Not Enough Time In Mexico City

                Despite trying my best to leave my phone behind in the hotel room, we made it to the airport with minimal drama.  The Villahermosa airport was clean and fast, I guess they forgot to make the rest of their town nice, and we were off.

                I was nervous to try to navigate Mexico City.  A new metro that wasn’t Seoul’s seemed too much for me to bear!  But their easy and well planned metro for 5 pesos was such a relief.  Each line is color-coated and each direction is marked by the end of the line (as none of them are loops).

                We had only been in the city for twenty minutes or so when a woman offered to help us find our way.  Though we understood the map, we watched as she explained how to get where we needed to be and even offered to take us there herself (even though she was headed the opposite direction).  We insisted that she needn’t do that, but thanked her profusely and, when we parted ways she waved excitedly and yelled “Welcome to Mexico!”  A wonderful first impression of the city.

                The other three members of my group were all friends with the couple that offered to let us stay with them in their home, and so we made our way there in order to allow our group to, well, regroup.  Since I was not one of the friends, it was admitted to me that my name was not known and that they had written on the approved guest list the names of the rest of my group followed by “y chica”.  I’m glad my boyfriend didn’t know this ahead of time.  When this fun fact came to light he exclaimed “You mean I could have brought any chica?!” Too late, dude.  Too late.

                Our first day in Mexico City we took a walk through a beautiful park, Bosque de Chapultepec in order to get to a history museum within an old castle, Chapultepec Castle.  While Mexico City’s climate is far milder than that of our previous destinations, we had arrived on the sunniest, warmest day in weeks, as our hostess informed us, and the park was a nice reprieve from the beaming sun.  Vendors sold nuts battered in varying spices and fried, candies that we familiar such as gummy worms, gummy bears, peach rings, and the like, directly next to candies I had never seen before.  A popular item was a foam monkey with just enough wire in its frame to allow it to hold tight to the owner’s head.  They had boats for rent, and life vests for rent separately, and certainly no shortage of things to be done including the Anthropology Museum which we would visit later in our Mexico City adventure.

               The group of us entirely and incredibly very white.  Even in the far more mixed-heritage Mexico City we did not look like locals at all.  Despite their pale Mid-Western skin and my paler Pacific Northwestern skin, we had brown hair and maybe could have slipped through the park with minimal head turns.  This was certainly not a possibility accompanied by our gorgeous, tall, thin, blonde-haired hostess.  Passing a thick ring of people circling some performing clowns we were called to.

                Something about the foreigners.

                Something about don’t we speak Spanish.

                Something like “Oh, no? So sad.”

                The ring of people laughed out, all eyes on us.

                Our hostess kept her eyes forward and her walking speed quickened.

                “What was that?” I asked, shooting another look backwards only to find dozens and dozens of eyes still trained on us.

                “They do that every time,” she said, clarifying with, “to the expats.  They have nothing better to talk about.”

                We laughed a bit, but the slightly venomous tone escaping through her somewhat pursed lips told us that “every time” wasn’t once or twice or even eight or nine time, but habitually.

                The castle sits atop a hill, which is wonderful for a view, but less so for trekking up.  We purchases waters and sports drinks at the bottom of the hill and were told we would need to finish them before entering the castle.  Misjudging the length of this height, the drinks were guzzled as to waste no time, which was regretted after walking, and walking, and walking towards Chapultepec Castle.  Maybe that’s a bit dramatic.  There is a train, or rather a cart disguised as a train as there are no tracks, that leaves every fifteen minutes or so, and we walked because it was only a fifteen or so minute walk.  The moral of this rant was more to warn away from guzzling your delicious sports drink in the first two minutes of your trek through the unforgiving sun.

                Chapultepec Castle was impressive if a bit foreboding.  Its military quality was in stark contrast to the sunny and blue sky outlined on all sides by the greenery rising from the park.  The entryway was painted on the walls and ceiling with beautiful and haunting paintings and half the rooms were preserved as they were give an idea of what life was like living there, while the others were full of history and artwork, often intersecting, explained by various plaques that were written all in Spanish.  It made me wonder what the latter of the rooms had been used for previously.  But I am sure that there was some plaque desperately trying to explain it to me.

(The most derp portrait of life...)

                While the interior of the castle was fantastic, it was stepping out onto the balcony and garden areas that really made this worth the trek up the hill.  All around the castle was the park that stretched out until it suddenly became city.  Statues and fountains looked marvelous in the beautiful weather we had somehow been lucky enough to have.  It was simply breathtaking.  And hot.  It was also hot.  I was thinking longingly back to that bottle of water.

                And then, there it was.  A water fountain sitting in a ray of sunshine as though the clouds had parted just to lead me to it.  I don’t think that actually happened…but it feels like it must have.  The rest of the group was talking about something that I couldn’t focus on.  “Is this water safe?” I asked.  They continued talking, having not heard me.

                I took several more hurried paces towards the water fountain.  “It’s probably fine, right?”

                Maybe they had heard me this time, or maybe they simply noticed the direction of my beeline.

