Day one
Thursday October 30
We’re off to Mexico City today for 17 days. We are going to stay with our friend Richard who we met quite by chance in London back in May. More on that to come, although the full story can be read in The London Diary, day 673. But I will say now that Richard is the singer and main man and driving force of Los Ekis, a really fun Mexican rock band with some level of fame and profile in Mexico. We also got to know the other members of the band while they were in London and so are expecting to have a few friends already on the ground when we arrive.
During the subsequent months after May, as talk grew of us coming to Mexico and then we actually bought tickets, it was quite unbelievable to see how things developed as Richard sent us messages of gigs he was booking us in for. As of now we have eight gigs booked for a two week period starting November 1 and we’ve been assured more will come in once we’re on the ground and literally rocking and rolling. And yes, this date is significant. November 1 is Day of the Dead, a spectacle we were assured we absolutely had to see and take part in. So the trip was arranged for this date so that we would be there on October 31 for the Halloween night, a kind of Day of the Dead rehearsal for want of a better word, then we would be all settled in for November 1 and the actual day proper. It looks like we will really be diving straight into this. Oh yeah. As well as the gigs already lined up, we also have an appearance on Mexican national radio booked. We don’t know any further on that right now, but that just feels huge. And that November 1 date, we have two gigs booked for that. So yes we really will be hitting the ground running.
I should also say now that yes, I do speak Spanish. I lived in Madrid for six years from around 2008 to 2014 when I moved to London. Is it good enough for radio interviews? Afterall, that move to London was over 10 years ago and I really haven’t kept up with it. But over the past few months I really have got back into it again, so I do kind of feel back on it and pretty much up to speed. Ish.
Silly O’Clock time of 4:30am to get up today to be out on the road. One of the things I’m really thinking about today, apart from, this is it, we’re on our way to Mexico, is getting to show Maja a 380 Airbus. I know they fly from Heathrow Airport. This is that all the way across double decker thing. Until you’ve seen one of these up close on the ground – normally from the paltry single decker you’re flying on – you really have no idea how big they are. We arrive at the airport and make our way to our gate with brilliant morning Autumn sunshine blazing through the large windows. All the way I’m scanning for a 380. Then, as we near the gate I see one. I get Maja’s attention as I’m finally able to show her one of these things, and she notices it before I do. First, of course, she is struck with the obligatory wonder at how ridiculously, impossibly huge the thing is. But then she has the realisation. ‘That thing’s in our gate. We’re actually flying in it.’ Oh my, we are. However, not quite as soon as we thought we were as the tannoy announces an hour and a half delay. OK. We’re taking this thing to Miami where we have the layover before going on to Mexico City, but an hour and a half? That should be OK, right? We were looking at three hours before this. Yeah, we could be doing without this hour and a half delay thing.
Still, with the sun coming through like it is, and the spectacular view of the plane in front of us, not to mention the prospect of Mexico at the end of all this, it’s not a bad wait, and then the time comes to enter. We’ve both been on wide planes before, and I’ve flown on the lower deck of a 747with its 3 4 3 seat configuration. Then, I sat in the middle. It’s the same today as we find our seats and settle in for the 12 hour flight. First, you have to take in the width of all this. For length, it’s about the same as the 747 which still makes it longer than just about any other commercial plane. Then there’s the mind bending thought that, as much as this all looks enormous down here, there’s a whole other deck of exactly the same size above us. And this thing is going to fly?
Now, here’s the first part of that experience. Well, the real first part is that as you taxi down the runway you just don’t feel it. All those bumps and grinds, you just don’t get them because we’re just too heavy. It might also help that this plane has 22 wheels so all the bumps get well distributed. But the thing really is that we just don’t realise when we’ve taken off. No idea it’s actually already happened. It’s the smoothest take off experience I’ve ever had. Fast forward a little and I can say that it’s the same with landing. I saw us coming in, sat back because, well, we were in the middle and couldn’t see much anyway. Then waited for the landing jolt to come. It just didn’t.
