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.
