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Published: March 13th 2010
I last left our tale as we were heading towards that metropolis of metropolises, La Ciudad de Mexico, and although it is now almost two weeks since we left that grand place, I have a ‘few’ photos and comments to share… I am writing to you from the coast of Oaxaca on the Southern Mexican coast, but all that in good time.
Mexico City
La Ciudad de Mexico (DF in local speak for federal district) is big - REALLY BIG! We were told our bus would take three hours, and we didn’t believe it as usual. But true enough, after three hours we reached the city limits - then it just took another hour to drive through the rush hour traffic to the bus station. Likewise, when we left the city three days later from the northern bus station to go south we just kept driving and driving through the big valley the city lies in surrounded by mountains that we could only see after several hours of driving through suburbs and sprawling concrete ‘houses’. It just kept going! Well, I suppose 20 million people take up some space. And although there is a very good metro-system in place,
I just can’t imagine why people would want to live there as it seems almost impossible to get around. The metro doesn’t reach all the suburbs. It’s fine when you’re in the centre and want to go to some other area in the guidebook, but I’m trying to imagine what it would be like if you had to visit someone somewhere else in the city, or had to get to and from work - whoa…
We stayed in a pretty good hotel, hotel Isabel, in the historic centre only a few blocks from the Zócalo, which is the main plaza in front of the cathedral. It was one of the cheapest we could find, with a shared bathroom, but that money would have gotten us a lot better anywhere else! But at least it was within walking distance of many of the things we wanted to see in town, and within fairly easy reach on the metro from the bus stations.
The Cathedral and Zócalo
OK, before you start reading the next paragraph I must warn you that some of you might find it fairly boring and that I owe a lot of the facts to the
LP, however, I thought it was an interesting issue when I heard about it:
Mexico City is actually built on what was once a lake in a highland basin, which the Spaniards drained in colonial times. The spongy subsoil that remained was hardly the best place to erect churches and palaces, and the entire city has been sinking ever since. The historic centre has dropped about 10m in the last 100 years. But the problem has been intensified in the last decades as the city sucks its water from underground aquifers faster than they’re replenished, thus removing a crucially buoyant counterbalance to the settling subsoil. This means that many buildings in the city are sinking unevenly - such as the cathedral, which is tilting visibly to the west. Apparently the Aztecs compacted the earth before erecting their temples, so the buildings that are built on top of some of these Aztec sites are especially suffering from this uneven sinking - causing total collapse in some cases. The solution recently has been, not to stop the sinking, but to ensure an even sinking under all corners of the buildings, thus keeping them structurally sound.
Elliott had really been looking
forward to seeing the zócalo, as he had seen pictures of its massive flagpole and he loves a good, big flag. However, when we strolled past on our first night in search of dinner, most of the zócalo was full of scaffolding with ugly orange tent-like sides. We later saw signs advertising an expo later in the year, that we think is to celebrate the 200-year anniversary of the beginning of the war for independence in September 1810. But that didn’t diminish our disappointment in not seeing what must be an impressive sight: the massive open square sided by the Cathedral on one side, the National Palace with Diego Rivera’s amazing murals on the other, and colonial buildings with Federal Government offices on the others.
We saw these murals another day, and they are very impressive. I’ve never been a fan of Rivera, but these murals were less stilted than some of his work I’ve seen replicated in books. They tell the story of Mexico’s past, through the prosperous times of the Aztecs and other pre-colonial societies, through the Spanish conquest with its cruelty and exploitation, to the class struggles of the early 20th century that were so close to
Rivera’s communist heart.
We spent some time walking around the historic centre with its vendor filled streets, sun-blazed plazas and crumbling churches. We had fresh juices, fruit and tacos in the market next to the old theatre, tried to get into the courtyard of the Centro de Educación Publica that houses some of Diego Rivera’s other murals (but they are not open to the public all day as the book says, but only at 10, 12 and 2pm on the dot, which we never managed to time our arrival to), we saw a tortilla-making machine, walked past the freelance printing presses and enjoyed a spot in the sun while the Mexican workers in a square had their siesta in the shade in an empty fountain.
Frida Kahlo
Now, I’ve been going on a bit about Rivera, but as I said I was never a fan. His wife, on the other hand, I’m a great fan of. A biography of her and her work is one of the few art-books I actually own and I’ve always admired how she seemed to paint her way out of the physical pain she suffered all her life and somehow externalise some
of her internal struggles. For those who don’t know her, she survived being speared by a tram railing when she was in her late teens, but it damaged her spine and although she recovered enough to walk again, she was bed-ridden much of her life and eventually confined to a wheel-chair after later surgeries that were meant to improve her spine, but caused her more pain and damage. She took up painting during her convalescence, and Rivera became one of her biggest admirers as well as her husband - twice. She spent time in America and also lived in her own house next to Rivera’s, but after her father’s death, she moved into her childhood home and made it her own. It is now known as La Casa Azul (the Blue House) and is a museum teeming with mementos and personal belongings that bring to mind the times she spent in the house with her family, her husband and the leftist intellectuals she and Diego entertained here. There are rooms converted to show her original paintings as well as some of her photos, and a few of Diego’s paintings and their close friends and fellow artists and photographers, that together
give you a greater insight into their lives. Parts of the house are left as she might have lived in them - especially her studio where a wheelchair is poignantly placed in front of an unfinished portrait of Stalin, the walls are shelved with her books and there’s a beautiful view out over the garden courtyard. Between her studio and her bedroom, is her canopied daybed, with the mirror in the ceiling allowing her to paint her many self-portraits while lying down. Although there were no photos allowed inside, we snuck a photo of this bed through the French doors opening up to the garden. It is a magical place - you can just imagine her sitting at her easel painting, or walking among her collections of pre-Hispanic art and Mexican crafts, or sitting in the courtyard with her monkey, dogs and parrots all around her.