So yeah, this really is a flying experience like no other. I’m only very mildly disappointed that we’re not on the top deck because I think it would have been special to be sitting that high above ground while actually still on the ground. But hey, you can’t have everything and still stoked to be flying on this thing and another hey, there are next times.
Heading up into the air and I perform my first Mexico operation by changing my phone to Mexico time. I’m going to get mine in here first because Maja will have a lot of fun with it later. I’ve only ever gone transatlantic, or long haul once and that was to New York from Madrid with a London layover. The whole trip was a weekend. Yep. I was in work Friday afternoon, there again Monday morning, and in between had been to New York and London. And I really did go to London; the layover there and back was in two different airports and in between, me and my travelling companions spent some time in an apartment in Kings Cross. That apartment was our meeting point out, and on the way back, the layover was so long, and we were all going to different countries, that we decided to head there again and hang for a while before heading off in our own directions. All this is to say that in that trip I had no experience of jet lag. Which has led me to wonder if indeed I don’t massively suffer jet lag. Maja finds this thought hilarious and instead says the simple explanation is that I never really left Madrid time. By the time I went to bed in my New York hotel room after our night out in New York – we were only there for a weekend so of course we went out on our first night there – I had been awake for a full 48 hours. I then got up relatively early the next day, did all the weekend stuff and had the trip back to Madrid and then landed in Madrid on Madrid time with my body still totally in tandem with it. Tired, I’m sure. I don’t massively remember but I can’t believe I wouldn’t have been absolutely exhausted. But jet lagged? Nope. By the time I was in work on Monday, I was right back into the swing of things. So, forwarding again a little, yes, Maja does very much enjoy any feelings of jetlag and time difference I have/suffer in our first few days in Mexico.
Back to the present and we arrive in Miami and see that we have an hour and a half to make it to the next plane. This wouldn’t normally be such a huge issue, but we discover that here, although we’re only on a layover, we still have to pass immigration. Then, once we’ve done that, we have to pass security again as well. And the queues are big. Huge. Enormous. It looks like it will take an hour and a half just to get through our first line. Then by some kind of miracle, security decides to open up a whole section of it right by us and we’re suddenly sailing through to the front. I say some kind of miracle, but there is some clamour towards them from our group that we had an hour and a half delay and seems quite a lot of people on our plane are flying on to Mexico and that’s leaving relatively soon. So we’ve been cut some slack. But still, we’re thinking our plane has to have its own delay if we’re to have any chance of making it. There’s still a long way to go and we have no idea what that really means at this stage. First, passing immigration. We’ve got near the front, but oh, they’re questioning some people for ages. Up to 15 or 20 minutes at times. And what’s it going to be like for us? Even when we get to the front of the queue we have to wait for what seems like forever before the immigration official calls us forwards. He asks where we’re going. Mexico City. Who are we staying with? A musician friend. How do you know him? We met him in London and he said he would arrange some shows for us, which he has, and now we’re going to Mexico. Oh, you’re musicians – we nod. So that explains the connection, he says. But now the guard gets suspicious. He looks at us through narrowed eyes and recounts what we’ve just told him. ‘So, you met some guy in a bar in London who lives in Mexico. He told you he would be happy to arrange some shows for you and put you up at his place, and now you’re just going?’ Yes, we nod happily. That’s exactly it. His face does so many things all at once. Bemusement, admiration, amusement, and just a whole load of get these crazy people out of my life right now. I really do think he turns his head at one point just so that we don’t see the crack of a smile through his tough robocop exterior because I’m sure I see it just before the turn. And I also really think that it’s with some feeling of begrudging respect that he says, OK, go through. Also, the fact that we’re flying on to Mexico and so aren’t going to be his problem surely must help. But we still have a problem. All this has eaten seriously into our time and we still have to get through security.
Three levels of security by the time we’re done. And each time our bags are X-rayed and at least opened, and once or maybe twice, pulled apart. And what can you do? You’re at security. At an airport. In America.
