2009-09-20 19 -98
| Sun 20 Sep 2009 in 19,-98: 19.7252738, -98.9625589 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Location
- Casas GEO, a secured district in the north of Tecámac, Mexico.
Participants
- knispel
- relet
Plans
Well, you know how plans are.. basically this was about my last chance to geohash in the Northern Americas for now, so I kind of had to try it. And since Mexico (the city) proved to be a lot safer than you'd think from reading the news, this village in the north seemed like a quite ideal destination. Just that I had managed to break my cellphone on day three of our travels, and wouldn't be able to use gps navigation to get there.
Plans: Hand-drawn maps, the information where to take which coléctivo into which general direction, good suerte and good shoes.
The satellite pictures showed the spot to be on barren land, close to a residential district under construction.
Expedition
I had asked the previous day, whether Tecámac was a safe place to go. I was assured that, yeah, our patron wouldn't know all of the place, but generally, yes, it wasn´t directly in the slums. (I had gathered that much from the satellite pictures, too) We just should be careful at the bus stations, and make sure that our colectivo wasn't going to be raided. (Well, I assumed all the Pirates did their raiding yesterday and would be quiet today)
We had breakfast and left the hostel at half past ten. Took the metro to Indios Verdes, the small bus hub in the north of the center of Mexico, D.F. (Look it up on the satellite view and you will understand that "small" refers rather to the size of the buses here than to their actual number) We managed not to buy any of the 300 newest releases on burned mp3 disks, origami folding instructions or dream interpretation handbooks (Everything for 10 pesos. Everything in Mexico is 10 pesos, actually)
At the station, we were greeted with a selection of fourteen bus platforms to choose from. A friendly policeman helped us with finding the right one for the buses to Tecámac. (It would be a trouble not to run into an idling policeman in this country. We were even frisked once on what we believed to be a remote beach in the Carribean by the night patrol) And without having to spend more than thirty seconds between the market stands selling everything (hearing aids? viagra for women? you name it. I have an idea what's the set of mind of these spammers by now) we had boarded a comfortable(!) bus in the direction of Tecámac.
As usual, the bus stops about everywhere where you want it to, so the best thing is to know where you are headed in advance. Failing that, I had a nice chat with the drivers assistant, showing him my hand drawn maps. He seemed to understand, and I trusted him to wave me out when we were close. The only thing I knew was that the hash would have to be north of some railroad tracks, and that I should watch out for those.
We passed Tecámac center, then the bus stopped at a cutout in the middle of nowhere and the assistant waved us out. I hadn't seen railroads anywhere, but we put our good faith in the man and left the bus.
We were at the entrance of what looked like a holiday park, a fair or a mall. A bystander confirmed that we would be north of the rails, and so I assumed this would be our district. We quickly realized that it would be a fenced and patrolled district. Bad luck?
Well, we put on our friedliest touristy smile, and walked up to the gates. There were cars passing all the time, and a smaller gate for pedestrians. The friedly security lady at the gate asked if we were visiting anyone inside and whether we could give her an address or call them. The maps didn't even have street names, so I was a bit of a loss there. I asked if we could just visit the place for, like, tourism.
She grew a bit cautious, and did not let us pass. But since it was obvious that we were foreigners and maybe just not explaining well, he directed us to the manager of the place who spoke English. He appeared to be real friendly, introducing himself as José, and seemed amused at the idea of tourists visiting the place. To him, I explained the game in rough and that we would really be very careful not to cause any trouble. He told us that we were good to go, and that we should just leave an ID at the entrance - and to the former lady something along these lines. Yay!
