Mexican Madness; 2006 in Aguascalientes - Moscow to Aguascalientes

Moscow to Aguascalientes

Wednesday, May 24, 2006 Epiphany in the shower this morning..that cold water really does get in!
Rather than brain-aching diaries, I’ll trial ‘theme’ messages..starting with this one, which is much longer than the following ones. Forgive me if I repeat myself..I have no idea what I’ve told you already. Let me know what you think.

Sunday, 25 December 2005 I didn’t send anything for some time after leaving Surgut; a combination of no internet access in Moscow, feeling miserable leaving my friends in Russia, & some culture shock. No proper dates & times for you regarding my travel itinerary..5 cities, 4 countries, 4 time zones, 3 days of non-stop travel, too hard to decipher. The entire duration spent in the air, or in airports..only one shower grabbed, which was in Zurich, not a bed seen at all..only 5 and a half hours of all that time spent in darkness, which is more time than I actually slept; is it any wonder my brain was custard for ages?

Back to the beginning …

Monday, 12 December 2005 Vadim took me into town to arrange my flights. PANIC! Two choices; fly 7am tomorrow..effectively non-stop..Moscow - Zurich - New York JFK - Mexico City - Aguascalientes, arriving in Ags at 11:30am Wednesday Mexican local time (Thursday everywhere else), or stay put in Moscow until after Christmas. Flights are fully booked.
I’m flying in the morning; I don’t want to impose on Alex & Olya, Vadim & Natalya any longer.
Back to Alex & Olya’s around 8pm. All hell had broken loose. Sergei’s teacher phoned to say Sergei hadn’t been to school for a couple of weeks. Olya was in tears; Alex was white with fury & worry; Sergei was cool, calm, collected, & unrepentant.
After much debate, I finally convinced Alex & Olya I would take a cab alone to Domodedovo Airport at midnight (5am Surgut time). Before I left, taxi waiting, Alex asked me to sit for a few minutes..Russian tradition for a good/safe trip..we 3 sat on my bags. He made me promise I’d come back to Moscow if Mexico proves too dangerous. Hugs & tears from us both before I climbed into the cab.

The little beast..he’d paid the taxi driver in advance!

So make that 3 & a half days of airports & travel. Too early to check in, I wandered around for a couple of hours, sat in a bar & had a couple of glasses of wine, a couple of buckets of water, & some heavy, greasy food that turned my stomach. Still too early to check in, I ‘hit the wall’ & tried to grab some shut-eye, that failed because some bloke started scrabbling at the bag I was using as a pillow. I’m sure the entire airport heard my furious, ‘on-the-brink’ “HEY!” He should’ve vaporised at the look I gave him, but no, his gobful of gold teeth deflected the heat; he lay down & went to sleep smirking. STEAMING, all inclination to sleep gone, I roamed (writer’s licence..more like stumbled) the airport until check-in. Have you any idea how hard it is to ‘roam’ with check-in luggage weighing (53kg’s) all-but the same as you, plus hand-luggage (8kg’s) that makes up the difference plus some (I’m weighing in at 55kg’s at the moment), when you’re sleep deprived? Let me lend you my squished shoes so you can walk in them & understand! I lost my favourite pashmina in the process..boohoohooo! Realistically speaking, if I’d lost the other pashmina IT would’ve been my favourite. They’re pretty pieces of frittery, whilst also being light-weight, small, handy, & surprisingly warm essential items.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005 There was a problem with my hand luggage. Weight the issue, & I had too many bags. Backpack with lappy, a change of clothes, & clean undies for 4 days, cosmetic bag with makeup & shampoo, & a disturbing bag filled with mags & hats. I tried logic; who in their right mind would entrust a laptop to ‘cargo’ status?, & pointing out my itinerary (hence the need for my cosmetic bag, clothes, undies & mags), & reasoning that styley hats just can’t be shoved into a suitcase. No empathy from the check-in chick, the nice supervisor girly understood & let me get away with everything.
This time no-one wanted to check my lappy, & I didn’t have to take my shoes off or wear plastic bags on my feet. I did have to stand in a ‘tardus’ though..”put your feet exactly on those painted feet”. No condoms loaded with Russian petroleum gas or diamonds detected in my belly, I was quickly allowed through.
About 30 minutes before 7:10am (I’ve been up & about for over 22-hours now) “Calling all passengers for flight 1325 to Zurich …”

THE SIBERIAN ADVENTURE IS OVER (sniff, snivel, weep..it’s been so quick..I’m feeling very ‘blue’!)

