Frida Kahlo

Ayer we continued our tourisimo at the Frida Kahlo house in Coyocán. We saw where she and Diego Rivera lived and worked and hosted all of their (now super famous) friends. 

This is Frida's studio, exactly how she left it:

And this is where she painted self portraits and maintained her eyebrow:

Then we hopped over to a market in Coyocán to purchase Dia de Los Muertos swag, 

and finished our last day in Mexico City with a fancy dinner serenaded by a 5 piece orchestrita, complete with accordion.

¡Adios Cuidad de Mexico! ¡Hasta luego!

Mujeres de Moda

Last night, Verna and I found ourselves sitting in the front row at the runway shows of Mercedes Benz Mexico Fashion Week. This sounds super suave, and believe me, it was. It was one of those Bridget Jones moments where you're just waiting for someone to recognize how obvious it is that you don't belong. Just be cool, you know, act normal. 

So how did two awkward chicas end up here? As it turns out, the more degrees of separation you are from us, the bigger deal you tend to be. Our dear friend Cesar connected us with his super cool cousin Manolo, whose boyfriend does PR for fashion week. Boom. Just like that we're in. ¡Hopefully we didn't embarrass our new amigos! 

Tourisimo

We have been quite the tourists these past two days. I think we walked approximately 500 kilometers, which translates to something like 27ish miles, and half of that was just inside the Museo de Antropología. 

We also hit Chapultepec, which is like Mexico City's Golden Gate Park, except bigger and with fewer hippies. Plus, inside they sell you chicharrones instead of drugs! The Chapultepec Castle is in the national forest, so we checked that out and learned a bit about Mexican history, but more about how poorly we read informational signs en español. 

We've also explored the Palacio de Bellas Artes where we saw some Diego Rivera frescoes, and the Templo Mayor museum where we saw some Mayan frescoes.

 At our rate of 2.5 museums per day, it should only take us 185 days to visit the rest of the museums in this city. ¡Oye!

¡Holy Molé!

Hello again! For our next installment of Discover Touching Fairies, Val y Verna take on Mexico City. We arrived today after a long weekend relaxing in Cabo with some of our amigas, and after sustaining on chips, guac, and mediocre margaritas for 5 days, we were ready for some serious comida. 

On the recommendation of a friend, we headed to a Yucatan restaurante and had an incredible meal of octopus, oxtail molé, and marinated queso balls (muy rico!) along with some inventive mezcal cocktails. (Mine came out literally smoking!) 

We knew this was our kind of place when they brought out bacon fat as a condiment. 

Now with renewed energy, we're ready for some heavy tourisimo mañana. Buenos noches!

Farewell Colombia, Until Next Time!

Cartagena

Well we made it to our last (and possibly favorite) stop, Cartagena! We hit the old city with credit cards in hand, finally ready to comprando some fabulous Colombian souvenirs. 

Here's what we like about Cartagena:

1. All the pescado, langostino, y camarones you can dream of!

2. The Disneyland-esque charm.

3. The fact that piña coladas are sold at convenience stores. And there is a convenience store in our building. :)

4. There are no nunubes here.

5. After a week of roughing it with ocean showers and living amongst animales, we're back to traveling in style. We clean up well, no?

Parque Tayrona

We headed from central Colombia up to the Caribbean coast into the national park called Tayrona. Our Eco Habitat accommodations are the plushest available, and though we aren't sharing our quarters with other travelers, we have a handful of squatters each night including (but certainly not limited to): geckos, lizards, bats, cockroaches the size of your fist, mice, and what we like to call, a nunube. Nunubes are small rodenty creatures that like to eat lollipops at night and poop hair ties on your bed. We have yet to see the face of one, but I assure you they are the enemy and your only hope in surviving a night with one is by arming yourself with a golf umbrella.

These few days in Tayrona have been filled with beaches, jungle views, hikes right out of Romancing the Stone, animales, jugos de coco, and DEET. Tomorrow, on to Cartagena! 

Perdon, señor. ¿Donde?

Nighttime entertainment: gecko watching.

Our accommodations: