All Roads Lead to the Virgin of Guadalupe

I´ve arrived in Mexico City, home of 10 million people and the worst air pollution in the world. Whoopeee! As an added plus, you´re not supposed to walk out onto the street and hail a taxi here at any time of day because the risk of armed robbery and abduction is too high. As they say in Spanish, ¨Eso es wack.¨

In a couple hours, my buddies Colin and Bryan will fly in and we´ll begin our ten-day journey back into America. But not before we go to a massive-ass religious festival tomorrow. Over a million pilgrims from around the country are converging on the capital to honor Guadalupe, the Mexican version of the Virgin Mary, who apparently magically materialized on someone´s cloak 500 years ago and has been the country´s saint ever since. If you want something, anything, in Mexico you pray to Guadalupe. For the last 200 miles of my bus ride in today, the sides of the highway were lined with people walking and biking with huge framed portraits of Guadalupe tied onto their backs. I seriously must have seen 50,000 people on this one road into Mexico City. Not since freshman year when I dated a woman in the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship have I seen virginity so celebrated.

--rahul