Santiago de Querétaro 2022
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In the last 24 hours I have spent about 16 of them in a mask. I don't think I would have survived that in the beforetimes. Good thing I've had lots of practice over the last couple of years! |
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I am not impressed with the "partnership" between Aero Mexico and WestJet. We were supposed to fly to Vancouver at 7:30PM on Thursday, arriving in Queretaro at 10AM on Friday. We got switched onto a 10:15 flight to Vancouver with a 12-hour layover in Vancouver before continuing our journey. I'm pretty sure that WestJet only lets Aero Mexico have spots on the planes if they can't fill them with other people. The two websites don't talk to each other. The way the airlines operate are so different that the WestJet staff didn't know what to do with us. We couldn't check-in online for ANY of the legs... because... nothing worked right between Aero Mexico and WestJet. Just meh. But, super grateful for Michel who was willing to come pick us up super early to take us to the airport so we could deal with all the issues first thing. |
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Among other things I'm not impressed with is the Aero Mexico website. Every time they change our itinerary (and the do it often) they send an email with a link where I can go to "accept" the change. I click "accept" and it says thank you... but nothing changes, and I keep getting messages that I have to accept. I can't do ANYTHING else until it works. And I end up having to phone a person to tell them that I accept. Bleah. |
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On the list of things I'm grateful for... Brent's brother, Doug, for picking us up at YVR and entertaining us for the day, Brent's niece, Lisa and her boyfriend, David, for letting us hang out for hours at their apartment. Best 12-hour layover ever!! |
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That was a whole lotta time in that mask since we left Edmonton, my goodness. I'm happy to be able to spend some time with my face "commando". That said, though, people here take their mask wearing very seriously. Most people on the street, and in establishments, are wearing masks. We've taken to wearing masks while out as well. I guess it's going to be a very mask-y time. |
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We left Vancouver at about 11:30 last night and flew to Mexico City. The worst thing was that someone had brought an infant with very healthy lungs on the trip, and the infant was NOT happy. It spent the whole night shaking the walls of the airplane cabin with its wails. Poor little devil. And poor me trying to sleep through it. Ugh. Thankfully, the wails weren't enough to down the plane, which, incidentally was a MAX-8. I probably wouldn't have chosen to fly on one of those but... que sera sera, and we made it alive. |
Our original plans were to fly down with a different airline, arriving on Saturday, not Friday. Thankfully our AirBnB had a room available on the same property for one night. Not the SAME room, but *shrug* hey, at least on the same property. So, we arrived today about 11AM, but check-in wasn't until 2PM. We had to hang out in my "office" (aka the roof-top lounge) until the room was ready. Tomorrow we'll have to check out of that room at 11AM and hang out in my "office" again until we're able to check into our "permanent" room. I am SO happy to be here.
After we got minimally settled in, we went walk-about in town, ate some local gorditas (hopefully they won't trigger a Montezuma's revenge like the time Brent and I ate local in Zihuatanejo). They were delicious! I hope they're as happy to be in us, as we are to have them in us... time will tell... |
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It is an AMAZING 23C here today, and that's about what it's going to be every day that we're here. I am so happy that it's not sweltering. When Brent and I last went to Mexico, we went to Zihuatanejo, and it was about 30C every day. We suffered for close to five days before we were acclimated enough to move around. I think this suits me much much better. |
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I got my computer all set up to work this afternoon. It had some kind of a hard drive error, so I was a little concerned for a while there, but two reboots seem to have brought it back up and it's working fine now. I'm hopeful that I will be able to work well from here. What an awesome life. |
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We have to switch from Gallo room to Canario room in La Encantada today. Our original trip plans had us arriving today, but things changed and we ended up getting here a day earlier. I'm super grateful that our host had another room in her property that was available so we don't have far to go to make the switch..... buuuuuuuuuut... we have three hours in between rooms. We need to leave Gallo at 11AM and we can't check in to Canario until 2PM. I had a look at the forecast today, and there is only one day in the forecast where we're supposed to get rain... of course that's today. And there's only a three-hour timespan where we're supposed to get rain through the day... of course that's from 11AM to 2PM. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! OMG. |
Even though I have my laptop along to work, we also brought along the new Surface, partly for Brent to use and partly to confirm it will work for posting tp DAMDetails when we don't have my laptop along, like when we go to Europe in the fall. I used my trusty old Surface all the wat from the 2015 tour until France in 2019 when it became impossible to use. I bought the 'new' (to me) Surface after France but then the Covid came and put a stop to my travels.
Using the old Surface was hard for putting photos onto DAM because DAM won't take photos larger than 500MB and the Surface had no software that would
reduce a photo's file size. So my workaround was to upload photos to FB then download them from there but now FB often gives you a file larger than 500MB. Anyway the new Surface has Paint on it which can reduce a photo file size easily so experiment concluded, experiment successful |
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One thing I really like about being here is being treated like a person instead of like a mark. I get really tired of everyone we see putting on the hard sell trying to get us to buy whatever they're flogging, whether it's a bracelet or a condo when we're in a tourist spot. |
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The rain during our period of homelessness turned out to be a non-event. Yay! We got into the Canario Room, which is where we'll stay for the rest of our time here. I got a makeshift "office" set up. The place that I think will serve me best is actually the shelf in the closet. Good thing I'm flexible... minded, anyway. |
We were going to go to La Pena de Bernal and Tequisquiapan with Laura today, but we decided to postpone that. The weather was kinda crappy this morning, Laura took a fall yesterday, and if we wait until next weekend, maybe Elissa can come with us.
