Pingu in Mexico

Travelling is nothing for fragile little girls, too dangerous and dirty! It requires courage and a tough skin to do that, so we left Pingvina with her grandparents on the couch, packed her up for a hard winter (that was 2001) and headed off towards Mexico!

Sorry for the useless photos, my parents (just ignore them) cared more for themselves but for me. I tried to win their hearts with making good weather, which I did very successfully, I was also kind of used to the desert environment. Quite interesting to talk to the local weather gods, couldn’t understand much, but very impressive to see how they were worshipped. I wouldn’t mind to have my own big stone pyramid to sit on, some priests visiting regularly, but even though smelling blood sacrifices might be nutritious it’s also barbaric, we live in modern times I think and whoever asks for more than beer is downright arrogant.

It was lonely sleeping on my big fleece mattress every day, sometimes I was under bug attack and had to fight on my own. Well that’s part of travelling, it wasn’t easy after a hard day to think of Pingvina at home, smelling coffee the whole day, enjoying regular meals and all that TV.

Mexico was not as interesting as India, not enough smells and always dusty. People loved me of course and the food was fine (had to sneeze a lot because of the chili), San Miguel and Sol became good friends of mine, but nothing but donkeys to ride on, too close to a lot of water (and my parents even went under water while a forsaken penguin waited in a dusty bag!) and for the first time ever I was separated from my girlfriend.

The only highlight for me was to meet millions of butterflies in the monarch sanctuary near Zitacuaro. They were very friendly, also great travellers, they fly thousands of kilometres every year from as far as Canada to come home to their little forest for a winter party, I wish we modern migrant penguins would have a place like this. Maybe Heineken could sponsor it.

By the way, my Papi has written a Spanish course for beginners and I'm so proud of him, I showed him how to write a blog for it: 'Spanish language course for beginners and travellers'!