                “I wouldn’t trust it,” one of them said.

                “Probably should wait ‘til we can get bottled water.”

                I nodded to myself as though they had said the opposite thing.  “It’s probably fine,” I agreed with I didn’t know who as I came to the water fountain.

                For perhaps the fifteenth time that trip all the advice about water and ice and food flooded back to me.  It was the background noise in my head as I listed to the water streaming from the fountain.  The water was cool and tasted delicious.  And I was fine.  Not so much as a stomach cramp or a second thought.

                We returned to the host and hostess’s house, to the comfort of AC and the promise of a pool, before we started whipping up some dinner and I tried my very first sip of mezcal.  And holy shit.

                “Did you want to try it?” our host asked me.

                All eyes seemed to find me.  Obviously I wanted to try it.  I was cool.  I could hang.  Sure, give me a glass.  I thanked him and pressed the short glass to my lips.  I did not get any farther than this before my eyes burned a bit.  I pulled the glass away blinking and letting out a “phew”.  “Just drink it?” I asked.  “Just like this?”  The laughter told me, yes, just like that.  I put the glass to my mouth once more, moving much faster and taking the worlds tiniest sip before placing the glass down with another “phew…”  “I guess now the tequila will seem weak,” I said.

                I checked the bottle quickly to be sure the guys were actually drinking mezcal and not paint thinner.

                I stuck to tequila watered waaaaaay down with soda but was warm and giggly within an hour anyway.

                The guys had all gone to school together.  They had taught in China together.  They had been friends for years and years and had no shortage of stories to be rehashed upon this reunion.

                I laughed along with their stories and contributed mostly when the topic turned to poking fun at my boyfriend, which is something I can ALWAYS contribute to.  But mostly I just listened and laughed and shot our hostess looks of I have no clue what they are talking about.  She returned these looks and we all laughed some more.

                Day two in Mexico City began early for me.  I didn’t sleep past 5am and decided it best to make my way out to the kitchen instead of disturbing the others, since we all shared the room.  I wrote in my journal and sent some messages to friends while I had wifi and didn’t see anyone else for a couple of hours.  But when they came, they all seemed to come at once.

                They began planning the day, and I suppose they thought I was part of it.  They listed place after place, enough that I couldn’t keep straight which one someone had vetoed and which everyone had nodded excitedly to.  I simply nodded, hoping that someone else was just as lost as I was.  But I doubted it.  The Anthropology Museum was the one that stuck in my head.  That.  I wanted to do that.  I wouldn’t fight anyone on anything else so long as we went to the Anthropology Museum.  So the conversation continued until we finally decided on a plan that I cannot quite recall as none of it happened.

                We walked through a Saturday market that resembled the Saturday markets that I knew only because they were selling things and it happened to be Saturday.  It was more closely related to the market in Merida without the bugs and grime.  There were mechanical parts to something or other and whisks and silverware and things a tourist would never consider buying, but it was interesting to feel part of the real life of Mexico City.  I lingered like a distracted child, but my boyfriend kept me up to a decent pace, pulling me by the hand as I slowed to watch a woman haggle over the price of a strainer.

                Impressive architecture rose up all around us as we moved out of the ritzier part of Mexico City that was home to Gucci stores and embassies alike.

                “What is that?!” I would ask, pointing to the most amazing building I had ever seen.

                “A bank,” our host or hostess would say, disinterested.

                “Wow…” I would linger, amazed, until my eye caught the NEXT most amazing building I had ever seen.

                It occurs to me now this may be called existing in a city.  Maybe this is what most banks look like in big cities and simply in being different from Seattle or Portland or Seoul everything seemed new and exciting.  Maybe after having traveled more I too will be able to pass archways and spectacular facades with a simple “just another bank” or “that’s only a mall” or maybe I won’t even notice it because it will all seem commonplace.

                But I hope not.

                If passing banks was impressive, I simply was not prepared for the post office.  This post office was plated in gold.  This seems like an unlikely sentence, and, believe me, it is an even more unlikely sight.  “This is the post office?!” I asked staring up at the elevator that was shimmering in the light of the chandelier overhead.  Never had I wanted to have my picture taken with a post office so badly.  Brush Prairie’s post office doesn’t even have more than one employee as far as I know.  There was a section, not just a corner, dedicated to art and post office related history and I started that way before I was reminded that we had other things to see.  My strong desire to spend an hour in just the post office told me that two days in Mexico City was ridiculous.  Absurd!  It wouldn’t be enough.  And begrudgingly I left back out to the street only to see another most impressive building I had ever seen.

               We moved on to the Zocalo, a square that was surrounded on all side by points of interest highlighted in our guidebooks.  The stop we had intended to start with was the Palacio Nacional.  It is one of the places that you must visit while in Mexico City!  Or so I was told.  The outside was very nice.  But it was also closed.  This caught us off guard and our group just kind of stared at it a while willing it to be open so that our plans could continue on.  But eventually we gave this up and turned to our left to the Catedral Metropolitana.

