Mexico City to Tecolutla

Yesterday was my first day of travel.  I flew Boston to Houston to Mexico City, and then took a bus to Tecolutla.  It was a long day, and I slept like a rock last night, especially because of the wonderful send off from friends and family the night before that left me with only 2 hours of sleep before I left.  I wanted to share with you some of my first impressions of Mexico City, and of getting around.

First of all, it is important that I first provide background to this post to explain my motivation for writing it.  The last few days before I left, when I told people where I was going, I was met with a lot of concern.  Given the nature of our media these days, the idea some people have of Mexico is of a very dangerous place where terrible things happen to people all the time.  Even my poor mother, a bit of an adventurer herself, had terrible dreams of me being attacked by druglords....  (she has an incredibly vivid imagination).  Anytime you travel there is a very distinct need to be aware and careful, as there is always some level of danger.  But I'm glad to be able to share my experience thus far, because it is a positive one.

Overall, my observations of public travel here are that it is much more clean, organized and more safety precautions are taken than back home.  This was first evident to me when I went to baggage claim at the airport.  I found my pack, no problem, but as I started to walk away, a worker approached me asking for my luggage tag (that little barcoded receipt they give you when you check a bag).  He wanted to check to be sure my recipt matched the tag on the bag.  This was done for every passenger and every bag. 

Once I claimed by bag and exchanged some money (now currently 1USD= 12.8 pesos), I made my way to the "Authorized taxi" stand.  Here I gave them my destination  (El terminal de autobuses del norte), paid in advance, and they gave me a color-coded, printed recipt, and indicate which door/sala to exit from.  I walked down the well-marked hallway, twice double-checked by uniformed workers that I was in the right place, and was shown to a taxi, who took part of my printed recipt and left me the rest.  The taxi was a very nice and comfortable car, without the washable seats and thick plexi-glass of those in the states.  The driver was very well dressed in a white collared shirt, dress slacks and nice shoes.   We made polite conversation about his two young daughters all the way to the bus station (about 20 minutes away).

Once at the station, I made my way to the ADO counter, and asked for my ticket to Tecolutla.  Here is where I became quite impressed.  The woman at the counter gave me the details of when the next bus was, and then turned her monitor around to ask me where I would like to sit.  Much like selecting your seat for an airline, the seats are specifically assigned, and available seats were marked.  Furthermore, they also indicate whether a seat is occupied by a man or a woman, and asked if I preferred to sit with a woman.  Pretty cool.  Once my seat was selected, I had about 2 hours to kill, so I walked around the station a bit, people watched, and grabbed a snack. 

During this time, I noticed a few interesting things.  One: the station is HUGE, wide-open, and well maintained.  With tons of skylights, the building was alight and felt very welcoming, bright and clean.  I saw at least 4 different men pushing large brooms to clean the beautiful rock floor in the time I was there. 

Two: buses are clearly a common way of travel because there were so many different bus companies (must have been at least 35 bus company booths), and the station was full of all different kinds of people: from young families with children, to the elderly traveling alone. 

Three: Interestingly, in the very middle of the central area of the station, there was a large cordoned area housing a glassed in virgin mary with a small alter and donation boxes positioned around her.  While I sat there, I saw several older people cross themselves as they passed, and one man who even came up to the placard, crossing himself and Mary several times. 

I was further impressed with Mexico's system, when it came time to board the bus.  Much like in the airport, everyone's ticket is checked and every bag is sent through a scanning machine.  With that done, and large bags tagged and placed under the bus, each person is checked through security, manually searching our "carry on" bags and swiping us down with a hand wand.  With all these precautions, it made me think a lot about how little of that there is in the states.  I have boarded lots of public transit back home, and never is there any security at all.

The bus ride itself went very smoothly, aside from about an hour of car sickness when we traveled through some very windy roads and I broke out in a cold sweat....  oh, and also despite the fact that what I thought was a 3 hour drive, turned out to be almost 7 hours, getting my in to Tecolutla at about 10:00 last night.  By that time it seemed too late to make my way to Turtle camp, so I found a nice, nearby hotel, checked myself in for the night, took a cool shower, logged onto their free wifi and slept.  That brings me up until this very point in time, when I am ready to get out and explore the town, and to put some much-needed food in my stomach!  More later