Chichen Itza / Playa del Carmen

The bus ride from Merida to Playa del Carmen was rather painful but it also included one of the highlights of the trip, including the part that I was looking forward to most in my entire Mexican/Central American adventure – Chichen Itza.

We had a private van from Merida to Playa del Carmen, so that was pretty cool. At least comfort-wise, the trip wasn’t so terrible. On the way to Playa del Carmen, about an hour-and-a-half out of Merida is Chichen Itza. Chichen Itza recently was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World and is the largest archaeological city of the Mayan civilization in the Yucatan Peninsula. It was a pilgrimage site for the Mayans for over 1,000 years and is one of the most visited places in all of Mexico.

The most famous icon of Chichen Itza is the Pyramid of Kukulcan or El Castillo. This is the pyramid/temple near the center of the facility that was built for the feathered, serpent god Kukulcan. It is busiest during the spring and winter solstice when the sunlight plays optical tricks with the pyramid and gives the appearance of a large serpent coming down the pyramid. With the exception of only the Great Pyramid in Egypt, it is the most iconic pyramid in the world.

Another famous icon at Chichen Itza is the Great Ballcourt. I’m still not sure what the game was, but it involved putting a ball through a hoop – a little like the Charlotte Bobcats but presumably with better accuracy. With respect to the game that was played on the court, this is the largest and impressive court of its kind in the entire Mayan archaeological world. I seem to recall hearing/reading that the game was played to the death at Chichen Itza but there currently are other schools of thought on the matter, such as the “death” being metaphorical rather than literal. I guess there is hope for the Bobcats yet.

There are lots of other structures at Chichen Itza such as the Temple of the Jaguars, the Platform of the Skulls, the Platform of Venus and the Sacred Cenote, which isn’t so much a structure as a gigantic sinkhole in which people were sacrificed after being doped up with liquor made from peyote, among other things. Listing these things isn’t so much important as it is a way for me to elongate the paragraph in order to provide enough space to include another photo. I have so many photos from Chichen Itza that it seems wasteful not to include at least three in this entry, so hopefully this paragraph is long enough now.

Leaving Chichen Itza, the rest of the trip to Playa del Carmen was a three-hour painful ride. I won’t go into why because it’s not important. I just write this so I’ll remember it when I look back at this entry. I’ll know what I’m talking about.

I’m not going to waste an entry on Playa del Carmen. I didn’t even bother to take many pictures. It’s got a nice beach, which I strolled for a while, but the town as far as I could tell is just a tacky resort town full of tourists and bars and restaurants and is most useful as a spring break hangout.

There is one thing worth mentioning from here, though. At a restaurant around the corner from my hotel, I stopped for some tacos and beer. I ordered Tacos de Mexicano. I received a bowl filled with a stew of chorizo, beef, onions and other tasty treats and six corn tortillas. It also came with guacamole, hot sauce, pico de gallo with jalapenos and other goodies. Once assembled, they were the best tacos I have ever eaten in my life and I was a big taco fan to begin with. The one pleasure that I’ll leave with from Playa del Carmen will be my memories of those tacos. God bless you tacos!!!

Tomorrow morning, we are off from Playa del Carmen to Tulum for a little more Mayan history and a little more adventure. See you there.

Merida

We arrived early in Merida and arrived at the hotel at around 7:00. Fortunately, most of the rooms were ready and we got to put our things up and get some breakfast at the hotel, which for me meant coffee.

We were out early on a tour of the area surrounding Merida. First up was stopping by and seeing some churches and other stuff. Then we went to a place where we were put onto little horse-drawn carriages (I’ll call it a carriage for lack of a better word. Actually, it was more like a palette with slightly-padded seats that were run on tracks) to go to various cenotes in the area. These were fresh-water swimming holes that were pretty deep, so I didn’t go in, and were pretty crowded with tourists. My favorite part was at one of them when we ran into some young American girls who tried to have the following conversation with us:

American Girl 1: Are you guys from Europe?

American Girl 2: Isn’t the Loch Ness Monster in Europe?

