Ciudad De Mexico

I left New Castle shortly after four am on Saturday morning, Jon kindly gave me a lift to the Amtrak train station in Indianapolis, about an hours drive away. The train departed about half an hour after i arrived, and about four hours after that i was in Downtown Chicago - and it was fucking cold.

I had to get the train on Saturday because my flight was leaving at 10.30am on Sunday, and with the first train being at 6am there was no way i would make it in time. The other factor that contributed to a very long day in Chicago was that the cheapest train was the 6am, it was about half the price to the trains that ran after during the day.

So i basically arrived at Chicago 24hrs before my flight was leaving. I decided to kill some time by walking around the city, i wanted to see lake Michigan, partly because an airfield that's on its shore was featured on the MS flight simulator series as the standard airport, so i really wanted to see the place for real. The airfield went a few years ago and they built a park there instead, but i walked right up to the lake and saw about a mile away the newly developed airfield site - it pretty much looked just like on the simulator.

The wind was very cold, it felt like January in England, and my backpack weighing just under 20kg i wasn't up for walking around much longer. I went and found the underground station that runs a train directly to O'hare, it starts off as an underground trian but then comes out overground - much like the DLR in London. 14 stops later i was at the airport, where another train took me to my home for the next 20 hours...Terminal Five.

I checked at Mexicana's desk that my flight (mx817) was all good and that the terminal remained open 24 hrs, to which i was happy to hear an affirmative answer. There was really not a lot there apart from a few pricey restaurants and a McDonald's, so i got a cheeseburger and sat down. For the next 15 hours i sat there listening to my ipod and reading ¨Between A Rock And A Hard Place¨ by Aron Ralston - he was trapped in a Canyon, i was trapped in a fucking airport.

I could not sleep no matter how hard i tried or how tired i was, i simply just layed there hopelessly trying to give my eyes some rest, i finally went into a very deep sleep to R.E.M at about 4am on Sunday morning, i woke up just after 6 thinking i'd overslept and missed my flight, i had to look at the time for about five minutes before i realised that only two miserable hours had passed. I got a Mcmuffin as Mcdonald's re-opened for the day just before and went off to the desk again to check if it was all good. This time the lady took some information and realised that somehow my flight was booked for mx817 (10.30am to MXC via Cancun) but money had been paid by the travel agents for MX801 (14.10 MXC direct). I was not amused, and didn't quite understand how the hell that came to happen, but the solution to the problem was simply to wait for the 14.10 and get on that one instead. I went and read my book again for a few hours, checked in my backpack, and to my delight at about nine or ten am i met a man who was also waiting for his flight, we chatted for a while and out of nowhere he comes out with the best question i'd been asked all day - ¨want a beer?¨ - of course the answer was yes and three budweisers later i was ready to go through security. The beers sure helped those last four hours go by a bit quicker, but the view of the tarmac and various planes going past also did a good job keeping me occupied.

So that was Chicago, i took off at about 14.15 and four hours later i was in Mexico City, where it was very cloudy by i hoped it would clear up within the next few days. I met Fanny, her brother, and Andrea who is the girl im staying with, i knew Fanny already but they are all very nice people and a good set of friends to be around. The drive to Andrea's took about half an hour - the traffic is fucking mental, everything is so quick and sketchy, it's a bit like a big 'free for all' but we eventually got home safe and sound.

On Monday we met up with Fanny again and went off for some breakfast at one of the shopping centres around here, it had an open view of the volcanoes on one side of it and what with the day being sunny and cloudless it was a very nice place to eat! We went and played some pool later on in the day and had a few drinks, we met up with some of their friends, Thamara, Karla and a few others.

Today we pretty much just chilled out, went to a plaza a few stops away on the underground or 'metro' had some ice cream, a beer and i briefly played a couple of games of skate with some kids that were around there. The buses here have music blasting out in them, like it is in Argentina, and although they look like theyre falling apart, its nice to be back into this type of place, seems closer to what i was used to a long time ago.

That's all for now, tomorrow i'm heading out to a skatepark and hopefully meet some more skaters and chill with them for a little while.

I like this place, the sun is always shining - or at least has been since Monday morning - the traffic is a bit more exciting to say the least, the buses blast out Cumbia, i can go back to speaking spanish to everyone, and the food and drink situation is so much better than in the US!

I love being back in a developing country, not only because it's different to what i've had for the past eight years but also because it has so much more character and is something that brings me back to my roots.

I know this has been a very long post but i couldn't spend 24 hours alone in an airport without telling about it! haha, thanks for reading this and i'll post a little update within the next few days.

Santiago.

¨That boulder did what it was there to do. Boulders fall. That's their nature. It did the only natural thing it could do. It was set up, but it was waiting for you. Without you coming along and pulling it, it would still be stuck where it had been for who knows how long. You did this, Aron. You created it. You chose to come here today; you chose to do this descent into the slot canyon by yourself. You chose not to tell anyone where you were going. You chose to turn away from the women who were there to keep you from getting in this trouble. You created this accident. You wanted it to be like this. You have been heading for this situation for a long time. Look how far you've come to find this spot. It's not that you're getting what you deserve - you're getting what you wanted.¨ - Aron Ralston.