Tuesday, 13 December 2005 Our flight was delayed because a plane behind us was blocking the runway. There was trouble moving it because the tarmac was too slippery from ice & snow. I’ve subsequently learned there was a cold-snap in Russia as I was leaving..Surgut plummeting to -58C! YOU’VE GOT TO BE JOKING! -38C was sufficient for me, & my book!
Moscow to Zurich; Gorgeous Moscow sunrise behind me. 2 lovely leather seats all to myself (no beating that delectable smell), a nap grabbed, not enough. Too upset, too keyed up.
Flying into a beautiful sunrise. Really wanted to steal the pretty, red airline blanket for posterity, warmth insurance, & possible bedroom decoration, but was intimidated by the warning on the packaging “The Property Of Swiss Air. To Remain On The Aircraft!” Didn’t notice that warning on the Cathay Pacific blanket packaging flying NZ to Hong Kong thank goodness..THAT blanket has been worth more than its share of my excess baggage charges!
I snapped loads of photos from my window seat, but it’s going to take some time to cull & organise them..(12-months later, I still haven’t finished the task!) I wrote some emotionally charged things to go with the photos, but really, probably none of it will mean anything to you, so I’m not going to include them at this stage.
An unintentional flash of brilliance; I’d forgotten a carton of juice from my breakfast. Forget your sickly, sticky boiled sweets for sucking on to unblock your ears. Sucking juice through a skinny straw’s the ticket! Best landing ears ever, no furry teeth..oohoohooo, even better! Why else would aero-hosties tell mother’s to breast-feed during landing? There you go; finally, a practical traveller’s tip for you!
Zurich’s a BEAUTIFUL place to fly into. Oh my god, it’s stunning! Why, why, why can’t I take photos? Gorgeous farmland, an amazing collage of rural colours & designs, paddocks of green & brown, some looking like corduroy, some like velvet..it’s all in the tilling method; hands stuck to the window, I had to stroke the view. Quaint, old-fashioned looking methods of transport; a green tractor with 2 trailers, one red, one white. Some fabulous-looking urban architecture.
Touchdown 8:50am Monday Zurich time (10:50am Moscow time; 12:50pm Surgut time; 5:50pm Qld time; 3:50pm Perth time; 8:50pm NZ time..sorry Sean, that’s as far as I’m going to convert)..so far, so good; we’re all on the same day. I wish I’d had enough time to leave the airport & look around. Alas, no. Only time to do airport reconnaissance, grab a shower & have my hair dried at the hairdressers, get my Switzerland souvenirs (I’m such a fraud)..a Swatch watch (instead of the usual 1 – 12 or 3, 6, 9, & 12 dial, it has 4, 8, & 12; also the strap & connecting bitties have a Koru design..I’m sure you understand why I HAD to have it; the dumb Hong Kong watch gives me a rash), & some coins (yes Vadim, I’ve got a couple for you), buy a book to pass some flight time, & have a brief chat with a guy from Italy there on business.
1:10pm “This is the final call for flight 65 …”
Zurich to New York JFK..even less sleep, daylight all the way. A fairly full flight but I still had 2 seats to myself. So many Jewish men..little beanies held in place with hairclips (ingenuity called for by the balding ones), interesting hairstyles & whiskers on the ones I assume were rabbi’s. Yes, we’ve seen it all before on TV, but there’s nothing like the real thing to gawp at.
A toddler doing all the right things to avoid deep vein thrombosis; we struck up an eye-contact, wink, grin, & wave ‘friendship’.
The approach view of New York into JFK is not so beautiful, but still interesting. I was gutted I didn’t get to see the Statue of Liberty..at least I don’t think I did. I didn’t have anyone sitting next to me to explain what I was seeing, & I was too shy to ask the couple of guys who’d spent a fair bit of the flight looking at me trying to work out my nationality.
Aren’t women strange creatures? The only women that would meet my eye are the ones that had babies that liked me, & accepted that I was old enough to be their baby’s grandmother. As for the rest..I was the ‘Phantomess’! In return, exhausted & fragile, I retracted into my crab-shell & emitted ‘I don’t care, I don’t need you’ vibes. Needless to say, I limited my own options. [Months later & wiser: To hell with that rubbish! From now on, I’m going to walk up, bold as brass, & talk to women; hyeehaha..it works..I’m a winner!]
Courage worked up at last, I was too late..”Fasten your seatbelts, secure your trays, & stow your hand luggage for landing.” Touchdown December 13th 4:10pm NY time (10:10pm December 14th Zurich time; 12:10am December 14th Moscow time; 2:10am December 14th Surgut time; 7:10am December 14th FNQ time; 5:10am December 14th Perth time; 9:10am December 14th NZ time. Ummm..did I miss a day somewhere? Tell me it wasn’t while I was taking a dreaded aircraft, time-wasting, & sight-missing pee!
I had to collect ALL my luggage (52kg’s departing Surgut, probably 5 – 8kg’s purged in Moscow, but then I bought an overflow suitcase, a beret, & what with gifts from Vadim, Alex & families..lordy, lordy, lordy, back to square one plus 1 kg..US$120 excess baggage charge..the greedy brutes!), then re-check it before I could do anything else.
