Bienvenidos a Cuernavaca

It was dark when we arrived in Mexico City, dark and raining. Good steady rain, with big full heavy droplets, just like home. The first rain we have seen in the 3 weeks since we left.

We arrived at 'Remote Gate 42', and a kind of airbridge bus thing came to take us to the terminal. It glommed onto the side of the aircraft, like a regular airbridge, but had seats and a driver, like a bus.

Our ride to Cuernavaca was waiting for us as promised, but immediately we left the airport we ran into the worst traffic jam I have seen in a long long time. It took about 2 and a half hours to drive 80km. Our driver didn't speak English so it was a quiet ride, but we listened to his radio. Someone was speaking Spanish, a glorious tumble of rolling 'r's and lollopping 'l's...

Once in Cuernavaca we proceeded up what looked like a farm track. Our accommodation didn't look too promising in the dark, but once inside, hungry and thirsty, we discovered that our hosts had left us a feast of mangoes, papaya and other fruit, bread, cookies, ham, a sliced moist white cheese called panela, frozen veges with olive oil to cook them in, and cornflakes for the morning. Plus a selection of teas, juice, milk and half a kilo of fragrant ground coffee. Suddenly the accommodation looked pretty good. We are in two studio apartments, next to each other. Each one has two single beds, so I am sharing with Emily and Al has peace and quiet on his own. During the day his apartment has become the computer room.
I took the photo above from just outside our room.

In the morning, we discovered that we were on the side of a hill, looking down onto the city of Cuernavaca, in the grounds of the university. It's cooler here than down in town, and much quieter, although the birds are pretty noisy at night, and someone lets off fireworks at all hours of the day and night. We have met some of our fellow tenants, doctoral students from Argentina, whose English is about as good as my Spanish, so we have long tentative conversations with lots of miming. This morning two scientists from the lab took us down to El Centro for a bite to eat and a look around. The traffic was unbelievable - it seems you just shut your eyes and go for it. I can't imagine driving here!! But the streets are full of sounds and smells and colour, and history. Unfortunately we couldn't stay long in town because I forgot the rule about not cleaning your teeth in non-potable water and had to rush back home with a dodgy tummy. Feeling a lot better now (we picked up a packet of Immodium before we left San Diego for just this type of occurrence!) . Humberto and Ricardo told us this morning that it was well-known that the water in Cuernavaca is 'very bad'.

Someone might be coming tomorrow to take us out of the city to do some sightseeing tomorrow, so we'll see.