Otros Gringos

To my surprise, there weren't many foreign tourists in Mexico, especially in DF; most of the tourists were other Mexicans checking out there own country. I imagine in the coastal cities/areas (Cozumel, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas, etc), this is different, since those areas often cater to Americans from North of the Border or Spring Break students. Every once in a while you would see another gringo wandering around, but it seemed like they were few and far between.

[For the most part, Mexicans were pretty dark and short, due to their ancestry of Mayans, Aztecs, Zapotecs, etc, so most gringos stood out like sore thumbs; I was often the tallest person around and Kimberly was almost always the whitest person around. There is some Spanish blood in Mexico, which resulted in some additional height and lightening of skin, but it was a lot less than I suspected before arriving.]

Then we arrived in Oaxaca, and all of a sudden, we were surrounded by gringos. Everywhere: in the restaurants, at museums, in the markets. You name it, gringos were there. But the interesting thing is that barely any of them were USA-ers. I would say 90% of them were French. The other 10% were German or Dutch or English. I suppose that July is vacation month in France, so a lot of French are traveling, but it was pretty amazing seeing some fancy dressed people sitting in the cafes, smoking their cigarettes all French-cool like.

I'm not sure what the point of this post is. I just thought the number of French in Oaxaca was impressive, as was the lack of USA-ers traveling in some of the most culturally interesting cities of Mexico, our closest neighbor (tied with Canada). I would write it off as a microcosm of the traveling attitudes of Europeans vs Americans, but I know there are lots of Europeans that are xenophobic, so I'm not sure this fully explains it.

I guess to sum it up, I think more USA-ers should travel to Mexico since it's close, friendly, has good food, and is packed with interesting history.