This is turning out to be a much more pleasant, more enjoyable day. Yesterday it was very hot, the air pollution was high (I heard on the local news that the air pollution is the worst it's been in history, and given the way I tire easily walking any great distance with the thin air and high altitude factored in, I do believe them). It is also difficult to write on my blog these days because one of the hotel guests (hell is other hotel guests) has been monopolizing the computer room with first and third party skyping and this to me is the height of inconsideration. However, I am wearing earplugs and I just asked him in polite Spanish to please lower his voice. I have also just found that being assertive is paying off, and I also sense him to be a gentleman anyway (some of us are).
As I was saying yesterday all in all was a misery for me and I found myself pining for the rainy cool weather of Vancouver and everything else I love about my city. Also, the crowds everywhere in Puebla were intolerable. I kind of made it worse for myself because I went to a local supermarket in search of bananas and chocolate bars. The chocolate bars I got on special but, can you believe this? they had no bananas. This is Mexico and they had no bananas!!?? So I took the long trek to a different supermarket where, yes, they had bananas, but no public washroom, neither anywhere in the mall so let's just say I had to be very valiant on the long walk back until I found refuge in one of the local Italian Coffee Companies, that local cafe chain that is like Puebla's Starbuck's substitute.
Today is El Dia de Benito Juarez which celebrates a president from the nineteenth century, Benito Juarez who among other things separated church and state so it is a public holiday here in Mexico. Speaking of churches I have noticed, and I am not employing hyperbole here, that there are more baroque churches here in Puebla than there are Starbucks in Vancouver. And all of the breathtaking splendour of their era. Puebla itself I am noticing to be quite rough around the edges. This is not a glamorous berg by any stretch of the imagination, but quite a working class town.
Today I wandered around in some new territory, frequently slipping into very rough and potentially unsafe neighbourhoods and I am discovering here in Puebla that the neighbourhoods are like microclimates and there are so many different kinds. I was going to sit by that beautiful tiled fountain again in the park but there was a young man seated there already with his pit bull, and though I have nothing against pit bulls in general I always try to err on the side of safety when travelling so I exited the park and wandered through a very rundown neighbourhood that had a kind of rough beauty about it. I didn't stay very long because it didn't feel safe, returned to the park where a family had taken the place of the young man and pit bull but then they left when they saw me coming so maybe they didn't feel very safe around this strange looking white guy? Who only knows. So, I stayed for quite a while and worked on a drawing but kept my materials in my bag so I would be able to leave quickly, just in case. After a while I felt that strange prickling sensation on the back of my neck, turned around and noticed a rough looking type seated just behind me. That is when I packed up my knapsack and left as quickly as possible. I have noticed that, given my experience in emergencies at work that I could do this very calmly and efficiently without panic or fear. So, I sat instead in a coffee shop nearby where I continued to draw.
I wandered some more aftertward, discovering a really cool looking area with brightly coloured buildings and churches, of course, and almost a festive sense in the air. I sat in another park in the shade by a fountain and from the corner of my eye noticed a couple in their fifties being very tender and romantic, as though they were each other's first love, and who knows?
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