Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Mexico City Blues


Hurtling through the stratosphere at night from Tijuana to Mexico City on a rattling Mexicana jet. Most of the passengers slept as I stared out to the misty dark through the plastic window. Screech to a halt onto the black tarmac as the sun - that blaring bloody unrelentless Mexican sun - creeped up over the horizon. Dart through customs, grab my bags from prying potbellied customs officer - his tongue green from clorets in a vain attempt to hide the smell of alcohol.
Went straight to my hotel in Mexico City - well, attempted to go straight there but the cab driver couldn’t find it due to the obscure street - cross-eyed dingdong driver ended up taking the scenic tour of the neighborhood in awful traffic. Gotta milk that gringo fare, I reckon. Pass millions of early morning bussling commuters, my taxi driver playing kamakazi roulette with other taxis, busses, cars, pedestrians - all in a swirling mad dash of chaotic speed.
The smog makes it hard work on the lungs and head. Michael Palin describes the place as a city of 20,000,000 million inhabitants that smells like they have all farted at once. I have to agree - feel like I'm suffocating as there isn't much oxygen at 2,300 ft. above sea level, but guess I'll gradually get used to it. Its a good reason to give up smoking on the whole unable to breathe thing. I light a Lucky and we finally pull up to the hotel.
Mexico City is ominous. Brassy loud, frantic, interesting - a visual buffet for the eyes and senses - racing bumpily along in the voltswagon taxi - snatching glimps of handsome eyes walking, staring curiously at the gringo, I stare back.
I snaged a great hotel only a few blocks from the Zocalo at the Hotel Montecarlo. According to my guidebook, DH Lawrence once stayed here. It has a great double spiral stairway all in cracked marble (there are a lot of sagging and swaying buildings in Mexico City due to earthquakes, spongy soil, and building on top of Aztec pyramids - some of these buildings are shockingly and obviously crooked to the casual observer, yet are still in use). As a bonus, my hotel was really cheap - 180 pesos per night. Checked in by an old fag at the reception and showed to my room by a smiling old woman named Erma.
My room was small and narrow, with high vaulted ceilings, a good bathroom, and scorching hot water. Adorned with elaborate, old, and scuffed up furniture placed ontop really old crazy carpet - it had the feel of an old converted house - in my travels, 'cozy' usually translates into 'tiny and filthy' but it was pretty spot-on with lots of lamps (you know I love lamps right? No? Guess you don't know crap about me then, huh?) and Frida Kahlo paintings and Virgin Mary statues. All a bit worn, but immaculately clean. And the best thing - not a cockroach in sight. Yet.
Threw my bags on the bed and went straight out to sample some local fare (i.e. Coronas), and wasn’t disappointed.
I went on a long walk in the general direction of the famous Zocalo, which is the main plaza, it was mostly just to get a feel for the city - and the 'feel' I got was mostly 'holy shit this is a big city', but I’m into that massive, dirty chaos thing that makes you feel really small and insignificant and like eating a taco. Sat munching at a sidewalk stall scoping out the hotties jetting back to and fro - making a mental note that I must visit The Pink Zone before I head south.
My favorite part of the visual eye candy though was the street art everywhere - lined everywhere on walls and some over lapping each other, many posters of state-sponsored stuff (which was quite impressive in a totalitarian Orwellian style) also stencils and kelideoscope colored spray-paint, massive murals of provocative subjects, on every corner. Everyone is not only socially aware but also socially active here, mostley in an anitgovernment slant but it still makes me feel lame for always lounging around whining about how crap everything is whilst being fanned with palms and fed peeled grapes.
Some observations on Mexico City (or DF, Districto Ferderale as the Mexicans call it):
It's much more of a European city than a New World one - i.e. it would fit far better into Europe than it would North America. It has wonderful old buildings with HUGE doors as the entrance to the courtyards surrounding the houses. These doors are of wood and are about twelve feet tall - sometimes more. Many building facades are like those in Lisbon, Portugal, with tiles covering the outside.
As like Tijuana Centro, here the streets are crawling with hawkers, selling everything from corn on the cob to tortillas to razor blades to contact lenses to clothes to just about anything you could imagine. They call out to passing traffic what they are selling but I rarely saw anyone purchase anything except for the food. And the food vendors are on every street.
The streets are also full of small shops. Each street seems to sell a different type of item. For example, the street my hotel is on has only book stores on it for an entire block, then the next block is camera shops, then the next wedding dress shops. It's very good, however one would wonder how they make money with their competition right next door.
Again, finding the air a bit hard - doesn’t help that there are millions of cars on the roads and most of them seem to be quite old.
Spent the day wandering around the Zocalo seeing old Aztec ruins and Diego Rivera murals, market stalls and the Palcio Nacionale where the President has his office.
The Temple Mayor is the original temple of the Aztec people who were the people living here in Mexico City when it was conquered by the Spanish. The Aztec built a temple once they had conquered a another tribe they built over the old temple with a new one. Consequently, they ended up with 7 layers of temples (they started building in 1325). The Spanish destroyed the last temple and built over the others, using the stones to build the Cathedral and the streets. Electricians discovered the sixth temple in 1978 and since then they have excavated down to the second temple. You could still see the paint used to color the outside of the temples
