Mexico City 11/17/07-11/27/07

I Recently visited an interesting city--see if you can guess which one:

• I was in a Wal-mart packed with Mexicans. (No, I was not back in Mountain View.)
• While walking down the street, I found myself in the middle of a hundred or more nude protesters wearing nothing but a picture of the president covering their goodies. (No, I was not back in San Francisco.)
• I wandered through a mall that was totally devoted to all things Jesus. (If you need a reliquary, I know where you can get one.)
• A few blocks away, I ran into another mall that was devoted to all things sexual.
• I went to a subway station to see a miracle--a piece of concrete with a water stain in the image of the Virgin Mary. (It had to be removed from the subway and placed outside in a little shrine because thousands of people were clogging the metro station to see it.)

If you guessed Mexico City, you are correct. If you did not guess Mexico City, you have problems--I gave you the answer in the title of the post.

I have gotten some feedback on previous blog entries. One was essentially, "Be more narrative." Another was, "Tell us more about your motivations rather than just what you did and saw."

So, here is some of my motivation for going to Mexico City: First of all, it is the second largest city (metro area, aglomeration, whatever you want to call it) in the world after Tokyo. That in itself made it interesting. On top of this, it has a reputation for a vibrant cultural scene. It also has many historical buildings, (some ancient,) varied neighborhoods, and is the melting pot of Mexico. Admittedly, one of the major factors was that Mexico City was on my travel route anyway.

Mexico City has some downsides, most notably, its famous crime rate. I was a bit intimidated by the city.

My bus ride to Mexico City from Guanajuato was uneventful. Upon arriving, I had the option of taking the metro (subway) to my hotel or taking a cab. Given the city's reputation for crime, I decided to take a taxi rather than the metro.

I was pleasantly surprised by my hotel (Hotel Rioja)--it was right in the center of the historic district, was quite nice, and was only US$20. However, when I took my first walk around the historic district, I was disappointed. I guess I had an image derived from guide books and other cities in Mexico. The buildings here were not as grand as I expected, everything seemed dingy from years of pollution, and things seemed kind of dead.

The fact that things were dead could partially be explained because it was a Mexican holiday weekend. Lots of people were out of town. When I went out that first evening to find something to eat, I was really creeped out. The streets around my hotel were practically empty. Before turning down a street, I had to make sure that there were other people walking down it as well. For the center of the second largest city in the world, it was like a tomb. I was not getting a good first impression of the city. I was later told that that part of town was not generally very lively after dark. It did get much better later in the week. The empty streets were somewhat mitigated by the fact that there were police at practically every corner. (It is the heart of tourism for the city, after all.)

The metro in Mexico City is great. For 2 pesos (about US$0.20) you can get to most places in the city.

I met several people in Mexico City and became friends with couple of them. First was Jorge. Jorge is a 37 year old professional who is very helpful, very open to suggestions, and very stable. Jorge did the most to show me around town. We spent a Sunday afternoon having lunch in the upscale yuppie neighborhood of Condesa, and then we went to the quaint old neighborhood of Coyoacan. From there he drove me to the new financial district in the Sante Fe neighborhood. This consisted of a few skyscrapers and very little else. There were some condos which are apparently exhorbitantly expensive. We made a bathroom stop at the mall there. It was large and very upscale--think Prada, Coach, etc. We ended the Mexico City tour in Zona Rosa, which is simultaneously upscale and kinda sleazy.

Jorge and I ended up having several meals together throughout the week. One was at a Thai/Vietnamese/Malaysian restaurant in the Condesa. It was OK, but I did not recognize most of the things on the menu. The food was fine, but not as I would have expected. And it cost 4 times as much as the same food in the US. Food is not particularly cheap here. It was at this restaurant, where we discussed foreign food and some travels, that Jorge made the statement that I have heard a few times in my travels: "You are not like other Americans." I asked him how so, but the only thing that came across clearly was that I liked trying different things.

The other person I hung around with a lot was Julio. Julio is a very independent, but very responsible and decisive, 29-year-old who is self-employed as an event planner. (He is currently arranging corporate sponsorship for a rock concert.) One night, he decided to show me one of the bars near my place--the Oasis. When we walked in, he stopped in his tracks. We were easily the youngest people there. We decided to stay anyway and had a couple of beers and chatted. We left there just after midnight (he had just turned 29 at midnight) and walked to Plaza Garibaldi, which I had not yet seen. We were surprised to see the place packed after midnight on a Thursday. There was a mariachi band on the stage and tons of people and vendors around. I had forgotten that there was a music festival in town this week.

The following Saturday, Julio, two of his friends, and I went to the dance club Living. When we got there, the guy at the door asked for my ID. I did not have one. When I am at home, I never go anywhere without ID, so I never have to think about it. When I am traveling in other countries, no one ever asks for ID, so the fact that I leave my ID locked up in my hotel room is not usually an issue. The guy at the door decided it was an issue. Julio suggested that we go to another club, to the visible disappointment of the other two. Instead, I told them to go inside and I would take a taxi to my hotel and get some ID and come back. Fortunately, I did my homework before they picked me up and I knew that there was a taxi stand right next to the club. I got a taxi, went to my hotel, got my ID, came back, and rejoined them. I managed to make my requirements clear to the taxi driver in Spanish.

