The Meet Up 2: Kahlo Me Impressed

Waking early on Friday, my birthday, I got some breakfast and went to an internet cafe to see what had happened after the previous nights failure.  Greg had e-mailed me that through a series of traffic, rain, and uncooperative taxi cab drivers, he had missed out meet up, but was at David's house.  He also noted that he would  try to be online at 10AM, so I waited around on the interwebs, though 10:30AM rolled around and I didn't want to waste the day.  I told Greg I was going to Mexico City and that he should reply back with meet up details.  I also considered telling him my real plan that I would wait one more day then go to Costa Rica...

I hopped on a bus, traveling the reverse of what I did before.  Upon arriving in Mexico City, I searched for an internet cafe and received Greg's reply.  Of all the possible spots and times, I found the most feasible one to be at the Frida Kahlo museum.  I arrived slightly after they were intending to visit the museum and quickly hustled through the different gallery rooms.  Eventually, after near misses and communication failures, there stood Mr. Greg Esser.  I casually slid up next to him as he admired one of Frida's beautiful paintings and said "Bueno".  He slowly turned around, looked surprised and offered a giant hug.  I think it hit us that without cell phones, meeting up with people is not trivial, especially in a new place with a different language and a population of 23 million).

Greg and our lovely friend Alheli.

We spent the rest of the day cruising around the city sight seeing with our great native friend Alheli who entertained us and made our visit fantastic.  For dinner, we were dropped off at David's house where we promptly left to go to a friend's house for drinks and food.  His friends and family were very fun people (most with fantastic english) and there were a lot of laughs and merriment.

Our new amigos!

As it grew later and we grew hungrier, we braved the rain for some food.  We walk around the corner to a taco stand that was set up on the side of the road with a tent over it.  Now, standing under a tent, chowing down on tacos, laughing with our new Mexican friends in the rain, I felt like I was finally in Mexico.

For the night's activities, we were brought to a place called the Patrick Miller Club.  This was indeed a strange place.  To enter, you must buy a poker chip and present it to the bouncer as your pass in.  Once inside, the bass was so loud you could feel in your chest and there were laser lights everywhere.  Yet, this was no normal night club.  Instead, the practice here was that in the crowd, circles are formed and two competitors have dance offs in the middle.  Here's a link to a video of a typical dance off.

They are serious too.  There are semi-bouncers to keep the circle from collapsing into chaos.  I was told that the contenders will practice their routines before hand in front of mirrors.  It seemed difficult to squeeze into the circle, but of course, I wanted to give it a go, but despite my dancing into the circle, the contender I was trying to push out was too in the zone and didn't budge.  Mexico wasn't ready for my hips anyway....

The Patrick Miller Club, a very traditional Spanish name.