Soccer mania hits Mexico within a few hours with the first match of Mexico against South Africa in the FIFA 2010 World Cup, wich gets played every 4 years.
Now why does the US call the game soccer instead of football as the rest of the world? Apparently at the end of the 19th century when rules were formulated for the game, it was called Association Football which morphed into senseless soccer because of "association". Assball would have been better.
The Mexican Immigration service has changed the rules again, and managed to create a website where you cannot find anything. Most novel seems to be electronic transmittal of visa applications and extensions.
http://setram.inami.gob.mx:8080/solicitudes-web/estancia.html .
Most curious is the apparent inability to solicit Mexican citizenship unless you were adopted, or a dozen other ways, except for actually living in Mexico for x number of years.
Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM) in English
I'll be tryng out the new system in a few months and have started saving my pesos for what I know will be 2 trips to Veracruz City again.
If you think Arizona has gone batty with its new laws, you ought to sympathize with Guatemala and El Salvador, which recently opened consulates in nearby Acayucan, because of the thousands of its citizens getting arrested, mistreated and killed while on their way from the southern to the northern Mexican border.
Local politicians vying for posts in the July elections, are falling all over themselves promising new tollroads criss crossing Los Tuxtlas. Stop by next decade and see whether anything was built, or you could land at the Catemaco International Airport.
It´s hotter than hades here now, and if a little rain doesn´t show up soon, I'll be running out of sweat, especially since my bimonthly electric bill just climbed to 3500 pesos (without AC!)
My well is running dry, and I slave to keep my plants moist, but apparently mother nature has more resources. This is flowering time in Los Tuxtlas, and great majestic trees dripping red, yellow or blue are everywhere.
The gringopagadoble effect is still going strong. Insuring a car in Mexico, with US plates, costs about 1000 pesos more than the same car with Mexican plates.
I've been doing my annual sightseeing of most of Los Tuxtlas in the last few weeks, because although it is unbearably hot, the sunshine and absence of rain makes for great photos. Most notable is the fertility rate of those damn topes that are reproducing geometrically. And of course the miserable maintenance of all but the main highway.
Surprisingly many "few rooms" hotelitos and isolated rental cabañas have sprung up in out of the way places.
Catemaco City will have two sort of "new" hotels this year. One is a nicely remodeled former fleabag, and the other the 4 story Posada Catemaco which has been building for more than 6 years. Both are a few blocks north of the central park.
The Catemaco Brujos have been getting some bad press lately. Apparently the Mexican Supreme Court ruled than brujos can be sued for malpractice. I imagine that all those justices will be experiencing serious problems in the near future.