I DO object to being charged for excess baggage when my luggage & I together weigh less than the average traveller + luggage, if my observations & estimates are anything to go by! Sexism..ageism..racism..nationalism..we’ve all heard & read about weightism when it comes to ‘chunky-monkeys’..Now I’m firmly putting my hand up & yelling “weightism..WHY THE HELL SHOULD I BE PENALISED FOR BEING SCRAWNY?!” I now seriously believe that travellers AND their luggage should be weighed together, & a median range established. It’s not on that seat sizes are being increased to accommodate our larger populace, at no extra charge. Even at my most obese, I never encroached on my neighbours space, so why should I pay … blah, blah, blah! Just in case any of you are hitting the scales & contemplating bulimia as a result of this ‘hiss’..SETTLE DOWN! I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of Kiwi’s (THAT’S KIWI’S, not my FRIENDS) that come anywhere near the size of some of the people I’ve travelled with in the last 3-years.
The airport was flat-out so it took ages for luggage to appear. Two obnoxious American women & a hen-pecked husband gave me good reason to remain mellow & pleasant, which earned me the ‘friendship’ of a poor old Swiss lady in a wheelchair at the mercy of a stroppy airport attendant. We talked a bit & I helped spot & retrieve her bags. Whoopee, mine came shortly after.
Rechecking my bags, the woman dealing with me mistook my rapid Kiwi speech for someone getting agitated (English; native & mutual language bonding..hoowah! Doh, apparently not at the rate I was speaking!) I apologised profusely, explained where I’m from, where I’d been & why, made her giggle, & was allowed to go.
Next stop, immigration. My fingerprints & eye-scan are now recorded in the world’s database, so that’s the end of my chances to become a terrorist. Come on! Of course I’d look great wearing a belt of ‘anti-matter’ threaded through my jeans (sorry, the book I bought in Zurich was Dan Brown’s ‘Angels & Demons’)
Definitely flagging, I decided to stow my hand luggage to give my aching body some respite & the chance to relax. True to form, I got lost & ended up in..I don’t know what the place was. The ‘nice’ man there told me how to get to the right place, & suggested I come back for him once I’d off-loaded..”you’re very pretty”, wink, wink. Yeah, thanks G. Like I’m in any condition for romancing right now..NOT!
Photo & signature taken to accompany my checked hand luggage; weighed down only by my bumbag & docs pouch I fairly floated about the airport shops. New York souvenir purchased..a carryall with a cool New York scene all over it .. Arguably a bad choice..so so easy to fill & increase the pressure on my poor wee shoulders! At US$10 it was a bargain, compared to the cutesy & impractical little Betty-Boop handbag that I really wanted, & cashing in at US$100!
OK, time for sustenance & rest, I was tripping over my own feet with every 3rd step.
The 1st place I went to had a friendly barman, got me a glass of wine, & a good conversation with a guy from Germany. He gave me a Chinese Yuen “for luck”, that he’d been given for the same reason 10 years ago, as he left to catch his flight home to wife & kids. Personally, I think that was a pretty special gift given we’re strangers..it’s become one of my ‘travel-treasures’.
The bar menu was ikky. Wine finished I moved on looking for healthy food.
Should’ve stayed with the ikky menu; the meal I bought that looked so healthy was foul! Bummer!!! I had to walk around for an hour trying to get my belly to settle.
Back to my friendly barman, & some relaxation..so I thought. Nope! A lady-lawyer from Israel, who now lives & works in NY, joined me & talked until my ears bled. Thankfully, her flight was called, but by then my cosy bar had lost all appeal; besides, sleep deprivation & 2 glasses of wine are not a good combination. Talk about squiffy! (squiffy: in-between mildly & very drunk).
I collected my hand luggage & decided to hide out in the anonymous & unfriendly arena of the public benches. Tired? I was more tired than the tiredest thing in the entire world! Let’s try airport bench sleeping again then. Nuh-uh, it just wouldn’t work. I remain a novice traveller, with the memory of ‘Gold-Teeth’ still too fresh in my mind! Ok; food & coffee. Oooooh, so wish I hadn’t! Blaccch!!
Stumbling back to my bench, a guy called out to me to come & chat. Nooooooooo! Please no! Really? Wah-ha-boo-hoo-hoo, ‘no’ wasn’t the right answer! He’d been talking to another traveller earlier & claimed they’d been watching me trying to sleep & wondered what my ‘story’ is. His story was that he’s a musician, generally supporting big names, on his way back from nursing his terminally ill mother. He plays in Mexico a few times a year & thought it’d be a good idea to look me up.
“Calling passengers for flight 8297 …”
“That’s me, gotta go, nice talking to you. Good luck! Catch you in A-mumble-tes, Mexico”
This time last year I’d have bubbled over & given him my contact details..but today something just didn’t feel quite right. Russian paranoia? Loss of naivete? Exhaustion? I’m hoping it was gut-instinct, because if it’s the result of the other three, I’m sad for me.

