Mexico City 24-28 October 2018

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Thursday Oct 24-28 – pre tour plus Day 1 to 1 - Arrive Mexico City



Up at 4.30am departing the Cranky Croc Hotel at 5.00am arriving at the Bogota Airport at 5.30am (traffic was starting to build even at that time of the morning) we departed on time with the Colombian-owned Avianca Airlines at 8.30am. The 4-hour flight was very, very comfortable with excellent service.



Mexico City is the world's most populated city with over 20 million people (nearly 9 million in the city-propper). Founded by Spanish conquerors in 1521, Mexico's capital sits at 2309 metres above sea level and was built on the site of the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. The extensive metro system and trolley buses make getting around easy and there is certainly plenty to see and do here.



We stayed at the Hotel Eldorado which was very central to the historical area and walking distance to many features including the Mirador Torre Latino (Tower Latino) which we visited. Going to the 37^th floor and then the open air 42^nd floor gave incredible 360-degree views of the sprawling city. We agreed that it was one of the most interesting panoramas of a city we had seen. The map they gave us was very good, describing what we were looking at.



We were surprise it wasn’t even windy at the top of the Tower. The weather has been very mild with temperatures around 25 degrees and a little cool at night. One night, while we were having dinner, we came out of the restaurant to find it was raining. We waiting 30 minutes and walked 4 blocks back to our hotel, getting only slightly wet on the way.



The start of our adventures around the city we found that a good starting point was the main plaza, the enormous Zócalo, where we found the impressive Catedral y Sagrario Metropolitano, the main cathedral of Mexico City, with a magnificent Latin-Baroque style façade. We remembered to look through the glass flooring outside of the church to see the ancient Aztec city beneath. Just behind the cathedral was the Aztec ruins of the ancient Teocali, which were only discovered in 1978. It was an impressive (large) site which was continuing to be carefully excavated. The building was full of discovered pieces, large and small, from the Aztec era.



We also visited the world famous Anthropology Museum, built in the late 1960s, and the National Palace where we saw the murals depicting the history of Mexico by one of the country's most famous artists Diego Riviera. A museum dedicated to his equally famous wife, Frieda Kahlo, is located in her childhood home in Coyoacán.



We caught the metro to the Chapultepec Park, Mexico City’s largest park which is full of museums, the zoo and a theme park, not to mention markets and many hawkers. There is also a large lake which was full of paddle boats for hire. Here we visited the Museum of Natural History, which is housed in the Chapultepec Castle, but decided not by pass the Museum of Modern Art. The Museum's nineteen rooms contain, in addition to a collection of pre-Columbian material and reproductions of old manuscripts, a vast range of exhibits illustrating the history of Mexico since the Spanish conquest.



The metro system in Mexico City was excellent. With a little map in hand and knowing where to buy the 5 Mexican Peso tickets at the underground station, all the routs were colour coded and numbered. The last thing you had to know was the final destination of your route. Cheap and simple was the best way to describe the multiple routes which covered the entire city. We could have caught the bus to the museum but decided to walk. Busses cost 3 MXP which is



On all 4 evenings we enjoyed a spicy Mexican dinner. Oh I was looking forward to Mexico’s spicy foods and the city didn’t disappoint me. One night we ended up at Garibaldi Plaza where we found a restaurant on the edge of the massive plaza. Plaza Garibaldi-Mariachi square is surrounded by cafés and restaurants much favoured by tourists, and in these and in the square itself groups of musicians play folk music. Most of these groups are "mariachis" from Jalisco, dressed in Charro costume and playing trumpets, violins, guitars and the guitarrón or bass guitar. We started with local beer and guacamole, later followed by some soft-shell tacos with a variety of meets. There were plenty of sauces to add to them along with onion dipped in chilli. Yum!!



While sitting drinking and eating, numerous times we were asked by musicians if we wanted to serenade us for a fee. All the musicians were dressed in black with gold or silver studs along the seams of their pants and jackets. A sombrero was part of the uniform – of course.



The police presence was substantial. In fact, all facilities we visited had numerous police watching over and guarding the areas, inside and out.



One of the most impressive buildings we visited was the Palace Bellas Artes - Performing Arts Centre. It was beautiful inside and out. We were too late to visit the museum inside the centre.



Another impressive building was the Cathederal Metropolitan which was one of the main attractions around the Zocalo (which used to be called the Plaza de Armes). The incredibly long National Palace formed one complete length of the Zocalo also.



