Riding the Combis - Thursday -Saturday

 18/11/23 Thursday – Saturday

 

This is a combi that goes to Bodega Aurrera

Thursday 16/11/23

It was a pretty nothing day. I took my walk and then just hung around the house all day. The hot water to my shower stopped working on Wednesday due to air in the lines, and my landlady came to fix it, brought me water, and put my dirty clothes in the wash. Before she left, she offered to rent the place to me, outside of AirBnb, for  $8,000 MX per month (about $470 US). I told her that it was a generous offer but that I had already taken a place in the city which is a more convenient location for me. I also spent some time playing guitar, studying Spanish, hanging my clothes on the line, and, later, taking them down, folding and putting them away. Too much excitement!

Friday 17/11/23

I got up early and did a little studying. At 9:30, I went to Tony and Shirley’s house to learn how to use the combi buses. These are small buses that have a bench seat behind the driver and bench seats lining the walls, all facing towards the center. They run very frequently and it is going to take some time to figure out which goes where, because the routes don’t seem to be posted anywhere. They cost $8 MX (about ½ dollar US) and no transfers; when you switch to another, you pay another $8 MX. Tony and Shirley showed me how to take one to the center of town, and then another to the large Bodega Aurrera, which is a part of the Walmart empire. It’s like a Walmart, with about half of it dedicated to groceries. I bought enough groceries there to fill my backpack and one extra bag. While I was shopping with Shirley, Tony was talking to a couple of banks to see if he could open an account with his Temporary Resident card. Strictly speaking, this is not allowed, but it is often done in cities with large gringo populations. He was turned down flat at one bank, and was told to come back next week by another while they verified his passport and resident ID. Getting a Méxican debit card would make our lives a lot easier here.

Then we took a combi back to a transfer point which was right by the main bus terminal, so Tony explained how that worked to me as well. After that, we stopped at a taco place and had some pulled pork tacos, which were delicious and cost $15 MX each, a bit less than $1 US. Afterward, we took another combi back to Tony’s place and then I got a message saying I was getting a delivery at my AirBnb later, so I grabbed an Uber back to my place and stayed there the rest of the day.

Saturday 18/11/23

My songwriting and producing buddy, Don, has a drummer friend from the States named Victor, who has lived in México for many years. I have been communicating with him since before I left Minnesota, and he has proven to be an excellent resource for honest information about the expat life here. He and his lady, Diana, were spending a few days in Puebla and invited me to visit, so I Ubered to the bus terminal and bought a ticket for Puebla City for $35 MX ($2 US). The bus made several stops on the way out and I got to Puebla in about 1 hour and 20 minutes. From the terminal, I Ubered to the hostel where Victor was staying and he and his lady took me to a restaurant where they had a vegan breakfast buffet which was amazing. Lots of different kinds of food and everything was delicious, especially the bread, which only I was eating. I ended up taking 3 of the small loaves (about the size of a kaiser roll) back with me.

This weekend marks the celebration of the start of the revolution on the 20^th, and it is the Méxican Black Friday, with markets and sales galore, everywhere you look. We strolled through a park that had a lot of handcrafted goods, as well as some collectibles and plants. After a few hours of wandering through Puebla with Victor and Diana, I Ubered back to the terminal and was just in time to catch the bus back to Atlixco, and then took a combi almost all the way home; I couldn’t figure out where to catch the bus the rest of the way, so I had to take a taxi, which is about twice as expensive as an Uber ($7 US vs $3.25 US), but there was one right there so I grabbed it.

When I got home I had a snack, played guitar for an hour and a half, caught up on my email and wrote this blog post.

Tomorrow (Sunday) morning, I am meeting with members of the Atlixco WhatsApp meetup group, who have been very instructive and helpful already. We are getting together for brunch at Vitorio’s, a restaurant near the Zocalo. I’ll try to remember to take a picture of any interesting food that I might be having. I’m not usually that kind of guy, but I know that a couple of you are interested in that kind of snapshot.

Hasta luego.