Mexico Travel Diaries - Leg 2

Mexico City (Part I)

Mexico City (Part I)

• See Mexico City (I) pictures

From the moment I walk out of the customs hall and into the airport arrivals area in Mexico City’s Benito Juarez airport, the intensity of the city engulfs me. Carrying my bags, I physically battle my way through the waiting crowds of people; all here to meet friends, relatives, colleagues or clients.

As the car I'm in is driven out of the airport complex and on to the city streets and I am reminded that Mexico City’s traffic is deservedly legendary. There appear to be no rules; your objective is to miss the other cars that surround yours and make headway to your destination. People use their horn liberally; like a chain reaction, one starts and others must follow suit.

20 million people are reputed to live, love, work, play and survive inside Mexico City’s 750 square kilometres. For the last 2 months I have been living in one of England’s smallest hamlets; and now I find myself treading the streets of what is arguably the world’s largest city. I feel a mix of blissful exhilaration at the opportunity to experience this city again; and am full of anticipation of the events to come. In the same moment, the feelings are tempered with brief pangs of uncertainty and doubt.

Historic Christmas

Downtown, near the historic centre, the street traders are getting ready for the Christmas rush. I board a taxi, and begin chatting to the driver, who has lived in Mexico City his whole life. “Christmas bonuses mean that there is more money around; this is an important time of year for the street traders”, he says. I ask him in a spirit of curiosity, “If I want to start selling something here, do I just show up one morning and put up a stall?” The driver chuckles and says, “Oh no. You’ll have to consult the local street boss” his arm waves across the dashboard as he points at the stalls, which create a gauntlet on both sides of the street, “All of these people will have seen the local boss and paid him maybe 50 pesos a day, and he assigns them a place on the street to trade” The commercial activity at these street markets is relentless; hundreds of people are continuously browsing the stalls which have taken over the sidewalks. The taxi turns the corner, and the street’s sidewalks are visible again, as we drive down a main avenue that leads us away from the heart of the Capital.

Reforma & Chapultepec

I spend a morning wandering around the commercial heartland of Mexico City, along the well kept and very elegant avenue called Reforma, which runs from the historic centre through to Bosque Chapultepec (Chapultepec Forest), Mexico City’s largest parkland. Beyond Chapultepec, the avenue keeps going and connects the city to some of the metropolis’ most expensive and prestigious residential areas. The area around Reforma is host to some of the city’s most luxurious hotels, top banks and financial institutes, plush office space, trendy restaurants and up-scale retail boutiques.

I visit the Angel de Independencia (Angel of Independence) probably Mexico City’s most famous landmark at one of the several roundabouts that interrupt the eight-lane Reforma avenue. I walk a little further east, past restaurants, banks and street traders to visit the gleaming Stock Exchange building. Two blocks south is the Zona Rosa (pink zone) which is a pedestrian-friendly district of the city centre brimming with trendy shops, restaurants, boutiques and night life often frequented by visitors and tourists to the city.

Further up Reforma at the entrance to Chapultepec, Mexico’s latest landmark is nearing completion: Torre Mayor (Main Tower). Upon its inauguration it will be tallest building in Mexico; some say in Latin America. On the hill above this new addition to Mexico City's skyline is the Castillo de Chapultepec (Castle of Chapultepec), the centrepiece of the park and once home to Maximilian and Carlotta. At the foot of the hill, flanked by the castle in the hazy background created by Mexico City’s less than ideal air, is the monument of Niños Heroes (Heroic Children Soldiers) who, according to legend, refused to surrender to the invading American forces that had surrounded the castle above, choosing instead to wrap themselves in flags and jump from the castle walls to their deaths.

I keep walking east, and Reforma avenue turns right, where plush offices and up-scale retail euphoria give way to tree-lined streets with the zoo and castle grounds on the left; the world famous Anthropology museum on my right. Also nearby is the world famous Rufino Tamayo museum and Mexico’s Auditorio Nacional, where today many international pop stars and groups host major concerts.

Outside the anthropology museum, I am approached by a group of girls; college students; brandishing a tape recorder and cue cards. “Do you speak English?” they ask me. “Would you please take some time to answer some questions”? If this was a person with a clipboard, I would have told him or her to push off, but I had been approached by a similar group a couple of years earlier; they are English students, on assignment to find English speaking people to practice on, and what better place to find them than near one of Mexico City’s top tourist attractions? They will play the tape back in class later on. I pretend not to know any Spanish and answer their questions. What’s your name? Where do you live? What work do you do? Are you married? Do you have children? Do you have a girl friend? Do you live alone?... I can’t help but to think that they are practicing some one-liners for use at their local night club; but the interaction is fun. Expressing their gratitude for the help, they move on to find another volunteer.

Avenida Insurgentes

Avenida Insurgentes (Insurgents Avenue) cuts Mexico City vertically in two. The avenue stretches for about thirty-five kilometres from the south side of Mexico City (near the exit to Cuernavaca) through the centre and up to the fringes of the city’s border with its neighbouring State of Mexico. Continuously sprinkled with shops, offices, restaurants, night clubs, government offices, schools and cultural centres, it is said to be the largest commercial avenue in the world. So many roads criss-cross Insurgentes that moving north or south along this avenue is always a slow process, despite its four lanes on each side. During the day, the south end of the avenue serves as one of the city’s main commercial areas, and at night it comes alive with people seeking relief from the day’s work and stresses. I spend time travelling along this avenue on several occasions during the week.

