Friendly Neighbors

We´ve been in Puebla for 3 days now and are really enjoying it. The city is largely closed because of the holiday weekend, but we´ve managed to find fun things to do including Semana Santa (Holy Week\Easter) festivities. We also took a fun side trip today, more coming on that stuff tomorrow or Monday.

We just wanted to share a funny story about the way people seem to be here much of the time. We booked our ticket 3 days in advance for the bus from Mexico City to Puebla. There are plenty of buses but we knew it was a big holiday weekend so wanted to get it early. We made the reservation for a 12 noon bus. We figured we would show up a bit early because it was our first bus trip and we like to be early in general, plus the holiday. So we arrive with our backpacks and all of our stuff and the bus station is packed. Think airports on Thanksgiving and then some. This is one of the most populous cities in the world on a weekend where tons of people travel to visit family.

So we figure, it´s no problem, it´s busy but that´s why we have a reservation. When we got to the gate our bus was supposed to leave from there was a line literally hundreds of people long. We had about 45 minutes before we were scheduled to leave.

But why the line if everyone has reservations? Well, we asked around to make sure we didn´t have to wait in line. Rich found a guy who spoke a little (very broken) English, and he told us that most people don´t have specific times on their tickets, so they were waiting in the stand-by line. Since we had a time, we were cool and could just walk past everyone at 11:50.

So we waited for 15 minutes outside the line, then double checked with a security guard, and then a 2nd security guard, and we figured out that we DID have to wait in line. Turns out they were running buses every 20 minutes and just boarding people 1st come 1st serve because the crowds were so large. The guy who spoke some English from before came back and confirmed this with us and apologized for giving us bad info. Damn you broken-English-wrong-information-man!

This was bad news... with the length of the line we were looking at a 2 or 3 hour wait. Waaayyy past when we were supposed to leave. We were totally bummed and obviously it was not fun or what we wanted for our first bus trip.

So we sat for 15 minutes at the back of an enormous, snaking line as the length of the delay and the weight of having to stand with our packs on in the unbelievable crowd and heat sunk in. Then, the damned English speaking fellow came back to us at the very back of the line. Keep in mind, English speaking does not mean he spoke much English. But now, he says, ¨My name is Paul, I can help more, I told them you were my family, we can go now.¨ Huh? Kinda pale aren´t we? A bit confused, we said, ¨are you sure?¨ And he said yes, just tell them we´re his family.

This was a bit weird, given that we are two very obviously white, very obviously not spanish speaking, very obviously not his family. He walked us to his spot in line, which was literally NEXT to board on the next bus. He tucked us under the velvet rope, as jealous onlookers gawked, and there we were 2nd in line. He convinced security we were his cousins from the US and we boarded the next bus and left at 11:50am, 10 minutes earlier than our reservation.

Our Mexican friend Paul lied for us. Thank you Paul. You completely redeemed yourself. Props for helping out two strange backpackers for no real reason. ¡Muy Excelente!