Losing our way

After two and a half weeks in Puerto Escondido Centro we were packed and ready to move to our next AirBnb.

We were fairly adept at flagging down taxis at this point but our luggage is not the "minimalist" ideal so we had to roll our two suitcases and our backpacks plus a couple of grocery bags to the closest busy corner and hail a taxi from there.

A lesson we should have learned about figuring out where we were going next is to properly pin-point the location before getting into the taxi.  So when we got in I gave an approximate direction, the equivalent of "head in the direction of..." that you might use while you sort yourself out with the actual address.  I suppose a companion rule is to have the address copied to both of you so you each have it on your phones...

We had bought an unlimited international data plan before starting on our trip and it has been excellent for us in all the places that we have visited so I was able to use Anne's AirBnb app to click on the "directions to your AirBnb" button and have it show us precisely where we needed to go.

Anne was very disappointed when I let her know that the directions were taking us to a place on the opposite side of the highway from the sea and our hearts sank when we arrived at the spot indicated on the map... it looked pretty run down and nothing like the photograph in the app.

I went inside to ask someone whether this was an AirBnb location but I left Anne's phone with her so when the obvious followup question, "What is the name of your AirBnb" came, the exercise became pretty fruitless.  I didn't even know the name of the AirBnb, let alone the actual address.  

They confirmed that they were not an AirBnb, so I went back to the taxi where Anne had managed to find another address.  The patient taxi driver took us over to that new location where there was still nothing promising in sight.

We were both a little frazzled at this point.  I was imagining a repeat of our experience in Antigua where the Bookings.com location turned out to not exist.  I saw a small local restaurant across the road and suggested to Anne that we let the taxi go and take a seat there, get some food and/or something to drink and plan our next move.

This wasn't a great idea because we had some frozen goods in the shopping bags but at that point I was willing to sacrifice the frozen food for a more careful consideration of our next steps.  It took a few moments for us to realize that there weren't any taxis driving up the road we were on but I was happy to defer solving that problem until we'd sat for a little bit and finished a juice and (in my case) a beer.

A young girl sitting at one of the tables, probably around 10 or 11 years old, was listening to me asking in my rough Spanish if they knew anything about the AirBnb that I still didn't have a name for.  

She said something to me in English and I told her that she spoke English so well.  She said she was from Los Angeles but now living in Puerto Escondido.  The older person at the shop was her grandmother and her mother was working there too.  She said she didn't have any friends because she didn't speak Spanish.  In retrospect I suspect this may have been an exaggeration but I also realized that her family may have been among the many expelled from the USA for being there illegally after she'd spent her childhood there.

She then asked me where the "woman" was (she meant Anne) who had vanished while I was talking to her grandmother and her.  

We looked around for her and I was wondering if she had gone to look for a bathroom when a taxi pulled up with her in it.  She had searched for the AirBnb by name on google maps and then walked to the end of the street, hailed a taxi and told him to pick me up.  

We had a third destination that we were going to make our way to. 

This one turned out to be the correct address and, although I missed my 2pm work meeting I was able to settle in and set up my digital world for the rest of the workday within a few minutes of arriving.

Our new stomping ground was the roughly two and a half mile-long (4km) beach on the South West of Puerto Escondido,

much closer to the very touristy beach at La Punta with its crowded streets and restaurants - including the lovely Chicama restaurant.

where the bar staff brighten your day, and the vegetarian restaurant Piyoli restaurant which also has a branch a couple of blocks from Nick's apartment in Mexico City.

My workday routine didn't change much other than for the fact that this AirBnb has a pool and the beach is not much more than a 10min walk from us.  We discovered that this entire stretch of beach is marked with danger signs (mostly ignored) warning not to swim.

Sun illuminates the waves as they break with a surreal effect

 There are a couple of lifeguard stations along the beach and the waves crash unrelenting on the shore. 

At 4pm we often take a taxi to La Punta where there are more people swimming and the waves are a little less alarming because of a rocky point jutting out nearby that offers some moderation to the swell.

 

There are so many motorbikes and scooters in use here - the streets at La Punta are lined with them and so I took a few minutes to stop at a scooter rental place to find out what they might charge. 

They quoted $400 MX (approx $22 US) a day and $3500 MX ($190 US) for 2 weeks and so I checked with our AirBnb about parking one there and the really friendly and accommodating host told me that they had a scooter to rent for $200 a day if we liked.

