trip!

The museum was fucking unreal. I'd studied for months for this trip, and I learned more in 2 hours about the history of Mexico and Aztec culture than I had in all previous attempts. Again though, Mexican weirdness reared it's ugly head. They have these uber-expensive audioguides for the museum, because everything says that all the descriptions are in Spanish and to fully appreciate the museum, you should understand it in your own language or something. And, to guilt you even more, they have physically handicapped children selling the damn things. Some kid with a hook for one had and a pair of tongs for the other (seriously) fleeced me for 15 bucks for the fucking guide, and...guess what?

All the descriptions are in Spanish AND english on all the signs in the place. Fucking tards these days.

Either way though, Milo and I thought it was awesome. It's not as big as I thought, nowhere near the size of the British Museum or anything like that, but it's laid out well and had a ton of cool shit to see. It's amazing how stupid the Aztecs were when it came to the Spanish Conquest - basically, despite everyone else telling him how terrible of an idea it was, Moctezuma the 2nd thought the Spanish were cool and befriended them...and then the Spanish slaughtered the fuck out of them. He basically handed his entire empire to them, after showing incredible guile and intellect in the decimation of all the other empires in the area. Very strange.

After that illuminating experience, it was back to crazy Mexicans. Lisette agreed to come meet up with us to go out to the Zona Rosa. She said she'd be there at 9. At 7:15, Milo and I went down into the lobby to grab some stuff from the store...and there she was, sitting and listening to her ipod. Milo asked why she was so early, and she said she had already been there for an hour. Instead of asking for our room number or just texting Milo...she was just gonna hang out there for close to 3 hours until we came down. Soooo weird. But she was cute, so Milo was still willing to look past this obvious foreshadowing of crazy.

The night basically alternated between really fun and really weird. Lisette was funny and engaging for a while, putting up with me teasing the shit out of her for his spastic Italian-like hand movements while she talked while teaching me a shit ton of Spanish and telling us stories about her family. The weird started when Milo wasn't paying attention to his smoke, and literally lit some girl's ass on fire. He put the cherry of his smoke against her jeans for so long it basically burrned a hole, upon which she finally noticed, screamed, and jumped up. Milo was embarrassed as hell, but the chick didn't seem to care at all. She saw gringos, so it was go time. Uh oh.

This chick didn't speak a lick of English, but her friend Erika did. She had studied English in Montreal for 2 years (who studies English in Montreal?). After a few minutes of conversing with her, the entire band of oddities moved to our table. This included ass-on-fire, a huge Mexican dude close to my size, a little tiny gay dude, and another Mexican chick that refused to interact with us for some reason. Erika translated while ass-on-fire (who was probably 40 and not attractive in the least) offered her services as a wife to me and Milo. Lisette put the damper on it for Milo immediately, which made me her central target, unfortunately.

Interspersed amongst all the crazy were the leeches, At LEAST 30 different women or children wandering into the bar and trying to sell us everything from gum to pens to dolls to smokes. You can only feel bad for poor little cute kids for so long - then you want to throw them all in a bag and toss them off a bridge like kittens. Hey, it's how my dad got rid of excess kittens in Saskatchewan in the 30's. Don't blame me for the stunniningly awful mental picture, it's all dad's fault dammit.

Back at the party, Erika did an awesome job of boosting my ego while explaining that the woman didn't care who the gringo husband was, but she wanted a white man to marry so she could leave Mexico. Yeah okay...sign me up. What the fuck? I politely declined, which led to badgering questions like "You think she's ugly?" (YES!) "Do you have a girlfriend or something?" (Time to lie! YES!) "Are you gay?" (No, assholes, she's just a sea donkey!) Eventually ass-on-fire gave up, and I just started talking to Erika for what turned out to be a long time. She was pretty cool, actually. Other than asking me to hug the gay dude a bunch of times because it was supposedly his birthday or something, which was obviously met with "Keep that thing away from me", the night was going well....until the bill came, and the arguing started.

