Mexico City (this one has been waiting around for a long while)

I have kept a Mexico City roadmap in my backpack for all these months, because I was fascinated by the street names.

Most Latin American cities have a variety of streets named after important dates (assumably) in that country’s history. The Centro Historico district of Mexico City is no different: 5 de Mayo (even I got the significance of that one – though I still associate it more with a Corona commercial than its true meaning) and 16 de Semtiebre roads. A variety of roads named after other countries in Latin America: Republica de Uruguay, Republica de El Salvador, Republica de Brasil, Republica de Cuba (the Republic part would be news to most Cubans), Republica de Colombia, and so on. I didn’t notice a Republica de Estados Unidos, but since we had taken about a third of Mexico from them a couple hundred years ago, that didn’t exactly surprise me.

It was the other districts of town that I really found interesting.

The San Miguel Chapultepec area seemed to have all of its streets named in a military fashion: General Molinos del Campo, General Zuaza, General Leon, General Gomez Pedraza.

The Cuauhtemoc district had all its streets named after international cities: Londres, Liverpool, Tokyo, Genoa, Oslo, Copenhagen, Roma. Once again, no streets named after American cities. Hmmmmm. Liverpool and Hamburg get streets named after them (and pretty big ones in fact), but no Nuevo York or Chicago street?? I could understand why no Los Angeles avenue – we did sorta take California from them – but what about some cities east of the Mississippi?

Right across the Paseo de la Reforma was the Cuauhtemoc district with streets all named after rivers: Rio Nilo, Rio Po, Rio Tigris, Rio Elba, Rio Amazonas, Rio Sena, and . . . Rio Hudson. True, it was only one block long – wedged between Rio Panuco and Rio Lerma – but we made the map!!

The Polanco district was my favorite, all named after famous authors west of the Parque Lincoln (I feel pretty sure that was named after Abe) and famous philosphers and scientists east of that. To the west: Dickens, Moliere, Ibsen, Tennyson, Oscar Wilde, Julio Verne, Alejandro Dumas and Edgar Allen Poe. To the east: Galileo, Aristoteles, Hegel, Newton, Schiller. There did seem to be a bit of confusion on a street here and there in this district: Platon and Socrates streets were to the west and Hans Christian Andersen and Homer were to the east.

The driving was completely and totally insane in Mexico City, but I do have a soft spot for any city where I can get in a cab and say: “take me to Florence and London please – right on the corner will be fine.” Or perhaps “to the bookstore right there at Aristotle and Homer.”

Bus Rides

I am going to write more about the pros and cons of traveling the world mostly by bus, but as I just got done with a 58 hour trip from Cuzco, Peru to Santiago, Chile and its 7 a.m. here and I can´t get a hotel room for a few hours . . . I shall throw down a few thoughts.

Movies (or music) on the bus: For most people reading this back in the States, this might be an odd choice to start off a discussion of 10+ hour bus rides. You (and I before the trip) would figure that the biggest concerns are how to sleep and make sure your stuff isn´t stolen. For those of us that have taken some of these buses -- there is no other place to start.

The first 24+ hour bus trip I took was from Guayaquil, Ecuador to Lima, Peru. I sat in one of the first few rows of the 2nd floor of the bus (some of them are two story jobs, with first class seats on the bottom floor, with the driver, and the bathroom down there and the regular seats -- which are still nice -- are up top). On configurations like this, since the driver is down below, there is a huge window up front where you can look out at the scenery and the oncoming traffic.

This is not always a good thing.

This particular bus driver was like almost all the drivers I have experienced in Latin America, which is to say, slightly insane. Double lines, signifying no-passing zones, are completely optional. In fact, I think most bus drivers just take them as challenges to try to pass multiple vehicles at once. Up hills. Around corners. Visibility to oncoming traffic?? Nah -- the power the force will propel you to victory, Luke.

So my options were to watch this driving lesson (and some admitedly great scenery) out the ´big screen´of the front window, going from floor to ceiling, all the way from side to side on the bus or. . . . a remake of ´The Hitcher´ on the small television screen right above the window. O yea! And while we are talking about movies, let´s mention the volume. High. Very high. My iPod with the fancy earplugs that are supposed to drown out outside noises does generally work, if I put the music volume up high enough, except to drown out --- loud screaming from people being murdered in horror movies.

Essentially my choice was to watch fictional people get killed on the small screen or to perhaps watch myself get killed in the big screen. Would the soundtrack of the movie somehow coincide with the live version action??

And while we are at it -- why on Earth would anyone ever want to remake ´The Hitcher´?? Wasn´t the original movie bad enough? Is there really a need for an updated one? Hell, I don´t even think the original one is 20 years old yet.

´The Hitcher´was followed up by ´Die Hard 6´(or whatever the last one was -- 6 feels about right) and then a Wayans Brothers movie that I am quite happy to have no idea what the title was. It was about one of the Wayans brothers playing a midget who poses as a small child to steal some stuff from a rich family that takes the ¨child¨ into their home. I´ve never been so happy to see a movie in Spanish, so I couldn´t follow the dialog.

That was the evening portion of the bus ride. The next day brought ´Severance,´which is a U.K. slasher film. The first scene in this picture was a group of people traveling -- in a BUS -- that gets lost in the middle of nowhere. Obviously everyone leaves the bus and all but about three of the dozen people die horrible deaths in the next two hours. After that film came ´Shutter,´which I thought might be a good picture. I recognized a couple of the actors, though I don´t know their names. Turns out that it was a Japanese horror movie -- one of those types that pretends to be some big psychological twister.

Next movie was ´Dead Silence.´ First, I´m not kidding. These films all came back to back to back. Second, you get get the jist from the title, in this case a ventriloquist´s puppet kills off whomever gets it his/its way. I moved to a seat directly under the TV, so that I couldn´t see it, put my iPod volume on high, and tried to read a book until we got to Lima.

On the music front, here was the playlist from one part of my bus ride a few days before from Lima to Nazca (the songs were listed on the TV screen as they played, so I was able to write them down): Alejandro Sanz, Bon Jovi, Christina Aguilera, Erasure, Flash Dance, Johann Sebastian Bach and Leann Rimes. Played alphabetitically, of course.

Quite an interesting mix.

My latest bus ride was a 30 hour trip from the border of Peru and Chile to Santiago, Chile. We left at about midnight, so we only got one movie last night -- ´The Dark Night´ in Spanish. I have now seen this movie once in a U.S. theater and three times in a bus, in Spanish. I really didn´t like it any of those times, but at least it wasn´t a horror flick right before I fell asleep (O yea -- forgot to mention two things: first, I have an incredibly active imagination, which is why I hate horror movies, and second, the common side effect to the anti-malaria medication that I am taking is that it promotes very active dreaming.)

As we woke yesterday morning for a full day on the bus -- the first time I was to go a full calender day, from midnight to midnight, on a bus -- we got some other big budget U.S. movie in Spanish, with Spanish subtitles. I frankly can´t remember it, but I was happy it wasn´t a horror movie. Then we started a TV festival for the rest of the day. Three television shows that were shown back to back to back, and then another episode of each in sequence again. And again. And again.

The first show was a Latin America show called ´Gags.´ It was a latin version of ´Candid Camera.´ Funny little pranks and stunts pulled on people on the street. It was actually pretty amusing and easy to follow, since they were all sight gags and dialog didn´t matter. Then came repeats of one my favorite shows, ´House´, and in English to boot. VERY nice. It gave me a bit of a home-on-the-couch feeling. After ´House´came repeats of. . .

´Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire.´

Is Will Smith just Chile´s answer to France´s love for Jerry Lewis?? I will let you make the call.