For this Excellent Adventure, Allen and Travis and I boarded the Metrobus in Colonia Condesa southbound down Avenida Insurgentes for a forty-five minute bus ride followed by a ten-minute taxi ride. We had two destinations this day. The first would be a morning visit to Museo Dolores Olmedo, a gorgeous old hacienda-turned-museum where we spent the morning wandering the grounds and seeing some of the late Señora Olmedo's personal collection of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
We looked at the art (she collected a number of amazing pieces), watched the peacocks and the Xoloitzcuintles (a 3000-year-old breed of Mexican dog), and poked through the excellent gift shop which is apparently subsidized by Olmedo's family, as the prices were tantalizingly low. After we'd had our fill, a kind and friendly security guard tucked us in to another cab for our rendezvous with friends at the famed canals of Xochimilco.
These remaining canals are all that are left of the waterways that once linked and laced all of the area now known as Ciudad de México. In 1519, when Cortés and his Roman Catholic conquerors arrived in what they called New Spain, they described the great Aztec city of Tenochtitlán as built entirely on lake islands connected to the mainland by long causeways. Canals were the city's streets, people and goods moving about by canoe.
"All about us we saw cities and villages built in the water, their great towers and buildings of masonry rising out of it… When I beheld the scenes around me I thought within myself, this was the garden of the world. And of all the wonders I beheld that day, nothing now remains. All is overthrown and lost." Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain.
Over time (pretty darn quickly, actually), as the Spaniards eradicated existing communities and constructed their new city, they began to drain and fill the extensive system of shallow lakes and canals. This practice became the new normal, until, five centuries later, only a tiny part of what was yet exists.
And yet, Bernal, it exists.
Once the agricultural center for all of the Valley of México, where produce was grown and canoed into markets in the city, Xochimilco now boasts a different type of commerce: the tourist trade. As with so many treasured sites of long ago, it only continues to flourish because people care to be there. And not only visitors from afar...
...like these nuns from France. The people of México, too, come by carload and busload...and boatload.
Our cab driver, who apparently had something else to do, dropped us blocks away from our designated meeting place. The narrow streets of Xochimilco were crammed with people, booths, and rides being set up for a street fair. We hoofed our way to Embarcadero Salitre, one of nine docks from which the wonderful boats called trajineras depart.
We found our party already aboard the flat wooden barge, the trajinera that would be our mobile home for the afternoon. Along with a dozen other similar boats (all modeled after ancient Nahuatl boats called acallis, "water houses"), it was packed snugly into a tiny water cul de sac with no apparent escape route.
Our trajinero Jorge picked up his long pole, and with the help of his compatriots, bumped and maneuvered us out of the tight slip and into the main canal.
And what sights awaited us there! Trajineras entered the canal from every direction, all full of happy groups out for a Sunday float. Slipping among and between them, the vendors of every possible need, from cerveza to flowers, from toys to candy apples, from music to more music!
Thanks to Cristina and Judy, our organizers and cat-herders, we were in need of very little from the vendors. Our boat was stocked with beer, tequila, mezcal and soft drinks left over from their wedding two nights before. (¡Felicidades!) Cristina had also arranged a stopover at a brilliantly conceived canal-side business which supplied us with delicious pork carnitas and all the trimmings, including plates and salsas, to go.
The food even came with a blessing.
No more for us to do then besides float and eat and visit and drink and watch.
We were joined by our own private marimba band for an hour or so, who tied right up to our trajinera and drifted along with us. There was some dancing.
And some dog watching.
Flower nurseries line much of the canal, perhaps remnants of thousand-year-old chinampas, invented by pre-Hispanic locals as a way to grow their crops in the middle of a lake.
These resourceful people built rafts of the indigenous juniper, heaped them with mud and soil, and planted their crops. Over the years, as the rafts sank and were augmented with more layers, they became islands of agriculture, and the lake became canals. Thus the Xochimilcas, the first of the seven Nahua tribes to settle in the Valley of México, were the providers of corn, beans, chiles, squash, fruits and flowers to the surrounding communities.
The remaining chinampas and canals of Xochimilco are now a World Heritage Site, although in danger of losing this designation due to urbanization and massive illegal settlement and its resulting pollution.
Oh, well. On we floated. Until we didn't.
It seems even in the canals of México City there is gridlock! Much nicer here than in a horn-blaring taxi, though. What could we do?
Ken decided to scamper across the boat decks, now as closely packed as floor tiles, and take the bubble blowing machine over to visit some neighbors. It would be a gross understatement to say he was well received.
Then we whiled away some time hiring a few songs from a family mariachi band who appeared beside us in the throng.
Eventually, as the clouds began to darken and the wind to freshen, Jorge negotiated with his fellow trajineros a path into open waters, turned us about and headed us back toward the embarcadero.
We stopped to drop off the dirty dishes and use the facilities again. Beer, you know. (There are several spots along the way to tie up and pay a few pesos for a baño, thank the Aztec goddesses...)
Then, with a song in our hearts and faces full of smiles, we drifted happily (very happily, in some cases) back to our home embarcadero, where we bid a fond farewell to our good companions, thanking them from the bottoms of our hearts for a beautiful day on the canals of Xochimilco.
♥
If any of this made you hungry for Mexican food, may I direct you to the fabulous website of the same Cristina who found for us the onboard carnitas?
Cristina's Website -- Mexico Cooks!
And here's another that has nothing much to do with this post but is just really really cool:
what a wonderful place to discover.... I had not heard of this little water explosion until your blog.. The colours truly are incredible, and the life on the canal seems a world all of its own... wouldn't it be fun to kayak these waters.... WOW!
Posted by: Gretchen | August 09, 2011 at 12:47 PM
Candice,
The first thing I did this morning was indulge myself in this delicious feast of color and culture. Your blog is starting to be an addiction to me!
Hugs!
S
Posted by: Sheri | August 05, 2011 at 06:35 PM
What fun! Gorgeous photos too! I would have loved to be there!
Posted by: Jeanne | August 05, 2011 at 01:42 PM
Great blog post about what sounds like such a wonderful day. We've cruised around Xochimilco one afternoon, but it sounds like you had a livelier time than we did!
I live in Mazatlán, (we are also from Seattle) and are friends with Cristina and Judy too! I have to thank Cristina for tweeting about your post.
Posted by: Nancy | August 05, 2011 at 07:39 AM