So Anne and I revisited our earlier reservations about renting a scooter and that Friday evening we were off to La Punta on a little blue and white scooter along the back-roads of Zicatela for a swim, dinner and a ride back in the dark again along the sandy pot-holed back-roads.

It was a great feeling to be scootering around the town despite linear ruts in the paved roads that had our front wheel occasionally latch onto the direction of the rut for a second or two before popping out again.  It was enough of a wobble to raise my anxiety just a little bit.

Early morning street dogs with the linear ruts in the street

We visited the huge Zicatela market on the Saturday,

this time braving the highway for both the trip there and back.  The market has a hangar-like roof over small brick shops that sell everything from meat and fish to clothing and a number of different grocery specialists including incredibly fresh vegetables and fruit.

  The side walls have beautiful murals on them.

Anne's photo of one of the murals in the Mercado

It reminded me (in spirit) of the Victorian Market in Melbourne, Australia, although the concrete brick structures inside lacked the elegance of the wooden stalls of the Melbourne market. 

Anne has always been a little highly-strung.  She startles easily even on a relaxed afternoon, and so I decided to give our scooter rides a running commentary so that none of what I was doing would be a surprise to her and cause unexpected reactions behind me.  In particular I'd announce the moments when I took advantage of the many speed-bumps on the highway to cross in front of oncoming traffic knowing  that they had to slow down a lot before proceeding.

Our last taxi ride back from La Punta on the Thursday night had a price increase from $50 MX to $80 MX so I felt good about the $200 MX a day for scootering around our town and to La Punta in the evenings and we did this for the first week.

On the Thursday I had to work late but it looked like we would make it to the beach in time for sunset so we set off on the scooter onto the highway and then an exit to a local road to the beach itself.  The first speed-bump after the exit felt a little sharper than expected and as I accelerated after it, the back wheel spun out a bit under us.  My running commentary to Anne was: "I think we went over a patch of sand, no worries" as I accelerated again the scooter did a 180 degree spin around although fortunately at this point we were going very slowly.

We got off and saw that the rear tire had separated from the wheel and my immediate thoughts went to the small details of how far we were from the AirBnb, how little we knew about how to get this fixed and where the hell would we park it for the night until we figured out what to do with it.

Anne's text messages to the AirBnb got a neutral response that wasn't much more than a "message received" at that point and so we wandered up the street a bit and I asked someone who was replacing a wheel on a small panel van if he knew where we could get a flat tire repaired.  He said "no" but I'm not sure if that was because he misunderstood me.   It turns out (after the fact) that "punchar" and "pinchar" means "to prick" and the various verb conjugations of this could mean "you prick" or "fucking" as in "pinche policia".  It also means "kitchen assistant".  What it doesn't mean is "puncture".

So my statement:  "tengo una pincha" would quite literally mean "I have a prick" followed by "do you know where I can fix my scooter?"  This would result in the answer "no" in most countries.

I saw a sign across the highway that said something about a "Moto" and there were clearly some motocycles there and people working on them so we made our way over there and found that the person behind the counter spoke English very well and said if we brought the scooter over he could have someone take a look at it for us.

Literally minutes later we were informed that the wheel was fixed and the person behind the counter explained that a wheel like that, if under-inflated could lose all of its air quite suddenly, for example when you went over a bump in the road.

We hadn't realized that the scooter wheel was flat in our trips back and forth to the beach, and it must have been given to us flat to begin with.

He refused to accept payment for re-inflating the tire after seating it correctly back on the wheel but I insisted on leaving a tip anyway.

He also complimented me on my Spanish - which was a first.  This came because I had had a little conversation with him about where we were from and how my accent isn't (really) a USA accent.  I still speak like a South African despite the 20 years we've been in the USA.

After the scare with the back tire (and realizing that we hadn't been using the scooter outside of the single trip to the beach every day) we decided that it was costing more to rent the scooter than the taxis would have cost every day so have stopped using it.  We'll take another run at scooters, motorcycles or bicycles in some other destination.

We have enjoyed every trip to the beach.  

Even though the waves break close to the shore, you can still get some pretty good body surfing in.  The beach gets pretty crowded close to sunset at La Punta where everyone also applauds the sunset as the last rays touch their skin.

Misdirection in paradise

The small coastal town of Puerto Escondido is a short 1 hour flight on a small plane from Mexico City.  