During the day we saw Aztecs people doing smoke ceremonies in Zocalo. They were all dressed in traditional clothing with hugh feathered head-dress, bells of the ankles and often with severe face paint. They were striking.



As Mexico City was severely damaged by an earthquake in 1985 everywhere we went there were instructions on where to evacuate in timed of quakes. There were also green painted signs of the ground which indicated where to congregate. Meeting place if earthquake imminent in Mexico City



I found the history of Mexico City very interesting, some of which I learned in the Museums and some from our guide. The origins of Mexico City date back to 1325, when the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan was founded and later destroyed in 1521 by Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortes. The city served as the capital of the Vice-royalty of New Spain until the outbreak of the Independence War in 1810. The city became the capital of the Mexican Empire in 1821 and of the Mexican Republic in 1823 after the abdication of Agustin de Iturbide. During the Mexico-US war in 1847, the city was invaded by the American army. In 1864 the French invaded Mexico and the emperor Ferdinand Maximilian of Hapsburg ruled the country from the Castillo de Chapultepec and ordered to build Avenue of the Empress (today's Paseo de la Reforma promenade).



Porfirio Díaz assumed power in 1876 and left an outstanding mark in the city with many European styled buildings such as the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Palacio Postal.



Diaz was overthrown in 1910 with the Mexican Revolution and this marked a radical change in the city's architecture. The 20th century saw the uncontrolled growth of the City beyond the Centro Historico with the influx of thousands of immigrants from the rest of the country.



In 1968, the city was host to the Olympic Games, which saw the construction of the Azteca Stadium, the Palacio de los Deportes, the Olympic Stadium and other sports facilities. In 1985 the city suffered an 8.1 Magnitude earthquake. Between 10,000 and 40,000 people were killed. 412 buildings collapsed, and another 3,124 buildings were seriously damaged in the city. We saw no clear evidence of the damage.



Mexico City is one of the most liberal cities in Latin America and was the first jurisdiction in the region to legalize same-sex marriage (in December 2009). As such, this is generally a gay friendly city, particularly in the Zona Rosa District. Abortion on demand is also legal, as well as euthanasia and prostitution (the latter allowed only in designated districts).



The Capital Bus, which is a sightseeing double-decker hop-in hop-off bus was next on our list. We caught it close to our hotel around 10.00am. The one-day ticket costs MXN180 as it was Saturday and its main route includes the Zona Rosa, Chapultepec Park, Polanco, Condesa, Roma and the Historic Centre. There are 4 routes, one runs from Fuente de la Cibeles in Condesa to Coyoacan and Xochimilco but we only had time to do one circuit.



Mexico City was celebrating the Day of the Dead which is usually celebrate on November 1-2 but this was the first time Mexico City had a major parade that was going to happen at 4.00pm on the Saturday (27/10). Mexico is one of the few countries in the world that celebrates this day (Dia de los Muertos), in which people go to the cemeteries to offer tribute to their departed ones and decorate their graves with marigolds and bright colours. But this is not a sad celebration, on the contrary, people give family and friends candy treats in the shape of skulls and bones made of sugar and chocolate, as well as delicious bread called "Pan de Muerto".



There were 1000s of people on the streets and the streets were closed ready for the parade, hence we didn’t complete the hop on hop off bus circuits. The street were closed as well as the traffic was horrific.



We decided to find a ‘good’ spot to watch the parade after we had another excellent coffee. Whilst at Starbucks (which were everywhere) we spoke to a local who had very good English and she gave us all the information of the Day of the Dead celebration. Initially we thought the crowd was due to the celebration of the Mexico City Grand Prix which was being staged the next day!!



We stood, and stood and stood some more, waiting for the parade. There were police dotted along the parade street every 5 metres. By 5-15pm Tom decided to go back to the hotel to meet our guide for our Tucac Travel tour as well as fellow travellers, scheduled at 6.00pm. I decided that I wasn’t going to miss the parade after waiting for 1 ½ hours. Ten minutes after Tom left the parade passed where I was standing. It was ‘full-on’, with floats depicting the history of the country including Aztecs, old ships, as well as showing the environmental features of the country.



I then rushed back to the hotel to catch up with the group and arrived just as the last person was introducing themselves. After the briefing we all went out for a lovely spicy taco meal.



The group of 17 people was very diverse, coming from Canada, England, Indonesia and Australia. Age ranges was from 20s to Tom being the oldest at 70 years. Only 3 of us were travelling all the way to Panama. Diane from Brisbane who was a few months younger than Tom was the other person. As always, there were many travel stories to share with each other. They were an excellent group, so we were looking forward to their company.

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