In the Zocalo in Mexico city is the largest flag in the world. And the square in which the flag was flown was larger than any public space I had seen before.

Jason bought a coke in a glass bottle, battered and frosted by dozens of uses and reuses. The wide-faced vendor smiled and motioned that no, he couldn’t walk away with it. Taking the bottle from Jason’s hand, he upturned it into a plastic bag, inserted a short straw, then wrapped an elastic band around and around to secure the two together. We continued onward, bag of coke (or coke facsimile) in hand.

Arriving by bus into Acapulco in the dusk, we followed a short older man to a hotel a couple blocks back from the beach. It was cheap in our Canadian dollars, with cool beds like cement. But when Jason got sick a couple days later, we left the roaches and headed for an expensive chain hotel at the beachfront. I remember asking the price, and using my parent’s ’emergency’ credit card to pay for the room while Jason hovered behind me sweating, just waiting for the peace of air-conditioned oblivion in his fevered state.