At this point, I should say a few things about taxis in Mexico City. You know how I had that post about how I hate taxis? The taxis in Mexico City are so bad that even locals are wary of them. Taxis are one of the more dangerous things in Mexico City. Taxi drivers are involved in robberies and kidnappings on a regular basis. I only felt comfortable taking the taxi from the bus station and the nightclub because they were "sitio" taxis--that is, the taxis were associated with the taxi stand. The trips made by these taxis are recorded and dispatched through the stand. The prices are fixed, so there are no "scenic drives" to run up the meter. These are much safer than hailing a taxi on the street. When I recounted my tale of taking the taxi from the club to Jorge, he was impressed--both by the fact that in my limited Spanish I managed to communicate with the driver what I needed and by the fact that I was so careful about my taxi selection. He recounted a story of how he hailed a taxi in the street which then stopped in a bad neighborhood where the driver's accomplices robbed him. They made him get out of the taxi in this bad neighborhood where another guy immediately tried to rob him, refusing to believe that he had just been robbed already.

Anyway, back to the story. I met the guys in the club. By this time it was probably 1:00am. (They did not pick me up until about midnight.) The club was actually quite nice. It was in an old historic building whose interior had been done in a more modern style with state of the art lights and sound. There was a large main dancefloor with a smaller dancefloor around the corner. There were several smaller side room used for bars and small, casual lounge areas. There were also a few small balcony areas. The place was ludicrously expensive, though. The cover was US$20 and drinks were over US$9. We ended up leaving shortly after 3am.

The day before I left Mexico City, Julio showed me a few more places in the historic district. However, before he got there, I decided to go see the Virgin of the Metro--the miraculous piece of stained concrete I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Well. What can I say? I think I saw the image. It was hard to tell with all of the glare from the plexiglass covering it.

On the way to and from the Virgin viewing, I saw the nude protesters (also mentioned previously) for the second time that week. Fortunately for you, I had my camera this time. The first time I encountered them, I was walking down the street when someone tried to hand me a flyer. This happens all the time everywhere in the world, and my response is always the same--a shake of the head and I move on. I just do not want to carry around extra paper or fill up a trash can, particularly if I probably will not understand what is on the paper anyway. However, in this case, after shaking my head, I looked up and noticed that the woman handing it to me was naked. "That's odd," I thought. Then I saw another woman a few yards away also naked and handing out flyers. And these were not women that you would particularly care to see naked. I had been hearing a drum beat for the past several blocks but thought nothing of it. There was usually some sort of noise-generating event going on downtown. As the drum beat got closer, I noticed a hundred or more naked guys at a major intersection dancing (well, jumping around) to the drum beat. They all had pictures of Mexican President Calderon used as a sort of loin cloth. In order to cross the street, one had to walk through them. Usually, protests have a somber, sometimes menacing tone. Not this one. Most were smiling and dancing. I guess the thing was to make a spectacle and get their message across.

Anyway, I went back to my hotel, Julio showed up, we had lunch and he showed me around the palace a few blocks from my hotel. Inside are many murals by famed Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Julio seemed very knowledgable about the paintings. It was like having my own private docent.

After the palace, we ducked into the lobby of the Hotel Ciudad de Mexico. It was a very nice old building with much wrought iron and a ceiling made of a sort of domed stained glass skylight. Julio mentioned that the hotel was a popular spot for photo shoots. Indeed, on the stairs opposite was a photo shoot in progress. The model was wearing a hat and a trenchcoat. And nothing else. The photographer was capturing all of the man's features, but nothing was visible from the lobby except that he was, indeed, naked.

While we walked around, I mentioned the "Jesus Mall" to him--a moniker which made him laugh--and somehow the subject of the sex mall came up. He was surprised that I knew about it. (Lonely Plantet is a very thorough guide book.) Then he got it into his head that we had to go see it. He had never been there and was curious to see what it was about. After walking way out of our way, he asked directions and found out it was about 2 blocks from where we started. It was nothing very impressive, but it was interestingly non-sleazy in feel. We were actually kind of bored by it.

Later in the day, Julio and I had dinner in the Casa Azul (Blue House) which is an old historic building covered in blue and white tiles. It is now owned by the department store chain Sanborne's. (This chain is owned by the Mexican telecom magnate who is poised to become the richest man in the world.) After dinner, we headed to a well-known all-night churro shop (it was about midnight) for churros and hot chocolate. These are the only items on their menu.

Also, while I was in Mexico City, I took a day trip to the pyramids of Teotihuacan which are an hour outside the city. I will talk about that in a separate blog entry.

Well, I could go on, but I have discovered a salsa stain on my shirt that looks just like the Virgin Mary and I need to contact the Vatican.

P.S. Since Mexico City, I have been to Oaxaca, Tehuantepec, San Cristobal, and am planning to head to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala tomorrow. Eventually, I will catch up on my blogging.