Hola, buenos dias, como estas?, gracias....

My very basic, phrase-based Spanish, doesn't get me very far in Monterrey, Mexico, but it hasn't stopped me from enjoying my days here.

Ashlee-Maree (Ace) and I started talking about travel plans a couple months ago, and we both decided it would be awesome to visit our uni friend, Chloe, while she's exchanging in Monterrey.

So here we are! Day 3 of my Mexican adventure.

Thursday, August 26: It all began when Vanda and Margot took us to our mystery bus station, while Ace directed from her laptop and we wolfed down Hoboken pizza on plastic plates in the dark. We still aren't sure whether we missed our bus, but we hopped on one about 10pm, crossing the border around 3am, and ended up in the city by 7:30 Friday morning, where Chloe and her very blonde hair was anxiously waiting our arrival.

Friday was an organisation day with two trips to Soriana (a semi-Walmart equivalent) to buy food, beverages and beds. Besides the people in the supermarket, I began to wonder when it would hit me that I was in Mexico. Monterrey is one of the country's most "americanized" cities. I've heard there's Walmart and H.E.B. here too! Besides those american intrusions, I'd say by the time I'd caught two taxis, I was definitely getting inklings of being somewhere very foreign to me.

Our Monterrey tour guide aka Chloe Fox took us through her university, and promised we'd return to snap photos of deer. Her campus is very much smaller than the U.T. I'm used to, but the entire ITESM network in latin America consists of over 90,000 students. There's very tight security so Ace and I needed our passports to enter the grounds.

Chloe and her housemates, Julia and Isabel, were hosting a cocktail party to christen Chloe's new blender, so it was a perfect night of meeting her exchange friends (the majority from Germany), and sitting outside in her courtyard, sipping on a homemade mojito. After maybe two or three hours sleep on the bus, I passed out by midnight on my brand new air mattress.

We'd planned to visit Canon de la Huasteca the next day so after making some mouth-watering portabello burgers (with Mozzarella cheese, spinach and tomato) for brunch, we had food babies, but were raring to start our day! Chloe's been vegetarian since she was a teenager and I always enjoy joining in on her diet, not being a big meat-eater myself. So the burgers were her idea and an excellent idea it was!

From her house on a cute street adjacent to campus (lined by what we think are lime trees), we walked by Caroline's house to pick her up and then caught two taxis to El Obelisco (the obelisk) to catch our bus to the Canon. We weren't too sure on the bus number, since the party had been such a hit the night before, but we hopped on our best guess and enjoyed a very haphazard, noisy and slightly dangerous bus ride to the outskirts of the city.

Driving on the roads here feels like you're sitting in a dodge 'em car and I'm now re-thinking my opinion on Malaysian drivers after being here a few days. You won't go anywhere without hearing the squeal of tyres and communicative horns (sometimes a blast can be a good thing?).

The heat was making me sleepy, but I fought to stay awake and enjoy the scene around me. I shoved my camera out the window to take some snaps, but my battery died prematurely so the rest of the pics from that day have been taken by Chloe and Ace. We ended up not getting off at the proper stop and extended our ride 30 mins or so. No one was exactly sure how we ended up having an entire Mexican bus to ourselves, but it was a fun detour. All the while we were thinking, "Where the bloody hell are we?".

So we eventually made it to the gates of the national park, where two other German students were waiting for us. From there it was another experience to try hitch-hiking in the back of a pickup so that we could travel further in to the Canon. By this stage, people are probably wondering how safe I'm being, but you'll understand once you're here that you need to just embrace the lifestyle, laugh a lot and pretty much "go with the flow".

It was windy in the canon and the water was a slightly, murky blue. Usually there's no water at all, except that there's still run-off from the hurricane, which hit the area really badly a month ago. You can still see the damage on the roads and bridges around the city. We stuck our bottoms in the water (and of course I kept getting pushed downstream by the strong current), while some of the locals enjoyed watching the foreigners. The mountain ridges that surrounded us were so stark and beautiful. Our pickup ride-in told us that he takes people rockclimbing there.

Our tummies began rumbling, so Ace, Chloe and I left the group early in search of corn. And at the entrance our wishes were granted. Thinking that we would eat the traditional way, Chloe and I asked for lime and chilli on ours, and a few bites into the experiment our lips and mouths were on fire!!! I attempted to brush some chilli off, and then thought it was best to eat as fast as possible. By that stage I was inspired to eat more traditional food, so when I saw the gentleman next to us pay for an empty tray of what I suspected might be tamales, I asked straight away if we could have some too. Yum! They tasted just like the ones Lillie had heated up for me all the way back in May.

After another sleepy bus ride back to the city and a roller-coaster taxi ride, the three Mexi-cateers fell on to our respective beds and passed out til 8:30pm! Oops! We almost missed the BBQ we'd been invited to, so we trooped back to Caroline's and enjoyed a very nice night of freshly-made patties on a breezy Monterrey balcony.