San Pancho Vida

Enjoying Mexico City: The Art

The art, the art. Where do I start? My experience of the art in Mexico City has been nothing less than sublime.

Here, art is a pride, a passion, a pastime. It is respected and protected. The museums sparkle. Most are beautiful, organized, and a pleasure to wander. They are also cheap, some days free. Many give discounts for Mexican residents and discounts or free passes to “mayores” (people 60 and over), students, and teachers. They are always worth way more than the price of admission.

But the museums aren’t the only venues for viewing art. A simple wander down a side street often reveals surprising treasures. Street art abounds, sometimes political, sometimes religious, other times just because.

Art embellishes buildings

and walls.

That mural two photos above, by the way, decorates the exterior of Teatro Insurgentes, and is made entirely of tiny tiles...by none less than Diego Rivera. Here's a detail:

Art (or sometimes, attempted art) is inside buildings.

The magnificent Tiffany glass ceiling of the Gran Hotel on the Zócalo was installed in 1908.

Whereas this fountain is crafted entirely of ceramic dishes and cups and...well, you figure it out:

Or art is the building itself, as with the Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros.

I've seen art made of ancient clay

of fresh fruit

of beads and wax and a Volkswagon bug.

My head is spinning with the joy of it all.

I've been to Frida's Blue House...

...and stood rapt in her studio.

I visited the Museo de Anthropología...

the Museo de Arte Moderno...

the Museo de Artes Populares...

and the big attic of a great big house (now the Museo de Ciudad de México) where Joaquín Clausell -- political agitator during the era of Porfirio Díaz, writer, attorney to the poor, and México's foremost Impressionist painter, among other things -- painted the walls of his studio for thirty years, mostly just for the fun of it. He's my new hero.

I need to figure out a way to sleep in that room for a night.

Travis almost got arrested there for taking pictures, but don't worry, I saved him.

These four museums are my favorites, and you'll have to bear with me if I need to show you more of them in the coming weeks.

I've used perhaps a tenth of my photos so far. I have other places and things to tell you about: the canals of Xochimilco, the shopping, the witch.

But they'll have to wait. I'll be packing up and returning to San Pancho in a few days, and am looking forward to home and heat and dear friends. From there, I will continue these stories, and will tell you more about Mexico City -- which, for all the rumors and all the sensationalism, is still only a big, progressive, dynamic, normal, real city. And, I'm happy to report, is a mere one hour and five minutes away, nonstop, from the Puerto Vallarta airport.

                                                ☛    ☺    ☚

The paintings in the Museo de Arte Moderno are:

Tarde de Verano [Summer Afternoon] by Helio Montel, 1993

Autorretrato (Múltiple) [Selfportrait (Multiple)] by Juan O'Gorman, 1950

Creación de las Aves [Creation of the Birds] by Remedios Varo, 1957

Naturaleza muerta con sandías [Still Life with Watermelons] by Frida Kahlo, 1953

The photos of the angry dog, Fuente de Trastes [Fountain of Plates], the Polyforum building, Clausell's studio walls, and a couple of the street art shots are by Travis Ashby, 2011

Encountering Mexico City: The Faces

                        ✬✬✬ Special Midweek Edition! ✬✬✬

         (You know I'm being saturated when I publish two times in a week!)

For this special edition, I'm just going to give you some photos I've taken of the people here in Ciudad de México, who I trust you will enjoy meeting as much as I have.

I'll be back Friday with another post!  xo C

 

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Exploring Mexico City: Contrasts

For anyone who has traveled this country, it will not come as a surprise that México is a city of contrasts. Here, though, the contrasts seem exaggerated, edgier: between ancient and new, technology and tradition, wealth and poverty, rustic and sophisticated, chaos and calm.

The noises from our 8th floor apartment in Colonia La Condesa are pure New York City, generously seasoned with the sounds one hears in every small Mexican pueblo.