From the south side of the city, I get into a cab and say to the driver “Hotel de Mexico por favor”. No such place exists, but the cabby knows what I mean and we travel up Avenida Insurgentes to arrive at the World Trade Center. Without doubt, the most conspicuous of Insurgentes’ landmarks, the building’s basic concrete structure was left standing for years because the project ran out of funds before its planned completion. Fresh investment gave the project a new lease of life in the 90’s and it has now been completed and turned primarily into office space. It was also renamed to Mexico’s World Trade Center. The original plan as the old name suggests, was for the building to be the nation’s flagship hotel. Several layers of basement create parking space for thousands of cars; retail therapy and entertainment (including a multi-screen cinema) is dispensed around street level; followed by 37 floors of prime office space that rise into the city’s skyline; topped off by a cylindrical showpiece on the roof; inside of which are a number of offices and press rooms, and above them - one of the city’s most elegant revolving restaurants – Bellinni’s. If you dine here, you are also afforded spectacular views across this vast city during the hour and forty minutes it takes for the restaurant to complete the circle.

On The Metro

Mexico City’s metro system can be a pleasure or a pressure to travel on, depending what time of day you venture on to it. French-designed, the trains run on rubber wheels, gliding across wide steel tracks, backed up by a steel-on-steel wheel and track system should the tyres burst or fail. Rain, especially the heavy downpours the city experiences during the rainy season (May-October) really slows the system down, especially on stretches with outside tracks. I’m travelling off-peak, just before the evening rush hour, and the experience is a comfortable one. Seats are available, there’s no rain and the fast, quiet trains whisk me from the centre of the city to the south side for a mere 2 peso fare. For the cost of a metro ticket, you can travel one way from point A to point B and make as many changes as you need on the way. On another occasion I travelled on the metro during rush hour; so packed is the system at peak times that women and children are siphoned off into separate carriages. Mexico City’s metro, like most metro systems in large urbanised areas, is not a pleasant experience during the morning and evening rush hours.

San Angel

I arrive in San Angel on Saturday morning, a neighbourhood on the south side just off Avenida Revolucion. San Angel used to be a village in its own right, similar to Coyoacan, which is not far from here and which I have planned to visit next week. Both neighbourhoods have a colonial feel to them, although they are distinctive in their nature.

The area of San Angel begins with a series of exclusive boutiques, restaurants and night spots that I walk past wandering up Avenida de La Paz, a street that links Avenida Insurgentes to Avenida Revolucion. On week-end nights, this street becomes a car park and a sea of people envelops the scene. Crossing Avenida Revolucion, the neighbourhood changes; cobbled streets replace modern tarmac roads; suddenly you are surrounded by Mexico’s colonial heritage.

I decided visit San Angel on a Saturday so as to re-experience the Bazaar Sabado, (Saturday Bazaar), an art and artisans market that convenes here. The bazaar is a main attraction centred on Plaza San Jacinto, and is a popular attraction for visitors and locals alike. People are arriving early to breakfast at one of the local restaurants or cafés which provide outdoor tables and parasols. They enjoy watching the world go past on San Angel’s cobbled streets and plazas before walking off their breakfast, meandering the streets and alleyways and browsing the pathways around the plazas and art shops. Local artists display their work in the plazas and on side streets; old mansions open their doors to reveal art centres and curio shops, offering local arts and crafts at reasonable prices. People admire hand painted sculptures and stop to contemplate the art, taking the opportunity to buy directly from the artists that created them. During weekdays, this area is quite serene; but at weekends, when the crowds come, the ambience changes completely.

I walk up the hill, beyond San Angel’s main Plaza and restaurant areas and the neighbourhood changes again. Colonial mansions adorn cobbled streets and leafy lanes; the noise and hustle of the market scene below is replaced by the sound of birds chirping. The sound of splashing water from hose pipes echoes down empty streets, as it dampens down dust on the side walks. The air in the streets smells refreshed. Cars, which are few now, are forced to travel at 20 km/hr because of the large cobble stoned streets, so even their noise is limited. As I venture deeper into the residential haven of San Angel, a sense of peace and tranquillity is apparent and yet, I’m less than a kilometre away from one of the city’s main avenues.

As I walk back down the hill, back into the main square towards Plaza San Jacinto, the noise and concentration of cars rises significantly along with the sights and sounds of big city life. I find Plaza San Jacinto buzzing with activity; packed with people wandering through its passageways; admiring the artwork and bartering a price with its creators. People are double-parking and queuing for tables at local restaurants in time for the early afternoon meal. The charm and curiosity of San Angel has once again attracted new recruits to its fold, as old timers back for more of the same.

Getting Ready for a Mexican Christmas

As Mexico gets ready for Christmas, the Posadas, (Christmas parties) are starting to get into full swing throughout the city. School finished Friday. Next week, as Christmas Day approaches, Mexican families will make a determined effort to be with their loved ones and share a family Christmas together.

It’s Saturday night on Avenida Insurgentes and I’m in a taxi travelling north through the city. The taxi driver has contemporary English pop music playing on the radio as I watch the world go by from my back seat window. A young woman, perhaps eighteen or nineteen years old, steps out of her white BMW convertible and hands over the keys to the valet attendant as she accompanies two of her friends into a nightclub… a few yards down the road, an old man packs away his wax and brushes into the shoe-shine stand that will look after itself until he returns for another day’s work tomorrow morning… The chic boutiques dotted along the avenue have been lit up for the night; everything from fine furniture to oil paintings gleam behind glass displays under halogen bulbs and the reflection of twinkling Christmas tree lights… Men and women walk the aisles between car lanes at the next set of traffic signals selling 3-foot-long Christmas sparklers and stocking fillers to drivers waiting for the next green... And so another Saturday night begins to unfold in this colossal and complex city for people of all walks of life and lifestyles who are obliged live inside this metropolis’ crucible of contrasting scenes that play out alongside each other every day.