Zona Rosa
We went to Zona Rosa, another district in the centre, for two reasons: A vegetarian restaurant to have lunch in, and a post office that was open in the afternoon. I was trying to send some stuff home, but needed to go find a few more things, so we also
wanted to go to a market that sounded like a good place to look for ‘stuff’.
We walked around a bit and saw some of the monuments on the big avenue that runs through it, including the Statue of Independence. As we approached the road was suddenly full of bicycles, all with sprigs and flowers tied to the handlebars. At first we thought it was just a group of them, but they kept coming and coming, and they even had support buses and everything. But if it was a protest, they weren’t very clear with their message, as we never did find out what they were cycling for (they weren’t going fast enough for a race, and stopped at the lights, etc). Bicycles seemed to be the theme of the day, because a bit further on, we saw one of the initiatives to make Mexico City a greener place (and it needs it, with the haze of smog hanging over it every day!) - free bicycles. There are different ones, where you give your credit card details, get it for 3 hours, and if you hand it back late, they charge you. These ones seemed to require some kind of
membership where you had to insert some kind of card in a central control and then choose which bike you wanted. It looked very nice with all these red bicycles gleaming in the sunlight.
Zona Rosa is a very gay-friendly neighbourhood, with some pedestrian streets and some tree-lined roads. Parts of it seemed quite yuppie-ish, and apparently it used to be an international playground and shopping district, but has undergone some decline since its hay-day in the fifties, though it still has some charms. The market we went to was one of the most harrowing experiences I’ve had lately, with stall owners ‘attacking’ us left, right and centre. It was impossible to walk around and try to think what exactly we’d come there for. But walking back we came through Chinatown, and it was really nice to have something that didn’t include tortillas for a change 😊
Teotihuacán
On our last day in Mexico City, we took our bags and went very early to the Norte bus station where we stored our things, checked the bus times for going to Oaxaca City later in the day, and then took a bus out to the ancient city of
Teotihuacán about 50km northeast of the city.
Teotihuacán was probably the biggest ancient city in Mexico, and with its two pyramids: Pirámide del Sol and the smaller Pirámide de la Luna, is comparable in splendour to those in the Yucatán. The grid plan of the city was probably laid out in the 1st century AD with the pyramids of the sun and moon and other temples and avenues added to it during the next 600 years. At its peak it probably had around 125,000 inhabitants. This first great civilisation which came before both the Mayas, the Toltecs and the Aztecs, stretched as far down as Honduras and El Salvador. It was focused on tribute gathering rather than outright occupation and helped spread their advanced civilisation which included writing and books, a numbering system based on bar-and-dot numerals and a calendar-system of 260 days divided into 13 periods of 20 days.
After weakening of the civilisation the city was finally sacked, burned and abandoned in the 8th century, but was still a place of great importance through later periods. Many of the Teotihuacán’s gods were still being worshipped by thy Aztecs whose nobles came here on pilgrimage.
Apparently
the Pyramid of the Sun is the third biggest pyramid in the world after Cheops and the little known Tepanapa in Cholula, Mexico.
Though the ancient Teotihuacán covered more than 20 sq. km. most of what there is to see today lies along 2km of the Calzada de los Muertos (Avenue of the Dead), a road that stretches so far that they haven’t yet explored where it ends… Although we were pretty sure we saw the end in a small field behind a fence near the gates… 😊
It was very interesting walking around seeing all these ancient structures, the citadel, climbing the pyramids (the first I’ve ever seen!), and seeing the fresco designs in one of the temples. But it was hard to concentrate all the time, and we did it all in a different order than most trying to avoid the hundreds and hundreds of school children on field trips. There were of course lots of souvenir sellers, and for some reason it seemed that every one of the little rascals had spent his or her pocket money on either a horrible whistle that made a growling sound that was frankly quite disturbing or toy bows
and arrows. There was no discipline that we could discern, and even when the guides were telling the group about whatever building they were standing in front of, half the children would we running around shooting arrows at each other.
We did manage to get some quiet time on top of the Pyramid of the Sun, as we did arrive very early and only a few people had climbed to the top of it yet. But all good things must come to an end, and after lunch we took a bus back to Mexico City in order to make our way south.
More of that later…
Love,
Kristine
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Guma
non-member comment
You did a great election
Hello Krini, I am from Mexico City, and I also love my City. In fact I will give an speech about it the next week. It is really nice that you enjoyed your travel for Teotihuacan, the Historic Center and the museums. It is really fascinating. I hope you will return to visit Mexico City. Thank you for your pictures they are nice.