The airport is a single runway airport and reminded me of the Kimberley airport where you had to walk down the mobile staircase directly onto the runway and the heat would hit you as you step off the aircraft. We were dressed for the Mexico City weather and had to shed a sweatshirt immediately.

Our host offered to pick us up from the airport and he and his wife arrived within a few minutes of our Whatsapp message.  They could speak some English but we valiantly kept speaking Spanish explaining to them that we really wanted to practice.  Naturally they had to revert to a few English words to go over some of the details of where to shop and wash our clothes.

The apartment is in the higher part of the town on a street called Septima Norte (7th street) and overlooks the ocean with a view that includes some of the houses on the edge of the town.  Fortunately it had ceiling fans and the bedroom had an air conditioner to use at night.

Dawn over Centro, Puerto Escondido

 

We had last eaten at 10am at our favorite little coffee shop near Nick's apartment in Mexico City but once we had put our things down in the apartment Anne was keen to make our way to the ocean after we had changed into something cooler.  

Our host told us the name of a good swimming beach which looked to be a 20min walk on Google maps so we set off in the late, hot afternoon down the long hill towards the beaches on the Southern side of the town.

The temperatures here only vary by a small amount between day and night.  We are in the winter now and the nighttime temperatures "plummet" to 72F (22C) at night and go up to 86F (30C) during the day.  Every day.  

An article on the climate in Puerto Escondido says: "The temperature in Puerto Escondido varies so little throughout the year that it is not entirely meaningful to discuss hot and cold seasons".  I suspect it is a little less comfortable in the summer when the humidity is high and the few people we have asked all said it is much the same all year around.

The beach is called Carrizalillo (which I still struggle to pronounce).  It has a staircase with 157 steps and was fairly crowded with tourists and locals.  The waves are what we used to call "dumpers" in South Africa - they break right on the beach and dump you in the sand. 

The beach edge is pretty steep which made me wonder about a rip-tide but there were plenty of people swimming just beyond where the waves were breaking.  A fairly large number of surfers - mostly people learning to surf - were out quite a bit further where another set of waves were breaking.  The waves out there are a lot smaller and slower to break which make it an ideal beach for learning to surf.

The sea is warm for the Atlantic - on average around 84F (26C).  This surprised me but I guess 84F water feels a lot cooler than 86F air temperature for a number of reasons.  It is a very comfortable water temperature for swimming and I didn't hesitate to get in with Anne.

There was a sign at the top of the stairs warning that smoking and nudity (among other obvious things) are illegal, but a small percentage of people ignore these rules.  Topless bathers are less offensive than someone smoking upwind of you but it is easy enough to move as long as only a few people are doing it.

A rather nice tradition is that, on days when the sun sets unobstructed by clouds, the whole beach erupts into applause and whoops as the last ray of sun disappears below the horizon.  A tradition that is repeated at some of the other beaches that face West along this coast.  

After sunset we walked the 20min back up the hill and decided that we'd visit a Peruvian restaurant (called Chicama) that our friend Gina had recommended to us.  I looked it up on Google maps - about a 15min trip - and we started walking down the main road thinking we'd get a Taxi on the way.  At the bottom of the main street we came out onto a 4 lane highway that Anne took an instant dislike to.  It was more or less deserted of pedestrians and not well lit.  It was our first night so we had no idea how safe it would be to walk there.  We'd already walked 10 min so I figured we'd be ok to keep going but naturally our patience with things in general was waning quickly as our blood sugar continued to spiral downward.

A few minutes later, Anne asked how far we still had to walk and I casually opened google maps to check and saw that I'd had "by car" set when I had looked for the restaurant. "By foot" put us around 15 minutes into a 1hr 6min walk!

We had heard that Taxis are easy to get in Puerto Escondido but we hadn't had much luck walking down the main road and on this highway there was nowhere for a taxi to stop.  None of the ones we saw were looking for a passenger.  So after walking for another 10 minutes we decided to go across the road to a rather nondescript looking Hotel where the really sweet receptionist said she would help us get a taxi.  

When we asked if she knew of a nearby restaurant she let us know that they had a restaurant on their top floor so without hesitation we went up to take a look.  We were the only people in the restaurant which had a simple functional layout but the view was rather nice and we were starving, so we took a table at the edge of the balcony.

We took a look at the menu and ordered drinks.  We spotted what looked like safe choices of meals: "Carne" (meat) for me and "Pescado" (fish) for Anne, as there didn't seem to be anything even vaguely vegetarian.  We used google translate (thank you Google Fi) to check out other items on the menu but one item which included "small grasshoppers" and another for octopus convinced us that there weren't really any other options that we'd choose.