The waitresses (they kept switching) rang up something like 45 beers and 8 plates of food for the 3 of us. In 3 hours. This is amusing because: None of us ate a thing; Lisette had 3 beers; and Milo and I were both still relatively sober. We certainly didn't have 42 dos Equis between us (depsite doorknob insisting on being called "Roberto dos Equis" all night. Freak). We got into a huge scrap with two of the waitresses, which luckily came down to Lisette losing her shit until all the food was gone and we were down to 31 beers. Still way too many, but whatever. I was fucking done with the Zona Rosa at this point, so I headed back to the hotel, which Milo and Lisette trailing behind. Back at the hotel, the weirdness began again.

Once we were back in the room, Milo said something to Lisette that made her completely lose her shit somehow. Neither of us had any idea what she was mad at, but she cursed us both up and down and stormed out. Milo chased after her, which led her to go and talk to a bunch of cops for some reason. Even Milo's smart enough to know that fucking with that combination is trip suicide, so he came back upstairs and passed out. I sat up drinking for a bit, then passed out too.

The next day turned out to a be a big bummer. I found out that I either lost my camera or someone stole it from our room, which really sucked. Milo's camera didn't work for the entire trip, so all of our shit was on mine, and I had forgotten the cable so I never got the chance to upload any of the shit I had on there, which was a lot of cool stuff. The square during the Mexico game, all of Milo's retarded pics with cops, all the pics of Taxco and Puebla...all gone. I was fucking pissed (and kinda hungover).

It was our last day in the DF, and we still hadn't been to the Pyramids yet, so Milo inquired about a tour through the hotel. He ended up taking it, but I was not in the mood to be a tourist anymore. I was fucking done with Mexico at that point, so I just chilled. And I'm soooo glad I did. Rob Milo can't go one single day without something seriously nuts happening to him, and this tour was no exception.

He left at 3pm, and was due back around 8:30 or so. I was just chillin, watchin TV and writing. At 6:15, Milo comes through the door, freaking out, trying to tell me an entire story in 4 seconds. While it was hilarious to see him that animated, none of that compared to the actual story. I swear this kid has such a big travel horseshoe so far up his ass, nothing can hurt him. He's fucking unbreakable. I would never, EVER believe this story if I didn't get stone cold proof it a little while later. But it's Milo, so the unbelievable is just on the regular for him.

This is Milo's explanation of the tour, paraphrased. So...he sets out on the tour in a bus. There's himself, a few other tourists, and some german dudes in Mex City for a physics convention. I'll let your imagination fill in how cool these kids likely were. After traveling through, by far, the worst slums Milo had seen yet in the DF, they get dropped off at a gate outside Teotihuacan (the Pyramids), but are told by the tour leader to meet up at a DIFFERENT gate to be picked up in 2 hours. Besides the fact that the tour didn't even include a fucking TOUR OF THE PYRAMIDS, he was supposed to meet the bus at some unknown location a couple of km's away to get home, for some odd reason. Crazy? I thought so.

So, he walks around the the German cast of the Big Bang Theory for a while, then they go to the appointed gate. No tour bus. No...anyone. And the gates to the site are about to close for the night. Him and the nerds understandably panic, and debate what to do. Milo thinks they should go back to the original gate, but it's over 2km away and the Germans think waiting is the best thing to do. 20 minutes later? Still no one, and the gates are shutting. They're being told they have to go out...into the slums. Obviously not the brightest of ideas.

While they're all arguing about what to do, a Dodge Aries (again!) pulls up beside them with a sketchy Mexican behind the wheel, who explains to them that all the buses are gone and they're basically fucked...unless they give him 500 pesos for a ride back into town. Despite how creepy this dude is, they don't see any other choice. Rob chips in 200 and conveniently gets dropped off back at our hotel, where he bursts in and tells me this story way too fast.

