There is a pungent scent of sweated-in socks, shoes and beds as I am led into the shadowed room 101, this is your bunk, and here is your key. Alone in Cíudad de México, communing with the snoring from a nearby bed and trickling of water in the fountain outside. A young German man appears from a bunk and nods with a strong forehead and eyes that makes one think of a forest. I'm from England, I'm just going out to get something to eat. I merge with the rivers of bodies moving on the noisy streets, passing endless clothes shops, and street vendors before a large tree ushers me down a calm street past La Santísima Church.
What do you speak? ah English? The half-Italian pizzeria owner takes my order as I sit outside beneath a blue umbrella and admire the tree. Moments later a young woman with long black hair and a soft face pulls a chair out beside me - mind if I join you? Odd seeing as I am the only person and there are four other vacant tables. Please do. I notice a sightly mole on her cheek as she tells me that she lived out of her father's shirts for the lock-down in his beach house.
The next day I wake up groggy from the unseemly dorm aura and last night's undigested enchilada and micheladas (beer and tomato juice plus spices). Sitting up amongst the hot smelly air and gasping for water, there arises a growing suspicion I may have grown too old to put up with hostels.
I escape into the fresh early morning streets with their misty beams of sunlight penetrating through the trees. Could I drop a note at the pizzeria? here's my number, call me. Yesterday she disappeared abruptly, to buy food for her dog apparently, who was waiting in her apartment just across the road. But already my legs have started off in the opposite direction and besides, it wouldn't be open this early.
As I walk, neighbourhoods come and go like silent hymns until the sun climbs and the cold dims. Taco stands become peopled, the pavements thicken, the quiet morning is startled into becoming midday by the city's bustle. After walking for a few hours I notice an upmarket vintage clothes store and realise I must be entering La Roma. So like a good little hipster I sit and order a cortado and chocolatina at Abarrotes Deliro. It's as I take my first golden sip that I notice them - the heart-flutteringly beautiful couple I photographed yesterday in front of a nude painting. Her long striking red-orange hair and pale skin and his short ruffled black hair and handsome face were almost exactly mirrored in the nude painting - I had stepped in to help seeing them try to take a selfie. I imagined they would imagine me imagining them nude and wondered if that's why they seemed to walk awkwardly past the café mid-cortado sip.
By evening the next day below a stone-grey sky, I am sitting on a blue beanbag staring out the balcony. Street saxophone notes lonesomely reverberate down the street as a bearded man's heavy breathing plays behind me while he does yoga. I am nursing the aftermath of the first instalment of Mexican food poisoning. The ordeal had me passing out around midnight on the floor in front of the disappointingly locked toilet door. I came around to see an astonishingly attractive German lady looking down at me. This was no time for pleasantries and rushed past to the toilet myself. Later she speaks through the door I have some tablets, I will leave a glass of water for you out here. I am thankful to her, to the large bin beside the toilet, and to my physical body, which is endlessly astonishing in its intelligence - how it knows when, where and what to eject for it's own health. I'm taking notes as I'm not so skilled at ejecting harmful beliefs before they get into my system.
By the time I leave the hostel for an early flight, my stomach has settled. I watch out the plane window as the huge white city fades from view and Popocatepetl's snowy peak lunges towards the sky through the clouds. My astonishingly intelligent body and I eagerly await being submerged into the pacific ocean, bronzed by the sun, and whatever else is in store for the both of us in Puerto Escondido.
