Giant update... FROM MEXICO!

OK, well since I’m not on tour right now, this is reverting back to being the Random Travel Blog rather than the Tour Blog. It’ll be the same thing, but without the shows and accompanying tomfoolery. As an added bonus, no-one needs to hear about how my in-ears are hurting me, or how the raked stage is messing up my knees or whatever. Anyway, I flew to Mexico a couple of days ago to meet up with my cousin Tero and his wife Alejandra in the city of Monterrey. I had a connecting flight in Hermosillo, and on my way to LAX, I realized suddenly that I wasn’t even that sure whether Hermosillo was in Mexico or the US. How embarrassing. Anyway, the mystery was solved pretty quickly as soon as I landed.  Most of the departure screens were broken, and the flight announcements were being made in Spanish exclusively, so I did my best to stay on the ball and listen out for my flight number; apparently I did OK because two hours later I was in Monterrey (this was actually VERY lucky according to Tero, because flights in Mexico routinely make unannounced stopovers at will in random cities). The cousin and I weren’t immediately able to find each other at the airport as nobody seemed to know whether my arrival was domestic or international- the stope-over at frigging Hermosillo was really threatening to screw my day up again. To my credit, I didn’t freak out, but decided that the best thing to do was stay where I was, get myself an over-priced drink at the arrival lounge bar, and sit tight. Lo and behold, Tero found me after a mere twenty boozy minutes. I got a quick tour of Monterrey on the drive from the airpot, and we rounded off a fairly exhausting travel day with a couple of glasses of wine and some sandwiches on the couch, after which I  passed out promptly at, um, 2am. The Christmas Sweater Festival performance with Eskimohunter the previous night had been fun, but also definitely took its toll on my energy levels, and I was pooped. Oh, and not to go off on some irrelevant tangent, but LA Weekly's magnificent Tim Norris came to the Sweat Fest, took photos, and made a slideshow of them here.

The Christmas Sweater Festival is fun, but it was a mistake taking multiple international flights the next day.

My mom and sister Juulia were also heading to Monterrey to meet us, but their journey wasn’t turning out to be quite so hassle-free. The entire East coast of the Us had been buried in snow, so their flight to NYC had been canceled, and they had to deal with some 5am stand-by bullshit the next morning instead. I guess even getting on that particular flight was somewhat of an ordeal as so many people were stranded at Heathrow that they’d had to put up quite a fight to secure the last two seats on a flight to Dallas. Long story short, they also made it to Monterrey, albeit 24 hours later than initially planned. In the meantime, Tero and I had a fun and relaxing day in Monterrey, including some light sight-seeing in the old part of town, and a two-hour massage at his usual spot, the location of which I am banned form revealing, lest it become inundated with newbies. Anyway, my initial impression of South America in general had been quite negative (the Kylie tour ran into all kinds of difficulties here last year), and I was keen to see some unusual stuff from a local’s perspective, and not be all pissed off with it anymore. On that count our day off in Monterrey was totally successful, and I became stoked on South America again, even though Monterrey itself is primarily city devoted to hardcore business and industry, and isn’t considered especially beautiful or idyllic.

My cousin was driving, so I sat in the back seat and took photos out of the window and ate snacks.

The next day we were set to make tracks for Real De Catorce, a tiny mountain village about five hours from Monterrey, so the morning was taken up with various preparations for the trip, including snack purchases, general confusion at the cash machine, and picking up an extra rental car. We’re also planning on making these traditional Finnish Christmas pies somewhere along the way as well, and Juulia had hauled the necessary prune preserves all the way from Finland, so we also had to find the specific pastry needed for this in an Mexican supermarket. I wasn’t at all convinced this was going to work out, but amazingly, the mission was accomplished relatively painlessly. We were on our way to Real De Catorce by 3pm. We listened to The Who in the car (Live At Leeds, for interested parties), I did some reading (The Little Friend, by Donna Tartt), and took some pictures of the neat sunset along the way, like a complete cheeseball tourist. Real De Catorce is a very, VERY small town, and the only way there is via a cobble-stoned two-lane road, which had all kinds of donkeys hanging around it for the last twenty or so kilometers of the journey. The final step of the trip is a two-mile-long tunnel, which isn’t wide enough for more than one car at a time, so there are dudes with walkie-talkies stationed at both ends to let you know when the way is clear. To give you an idea of what this place is like, the movie “The Mexican” (with Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, whatever) was filmed here, so weirdly, all I could think of the whole way was how the hell they managed to squeeze truckloads of equipment and hundreds of crew through this minuscule tunnel. I pretty much kept that one to myself though.

Tero was all, "oh hey this cactus is great for your skin!", and Juulia touched it, and now she has a rash on her hand.

Our B&B in real De Catorce turned out to be really adorable and very comfortable. It’s run by a husband and wife duo, who hooked us up with a yummy pasta dinner when we arrived, and instructed us to take a hike (in a nice way) to see some ruins up in the mountains, which we did today. Real De Catorce used to be a really happening mining town, and also served as the place where the country’s coins were made. The “Royal Mint”, so to speak. Anyway, the mining boom was all well and fine, but eventually all the precious metals ran out, at which point the people took off, and left some pretty spectacular ghost towns for the likes of us to check out on our vacations. The walk itself was lovely, and I took tons of nature photographs, which nobody needs to look at in massive detail, but it’s all up on my Flickr account for anyone who cares. After three hours of pretty intense uphill/downhill action, everyone was pooped and we headed back into the village for some hot chocolate and cookies. Tonight, another friend of Tero’s is joining us for the festivities, and the plan is for everyone to hit a nice restaurant in town. It feels super weird that tomorrow is Christmas Eve; these kinds of holidays don’t hold too much sway in such remote parts of the world, but that’s totally OK by me as I’m mostly just happy to be away from the tackiness of the Western holiday season.

Standing in the ruins of humanity, with my backpack.Oh yeah, I also plan to keep track of my taco consumption while I’m here. So far: Day 3#, Taco Count: 9.



Comments

[Joanne Hughes Emanuele]

Loved your pictures and tales of Mexico! Hope to speak to you this week to wish you a Happy New Year. Best to your mom as well.
xo
J