Call me ‘The Lucky One’! I was singled out for interrogation! “Where are you from? Where are you going? Why? Where have you come from? What were you doing THERE? Where were you before that? What were you doing there? Give me the details of your movements since February. Show me your teaching license. What are your plans? Open your laptop & show me your e-mails to prove you've got a job to go to. Thanks for that, I was just wasting your time, e-mails mean nothing. How much checked luggage do you have? What does each bag contain? Is there anything in any of your bags that may be considered a weapon?”
“Yes. 2 Swiss Army knives in the back pocket of the blue suitcase. A 220-vault hairdryer that could be mistaken for a firearm by your scanners, and a 220-vault tool to straighten my hair which gets REALLY hot in the black suitcase. A 220-vault Braun hair plucker..wanna give it a go on YOUR armpits?..in the purple backpack. Oh, and on my laptop, in the orange backpack, some sizzling photos of me in a green dress!” Nah, I didn’t mention the plucker or photos, but I WANTED to, just to pay him back for the e-mail game.
And on the questioning went. And on. And on. And on. The final call for my flight came & went. I commented I was concerned about holding everyone up..”We Kiwi’s don’t like inconveniencing people.” His response..”don’t worry about it, it’s normal! I want to talk to you some more..are you married? Where’s your husband? Will he be joining you? When will you be passing through this airport again?”
Then my name was called; the flight was delayed, & passengers weren’t allowed to board or disembark.
“C’mon guy..PLEASE?!” No respite..dangerous woman, this Prue Jarvis!
The BIG airport security guys were called in. They demanded I buy a return ticket to Moscow, or a forwarding flight to NZ. I told them I didn’t have the funds available on my credit card & it would take 24 - 48 hours to complete the transfer from cheque account to credit card via internet banking in order to pay. I must’ve passed the ‘too friendly, too excited, too cheeky, too honest, too patient, too tired, too ‘typically nutty Kiwi’, so crazy to choose this travel itinerary’ test. They contented themselves with making a flight booking for me without payment (bless!), & released the flight for boarding at 2:30am. Although some of this reflects badly on the American airport & security staff, they were actually very nice to me, especially when it came to bending the rules by booking me that unpaid for flight out. They could’ve been nastier.
And actually, I WAS the lucky one. Far from being the only one holding up the flight, I was therefore unidentified, & unhissed at. A couple of Mexican guys were being miserably harassed by a red-neck cop on the way to the plane. So malicious! Is it really necessary?
New York JFK to Mexico City. FINALLY, sleep. Well, for an hour anyway. My first flight in darkness, it made all the difference. My first contact with Mexicans; they ran the full gamut..crass trash, humble poor, flashy new rich, dignified in-betweens, humble old money. Crass trash in front of me, humble poor to my right (helped him with his baby), humble old money to my left (helped him to stow his overhead luggage); smiles from left & right. I hope I’m going to be ok.
I should’ve noted the aircraft toilet..more on toilets later.

