Sol sol sol sol sol! Skating outside the city!

Chica Riders organized the Magical Mystery Tour out to this new amusement park: Bicentenario Park in Querétaro. It has a huge skatepark that looks like super happy cause of the paint job. We left super early in the morning in this nice tour bus filled with chicas, a few parents and a few chicos. The bus was amped to go skate! When we got there Paco and Paloma set us up with the girls from the bus and from the town. They skated from noon to 5pm in the hot sun. We worked on pumping walls, which most of the girls could do really well already plus kickturns. Then we moved over to ollies, 5050 stalls, shuvits, maunallying off things, old school tricks (with Erica), and tons more. The girls just wanted to skate. At one point in my broken Spanglish, I was like "I need water, do you all need a break, and they were all naw... go ahead take a break.

There were like over 30 girls skateing. We had such a fun time! The bus ride back was insane. The girls were soo hyped on skating and walking back and fourth on the bus chanting many things, but mostly: "Sol Sol Sol Sol!" It was one of the girl's names.

finally, skateboarding @ la fuente y benito cabeza

Ok we slacked a bit this is from el 3 de Abril.

So yesterday we got picked up by Paloma, Paco and Micaela-- we headed to a park where we will be doing our last clinic on Sunday: La Fuente. It's a park that is built into an abandoned fountain, mostly ramps. It is really awesome. We met Raul who runs the park, and Renata who stopped by to skate with us!

After sessioning and eating our tortas we went to the skatepark that is next to La Cabeza de Benito.

It was a bunch of bowls. We skated there, and I got trapped in the deepest bowl. I had to have Erica rescue me. Between the heat and the lack of oxygen in my body, I was panicking like a rat trapped in a bowl. Dios mios, gracias Erica! I have committed to better cross training so I will never be trapped like that.

Then we took a skate break and went to visit Frida Kahlo's house. Her and Diego lived in a really beautiful spanish style home in Coyoacan. Erica noted a picture of Frida and Diego, where they were holding seals, and Paloma said they were Xoloitzcuintli, which were hairless dogs that the Aztecs bred, not seals. After leaving Frida's place, we went to a restaurant and had some traditional fare including: spinach soup in chicken broth, really good limeade, nepolas (cactus), and some taquitos with whey.

We stuffed ourselves as a mariachi band played. Micaela told us that her favorite song was playing, it was about a crazy woman who drowned her kids in the river, and at night she goes around crying... adults use this to scare kids into obedience... if you aren't good.. she will come and drown you.

We walked around Coyoacon, and went to their Cathedral. It was really beautiful and ornate inside. We walked into someone's quincenera, but tons of people were, it wasn't like we were barging in.

After being able to be part of some sweet Mexican girl's special day Paloma pointed out to us a real live Xoloitzcuintli! We were all trying to be sneaky to take a picture of it, but Paco asked the guy if we could take pictures and pet the dog. It felt like petting an oily piece of leather with tufts of hair. Erica was pretty much not into it.

Day 2: Touring the City

The first night when we got to our Hotel Paloma warned us not to go to the street food vendor across the street. So when Erica and I woke up yesterday we walked around looking for water and avoided that place. We got pastries, and sat in a beautiful church. After 30 min we were overheated and high from the air so we went back and took a quick nap.

We got up and were hungry, so we went to a torta stand, down on the OTHER end of the street. Then Erica got a papaya / guava juice next to the street vendor that Paloma told us not to go to. No diaherrea yet.

We went and took another nap.

Paloma came and got us and showed us around the downtown area. Mexico City has 30 million people, and so much culture and history. We went to the Palacio de Belles Artes, the night before we saw people skating on the all white marble building. Inside is a performance hall with huge murals done by the great Mexican Muralists.

We stepped out and walked towards the central plaza. We stopped at a traditional candy shop (Dulceria de Celaya). Then we went to a cathedral that was built on top of a pyramid. After that we went to the Templo Mayor, a "rui"n part of the Aztec's great pyramids.

The day was super busy, and at night Paloma and Paco took us to this super exclusive art opening hosted by Converse, "leyendas mixtecas a traves de pintando pasos oaxaca" where they had Oaxacan artists paint on converse shoes. The event was super posh, and Erica and I rolled in like scrubs with jeans on and wearing beat up Vans.

There were tons of random folks there, like the reggaeton sensation "gold nigga." We met the editors of Canvas (a magazine all about shoes) they had a spread on the Converse shoes. I am sure there other famous people there, but Erica and my Spanish is so poor.

We did enjoy the traditional Oaxacan hors d'arves such as chapulines
it tasted like black beans. Afterwards we went to go pick up Micaela from Poseiden.

It was a good day and night.

La Ciduad de Mexico

Erica and I flew in to Mexico City around 11:30 pm, and got picked up by Paloma (ChicaRiders.com) and Paco (reskate.com).
They are so awesome and nice. They told us about a radio interview, and we were like that sounds cool, it turned out that it was that night.

We went straight to the radio station and were unsure what to do, but we tried our best to answer questions about the clinics. Paloma and Paco helped to translate. They told us that the radio station was the biggest gov supported radio station.

So we were on Mexican Radio!

Then we drove around the city and saw some huge cathedrals that were built on top of pyramids.

We got to our hotel to get shut eye.

This morning we woke up and walked around trying to acclimate to the weather and air.
We will be exploring the city soon and skating a bit.

Paloma and Paco has set up some clinics and bus transportation to get like 20 girls to come to skatepark outside of the city. We will more photos soon.

Check out the photos of the radio interview!