I had assumed that my "carne" was a steak and asked for it to be cooked medium which somewhat puzzled the waitress.  I think she just put it down to me not knowing much Spanish because she wandered off to get the chef to start preparing the meal. 

The meal was a surprise.  Anne got a whole, very boney small fish, grilled to a crisp.  The presence of the head and the staring eyes were so distracting that after staring back at it for a few moments, she cut the head off and wrapped it in a napkin - out of sight, (kind of) out of mind.  

My meat was prepared in a very specific way called "carne asada" which is a thinly sliced piece (1-2mm) of beef, also grilled to a crisp and served with beans and rice and some salad and tortillas.  I had seen this style of preparation previously in street food in Mexico City.  The intention is to break up the meat and wrap it in tortillas but it was as tough as leather.

My mind and stomach were prepared for a juicy steak cooked medium rare and Anne had imagined a white fish fillet with some delicious sauce.  After a few moments of dull recognition our hunger gave us the big mental adjustment needed and we ate.

Once we had eaten though, we started to feel a little more human and the receptionist accompanied us out on the dual lane highway to try to help us flag down a taxi.  She was so helpful and compassionate - we were two lost gringos who really needed help.

A large mural on the 2 lane highway not far from our Hotel of the first night

After 10min of waiting in vain I told her that we might try walking back up one of the side roads close to the hotel and she agreed that we may find a taxi easier that way.  She refused the tip that Anne offered her for all of her help and waved goodbye as we headed off.  Sure enough as we rounded the nearest corner a taxi was dropping off a passenger and we were able to get back to our apartment without much fuss, exhausted and a little shell-shocked.

In retrospect we should probably have taken care of eating right after visiting the beach at one of the restaurants close to that beach but, even though some mistakes were made, cool heads prevailed and we didn't have a "hangry spat" on the Puerto Escondido highway.

We did visit the Peruvian restaurant the next night as a treat to ourselves - by taxi this time.  

What an amazing experience!  

The young people serving there, particularly behind the bar made it the happiest restaurant we've ever visited.  They were singing along with the music, dancing and mixing drinks in the most engaging way.  We each had a meal of potatoes and egg and a delicious sauce.  I took a shot of the famous Guatemalan Rum (Zacapa) which the barman said was the best drink in the house.

We stayed in Puerto Escondido Centro for just over two weeks with a daily routine that involved me working from 8am local time until 4pm (excepting for a few days where work intruded into the evening) and then taking a taxi to the beach.  After sunset each day we would walk all the way back to the apartment in the cooler dark - on some days stopping at a restaurant - we found a couple that sold a steak called the New York which was right up my alley. 

We tried 3 other beaches but tended to always return to Carrizalillo because despite the rough waves on the beach, swimming beyond them is rather comfortable and the evening ritual of the sunset is a good way to end the day.

On the Saturday of the weekend after arriving we had paid for an early morning trip on a boat to see dolphins, whales and turtles.  We had mixed feelings about this while we out there - the captain of the boat didn't see two turtles that he motored over and at the beginning of the trip about 10 boats were juggling to get close to the only pair of whales that were spotted that day (he said it was a mother and child) .

Despite these misgivings it was amazing to come in among a pod of dolphins chasing fish and leaping about and be able to drop into the water and see some of them swimming near us - even if briefly.  We also got to swim close to a turtle though to be fair it was more swimming away from us than with us.

On the way back we saw a few flying fish.  They are quite incredible because they can glide for a really long time.  At first I thought I was seeing a bird with a shiny stripe gliding just above the waves and then it was gone!  When I spotted the second one I suddenly realized what it was!

When we got back we went to a nearby beach where we were offered a day long rental of a beach recliner in shade and all the food we could eat for $600MX pesos.  I'm not a big fan of hanging out at a beach all day doing not much and fortunately we aren't big eaters because by about 4pm when we decided we'd had enough the owner calculated how much food we'd had (breakfast, lunch and some drinks) and when he was satisfied that we had not spent over the $600 he said all good, thank you and I paid him.  I realized that his "all you can eat" was indeed conditional on the all not going over the offered price for the recliner.