American Girl 1: Yeah, like Sweden?

American tourists. God, you gotta love them.

After the swimming we returned to where we hopped on the Carriages of Doom because there also was a restaurant there. I ordered a steak and waited. And waited. And waited. About 75 minutes after I ordered the steak, it arrived. It was good, especially with the hot sauce that I added, and everybody got to watch me eat it. Good times.

After lunch, we went on a little driving tour around the city of Merida. I didn’t take pictures because I thought that I might get out on my own to see the city and would take some better pictures that way but that was never to happen. Also, the back of the van was particularly warm and we were starting to have a mutiny, so the van ride ended a bit prematurely.

When we returned, a girl on the trip and I went out and grabbed some beers and came back to the hotel to shoot some pool. Returning to old form, I sucked until around the third beer, improved, and probably would have started sucking again around beer six, but we were cut short before reaching that point in order to go to dinner. I don’t want to brag, but I was pretty impressive. So impressive that the girl I was playing with ended up sleeping with somebody else. But, then, that’s pretty much the story of my life.

The next day was pretty much a waste and I don’t want to do a whole entry on it so I’ll try to sum it up here. We took a two-hour bus ride to a beach on the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn’t an ugly beach, but it was more of a fisherman’s beach than a tourist beach. From there, we went on a 2.5-hour tour to see flamingos in the wild. We saw about 30. We also had a five-minute stop to see a petrified forest and a ten-minute stop to go swimming in another cenote. Afterwards, we returned to the beach for lunch, which I skipped, and there was more swimming while we staggered our returns to the city on the two-hour buses. Had I known what the day had in store, I would have just stayed in the city and roamed around on my own. Poor due diligence on my part. Oh, well. Traveling in groups has some good days and some bad days. This was one of the bad ones.

Dinner ended up being Burger King as a substantial part of the group had eaten enough corn/bean products for a week and decided to do something beefy. This leg of the trip ends on Saturday and we will be inundated with new blood as several people on the current leg leave and several new members join. I’ve liked the group that I’m with, overall, but I’m ready for a little change, as well.

That’s where I’m at now, as I write this on Friday morning. In an hour or so, we are taking off for Playa del Carmen with a stop at Chichen Itza on the way. That’s what I’ve been looking forward to most on this trip so hopefully the tone of these entries will improve shortly.

Palenque

Well, the worst part of the Bad Time came to a conclusion just in time because it was time to visit Palenque. Palenque is an ancient Mayan city that was active between 100 b.c. and 800 a.d. Palenque disappeared into the jungle after that but is now being excavated, although, to date, archaeologists estimate that only about five percent of the site has been unearthed.

We hired a local guide at the gate to give us some insight to the site and he was pretty helpful. When you first enter the site, you come upon the Palace and the Temple of the Inscriptions. The buildings sit in a complex with other temples that are in greater states of disrepair. The Palace and Temple of Inscriptions, however, are breathtaking. Palenque is perhaps most notable in that it was the first Mayan site in which archaeologists were able to locate the remains of Mayan rulers. In 1952, Alberto Ruz Lhuillier found a passageway to the sarcophagus of Pakal the Great, who ruled Palenque for 68 years during the seventh century. The sarcophagus was found in the Temple of the Inscriptions and is currently housed in the Palenque museum, which is on-site.

We climbed up to the top of the Palace and continued on our way through the site, past the aqueduct. The other impressive area at Palenque is the Temple of the Cross complex, which includes the Temple of the Cross, Temple of the Sun and Temple of the Foliated Cross. We climbed to the top of each one. I’m not sure exactly why. Nice views, I guess. There were remnants of art in each of the buildings but not enough to justify climbing to the top of a temple in a rainforest in order to see them. Nevertheless, the Bad Time was over and I was enjoying myself.

After visiting a few other structures at Palenque, we made our way over to the museum. It’s not a large museum and there aren’t a lot of pieces in it. The prize piece has to be the sarcophagus of Pakal the Great, which is housed in its own air-conditioned room. There are also various pieces of jewelry, masks, pottery and other items that have been recovered from the site. The museum as a whole is nothing spectacular in its own right, but it’s worth a visit if you’re already there.