By the time we get to our last phase of security we’re in some heightened state of anxiety. If he’s giving it any thought at all, that immigration officer shouldn’t be so hasty in his smugness that we’re about to leave the country. We do indeed clear this last hurdle, but then we’re hit with one more that we really could be doing without.
Where are you going? Asks our security officer with some level of friendliness. More in a kind of offhand, chit chatty way. Mexico City. ‘What gate is that?’ he asks. We innocently, oh, so so innocently, check. D1. ‘D1?!’ he asks, or really, explodes, looking at us like we’re crazy and did this on purpose to ourselves. ‘That’s over a mile away.’ No. Seriously? That doesn’t seem possible. As a distance from security to gate, or to even think about making it in the time we somehow have left. We have no time to think about whether or not we have time. We just have to go. Now. And fast. Damn. OK. He hurriedly gives us instructions and we hurtle off. Really hurtle off. There’s no sense of pacing. Luckily our wheeled luggages do their jobs very well, and the airport flooring is absolutely perfect for them. But still. We are properly running. And we have a mile of this to get through.
All the time we’re hoping that the plane is delayed, and that it may have even delayed itself to wait for straggling passengers. I know they do that sometimes, especially when they know there’s a particular connecting flight or flights that have had problems. But there’s no way for us to know any of this. We just have to keep running. Or I will once I’ve stopped and taken off this coat I’m wearing. We are properly sweating now. Yes it’s the end of October, but we’re in Miami now and we’re already feeling the heat of our considerable timezone change.
We push ourselves on and on. We started going to the gym about 18 months ago and have also been doing some solid cardio there lately. Where we would be without that right now I seriously do not want to think. But we have the fitness to keep going, and the recent experience of training pain and fatigue to keep pushing. It’s a hard training run. Just a hard training run.
We’re running past all the gates now. D27. OK. Keep going. Keep going a little while longer. Come on. You can make it. Just a little further now. There you go. D26.
Oh no. This isn’t possible. But we keep it up.
And there. Past D3 and then D2, just where it should be, we see it. D1. And our Miami Mexico Mile-long Miracle. It’s still open. We’ve made it. We’re going to make it.
We stumble into the plane and immediately, rather than welcome us on, the staff hurry to get some water for us. They must have known about the delay and can see we’re at the end of some kind of ordeal. So can the other passengers. The plane is full, and as we walk/hobble through it, red faced, hyper ventilating, and melting in sweat, people look up with faces of some kind of respectful amusement. Some even nudge their traveling partners to alert them to turn and look at what’s just been tossed onto the plane. But we don’t care about any of that. We’ve made it. Impossibly, improbably, unfathomably made it. Now we can crash – yes, unfortunate adjective but I’m starting to run out here – into our seats and relax for the first time since we were a couple of hours away from Miami and wondering if we had any chance of catching the next plane.
Well, here we are. Next stop Mexico City. In three and a half hours. In Europe, I’ve generally considered that quite a long flight time; London to Madrid is only two and a half hours. And you can even be in Moscow from London in less than four hours. In the context of today, and considering what we’ve just been through, even that feels like a puddle hop. Not to mention that it takes us just about half that time to cool off and calm down.
And breathe.
I am in no way prepared for my first sight of Mexico City. We’re coming in at night, but the whole panorama below us is revealed in a kind of all across the city light so we are able to actually see all the individual buildings. Apparently millions and millions of them. I’ve never seen anything remotely like it. An ocean of city. Of houses and roofs. And with absolutely no apparent order whatsoever. It’s like some giant has scooped up a whole load of sand, although each grain of sand here is a house, and has just thrown it over a whole landscape. And has just kept going until the whole thing was filled up. All we can see as far as we look as we come in is more and more roofs and houses. And when there are skyscrapers, they seem to stand alone and survey, while regarding each other knowingly at the same time. All I can think is, where would you even begin with a place like this? Luckily we don’t have to think about that. We really have already begun. Our friend Richard is down there waiting for us and he has a pretty decent itinerary of gigs ready for us to play. We are here until November 17. Almost three weeks. And he’s assured us that more could be added to the list along the way.