I've had an interesting relationship with pesos while we've been here.  The conversion rate is around 18pesos to $1 US so $600MX is $32 US for both of us for a day on the beach including breakfast and lunch but somehow after paying for things like taxi rides and meals in the center I found myself starting get annoyed when suddenly the price is $20MX higher for a taxi ride.  It is like $1.25 but somehow I'm not making the conversion any more, just reacting to the higher price.

Of course the cab drivers had a few things that they did that I had to learn about over days of using them.  The rate when we got there was $40MX from our house to the beach but a number of drivers were asking $50MX which was confusing and then halfway through our stay it was consistently $50MX.  I suspect this is the "tourist" price because plenty of locals use the taxis and I doubt they tolerate a lot of price increases.

The other trick is claiming that they don't have change when you don't produce the exact amount.

Our first trip to the Peruvian restaurant cost us $100MX but later in the week we did another trip and the driver said $150MX when I asked how much it was.  Anne heard the 50 but I just heard $100MX and so I gave him $100MX when we arrived and he put up a bit of a fight before letting it go.

I suppose having the right change for $40 and/or $50 for local trips and $150 for the longer trips to the further towns was the best approach.

We thought about renting a scooter but decided that the taxi drivers and the sudden speed bumps and potholes in the road made it a little unsafe.  Besides renting a scooter would be a daily cost more than the price of the taxi to the beach.

Further east of Central are two communities that have a lot more tourist activity - Zicatela - which has this long curved beach with impressive waves and La Punta which is a beach near the end of this long beach with a row of restaurants and shops and tons of people.  La Punta is where the Peruvian restaurant is.

Our next AirBnb rental is at Zicatela and they have a pool which should make it pretty luxurious.

On our last visit to Carizalillo a young couple started dancing on the beach - I swear that they had only just met but they got a good round of applause from everyone nearby when the music stopped.

Dance of the Flyers

We arrived back in Mexico City and back to visiting the little coffee shop close to my son's apartment every day. He has very fast internet and our Airbnb internet was patchy so I  tended to work in his guest room during the week.

My daily routine was to stop there for breakfast for their delicious coffee and bagel combination with scrambled egg, bacon and cream cheese on my way to his home.

The cafeteria has a group of friendly workers.  Most of them are young women who greeted me with smiles every day, waiting patiently for me to make a hesitant order (even though after a couple of days they knew what it would be) in Spanish and then helping me with the prices.  Working with numbers in Spanish is so hard. Even though I know most of the numbers individually the combinations when you are buying vary a lot. Particularly since we have to deal with hundreds and thousands quite often.  For example, breakfast cost us about $480 MX ($2.60 US), so it was a challenge to hear them speak it quickly and then work it out in my head. The cashier usually turned the screen for me to see the number and then said it aloud to help me.
 

So after five weeks my Spanish was much better and the experience at the cafeteria was more conversational and less hesitant.

Our last week in CDMX (the common abbreviation for Ciudad de Mexico) included another trip to the Fine Arts museum. 

Anne and Gina getting into the entrance line which stretched to the main road

This time for a great show of traditional dance and music through the centuries and from different parts of Mexico. Our tickets were bought by Nick's lovely neighbor as a parting gift.  She had hosted us for drinks on Christmas Eve and had generally been very welcoming when we had met her on the stairs and so this was a generous gift to us.

 

The theater in this building is spectacular with a Tiffany glass curtain on the stage

and a beautiful stained glass circle under the dome - which gleams gold from the street.  

 

The highlight of the show for me was a dance that had a cowboy and his lasso dancing with several girls, him twirling the lasso and them spinning in long, flowing dresses.

 

The last weekend in the city included the long awaited trip to the Museum of a

Anthropology and the central park Chapultepec and its castle.

 

The museum has the most amazing feature as you walk in - a free-standing pillar which supports a massive roof.  The pillar spills water over onto the tiles below where the water is collected and sent back up.

You really need to visit this museum a few times to fully appreciate it.  I was pretty exhausted after visiting the first few halls showing prehistoric and Mesoamerican and then through the Aztecs.   There are so many small details and of course the struggle of reading many of the Spanish descriptions.  

There are, of course many descriptions in English but they are less frequent.

At some point a voice on the loudspeakers started saying something in Spanish that was several paragraphs long.  Then the voice started again in English and said simply "Please don't touch the exhibits" which, by the way was the only phrase that I understood in the Spanish.  Anne said he had gone on to say something about following the rules and showing respect for the museum  etc.

There were a few notable things for me in the first few halls that I really appreciated.  The first was that the little models showing pre-historic people were all anatomically correct - no flat surfaces where the genitals should be. 