               The cathedral has varying architectural styles as it has been built upon all throughout the colonial period and, through glass in the ground, you can look down onto some of the ruins of Templo Mayor that it had been built upon.  This, more than the guidebooks or documentaries had, conveyed a feeling of the history of the city.

                The inside was full of people worshiping.  I felt like a voyeur as I admired the altars and artwork in the midst of people trying to have a religious experience.  I appreciated the beauty and history of cathedral, but not without a feeling of guilt.

                “I didn’t know they would allow heathens like me in here!” one of the members of our group, a Methodist, joked.

                I just scoffed and continued walking about.  Try being Asatru, I thought to myself, avoiding walking under chandeliers just in case.

                We moved to Templo Mayor next.  I wanted so badly to be awed  by what was left of this structure.  But I simply wasn’t.

                “Look at what it used to look like!” the recreations of the Templo Mayor seemed to cry to us.  “Look how amazing it was!”  This is not to say you ought not to go.  It is only a couple dollars to check it out.  And maybe your imagination will allow you to fill in some of the blanks.  But for me, “It used to take up so much more space!  See that coffee shop over there?  That was built over the ruins of this,” wasn't enough.  It just fell short of the ruins we had already seen.

          The attached museum had a wealth of artifacts found in the ruins and was worth the entrance fee to the Temple, so I don’t feel slighted.  But I simply felt guilty that I was so underwhelmed by what was supposed to be impressive.

                “I think we’re all museumed out,” someone said after leaving the museum.

                “Wait…what?” my eyes widened in terror.

                “Yeah,” someone else agreed.  “Let’s skip the Anthropology Museum and do something else.”

                “But, but…”

                There was a unanimous nodding as we started walking toward the bus.

                “Are you alright?” my boyfriend asked me.

                I felt my eyes morph from my own eyes into puppy-dog eyes, but I could do nothing about it.  “We’re not doing the Anthropology Museum…?”

                “Nah,” he said, “I don’t think anyone feels like it.”

                I could feel despair nestle itself into my heart.  If that sounds dramatic, well, it was a dramatic time in my life!  I had stared at those stupid rocks that someone insisted was a temple for far too long.  I had been pulled from my post office.  And now the new plan was brunch and then coffee shops in “a kind of cool neighborhood”?  I swallowed down a tantrum remembering I was a 24 year old woman and simply continued to pout.  I felt that was a reasonable middle ground between tears and kicking my legs and going with the flow.

                But I know I should have simply gone with the flow.  My boyfriend suggested we split up after brunch and some of us go to the “kind of cool neighborhood” and he and I, and anyone else who was interested (which turned out to be no one) go to the Anthropology Museum.  Everyone said that was fine, but I suddenly felt guilty for my childlike pouting.  I told him it was fine, that we could all stay together, but he insisted that he also wanted to go the museum.  I knew he didn’t really.  That he would have preferred to go with his friends, that really he was just going for me.

               

                This brunch is what some of us like to call “lunch”.  It happened at around 1pm, and served lunch-type food.  But because we called it “brunch”, I decided that it was fine to start drinking.  I ordered in Spanish, which I should not be too proud of since I simply said “para mi…” the food I wanted, and, “y…” the drink I wanted.  And even that I had to do twice and point to the menu because my pronunciation is apparently shit.  While the food was great, it came at Mexico speed.  We waited for what felt like hours (it wasn’t) and were starving by the time our food came.  I ordered a second drink knowing that it would take forever and someone else ordered a coke.  By the time the second drink came everyone had finished their food and had been hoping for the check for ages.  I didn’t even want that beautiful, delicious drink at that point, and the coke was shoved in a bag “for later”.  I angrily and quickly drank that beautiful and expensive drink, which is not the ideal fashion to drink such a drink, and the check came within minutes.

                Despite the guilt of pulling my boyfriend from his friends…I really, really enjoyed the Anthropology Museum.  There were a series of rooms for each civilization.  Even though we had three hours, we had been warned to pick and choose which we wanted to see most and not lollygag too much.

                Within each room there were some real artifacts and some reproduction, but the recreations were done so well the only real way to tell them apart it seemed was either by being informed by one of the signs or deducing that, because this one was behind thick glass and surrounded by protective rope and that one was within arms’ reach, that this one must be real and that one a reproduction.

                This museum was exactly what I wanted.  The ruins we had seen had provided a skeleton of the civilizations that had once inhabited Mexico and the museum had filled in the flesh and blood: the religion and daily life.  The clothing they wore and the products they created.  What they might have eaten and the stories they probably told.

                Each section was broken into an upstairs (with the aforementioned artifacts and such), an outside (the was a smell section recreated into life-size), and an upstairs.  For the most part, the upstairs areas were a mystery to me.  We had only three hours (yes, I said only three.  Three is nowhere near enough) and we only say the upstairs to one of them.  But it was recreated with photos and color.  It made me wish I had seen the other upstairs sections.

                We both left very happy that we had gone, which made me feel slightly less guilty about my earlier pouting.

                We would leave the next morning and so, to celebrate our second but final night in Mexico City, we all drank margaritas the size of our heads.