The Megalopolis

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Dear god, Mexico City is huge! We've been here for four days, and we've seen maybe 5% of it. From what I can tell, the city is infinite...

Our first hour here was very eventful -- in a bad way. Both of us were pick-pocketed. We were waiting at the subway station, travelling from the airport to our hostel in the Centro Historico. The station was pretty jammed and we were in the middle of the crowd. When the train arrived, there was a crush of people exiting the train while we scrambled to make it on. We were unsuccessful getting on, and as the train left my brother pointed to my wallet chain. It was hanging from my belt loop, neatly cut with the wallet gone. Then he noticed his was gone from his front pocket. It was truly a magisterial display of pickpocketing skill...

Luckily, we were not carrying too much cash in our wallets or anything irreplaceable. Most of our cash, a backup debit and our passports were in our money belts, so we lost only about $100. Still, it is an inconvenience and now we might have to have another backup debit shipped down.

Our time since then has also been eventful, if less dramatic. We've walked around the Centro Historico pretty extensively, getting a good feel for the area. The buildings here are impressively old and well-maintained. What we've seen (mostly in the Centro Historico) has been surprisingly clean.

On Friday, We went to a Mexican wrestling match. We were about the gringos in there, but nobody seemed to mind. As the first match started (of the seven), it became apparent that their wrestling is much, much cooler than WWF. They constantly do flips and other acrobatics. One wrestler, Mystico, was always jumping off the ropes and grabbing onto his opponents' necks with his legs. Then he would spin around their necks a few times before throwing them to the ground. Awesome!

The city is built on the ruins of Tenochtitlan. Recently, the ruins of the Aztec temple were excavated in what is now (and was in pre-Hispanic times) the main square of the city. We spent some time there walking around. It is pretty crazy to think that the Aztecs iced thousands of dudes in that exact location... They were really into the human sacrifice thing. One time, the ruler of a nearby city made the mistake of offering his daughter in marriage to the Aztec ruler. At the marriage ceremony, the Aztec guy showed up...... wearing his bride's skin (like a bath robe, I imagine -- a bloody, bloody bath robe). The Aztec guy was like, "Punked!"

Just about all of the streets that we have been on (over maybe an area of nine square kilometers) are covered with bustling street stalls. They sell the usual crap: batteries, strange Mexican porn, cheap clothing. The place is insanely crowded and hectic everywhere. But, since we are so bad-ass, we decided to check out the actual market, which spans three blocks. It is the biggest, craziest market that I have ever seen.

Generally the food here is good, but their conception of "only cheese" seems to differ from mine. When you order tacos "con solo queso", they start frying up some meat. At first we were a bit put off, although we ate them like the champs that we are. Later we figured out that it is steak. It makes up one of the fundamental parts of the taco, like the tortilla, I suppose.

We went to some museums and zoo on Sunday (since they are free that day). The Museum of Modern Art was a complete bust. It was full of this 70's po-mo, ugliness-as-art crap. To give you an idea: the best piece in there was by a Calgarian. However, the Anthropology Museum was pretty awesome. They have tons of epic Aztec stuff, including the so called "Aztec Calendar".

We saw the zoo too, and it was great! They have some pre-Hispanic American dogs (called Xeozlthelaxskhfghk or something...) that are pretty awesome in a hairless kind of way, as well as the usual Elephants and Panda Bears. At one point, we noticed an open gate, with no sign saying not to go there. The path took us to the giraffes' fence. The giraffe was looking at us from a few feet away, and there were lots leaves around.... so we decided to pass the guy some leaves through the fence. Man, giraffes have crazy tongues. They can reach maybe a foot and then they curl back into their mouths. Other than the weird tongue, it was kind of like feeding a horse.

Anyhow, our plans from here are pretty vague, but we'll keep you posted.

Mike

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