And there he is as soon as we head out into arrivals, and it’s an emotional reunion and we can’t thank him enough for being here and for getting this whole ball rolling.
Just a quick recap. Like we told the security guard back in Miami, we did indeed meet Richard in a random bar in London. After we’d had a gig blow out on us in Camden and so just wandered the streets for a while to go get a drink somewhere. We just happened to venture into the same place he and his band, Los Ekis, were decamping to after their own gig that night – their first of three dates in London on their European tour. We got talking to all of them, then when we discovered they were staying nearby, invited them to our place for breakfast the next day. This led to a bit of a weekend hangout which saw us show them round some London sights before catching their Camden gig. Then the next night, they came to a gig we had. During a hangout after this – in The Hawley Arms – Richard said that if we could get ourselves to Mexico he would love to help us with getting some gigs. That was in May. And now, here we are.
A little bit more on this. The Hawley Arms is a legendary Camden bar and even stands out in this London town which is full of legendary bars. It was one of Amy Winehouse’s favourite places, and is also where all the stuff happened which inspired the hit TV show Baby Reindeer. Yep. Writer and star of that show Richard Gad did indeed work here and upstairs in the venue there is a signed picture of him on the wall.
Now, we know how we happened across this bar that particular night. What we didn’t know until this Mexico trip is how Los Ekis ended up there at the same time. We learn about this quite later on, but I think we can visit it now. After playing a few European shows, the boys had played their first London show that night in Battersea, actually in The Magic Garden, a wonderful bar and music venue in south London I’ve played at and been to a few times myself. They just happened to be staying in Camden, or rather, possibly just just outside Camden down Kentish Town Road, at about the place Camden morphs into Kentish Town. Anyway, they were staying there in a rented apartment. They’d finished their gig, got the tube back to Camden and then were automatically walking back to their apartment, all still dressed in their red Mexican stage outfits. Just as they were about to arrive at their apartment, Richard suddenly realised something and said a variation of, ‘Guys, what are we doing? We’re in London, we’ve just played a gig, and now we’re just going back to our place. We have to at least have a drink here somewhere.’ Everyone immediately agreed he had a very good point and they turned around and started walking back towards Camden. The first pub as you make that walk back from that uncertain area of Camden/Kentish Town is Quinns. Which is where we were at that very moment. As we had supposed to be playing a gig that night, we just happened to have our guitar on us, and when a whole bunch of Mexican musicians walked in, all dressed in red Mexican gear, and head for the bar, of course they’re going to talk to the girl sitting there who happens to also have a guitar. I myself had wandered off to the downstairs toilets at that time so Maja was sitting on her own. And this is how Richard, at the head of the group, turned to her and said something like, how do we order here, and what is good to drink? Maja, as you would expect, dove straight into helping them out. Which meant that when I returned into what had been a quiet bar a few minutes earlier, I discovered Maja in the centre of a huge group of Mexican guys. With that, this whole adventure began.
And here we are now in Richard’s car about to leave Mexico City airport and head into a packed gigging itinerary. It’s a quick first Mexico selfie together and we’re off. As we’re meandering our way through the airport my phone pings. It’s from a guy called Dario who’s with a Mexico City radio station called Real Musika. Damn. We haven’t even left the airport and I’m doing my first PR job task as I reply to him from the car and let him know that we have just landed and yes, we are in Mexico. Now we can chill for a while, chat around with Richard, a lot of which involves filling him in on the Miami adventure, and take in the dark surroundings of Mexico City.
It’s something like near midnight Mexico time when we arrive in Richard’s lovely looking neighbourhood and he leads us to his wonderful apartment where we are shown what will be our room for the trip. It’s perfect, time for bed, and it is exactly 23 hours since we left our own place back in Camden.
