March 22-25, 2016
After escaping the beaches of Mexico, we headed for Mexico City to play tourists for a week. Mexico DF is currently rebranding itself to #CDMX and is the second largest city in the western hemisphere. Even with it’s record breaking smog since the 1980’s we still loved it!
Cycling Stats
Well earned rest days while in the city. We did walk and take the transit for endless hours.
#CDMX Fun Facts:
Mexico City was the second most populated city of the world for many years, after Tokyo. However, according to UN’s “2014 revision of the World Urbanization Prospects”, now this is the fourth largest city with around 22 million people (Tokyo, Delhi and Shanghai make the top 3). Its population and economy are larger than those of more than a hundred countries in the world, and it has more or less the same amount of inhabitants than the entire region of Central America (Guatemala to Panama).
Transportation Systems:
Mexico City’s metro system (subway) is the largest of Latin America, with 12 lines along 226 kms, 195 stations and 7 million people using it every day. We used the system on a couple of days and it was fabulous. It really made us realize that while Vancouver Canada (our home) is beautiful, it’s got a long way to go to be considered world class.
What happened…
Andrew writes: We made it to Mexico City without incident on the bus, although it was touch and go insofar as the motion sickness went. Normally on the buses I can read a book or watch the movies, but all I could do was sit with my eyes closed and hope/pray that the Gravol would do its’ job. When we arrived in MC, it was 0530hrs and cold (12C). I had totally forgotten that we were going from sea level up to 2200m in elevation! So I had to once again don the sweater that I had promised Amanda we wouldn’t need until next year. *sigh* The ride through Mexico City to Santiago’s apartment was uneventful, all of the main arteries have 4 or 5 lanes, and bike paths, and all that jazz. At first glance, Mexico City easily is in the “world-class” category. We passed beautiful buildings, and parks, and everything is clean. It’s great. We finally reached Santiago’s apartment just at 0700hrs and he was awake, and we sat around and talked for two hours before he had to go to work. That left Amanda and I with a bunch of time to kill, and lots to do in the meantime!
March 22nd – Museum of Anthropology: I had heard a lot of good things about the Museum of Anthropology here in Mexico City, and that was at the top of my list to visit. There are also a number of other tourist attractions nearby such as Bosque de Chapultepec and the Zoo. We got our first taste of the Metro (subway) system and were really impressed with it. Quick and cheap at only $5MX ($0.45CDN) per person. The museum is HUGE, and we spent several hours walking along the galleries on the main floor. Each room or gallery covers the history of the various groups such as Mayan, Aztec, Toltec, Olmec etc. It was fantastic, with information provided in Spanish and English, and bilingual video presentations too. Then we sort of ran/walked briskly through the top floor which deals with the indigenous peoples in present day. We wrapped up the day with a walk through the Bosque, and sadly the Zoo was closed for the day by the time we got there.
March 23rd – Teotihuacan: It took us awhile, about two hours on buses, to get there, but the site of Teotihuacan was really interesting. This used to be the biggest city in Mexico, about 1000 years ago. There has been lots of digging done and restoration to make the site quite spectacular. There are two large pyramids that can be climbed including the Pyramid of the Sun, which is the second largest in Latin America. The scale of the entire operation was most impressive to me, covering many square kilometres. The part that I didn’t enjoy was how crowded it was. There were thousands of people all trying to see the same things that we were. Maybe if we had gone at a less busy time (Semana Santa) then I would have enjoyed it more.
March 24th – Centro Historico: Today was a tough day. Amanda and I got into a fight early on and it spoiled the morning and early afternoon. Still, all the hurt feelings seemed to dissipate as we walked through Centro Historico, which included the cathedral, zocalo (public square), many, many streets full of shops, and again, loads of other tourists.
When we got to the Palacio Bellas Artes to sit and read in the park, the day went downhill again, when we realized the Amanda’s Kindle had been damaged. Amanda hates spending money, but this is one of our “essential” items I think, so we had to get it repaired or replaced. We ended up walking past a big mall full of cellphone repair stores. We talked to a guy who said he could fix the Kindle for $400MX, but when I gave it to him to look at, it didn’t feel right. He started walking away with another guy, and it seemed really suspicious. So I ended up having to chase him through the mall, grabbed the Kindle and huffed away, while he was swearing at me in Spanish behind me. Then I found another shop who said that they could fix it. After an hour, it was clear that they couldn’t, so we got our money back and left. The Kindle was damaged even more at this point, and I figured that our only option would be to buy a new one.
