We arrived in the historical center’s plaza “Zócalo” and found out that sept 29th is the national day for corn! Quite a celebration with folkloric dances and lots of corn based food of course 😋
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I first met Carolina 15 years back at the Alliance Française in Paris. She left for Mexico 5 years back and I’m thrilled to meet her in her hometown! It was the national festival of corn with major festivities in the historic centre. We’ve been stuffing ourselves with various derivatives of corn 🌽 It also happens to be “pay day”. Every 15th and 30th is payday and a lot of people line up at bank ATMs. The city is a bit run down but it’s clean and the people are extremely kind and polite. They use Spanish words and phrases which are very mellow as compared to Spaniards. Carolina thinks that it could be a result of their colonial past where locals were encouraged to be servile.
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L’immense temple du soleil! -
Dog walking seems to be a very popular profession in our neighborhood of Condesa!
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We landed in a small apartment in the area of Condesa. Then we met with Mary’s long time friend Carolina.
Here are few random snaps as we started exploring the city.
La Bastille ?! El Angel is the monument of independence 
Another Paris look alike at the Bellas Artes station 
Electric wires sometimes resemble those in India 
Avenue Paseo de la Reforma seen from the castle of Chapultepec 
Leo on the terrace of Chapultepec castle 
Carolina hasn’t changed one bit 🙂 
Leo imitating the Joker’s attitude 
Joker face and tacos! 
Mariachis 
Instagram is the new black! 
Coco water 😋 
The lone violinist 
A police officer 
Bigspin tre-flip by a talented local 
Stretching exercise in the park 
A street artist jumps over a few volunteers 
Mary is invited to dance 💃🏽 
Some murals 
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That’s about 2 thousand kms more than the total width of the USA, that we drove in 15 days!
Our tour of the great south west ended with a very cosy week end near Lake Tahoe, in an exquisite country house lent to us by our friends ❤️
We bathed in the lake and Leo learned to stand on a paddle board.
After this relaxing bit, we returned to SF where we could spend one last evening with my cousins Abhishek and Abhinav. We had a great time cooking pesto sauce and tiramisu while drinking some cognac 😋
We only slept for a few hours and at dawn we left for the airport to our next destination : Mexico city ✈️
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We ended our US trip in Lake Tahoe in a stunning house belonging to friends and went back to SF for one last night with the Panday family before hitting the road. Mexico here we come!
Lake Tahoe 
Léo learnt to ride a paddle board -
The last leg of the trip from Grand Canyon back up to Lake Tahoe is 12hrs by car, so we’ve split it in two and slept in motel at the entrance of Death Valley: “El Portal Motel” in Beatty, NV.
If it’s not a bit shady and you don’t fear that some Tarantino character will come to shoot everyone, you’re not having a proper motel experience. Ours was perfect! 🙂
Oh and on the way to the motel, I had to stop for coffee and took the first random exit, only to end up in a historical café on famous route 66!
Of course that road into Death Valley was closed again, so we could only see a little ghost town near the entrance. That and some old gold mining heritage towns.
Route 66 
Dead chicken! 
The road to Death Valley in early morning light 
Joshua tree 
Joshua tree 
The ghost town 
The bottle house 
The ghosts of the town! 
Some modern art outside the ghost town 
Outside the saloon -
After a detour at the horseshoe bend we arrived at the site of the grand canyon on a rainy day. Luckily, it stopped raining the next day and we went out on a trail under cloudy skies. Everything is so huge that we looked like tiny specks floating around. I can understand why the Americans think BIG!
It was 5 or 6 degrees Celsius last night and it was coooold in the tent. We put on all the warm clothes we had. Glad to be on the road 😊 We’ll be in a motel tonight and that means I can have a good shower 🚿
My chair rocks 
Spot the condor eagles 🦅 
The mules on the canyon leave behind fragrant souvenirs 
🎵🎶 Get your kicks on route 66 🎶🎵 -
Americans lOove their superlatives and everything big in the US has to be the biggest thing on earth!
But every time I travel across this immense country, I feel that I understand a bit better their relation to space and size. Americans think big and everything is huge, just because there is plenty of space.
For instance, similarly to the way we travel with one big backpack, and a day-pack for our day hikes, Americans often travel with a gigantic RV, to which they attach a day-car for their day rides!
Now I’ll just use this post to dump a few random clichés that I collected on the way 🙂
No guns allowed in the Grand Canyon museum of geology, I’m glad! 
The day-car 
I stand for the flag and kneel for the cross
Raahi - A traveling family 