Horns honk incessantly, sirens bleep and wail, groups of lovely people pass below the apartment terrace, chatting and laughing. Inside and around those sounds are the piercing whistle of the yam seller’s steam chimney, the hand bell of the garbage announcer, the scritches of twig brooms, the Pan-pipe tootle of the knife sharpener on his bicycle.

We have walked miles. The only real danger I've seen is that of being smacked by an impatient driver in a six-way intersection, of which there are many of each. Peaceful cobbled side streets intersect with busier thoroughfares where stop lights are a vague suggestion and two lanes often become four or five as cars and taxis crowd each other for a place in line.

Gridlock is endemic. It's not unusual for a city bus to rush a red light and end up stopped in the middle of the intersection, preventing cross traffic from moving at all, or for an impatient taxi to blare its horn at a police car in front of it that's taking too long to move. I am endlessly entertained by the intersection of Sonora and Amsterdam half a block away, a constant drama of frustration and near accidents.

The busy thoroughfares empty into the "canals" of the city:  grand avenues so wide that their medians encompass entire monument-studded parks. 

The shot above was taken from the upper level of the red Turibus, a double-decker we spent a couple of sunny hours atop, giving me the opportunity to shoot photos around the city and observe the contrasts of Mexico's physical construction.

The city's architecture ranges from pre-Columbian ruins to ultra-modern highrises. Building styles are boundless, from exquisite through horrifyingly bad, from modest to -- and past -- extravagant.

And still there is room for the motley, the eccentric, the artistic.

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So, after all this touring, are you getting hungry? Not a problem. Contrasts abound in the food department, too.

Tiny typical family-run abarrotes, with their stock of candy and chips and sodas and packaged lunchmeats, still exist a block away from OXXO, 7-Eleven, Circle K.  Street vendors sell fruit, hot sweet potatoes, pastries and flan, pushing their carts past well-stocked gourmet grocery stores and wine shops, or setting up business on a street corner.

Want Italian or Lebanese food instead? How about French, Japanese, Catalán, Argentinian, Brazilian, Oaxacan or Yucatecan? Care for a fresh baked croissant, a plate of sushi, a pizza with prosciutto and mushrooms? You can get anything you want at a México restaurant. In the course of five chilly days last week, Travis and I had five different soups: cream of calabacita (squash), cream of spinach with mint, steaming French onion, Azteca, and Yucatecan sopa de limón with fresh lime and shredded chicken.

Lunches in the fancier restaurants often last hours. Businessmen and bankers remove their ties and jackets, order bottles of wine and dine in garrulous groups -- as in this Uruguayan restaurant, which serves grilled meat and sausages and sausages and grilled meat. And chicken.

My personal favorite eateries are the sidewalk cafés, with which I am deliriously in love. Choose the type of food you crave, then sit, drink, and dine while watching the endless parade of singles and couples, workers and deliverers, dogwalkers and jaywalkers.

Should you want a quick nosh, you'll find Burger King, KFC, Wendy's, Chili's, Subway, McDonald's, Baskin Robbins, and nearly as many Starbuck's as there are in Seattle. Also, of course, are the countless taco stands and lunch bars crowded with eaters from morning until late afternoon.

I still have much to tell you about the museums and art, the shopping and neighborhoods and other ingredients of this complicated megalopolis. I still have to show you the Museo de Anthropología and the Museo de Arte Popular which we saw today. Maybe I'll do a midweek post -- you might as well check in and see!

                                          ☀    ☁    ☂    ☀   

Excavating Mexico City, Day One

I left San Pancho late Wednesday morning. Nicole kindly dropped me at the airport, where I had some help waiting for my flight from this funny and talkative little fellow:

The flight on Interjet was a breeze. Friendly, professional people and a quick, smooth hour and ten minute flight on a nice new jet. The airport in Mexico City is smaller, neater, and much more manageable than I expected. Bag came in a jiffy, bought a taxi ticket to Colonia La Condesa (the neighborhood where Travis and I are subletting an apartment), and lucked into Javier, one of the nicest and swiftest taxi drivers ever.