We thought about taking a bus to San Juan del Rio, where Laura lives, to have a visit with her, but we couldn't get a ticket for the local transit to get to the regional bus depot. The local transit only accepts scannable cards, not cash, and we can only buy those scannable cards during the week. We could have taken a cab, or walked, but ultimately, we decided to stay in Queretaro for today and see Laura another time soon. |
Walking around Queretaro today was wonderful. We walked through Centro, which was alive with Sunday markets through plaza after plaza, and then walked the lovely pathway along Rio Queretaro.
Queretaro has some bicycle infrastructure, and we found lots of bike lanes. Maybe we'll go for a ride one day soon. We just need to figure out where to rent bicycles. |
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We have not seen a single mosquito here. Not. A. One. If this trend continues, then Queretaro is definitely my new favorite place on planet earth. |
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I've been working since we got here, and proven that my technology, and my brain, will cooperate with the whole idea. Today was the first business day, though that I really worked, and it went fine. I worked in the wee hours, like I normally do, and I had some meetings during business hours, like I normally do, and everything just worked. Yay! |
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While I worked today, Brent ran some errands, including picking us up some rechargeable Qrobus passes. The local transit busses can only be used with one of these passes - they won't take cash. I had read a four-year-old blog that said you could buy the passes at most OXXO or Mini Super stores at self-serve kiosks, but we looked all over yesterday and not a single store had a kiosk. The Qrobus headquarters is only open on weekdays, so this morning, Brent went out and scored us a couple of passes. We'll have an adventure in city transit very soon! |
Legendary Ed always said you need something to look forward to. My main thing that I look forward to is travel. When the pandemic started, I got it in my head that it would last six weeks. As it stretched into two years, I wondered when, or if, I would ever travel again, and I got super depressed about the thought of it being over.
Today was a day of new experiences. We took local transit in Queretaro. We at in a completely off-the-grid "restaurant" which is a word-of-mouth local treat, invited by the maintenance man at our AirBnB. We sat on the roof of our AirBnB, enjoying the sunset, and the flocks of small black birds that zip past every evening. And I am grateful. So grateful. I'm grateful to be from a time, and a place, where women have been afforded the opportunity to set the course of their own lives. To make a decent enough living to buy myself these experiences. To have the health that I enjoy for making the most of these experiences. To be able to travel. To have chosen a vocation that allows me to work remotely. To share it all with this wonderful companion... my Brent. Thank you, Universe. I am having a serious Joe Banks (the Tom Hanks Joe Banks) moment. |
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Brent has been doing a lot of roof sittin' since we got here, mostly while I'm working. Today I decided it was my turn too. Instead of wandering far from home, we mostly sat on our roof and watched the city go by. We also went to the mercado (market) and had a look at Los Arcos (the aqueduct), but mostly... roof sittin'. |
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I worked all day today and then Elissa arrived from Calgary in the afternoon. We brought her over to our AirBnB via the Aqueduct for a quick look, and then up to sit on our roof, because roof sittin' is good sittin'. We filled her full of wine, guacamole, queso and more and then took her back to her place to (hopefully) get a better sleep than last night. |
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We've had yet another SNAFU with Aero Mexico. They changed our itinerary (again), and sent me an e-mail with a link to "accept" the change. But the link didn't work. I ended up calling them to sort it out, and the reason why things weren't working... well... was because they had us flying from Vancouver to Edmonton the DAY BEFORE we were going to fly from Mexico City to Vancouver. As a remedy, they wanted to put us on a different route all together, leaving Queretaro on the Thursday evening, overnighting in Mexico City, leaving Mexico City at 5PM-ish for Toronto, then leaving Toronto at 9AM the next day. Three days shot just trying to get home. You've got to be kidding me. After some more phone calls to WestJet (the partner on the YVR-YEG leg) and to Aero Mexico, Brent got us hooked up with a one-day itinerary on March 10th leaving Queretaro at 6AM and arriving Edmonton at dinner time. That's a whole lot better! |
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I worked this morning and then we met up with Elissa to go for lunch and then to our bike tour. At the restaurant, we looked at having some guacamole as an appetizer, and there was an item that looked like it was guacamole with cheese. I asked the server if it was queso (cheese) and she said yes. Well, there was a breakdown in communication, because it wasn't queso... it was crickets. Elissa was a trooper and jumped right into the adventure, followed shortly by Brent. I followed as a very reluctant third. They were salty and a little fishy and a lot chewy. I wouldn't seek them out again, but for all the times I've wondered if I'd be able to eat bugs... well... now we know. |
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We had a really fantastic tour this afternoon with Uriel from Bike Tour Queretaro. He was very confident and skilled at leading us through traffic. His English was perfect, he was knowledgeable, interesting, and engaging. He took us to the hot spots in centro, and to my surprise, Brent and I had already hit most of the on our walkabouts. But it was still great to hear all of the stories, the history, the gossip and the conspiracy theories. Uriel also does tours to go see the migrating monarch butterflies. We're hoping to join one of his tours for that! |
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After our bike tour we walked back to our AirBnB along the Rio Queretaro. Elissa spotted a huge train of leaf-cutter ants making off with their daily loot. It was A-MA-ZING! |
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