Landed at 6:40am December 14th Mexico time (7:40am NY time … can you guys work out the rest please? Just remember that whatever time you calculate, it’ll be the 15th, while I'm still struggling through the 14th..the repetition of MY date is not a typo..just making sure you'll say "oh, poor Prue!").
The airport was very difficult for a shattered woman of my advanced years. Queues & milling 1,000’s of people everywhere, accompanying luggage filling the small amount of floor space left. Directed to one queue, waited forever in a system that had neither rhyme nor reason, only to be told once my turn came “oh no, you should be over there”..a crowded rugby field away. Just as well the 3rd queue was the right one, I was about to crumple & cry. Hell..I’m SUCH a CHICK..HATE THAT!
Connecting flight confirmed at last, a calming cigarette was in order. And it did the trick..until it was time to get rid of the butt. No bins! No piles of butts anywhere! Nothing! The street was immaculate! I gathered courage, & holding my smoldering butt-end like it was the piece of toxic waste it was, I approached a fagging guy who looked like he was foreign but ‘at home’. Whew, good spotting!
"Excuse me, do you speak English? Fantastic! Do you know where the ashtray is?"
“Just throw it on the ground!”
“Really? I don’t think I can. It’s not right! It’s too clean here.”
“Honey, look at it this way; you’re keeping someone in work & earning money. They’ll be by in a moment to sweep up!” No prizes for guessing he was an American (“Honey” being the clue.)
So I tossed my butt in the gutter, after 3 false attempts. And ran inside to hide in the bathroom & wash my hands before anyone identified me as the dirty pig trashing the pristine streets.
9:30am Flight 1238 Mexico City to Aguascalientes. Back to sleepless daylight flying. It occurred to me this multi-country journey has seen an end to my white-knuckle flying at some unidentified point. Maybe I’m cured, maybe I just don’t have the energy left to clench for now.
At 10:35am I stepped into a cute little airport that lost its appeal quickly; my bags were lost!
“Esperar, esperar, esperar (Wait, wait, wait).”
“Go & talk to that person.” …
… ‘That person’ said, “No, I can’t help you, you need to go over there.”
At ‘over there’, I was told “Just a moment (translation: an hour), I’ll find you an English speaker.”
English speaker: “Gosh, you HAVE had a long trip..all the way from Moscow..wow! Let me tell you about the time I travelled from … to …” (a 5-hour trip).
Pale faced sickly smile..’I can think of nothing I’d rather do than listen to your story when I haven’t lain in a bed for some days, & the bacteria on my body is multiplying at the speed of lightning!’ I’m such a ‘nice’ woman. I listened, I commiserated, I commended his English, I inconspicuously scraped my forehead back off the counter, & 2 hours later there were still no ‘Prue bags’! So now, it’s been 4 days since I left Alex, Olya, & Sergei; approaching 5 days since I last lay in a bed.
Defeat conceded by us both, I was allowed to crawl into a cab, book into my motel, to hopefully crash.
No crash. BINNGGGGG..my eyes opened, my body OD’d on adrenaline, my brain kicked in..”I’M IN MEXICO!” I took a long-long-long hot-hot-hot shower & went for a stroll; found a fabby fresh fruit & juice place, treated to an English speaker who gave me a king-sized juice for the price of a ‘kiddy-sipper’. He must’ve been worried about my pallor, the extent of which I was unaware of until I got back to my room. ‘White as a ghost’ doesn’t even begin to describe what the mirror reflected back.
Still too ‘up’ to sleep, another shower & cosmetic damage control completed, I beat the pavements looking for an internet café. Two close to home; one looked fancy from the outside but was a flea-pit indoors & expensive, the other was a plain little number, filled with sunshine, & cheap. No brainer!
A few urgent e-mails replied to, hard-core culling of spam & subscriptions, & it was time to luxuriate by lying flat & straight for the first time in a couple of days, to lie in a real bed for the first time in 10 days, to lie in a queen sized bed for the 1st time in 10 months. Diagonal starfish faceplant (face & stomach down, head at the top left of the bed, toes at the bottom right of the bed, arms & legs spread so there’s no room for any other human or cat).. BLISS! HEAVEN! OH MY ACHING BONES! ZZZZZZ!!!!