Things went from bad to worse when we got back to our Warmshowers’ host apartment, and he announced that we had to leave in the morning. We spent the rest of the night frantically trying to find accommodations, on a Friday, of a holiday weekend. I was hoping to find another Warmshowers place that we could stay, but knew that we would have to wait until the morning to get a response. So basically apart from the lovely buildings downtown, the day sucked.
Amanda writes:
Mexico city was amazing; I found it clean and safe and beautiful. In some ways it reminded me of New York city. The subway system was wonderfully effective and not expensive. Beautiful spring trees in bloom and buildings of beautiful historical architecture. We also found that there was a large police presence which reminded me of New York. Not at any time did we feel unsafe. The city while being massive and clean did get a little less clean and pristine as we headed towards the suburbs on our way to the pyramid tour. I guess that’s the same in any big city. It was fascinating to me how the hillsides were lined with so many houses of wonderful colours. I just couldn’t take enough pictures!
Our Centro Historico day was a bit hard as Andrew said. I was upset that we didn’t take the good camera with us, but in the end I definitely over-reacted. In the process I broke my kindle and our efforts at fixing it pissed me off even more. The first guy who Andrew had to chase down almost smiled when we finally caught him. Then the second guy was trying to rip us off too! When he started to fix take apart the Kindle then he said to us I need the cash up front to go and buy the screen. While I hesitated at first I did hand him the 500 pesos and as soon as he had it I got a bad feeling. And my feeling was spot on; again trust your intuition! He didn’t need the bloody money up front.
So now he’s got our 500 pesos and he walks off with the Kindle saying he needs to go and buy the part. He doesn’t return quickly so I go walking around to find him and I see him chatting with someone and I can see under his shirt tucked into his belt line is my fucking Kindle?! I ask him about it and he gets a bit defensive telling me I need to be patient. I explain to him that I’m uncomfortable that I had to pay him up front and based on our previous experience I don’t have much trust. Instead of trying to put my mind at ease he escorts me back to his booth and talks directly to Andrew.
We go through this process a couple of times where I go looking for him and then he finally comes back and tells us that he can’t fix it today but if we leave it with him along with a 100 peso deposit and return in two days he will have fixed it. By this time I’ve having nothing to do with it and tell him not a chance. Give us our Kindle and our money back. He proceeds to slowly start to reassemble the Kindle and I tell him I want the cash back now before he takes his sweet as time. He tells me to wait and I reiterate to him again that he needs to give me my money back now. He’s clearly getting pissed off because now there are a few people watching us. He finally goes into his pocket in a huff and pulls out thousands of pesos to give me my 500 back. Clearly he didn’t need my 500 pesos cash to buy the part. Once I had the cash I moved outside and waited for Andrew while he listened to the guy complain about me and half-heartedly put the Kindle back together. While it sucked I’m glad we got our pesos back.
So now we’re heading home on the subway and all I’m thinking about is I’m so glad this shitty day is going to be over and I”m looking so forward to sleeping in the next day and relaxing all day. Being a tourist in Mexico City for three days has been wonderful … and tiring. I was looking forward to not walking anywhere, just catching up on the blog, banking and maybe watching a Yankees game and a movie on the TV. Little did I know that when we got back to our hosts home we’d be asked to leave. I was devastated and was surprised I didn’t break into tears in front of him. Andrew must have recognized how upset I was and he managed to divert our hosts attention so I could remove myself and try and get composed. I don’t blame him, I mean he was a busy guy. He had a new girlfriend, his roommate and wife and child were returning and he had a wedding to attend that weekend so having house guests was likely overwhelming. The part that was hard was I was so tired and he asked us to leave the next morning and we only got back to his place at like 8pm. So here we are on the Friday of a long weekend in Mexico City trying to find a place to stay. I hopped on Expedia and pretty much everything was sold out unless it was $1000MX ($85CDN) per night. Oh and did I mention I was exhausted from sightseeing? Add to it I had a bit of a thing going on with my body that required some rest and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to ride to a new location. Oh well, as Andrew said to our host “we’ll figure it out”.
And we did. Andrew managed to find a place on Air BnB for a reasonable price. It’s times like these that I’m reminded that when you don’t have a home you’re often at the mercy of others and need to be grateful and respectful when someone opens their home to you. Our host Santiago was incredible! He opened his beautiful home to us in his beautiful city for a few days and shared cycling stories. He was funny, great to hang around with and easy going. We even got the pleasure of meeting his Aunt, Uncle and Cousin who were also super cool. I really hope we get to meet him again somewhere down the line and return the favour.