The weather has been quite mild - on Tuesday took a trip out to the Teotihuacan ruins about an hour to the north of Mexico City. These are the ruins of two huge pyramids and an imperial city built around 200 BC to 800 AD. The larger of the two pyramids, the Pyramid of the Sun, is similar in size to the large Egyptian pyramids. Magnificent and awe inspiring - being my first real encounter with pyramids. The difference is that these were used as a temple (on the outside only as they are solid). The priests performed sacrificing ceremonies - many including including live humans - on the top of the pyramids to the Gods. Climbed up to the top of both and with the thin air about 2500 meters above sea level - it was hard work! The pyramids were only re-discovered in the early 1900's and still have much to excavate however funding is poor and that is a pity - with government recourses going to much more important tasks, like the Cartel War..
Stopped at a tequila factory on the way back and I had tequila - was very surprised to find it tasted quite nice. The mezcal - a more southern Mexican - drink was actually a bit nicer as it wasn't quite so harsh on the throat. Returned to Mexico City with that warm glow of fine tequila in my belly.
That evening took the metro. A very crowded experience but cheap - only 2 pesos - about 25c a ride - out to the southern suburb of Coyoacan where Frida Kahlo and Diego Riveria lived. And what a train ride...I have right away a good impression of this city when I get in the metro. Somebody is stealing my notebook out of my pocket. Luckily, I feel what he his doing and when I ask him "Hey, Amigo" he drops the notebook and looks as innocent as a sheep. I think they work in groups, like five of them, they come and stand around you in the already busy train, pushing you in a corner, suggesting they don't know each other, Et Voila! there goes your money! Good it was only my notebook, and good I noticed, but I am more prepared now!
The museum itself was the house Frida was born and died in. Always dug her work. It was interesting to see her actual paintings - also fascinating was her ashes and the original back brace she wore for years.
Wondered around the streets of this obviously quite prosperous suburb. It was interesting to see the difference between the centre of the city where I had been based and these huge houses with gates and armed thuggish guards on the corners.
A case in point about the socially active thing: on my way back to the hotel, out of nowhere hundreds of riot police started lining up across the street (okay maybe this is the point where a sane person would have equated 'riot police' with 'potential riot' and hightailed it out of there instead of hovering around to see some action - actually in retrospect it’s kind of like just before the tsunami in Indonesia, when the ocean was sucked out for a kilometer and all the tourists (not equating 'massive water out flux' with 'massive water influx') all wandered out onto the seabed with their cameras like, "hey, where’s all the water gone?").
But I digress...
A few minutes later, I start hearing all this chanting and the general chaotic noise of lots and lots of people coming towards me - turned out to be the most massive protest I’ve ever seen. They were protesting about the situation in Oaxaca, literally thousands and thousands of people walking past with signs, some in costumes, chanting, yelling and riot-police-taunting. I was standing there for at least 20 minutes, people just kept coming and coming down the main street, it was crazy. You could only see people in both directions down this street. However, I actually got bored and started walking home, it was so big. The way I went was the way the protest had come, and all the way back there were anti-capitalist slogan and stencils sprayed on the banks, Starbucks, etc. The whole thing was pretty interesting, but speaking of Oaxaca...
What is it with me and revolutions? Been kind of planning to go to Oaxaca in the next few days, but there's been unrest there for a few weeks, a McDonalds was firebombed, and an American and a couple of other people were shot and killed last week sometime. I think the U.S. has issued travel warnings and there's been a fair bit of media attention, but I know from experience how these things tend to be a little over-exaggerated - I guess the best way is to talk to locals, and from what I can gather the firebombing only caused a bit of seat-charring (don’t they teach their revolutionaries how to make decent Molotov cocktails these days? Standards, people), and the American who was shot was a journalist taking photos at the front line of the blockades after a few days of rock throwing activists and gas bombing police. No excuse I guess, but I think avoiding the troubled areas and not throwing shit at police should render me pretty safe.
Well, I digress .
On in the night of the protest I went for a walk and found this place called Papa Beto's Jazz Bistro, where a live band was playing (jazz aficionados will go nuts in this joint), what a place and Papa Beto was an absolute chief. Was also treated to a bitching drum solo by this guy who the jazz band drummer said was one of the best drummers in Mexico.
Quite a first day, anyway.
That’s about it from Mexico City. On Thursday I'm off to the southern Mexican town of Oaxaca about 500m from Mexico City where I hope the air will be cleaner and a bit thicker!

1 comment:

DSW said...

"a city of 20,000,000 million inhabitants that smells like they have all farted at once"

Brilliant... Now I understand why you read my blog!