Thursday, 15 December 2005 I slept from 6pm last night until 10am this morning. Nice effort!
No bags other than those under my eyes, so I was forced to go in search of a couple of cheap tops & a pair of light shoes (fur lined boots are definitely not the go in this climate!)
Rene (my new boss) arrived in the evening to take me to the school to have a look around, to meet Danielle & a few students. Once Danielle’s lesson was over & it was just staff on site, they opened a bottle of vodka, & an initiation process commenced. I was questioned, asked & told bizarre things, & given bull-felling drinks. Thank goodness for vodka training, I did ok.

Friday, 16 December 2005 Still no suitcases. The cheap light tops I bought yesterday are ok for daytime, but it gets really cold in the evening. A jersey is required!

Collected by Rene to attend the school’s Christmas party..late. By the time we arrived the party was all but over, with maybe 5 people left. Angel was in a bit of a state because he’d been left to handle everything; Danielle & Carla not bothering to show up, & of course Rene AWOL. The last people dispatched, the school locked up, off we went to where Rene, Carla, & Danielle live. Plenty of people there, & I had a nice time meeting students & chatting.

Saturday, 17 December 2005 One of my missing bags has turned up. Damned shame it’s the least urgent of the lot..Russian coats & polyprop undies not being on the top of my requirements list right now. Still, it’s good to have it. Hoorah! One down, two to go!

Sunday, 18 December 2005 Spent the day fruitlessly driving around looking for an apartment. One little old duck appeared from nowhere & offered to help find a place. She’d been ‘taken’ by my ‘exotic looks’ as she’d glanced out her kitchen window, & was thrilled to learn from Rene that:-
a) I’m from New Zealand
b) Rene's from Canada
c) We're married

cough, splutter..you said WHAT to her?
Bless her swollen f’ankles (fat ankles), she knocked on a couple of doors & offered her assurances we’d be good tenants if a place could be made available. Delivered back to her home, she left me with kisses & blessings.
"Rene! What was that all about?"
"Hahahahaha..don't worry about it Prue, it was a joke, and that old lady wanted to believe we're a couple"

My last 2 missing bags have arrived. YEEHAAA! A smorgasbord of clean undies, fresh clothes, loads of wardrobe alternatives.
Ok, ok, ok..so I’m not a backpacker’s ingrown toenail..but I AM living my own adventures!

Monday, 19 December 2005 Slack man! My hair dryer & straighteners don’t work. Well, they do, but what took 30-minutes in NZ & Russia takes 2 hours here! A measly 110 volts from the electrical outlets is not enough..but I foolishly persevered. Now I have frizzy fried hair !

Tuesday, 20 December 2005 Found an apartment; the landlord, Alberto, is a honey. We rolled up our sleeves & cleaned the place together. He cracked up when trying to communicate & make the observation that I’m a speedy worker. We made a deal; he’ll learn English, I’ll learn Spanish, then we can talk to each other.
He’s given me beds, linen, lounge & dining furniture, cutlery & crockery. He bought me pots, sharp knives, cooking utensils, a blender, & a fridge. How’s that for a beauty landlord?!
Rene brought wine to celebrate my new home & adventure.

A slightly uneasy sleep, but thrilled to be in a ‘home’ at last.

Next installment..Prue the happy homebody, hostess, & party-girl! Yeah, a brief foray into days of old.