After Mayan ruins, it was time for some fútbol. It was Tuesday and the Champions League was in action so a Canadian Chelsea supporter and I went looking for a television on which to watch the match. First, we stopped for the best tacos I’ve ever eaten. Then, I got to use my mad Spanish skills to find a restaurant that had a television and would allow us to watch whatever match was on. It turned out to be Real Madrid and Lyon, which finished 1-1.

That evening, we boarded another overnight bus, this time from Palenque to Merida. Unlike the overnight bus a few nights before, I took my sleeping tablets before the ride. I also took another sleeping tablet that my French Canadian roommate had given me. He is my new hero. I have to say that even though the seats barely reclined on this overnight bus, I had the best sleep I’ve had the entire time I’ve been in Mexico. Thank you, modern science!!!

The Bad Time - Mexican Edition

The Bad Time always comes. It’s cyclical and I never know when it’s going to hit, but I can usually sense it coming within a few days of its arrival. When it first hits me, generally, I can fight it off if I try hard enough and if I can find people with whom I can ride the waves. Eventually, though, the Bad Time becomes too overwhelming to ignore. Usually, it waits until I am having a good time and then it is triggered by something, often something meaningless, and I become debilitatingly depressed.

This time, the Bad Time hit me in San Cristobal. After going to a wine bar and having probably a bottle or so of wine, we went to a club for some dancing and additional drinks. I didn’t drink at this club, but I was still having a good time. Then, the Bad Time came on like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. I was by myself, outside of the club, for about ten minutes and couldn’t overcome the feelings of sadness and loneliness that for some reason choose random moments to appear. This happens to me with less frequency than it used to, and I have a lot of experience with it, but it frightens me when it happens because I know that I’m not functioning with a fully rational mind when it happens. It often hits me while I’m drinking. (I know, right? Alcohol-induced depression. Who would have thought such a thing possible?) As I’ve always done in these situations, I went “Darkman” as a friend of mine used to call it. I just left. Went home. No good-byes. No nothing. I just bolted.

It wasn’t easy to get to sleep but eventually I did. The next day was a free day in San Cristobal, so that made the Bad Time easier. The last thing I want to do during the Bad Time is to be around anybody. I just want to be alone. I walked around San Cristobal and stopped in a couple of shops and restaurants, but I couldn’t eat because there is no appetite during the Bad Time. I took some pictures but eventually went back to the hotel because, for the first time during the entire trip, we had a thunderstorm. Even the weather was going through the Bad Time. (I did get to happen through this random parade, though, going through the Zocalo. I thought that was pretty cool.)

That evening people went out to a Thai restaurant to get some dinner. I blew that off, grabbed a bottle of wine and hung out by myself for a change. I can’t say for sure that it helped at all but it didn’t seem to make anything worse.

The next day we headed to Palenque. On the way, we were going to stop at a couple of waterfalls for some swimming. This was a horrible thing to do during the Bad Time. There was just no way to get away from people and the Bad Time was at its worst. I just listened to my iPod for about four hours until we got to Agua Azul, which was the only waterfall we ended up visiting. I walked with the group until it got to the place where everybody was going to swim. Then, I walked away and avoided the group for the next three-and-a-half hours. The Bad Time was ruining the day and there was no way for me to avoid it.

At night, I tried to come out to dinner with the group. I hadn’t eaten in a few days, and I still wasn’t hungry, but I thought I’d give company a shot. Once again, I had no dinner, but I did have some beer and ended up drinking myself into a better mood. The night didn’t end well, but I felt like I was recovering at least. Anyway, I think the worst part of this episode of the Bad Time has passed.

San Cristobal

After Oaxaca, it was time to head to San Cristobal. This required a thirteen-hour bus ride to which nobody was really looking forward. The trip was made easier by the fact that we were taking a fancified bus with nearly totally reclining seats for our sleeping pleasure and that was supposed to make all of the difference. As a little insurance, I packed along a little happy juice (vodka and pineapple juice) for the trip.

