Mexico CIty Week 2

Too Much for Two Weeks
Mexico City Week 2

Let me first say that I believe whole-heartedly that Mexico City has received a bad reputation from everyone that’s ever given us advice about traveling here. The police kept everything organized even with all of the protesting and craziness that went on. The people we had interactions with were very kind and helpful and we did not feel threatened once. Everyone else went about their own business. Being the huge city that it is, everyone has big city blinders on.

We were pretty tired from all of the hiking in our first week here. I would venture to say that we walked at least 5 miles each day, which was a lot after laying around for several weeks in Irapuato not doing much physically. However, we were definitely ready in week two to pick up the pace, especially since we had found our Starbucks energy source, and we still had so much to see it was mind-boggling.

First we visited the area in Mexico City called Zona Rosa. It was one of the most open minded, relaxed, friendly places we visited—very cool and hip with tons of bars, sex shops, and several happenin’ gay clubs.

Another area we visited a couple of different times was called Condessa. We visited an amazing museum (based on a Frank Lloyd Wright design) that had some of the best paintings and drawings I have ever seen in my life. We also ate at a T.G.I Friday’s (had an amaaaazing mudslide frozen drink – It’s amazingly hard to find good frozen drinks here), visited several Starbucks, and a mansion where I enjoyed the best mojito I have ever drank. It was, by far, the most rich and snooty area we visited in Mexico City. It was strikingly obvious how many more white people there were in the rich neighborhood.

We visited the ancient Aztecan ruins in the middle of the main part of the city called “Templo Mayor”, what used to be the principle pyramid and worshipping ground for the original people that came here hundreds of years ago. The Spanish as said repeatedly before destroyed all they could and it ended up being turned into a garbage dump until the early part of the 20^th century when an archaeologist excavated the site and unearthed some amazing treasures and history. It’s not much to look at now but the history behind it is intriguing and sad, as is the case with all other indigineous people around the world. But these people apparently gave Mr. Cortez a hell of a bloody fight. Here is a picture of me taming a wild jaguar that was patrolling the museum:
More museums and more museums… There are apparently one hundred and fifty museums in the city. There is a friggin museum for everything. Not counting the ones I’ve named in other posts, we’ve visited the Da Vinci museum, the Modern Art Museum, the anthropology museum, the Diego Rivera museum, the history of dentistry museum, and the “some dude collected a bunch of 15, 16, 17, and 18^thcentury junk” museum. I’m sure I missed naming a few.

The Da Vinci museum was pretty cool with all of the inventions he created, mostly for war, but a lot for mass production, lifting, general physics… cool stuff.

The dental museum had a recreated dental office from two hundred years ago. Amazingly most of the instruments looked exactly like they do in today’s dental offices except for a few that looked like Abu-garhib torture devices.

The Diego Rivera museum basically just had a big mural he painted in it – I think his most revered. It’s a great mural I have to admit.
The Modern Art museum was I think the most impressive museum of them all – some amazing paintings of all the Mexican muralists and other contemporary artist’s work that were jaw-droppingly great (my second favorite museum overall). There was very little if any of the “cover your body in paint and roll around of a canvas on the floor” art and that you’d expect to see in a modern art museum.

The museum of anthropology was humongous and overwhelming but well worth a visit if someone is never going to visit any of the ancient ruins like we are. They do have they remains of the cave person called “Lucy” though – several million years old, which is pretty cool. There is also a statue from thousands of years ago that looks like a not so distant relative of GW:

We of course took a day trip to see the pyramids of Teotihuacan. The views were spectacular and the miles of hiking in the scorching sun were well worth it. Melanie climbed a little pyramid but I couldn’t convince her to climb the big mama. This is her from my view at the top. Here’s another view from the top. I really love climbing these pyramids! They’re really steep and really tall and definitely will make your legs a little shaky and your heart race. I actually saw a few eighty year olds clutching their chests and gasping for air about halfway up – probably best to attempt when you’re young. If you think of it like any other staircase you’ve ever climbed it’s really no big deal (other than being hundreds of feet in the air). The key is to not look more than one step ahead than the one your stepping to, down or up. It kind of translates, at least for me, to life in general.

We spent more time in the park. Here’s a great pic of Melanie: Isn’t she beautiful?

One of the last things we did here was to go to the Basillica de Guadalupe. Thousands of people from around the world make pilgrimages there to see a picture on a wall. It’s a long story behind why and I won’t get into it, however, it is my mother’s patron saint and I went to check it out for her and to get her a religious souvenier. Here’s a little taste of what it was like... total religious madness:

The last thing I want to say about our time in Mexico City is about the hotel we were staying in: “Casa de los Gringos”. I call it that because everyone there spoke English and were from the states (mostly west coast hippies from Washington or California). There was something really annoying to be in the heart of historic Mexico and be surrounded by English speaking dirty hippies – I would, however, highly recommend it to anyone from Santa Cruz wanting to visit Mexico City. There was also no sound buffering and our room was right next to the bathrooms. We had the pleasure of hearing every loose stool, vomit, fart, burp, snort, sploosh, and splash amplified in stereo. We felt lucky if anyone flushed anything (thanks for conserving all the water hippies) and forget about anyone making an effort to conceal up their doo doo covered t.p. that they’ve thrown in the garbage. I also had a couple of different (non-important) items stolen from various places around the hotel. I’m so ready to leave this place – communal living is the pits. There was one guy from Somalia that we had some very interesting conversations about world politics with.

I left a few things out considering the amount of adventures we packed into the relatively short time here in Mexico City. We truly had a blast here though and I can’t overstate how wrong everyone was that said we would have problems here or would not enjoy ourselves. The food overall was good and cheap. The hotel, although as stated had it’s disadvantages, but was dirt cheap. The public transportation was amazing and the cheapest in the world. We apparently chose a good time to be here. There was apparently a mass exodus of people during these past two weeks for spring break and holy week, although it still seemed like a lot of people to me, it usually is much more crowded.

Well it’s on to San Cristobal, the city named after me, in the next couple of days. It will be a long bus ride – hopefully they play a couple of good movies. We will be seeing more pyramids and ruins at Palenque (so excited we’ll get to see monkeys and climb more pyramids!). I will write more soon. Thanks for traveling along with me.