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October 28, 2011

It´s 4:40 am in Mexico City.

 I am so exhausted and sleep deprived I couldn't punch the culprits if I wanted to.

Floor 19, Hotel Fiesta Americana, street La Reforma.  I laid in bed literally for hours with an upset stomach and wiggly legs.  And the inconsistent sound of giant fireworks banging off at a cadence of about one every three seconds.  Ironically, this Americana (me) is certainly not partying.

The boom reverberates between these few skyscrapers, the paper thin windows gifting us with the sound of horns honking below from the perpetual traffic and an exceptional audio quality of the explosion of high firecrackers and fancy plumes.

My stomach was tumultuous, and I could not sleep, and so I decided to take a small sleeping pill.  But no water.  No water in the hotel room.  No energy to boil water in the coffee pot, unable to justify calling room service and pay for a $5 bottle of water, and my mind was too fuzzy to find a good solution to the situation.  I tried to save saliva, but my stomach was too upset to swallow my wad of sticky spit carefully stored after great effort.  I found about 10 remnant drops in the bottom of a plastic bottle, but it was not enough to swallow the tiny pill.  My stomach churned even more.

I finally decided to swallow the pill alongside the heart of my guayava fruit.  Its edible seeds are slightly smaller than the baby pill I clutched in my right hand.  I slowly sucked out the heart of half of the fruit, attempting to muster all my tummy's strength to swallow the stupid pill.  Eventually I did.

I sank into bed, exhausted, and began to read some touristic photo book on Mexico with the red light from my Petzl headlamp.  The fireworks pounded, my stomach churned, and I protested.  And just when my exhaustion piqued, something quite curious happened:

At 4:30 in the morning, a tremendous amount of fireworks exploded all at once, and people in the street began tooting their trumpets and tapping their drums to something sounding of the American taps.  There was a parade beginning right in front of  my hotel, crowd, trumpets, floats, fireworks and all, at 4:30 am!   Aaaaak, for the love!

Who the hell has a parade at 4:30 in the morning?  What´s more, it looked like only 200 people were participating...  Did they really need to play their trumpets and wake up every other human within a five mile radius?  I lack comprehension.

Anyhow, now it's 4:53, my stomach seems to have settled down a small amount from the guayava, and I've written a few words to post on my blog (finally).  I'm armed with earplugs, no longer on the verge of vomiting, and hoping to God that I'll sleep just a few hours tonight.

Epic road trip starts tomorrow...

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