I've been here in Ciudad de Mexico exactly twenty four hours.

I've had a few moments of light-headedness, which could be from the altitude (7350 feet) or could be from the sheer thrill of being in this huge and bustling city.

I just finished downloading the 105 photos I've taken so far. I think I'll keep words to a minimum this week, and instead show you some of the images of this amazing place.

Bienvenidos a México.

A string quartet plays in a coffee house we passed on my introductory walk around the neighborhood Wednesday evening. I'll be back.

A nighttime peek at Parque México, a block away from the apartment...

...and someone's altar, there too. A park caretaker's? We don't know.

Dinner at a sidewalk table at Bistro Mosaico. Two kinds of paté, followed by piping hot French onion soup. Did I tell you it is rainy and chilly here?

A street in Centro Historico, where we spent much of the day Thursday, visiting the Catedral Metropolitana and the Palacio Nacional.

 And you think my doors are big??

Behind the Cathedral, this building caught my eye.

Then to the Palacio Nacional.

Lots of guards keeping watch.

These murals were painted by Diego Rivera between 1929 and 1951.

A lot of people were there, taking photos of each other and Diego's murals and everything else. In honor of the Bicentennial, the Palacio is having an art exhibit that opened in August 2010 and closes at the end of this month. We wandered around taking it in, my camera in hand, of course.

I was just focusing on an old painting of the Cathedral when I heard a sharp "¡Señora!" behind me, in an authoritative male voice. 

"Hmmm," I thought to myself. "I wonder if he means me?"

He did. He frowned severely at me and my camera and motioned for me to follow him. People were looking. I glanced around and spotted Travis over looking at some picture or other.

"Travis!" I called, following the very stern security guard. "I'm being arrested!"

Travis didn't pay much attention at first, thinking I'd said, "I'm going to the restroom," but then he figured it was a little peculiar that I'd be shouting that in the middle of an art exhibit, so he looked and saw me being guided firmly away by a big mean guy in a uniform.

The guard was taking me somewhere. He stopped walking just long enough for me to say, "Do you want to see the pictures? I can delete them." That seemed to sound like an easier plan to him than taking some gringa to who knows what hellhole for questioning, plus I was kind of acting like I didn't really speak much español, so he gave a curt nod.

I popped open the photo I'd just taken, deleted it, then started scrolling the other direction, to the little boy at the top of this post, then the airport, then the taxi driver, then the park, then the cathedral, chatting the whole time. He got bored quick and released me into Travis's custody.

Travis and I got the heck out of there, but nonchalantly.

Here's the photo I took right before the photo he made me delete, because I wanted to show you this juxtaposition of the Catedral Metropolitana in 1850...

...and in 2011.

By the way, nowhere but nowhere did it say you couldn't take pictures in that art exhibit. We looked. Hmmph.

So we decided to go hide out in the Templo Mayor, where they used to do human sacrifices and such.

See the archeologist sitting way in the back there, working away? The figures in the foreground are replicas of the real ones they found in that spot, which are now in the very beautiful Templo Mayor museum.

The Templo Mayor was one of the chief temples of the Aztecs (or the Mexicas, as they called themselves in this part of the world), and is directly beneath the Centro Historico. How's that for ironic?

Good old Cortes had the temple pretty well smashed up in 1521, just after he arrived from Spain. The current excavation of the ruins was inspired in 1978 when electrical workers digging up the street found this disk, which is also in the museum.

Some find, huh? Later, they found this.

And this.

And this, the House of the Eagles. That's all original paint, by the way, which has lasted something like 700 years. They don't make paint like that any more.

Archeologists continue their excavation today.

Okay, gang, that's it for this week. Just want you to know the exploration has begun, that it's wonderful here, and that I'll be thinking of you on my wanders.

Hasta pronto.