Now, this is Milo...he leads a ridiculous life, but this all seemed pretty fucked up, even for him. Ditched in the slums by a tour from a nice hotel? A sketchy Mexican gives them a pretty good price to get back to town, and drops him right at the hotel? Unscathed? Hmm. Let's just say Timmy was a tad skeptical...for an hour or so, until the phone rang.

"Can I speak to a Robert Milo, por favor?"
"Uh, sure."
*Milo on the phone* "Hello, this is Rob. No, no I'm okay. Yes, I couldn't find the driver so I hitched a ride back to the hotel. Really. No, seriously, that's what me and the Germans did. YES, honestly. WHAT? The tour bus is still there? WHY? Looking for...oh shit. Oh my god. Tell them I'm okay and to call off the search, we're good. The police? Oh my god. I'm so sorry. Holy shit. No, I'm leaving tomorrow, I don't think I need a free tour. Just tell them I'm really sorry. Holy. Shit. Uh, sorry for swearing. Bye."

Basically, the gate meetup was mixed up, and when Rob and the Germans didn't show up, the tour driver called the cops because the hood is so sketchy. They had spent the last 2 hours looking for him and the guys, while the rest of the tour (that apparently met at the right gate) waited impatiently on the bus, unable to go home, while everyone freaked out.

Yeah, wow. This kinda shit only happens to Milo.

After all that drama, Milo called up Lisette, who had apparently calmed down, and he took off with her for the night. Turns out she flipped because Milo asked me to leave the hotel room for an hour so he could bone her, but before I could even respond, she apparently wigged out because "she's worth more than an hour's worth of time" and that it was disrespectful or some shit. Who knows with her. Anyway, Milo ended up taking the metro down to the Zocalo at midnight, where he was the only gringo and it scared the shit out of him. And he wondered why I wanted nothing to do with the metro.

The next day, we met up, packed up, and flew home. Other than ridiculous boarding procedures in the Mex City airport, the day was pretty unventful. Milo got picked up at the airport by his mom and sis, and instead of going all the way home just to come all the way back in a few hours, I just got a hotel room near the airport. The post-script of the trip is where things truly get nutty though.


TWO WEEKS LATER

Milo sends me a FB message that just says "call me NOW". Uh, okay. The first 5 words out of Milo's mouth sent me into shock and hysterical laughter immediately -

"Dude, she says she's pregnant!!!"

After I stopped laughing, I asked what the fuck he was talking about. He said she called him and said she was pregnant, and asked him what he was going to do about it. Milo didn't believe a god damned word coming out of her mouth, so he spit out the absolute best response I've ever heard to that statement:

"No you're not. You just want money, don't you?"

After talking to her for a bit, she admitted she was totally drunk in Veracruz, the city of the coast we were gonna go to but went to Taxco instead. But insisted she was pregnant. He told her to stop being fucking crazy and hung up on her. She called back 2 nights later and said it again, and she was totally drunk again. He called her on it again, and questioned the shit out of her, with her providing less-then-credible answers to all of it. She had already lied about one kid (initially she said she had none, but eventually admitted to Milo that she had a 5 year old a few days before we left), and Milo knew she was full of shit. After he denied her, she deleted us both on facebook and never talked to us again...but I looked at her FB a few days ago (6 months later), and magically she's not pregnant.

The moral of the story? Don't fuck Mexicans without a rubber, retards!

Overall, Mexico City was not how I imagined it at all. It was a fucking beautiful city, full of cool neighborhoods, interesting sights, and crazy people. I never felt unsafe once, despite the city's crazy rep. Especially in the centro, which always had a ton of people around and it never felt strange. It was a truly strange destination overall though, full of contradictions and backwardsness (totally not a word) that always kept you on your toes. In addition to that, I never would have imagined the variety and awesomeness of Central Mexico, especially Taxco. Taxco might be the most uniquely cool place I've ever been, and I've been to a few places (like right now, since I'm typing this in a pub in Brno, Czech Republic, with a hot bartender chicky sitting in front of me smoking and not understanding a word I say to her).

Next up on the Mexican front, Guadalajara. Who wants to come?