No genitals in this diorama, but an example of the detail in a post-prehistoric scene

The second was that the statues and carved images from the Mesoamerican times were very alien to my western view.  I was able to distinguish faces in the carvings but many of them depicted a person with a headdress on that also had human facial features - these are hard to look at and decipher and I'd like to learn more about the significance of these depictions.

Finally the amazing number of artifacts found and preserved from a massively large timeframe.  From small figurines to large artifacts like the large sculpture that Anne had told me about that had a large hole in the middle for sacrificed human hearts.

The casual descriptions of these sacrifices were hard to read, including the famous ball game that had a ritual component to it (no doubt only exercised during significant rituals) where players who undertook moves in the game that went against the sun (whatever that means) were decapitated and their blood soaked the earth to bring good fortune to the community.

 

This game was played widely with I suppose only some instances where a mistake in the game could be fatal - but it did give me pause thinking about how spectators and participants felt about the relative value of their life in the community.  I suppose their view of death must have been so incredibly different from ours.

 

After visiting the remaining halls with a much lower concentration on the details we walked outside and discovered that the Dance of the Flyers (Danza de los Voladores) was about to start in a park across from the museum, near the entrance to Mexico's central park.

 

This is an ancient ceremony still practiced in some parts of Mexico and in Guatemala where it lives as a Mayan ritual.

 

The pole is immense and the participants scale up it without any protection.  At the top they tie ropes, that have been wrapped around the pole many times, around their waists and with a man sitting at the top playing the flute, singing or drumming, the ropes gradually unwind as the flying men circle the pole.

From there we walked across to the immense central park of the city where the paths were full of visitors and small impromptu tented shops selling candy and oddities.  

 

The best seller that week was a small spider creature that you could wrap around your neck and which had a tube and a trigger that allowed you to squirt water from its tail (like the thread of a web).

We walked to the castle in the park (Chapultepec Castle).  The viceroy of New Spain (an office that Spain used for the governor of both the West Indies and the territories claimed by Hernán Cortés) ordered the construction of the castle in 1785 soon after taking office.  He died a year later of suspected poisoning and the castle was sold to Mexico city in 1806 after not having had an owner.

The building is beautiful with amazing views of the park and the city.  The halls and stained glass windows are spectacular and the entrance ceiling and several walls in the palace have been decorated with murals painted to depict significant historical events in Mexico painted over 200 years after the castle was first built.

A man stopped us while we were in a hall with a mural that spanned the entire room to tell us that he lived in the USA but was from Mexico.

  He wanted us to be sure to understand how significant these murals were.  These panel were painted by David Alfaro Siqueiros painted between 1957 and 1966 and depict the revolution in Mexico between 1906 and 1914 starting on the right with the period of decadence where can-can dancers entertain the aristocrats while the common people have plunged into slavery,

moving on to a worker's strike that the painter believed was the beginning of the revolution following with ideologues who predate the leaders of the Mexican Liberal Party (Karl Marx is recognizable here)

followed by popular leaders and Constitutionalists and finally in the next room a revolutionary who has abruptly stopped his horse with bodies behind him - signifying the end of the first stage of the revolution.

Another mural that was quite powerful was painted by Jorge González Camarena and is displayed in one of the halls.  It signifies the violent clash between the eagle warrior signifying Mesoamerican culture flourishing in the region and the Spanish conqueror. 

The are both extinguished in the battle and out of this emerges a small eagle on the bottom right that will become the Mexican homeland built out of these two worldviews.

The gardens feature a fountain and great views over the city.

A photo from Nick's camera shot by a friendly visitor to the Castle

In the front of the castle are the statues of the Boy Heroes (Los Niños Héroes), teenage cadets who fought to the death defending the Castle against the American forces in the Mexican-American war. 

One of the boys, in an attempt to prevent the capture of the flag, wrapped it around himself and leapt to his death over the cliff on which the castle is built.  A ceiling mural depicting this act by the teenager is painted above the entrance stairway of the castle.

Anne's photo of the ceiling mural

 

A hundred years later Harry Truman visited the monument to these boys and, when asked by reporters why he had done this famously said: "Brave men don't belong to any one country.  I respect bravery wherever I see it."

We were pretty exhausted after the day of walking and we made our way down past this monument to the city-side entrance to the park where we caught an Uber back to our airbnb.

The next day we would be flying out to the amazing beaches on the southern part of Mexico.