                                                ❂    ❂    ❂

 

Seattle to San Pancho: Mexico Border Crossing and the Home Stretch

I'm in San Pancho, having arrived a week ago now, and boy, is it good to be home.

In this Part 2 of our road trip report, my brother Greg has some nominations for the List of Awards, Road Trip to Mexico 2011:

Ugliest Drive: Culiacan to Mazatlán. I second that nomination.   Dry, desolate, unchanging, this was the most boring stretch of road besides parts of the San Joaquin Valley in California, which at least had some big farms to look at. 

Most Aggressive Creepy Vendors Who Approach Your Car at Stoplights: Hermosillo, Sonora. These guys swarm and do not take no for an answer. One reached into the car and put his hand on Greg's wrist and/or bracelet. Keep your windows up and don't pay for any services (such as windshield washing) that you did not give the nod to. Truth is, we'd just as soon avoid Hermosillo altogether from now on.

Best Beer of the Trip: Bohemia Dark at Panchito's after unpacking the car!

Best Travel Partner/Navigatrix: That would be ME! Thanks, Greg.

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So I wanted to tell you a bit more about the Mexico border crossing and general feelings during the drive down. At the advice of Franny and Jack, we stayed at the excellent Holiday Inn Express in Nogales the night before crossing. Having got into the habit of rising early, we left the hotel at 6 a.m. and crossed the border at the truck crossing ten minutes later. There wasn't a soul ahead of us at Aduana. No trucks, no cars. 

But we got the red light.

A group of customs people were sitting on a curb nearby. One of them rose: a woman whose turn it was, apparently. She waved Greg into a bay on the left. She was very polite. She opened the door behind the driver's seat and partially unzipped a suitcase, then another.

"¿Ropa?" she asked me. (Clothes?)

"Sí," I replied. She nodded and shut the door. She walked to the back of the truck and motioned for Greg to join her and open the tailgate. 

Let me just say here that this truck was packed like a 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. There wasn't a gap anywhere. She pulled out a few things and peered into the dark depths of the truck bed, where she noticed Greg's compressor and raised her eyebrows. What is that? she asked in Spanish.

The compressor for my tools, Greg replied. She frowned. Then my smart brother said, "I'm a carpenter, and I'm going to volunteer at the community center and help rebuild a school for the children." (All of this being true except perhaps the part about the school.)

"¿Verdád?!" she said, eyes widening. (True?)

"¡Sí!" he replied. At which point she gestured for him to shut the tailgate, gave a big smile, and waved us on our way.

We high-fived for miles. Or rather, kilometers. If we'd had to unpack that truck we'd still be there.

Next stop, around 20 km down the road, was the car registration place. Big parking lot, still early, nobody ahead of us. Very nice guy in the first building checked, scanned, and stamped my passport and FM3 inside of two minutes. Then Greg's passport, and a quick peek at the car documents. He told us (in perfect English) what to make copies of, one each of Greg's passport, driver's license, vehicle title, and both sides of a car permit form Greg filled out right there with the guy's guidance. 

Out to the next building, the hangout of Copy Guy. Copy Guy was sweet as pie. Greg was schmoozing with him in Spanish, so I went to the bathroom. By the time I returned, all done. 25 pesos, which is a bit over two bucks. Greg, having no pesos yet, gave the guy a U.S. five dollar bill. The guy was so happy he would've come with us to unload the truck in San Pancho if we'd asked him to.

Next, the Banjercito or bank building. There were 12 or 16 windows around the outside of this building, but only one person working...and there was someone ahead of us. How'd he get there? So we waited, maybe ten minutes, for the teller to finish with him.

Now, here's the new situation as of June 11, 2011: you have to pay a bond to import your car for the six month visa period. There's a big poster that tells all the new rules right there, and rather than repeat them all I'm going to link at the end of this post to Rolly who, as always, had it all correct and clear on his website. So we knew what to expect, more or less.

