San Pancho Vida

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!

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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.

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