One last entry for Mexico

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We had to leave Mexico early Sunday morning, and we flew back to Mexico City from Oaxaca around noon. We had a whole afternoon left. We ended up going to a really fun place - from the Zocalo - the huge main square in Mexico City - we saw the Templo Mayor. It is the only remaining Aztec temple in the center of Mexico City, and it has a really great museum to go with it. The atmosphere was quite happy and festive, with lots of Mexican teens on a field trip to see the place, and families, and people from all over. I loved Mexico City because it feels so much like you're just dipping your feet into a huge culture and people. You don't feel like you're surrounded by tourists. It's like - going to New York City vs. going to - I don't know - Salem MA. One place is totally filled with tourists and that's all it's about. NYC doesn't care that you're there, but it's so awesome that you want to be there. Mexico City is like that.

Then we just walked around, down to the Alameda, where there was another market and a live band playing, to a little restaurant tucked on a side street with an Alice In Wonderland style decor, and finally back to our hotel where we relaxed before our flight. The square had some awesome Aztec dancers, and there was also some kind of women's festival going on.

In the end, we resolved to come back to Mexico again. It truly is a sister country to the USA, a place that you feel both at home and at the same time, it feels different, more vibrant than the Northeast where I live.

I also had a few thoughts about Mexico that I had posted in one of my other journals.


For now, I have several reflections. First, I am glad we took this trip. It fulfilled a desire I had, that California, Miami, and Vegas in 2008 could not fulfill. I am provided here with the opportunity to reflect on the similarities and differences between our two countries, to challenge my brain in speaking another language - one where I am fluent enough to get most things done, but not fluent enough to really "relax" in it. I am getting to see for myself a place that looms large in the American imagination.

Mexico City was vastly different from my expectations. While my guidebooks informed me of the trendy neighborhoods, gourmet fusion-cuisine restaurants, bookstore-cafes and all the other things that big cities contain - I still had this idea of Mexico City: it would be crowded, polluted, traffic-filled, gray, surrounded by shanty-towns, crime on every street corner. Perhaps all these things are true, but we had the very good fortune to see some of the most beautiful parts of the city. It is indeed tree-lined and park-filled. The pollution is not nearly as bad as Cairo, although it does get to you after a few days. Yes, there are shantytowns, but there is also the charming town within a city of Tlalpan, as well as the market square of Coyoacan. There are the trendy neighborhoods of Condesa and Roma, where we stayed, infinitely walkable, seemingly safe. Xochimilco, after braving the traffic-clogged road to the docks, offers a festive atmosphere of trajineras poled along the canals, filled with families enjoying their day off. And yet, we did see the shantytowns on our way to Teotihuacan, and our friend here actually had her cousin kidnapped and killed last year. So, it is all that you think and also all that you did NOT think Mexico City was. And it's quite a cool place.

We had one day on a tour - to get to Teotihuacan, 1.5 hrs north, it was the easiest, most economical way. On this tour, I saw the other side of travel. And remembered yet again why I love independent travel. On the tour, our first stop was a handicrafts center where the hard-sell reigned and we even got "tricked" into paying for a souvenir we didn't want - because we were told it was a gift and corralled into taking it, then paying for it with a hefty tip. We were forced to hook up with a guide, who should have gotten a hefty commission from Alli's fire god, but still wanted a tip. Later, the tour bus stopped at a restaurant - nevermind the many tasty-looking taco stands along the road - we pull up to this place with many other tour buses. I will write a full review later - as it was quite horrifying...but let us say our silverware was the same as used by the previous table occupiers, we lost our eardrums to overzealous mariachis, and I watched the French family eat lukewarm beige food from the buffet along with a salad. Recipe for food poisoning that. So I wonder what these people take home from vacation about Mexico. They take home the memory of a handicrafts center where they were treated like a dollar sign (or a Euro sign), and moctezuma's revenge from an overpriced lunch. Is that Mexico? Not at all. Here, I have had some amazing food, and haven't gotten sick once (I didn't eat from that buffet). I have experienced the most expansive generosity and hospitality of my life. I haven't had anyone try to cheat me, rob me, or even ask me for money/tips (outside of that day's experience.)

So I'm glad that we escaped that strange world of the tourist back into the "real" Mexico - and I will be travel-snobby enough to say that. Sometimes you can't get away from being a tourist, but it hasn't been that difficult here and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity.

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Photos

Shannon and the Temple of Doom
Actually it's just a house with skulls decorating the outside. this was in the templo mayor.

Head - Templo Mayor
Originally the whole place was painted in bright colors like this.

Aztec Dancers
Dancers recreating the indigenous dancers that would have been in this square in Aztec times.

Organ Grinder
Alli's family used to be the only importers of these in the US.
Doesn't the name Organ Grinder sound freakier than it is?

Chinatown
Of course, as we always do wherever we go, we stumbled upon Mexico City's Chinatown. It is only 2 streets, not very big.