Unfortunately, although the new rules are clear, the poor people who are trying to manifest them seem not to have been supplied with all they need to do their job efficiently. I suspect the software sucks. It took forty minutes to complete the process once Greg reached the window, during which the nice man behind the window dealt with Montezuma-only-knows what kinds of glitches and difficulties. Several times he'd be typing away, very well and quickly according to Greg, then push "Save" or whatever and groan in dismay, at which time he'd leave his window and go into some office and do something and come back, then go over to the printer, then come back, then type some more, then groan some more....you get the picture.

He was unfailingly polite. At the end of all this, Greg had put 4200 pesos as his bond on his debit card, which is fully refundable upon exiting with the vehicle before the six month visa period expires. In addition, he paid 258 pesos for his FMM, or tourist visa. The nice man gave him his windshield sticker and told him where to apply it. Then back to the first nice guy, who rapidly stamped and processed whatever form Greg brought him from the bank window, then carefully demonstrated again how to apply the sticker. 

Greg exchanged a few U.S. dollars at the exchange window and we were on our way.

Now, remember: this is just after 6 a.m. and there was nobody ahead of us. We were there one hour. My advice (at least until and unless these glitches are worked out, haha) is to get to the border EARLY in the morning unless you have a great love of standing in line and waiting.

I have no pictures of any of this. They don't even let you use your cellphone in this complex, and I figured a camera might not be appreciated.

As for the travel itself, at no time did we feel threatened in any way in either country. In Mexico, we passed a few federal police checkpoints, but they were uninterested in us. We also passed several convoys of military and were told that the military has stepped up patrols, especially in the Culiacán-Mazatlán area. We did not drive at night, and we used all the common sense we could muster between us.

Thursday evening, in Mazatlán, we went to dinner in the old part of town with Rena and Jeff. Plazuela Machala, restored and sparkling and ringed with sidewalk restaurants, reminded me of a tiny Oaxaca.

Near the Plazuela is the old opera house, the Teatro Angela Peralta, also beautifully restored and with a busy performance schedule.

The next morning we said goodbye to our fine hosts and began our final day of driving. After a while, we reached the outskirts of green jungle.

Due to an interesting series of delays, false starts, and coincidi, we were able to have lunch in San Blas with San Pancho friends Judith and Jesse. Greg and I had left Mazatlán at 7:45, then wound our way through the local desviación (I love that word -- it means detour), hitting the southbound toll road a bit after 8. Meanwhile, back in San Pancho, Judith and Jesse were finishing their last-second preparations to head north, encountering a few “things that had to be done” (mostly by Jess, or so reported Judith on our several emails and phone calls that morning). We were hoping to meet somewhere on the road for a farewell hug. 

The cuota from Mazatlán is mostly divided highway. Greg and I sped along. Had we passed Jesse and Judith there, going in opposite directions, we may have been able to manage a wave if the northbound and southbound lanes had been near enough at the moment of passing. We didn’t. But as we made our turn-off toward San Blas, Judith called. They arrived at the little country intersection leading into the fishing village two and a half minutes before us, so we followed them in and had a delicious lunch of grilled marlin and shrimp.

After lunch, we went our separate directions. And yes, we got our hugs.

That was my first visit to San Blas. I plan to return for the crocodile/bird tour and to explore some more. The road from San Blas through Zacualpan to Las Varas was sweet. One of these days you'll read about it all right here.

Greg and I arrived in San Pancho at 3:20. Deducting our longish lunch stop and a one hour time change, our trip from Mazatlán took five and a half hours.

Do email or send a comment if you have any questions about the trip. I'd be happy to answer them.

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Rolly's Vehicle Permit Page 

 

P.S. I still post every Friday, one way or the other. You can subscribe to San Pancho Vida using the RSS feed over there at the bottom of the left column ("Subscribe to this blog's feed"), so you don't miss any Road Trips...or the stories from my upcoming two-plus weeks in Mexico City!