Xalapa hype-a

Greetings from Xalapa! Which is pronounced ha-LA-pa, and is sometimes spelled Jalapa. This is why you recognize it as the root word for jalapeno peppers. This is apparently the birthplace of jalapeno peppers. My prior experience is limited to saying to the person behind the counter at Subway "No jalapenos please."
Xalapa is only a 2 hour bus ride away from the port city of Veracruz. Distance-wise it´s not far at all. Time-wise it takes 2 hours because the bus is in the right hand lane, or straddling the fog line, in a low gear as we rise from sea level to about 4500 feet.
Veracruz was hot and humid. Xalapa is hot and dry, and in the evening the temperature drops to about 75, and I can put a shirt on over my t-shirt!
One thing I missed in Veracruz was the chance to have late afternoon coffee and a pastry. When the temp is about 85 and humid, a coffee just doesn´t sound very inviting. For that reason, in Veracruz, there were very few cafes and loads of ice cream places. Xalapa is just the opposite. There are a few token ice cream places, but scads of cafes everywhere. Delightful!
Xalapa also offers LOTS of bookstores, loads of newstands and magazine stands. There are tables of books for sale in the halls of the shopping arcades. This makes Xalapa stand out from all the towns I´ve visited on this trip. Xalapa is a university city and it´s possible that there may be a number of people here who read for pleasure.
Xalapa lies in foothills with mountains looming up in the distance. It reminds me of both Guanajuato and Nevada City. Walking around means walking uphill or downhill which is great exercise. The city center consists of narrow one way streets. These streets are jammed with shops, the overwhelming majority of them selling shoes. Why so many shoe stores? I don´t know, but there must be enough shoes in the stores here to fit every man woman and child in Mexico! There are a great number of restaurants. I went to a terrific one yesterday. It offered a buffet with pork, beef and chicken entrees, veggies, salads, soup, and dessert for $3.50. Oh, and a pitcher of guanabana juice thrown in as well! Afterwards, I had to waddle back to the hotel room for a siesta.
The modern outskirts of the city contain the huge mall, Home Depot, Sears, Blockbuster, car dealerships, you name it, all the trappings of globalization. Speaking of globalization, one thing is rather mind-boggling. All over Latin America, there is a huge, as in HUGE, market in black market movie DVD´s and music CD´s. Every little town has stands and stands of movies and music discs copied on the spot and sold for a couple of bucks. I´m not one to lose sleep over Hollywood moguls not making even more money. However, if I had authored a script of some movie, and was entitled to my 2.3 cents (or whatever it is) for each sale, I would be upset by the fact only the US and Europe (I think) are actually paying retail for those DVD´s. Every one else in the world is ripping them off. It does seem kind of funny that you can BUY a black market copy of a DVD for the same price or cheaper than you can rent it from Blockbuster.
Now that I think of it, even in the US, you can download a black market verson of a movie onto your computer. I suspect the Hollywood folks stay up nights trying to think of some way to get around this problem. In the meantime, I´m going to try to find that restaurant I ate in yesterday. Hasta luego!