On the bus, we were able to watch movies, television shows, etc. I watched Despicable Me for the third time, and for the second time in Spanish. It’s a good film. Anyway, it was closing in on midnight and I still wasn’t sleepy. The girl sitting next to me and I decided to have a little happy juice. The only problem was that I couldn’t find my happy juice can. My friend got on her hands and knees looking under our seats for the happy juice. (She’s my new hero.) Ultimately, I found it a few rows up in the aisle. I grabbed the can and we shared some happy juice, though not much. It was enough for her as she went right to sleep. I, on the other hand, kept trying until around 2 am, when I finally surrendered to the Tylenol PM. That finally put me out, though only for about four hours. We swung into San Cristobal early in the morning and I was pretty tired.

We stopped for breakfast and then went to a nearby tourist office for options of things to do. The only thing that sounded interesting to me was a trip to Sumidero Canyon, taking place later in the afternoon. I went back to the hotel and got a little sleep before heading back.

The ride to Sumidero Canyon took about 45-minutes, if I remember correctly, and we all hopped on a small boat to get on the river going through the canyon. I don’t remember the name of the river, and the entire tour was in Spanish, so I was only picking up bits and pieces, but it went right through the heart of the ancient Mayan culture and Spanish conquest.

The highlight of the Sumidero Canyon is the scenery, I suppose. Lots of cliffs. We saw some alligators and some monkeys. We saw Catholic shrines. We saw jungle. Yeah, lots of cliffs and jungle. I think that pretty much sums up what we saw.

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the trip through the Sumidero Canyon. I just don’t have the words in me at the moment to describe it very well. Fortunately, pictures are worth a thousand words and all of the photos in this entry are from the Sumidero Canyon.

After the canyon, I hung out at the hotel for a little while and then we headed over to a San Cristobal wine bar. I was excited because the bar had an Argentine malbec wine and those are my favorites. In addition to wine, we received free tapas with every bottle of wine that we bought. We went through a lot of tapas and a lot of wine. Afterwards, we went to a club for some dancing and additional drinking. That is where the bad time started. I’ll talk about the bad time in the next entry.

Oaxaca

Next up after Puebla, we went to Oaxaca. This required a 5-hour bus ride starting at mid-morning and lasting until mid-afternoon in Oaxaca. Of course, 5-hour bus rides suck, but I passed the time talking with one of my new friends and listening to my iPod. All-in-all, I’ve had much worse travel experiences.

Like I said, we arrived about mid-afternoon. We took about a 15-minute chill period and then met back up in the lobby to have a walking tour of the historic district of the town and then get some food. The walk was pretty interesting. Oaxaca City isn’t a tiny town but we were going through a relatively lightly inhabited part of the city. I took a few pictures as we made our way to the zocalo. There we stopped for dinner and I encountered suspect number one of two of what has caused me so much pain ever since. We stopped at a restaurant and I had chile rellenos. They were filled with beef and I downed them with various types of Mexican beers and they were de-licious.

After dinner, a group of us went out to a bar for additional Mexican beers. It was a good time and it lasted until around 1 am. Upon leaving, I stopped at a little street stand and ordered suspect number two of my troubles. It was a hamburger with a piece of beef, a tiny slice of ham, pineapple (yes, pineapple) and an assortment of other toxins. I must say that it was delicious as well and a new friend of mine and I sang Monty Python songs while walking back to the hotel.

Early the next morning, Montezuma had his revenge and he’s been having it ever since (about four days now). I’m just going to leave it at that.

The next day, we had breakfast and went out for an all-day tour of things around Oaxaca City. We first visited a petrified waterfall. This required a thirty-minute bus ride followed by a 45-minute trek up a hill in the back of a pick-up truck through very bumpy terrain. (This, of course, did great things for my stomach.) Once we got to the top of the mountain, we had some great views of the petrified waterfall, something I had never even heard of before, and the surrounding mountains. There were some ponds and a few people went swimming in there, but I just took some photos and negotiated with my sore, sore belly.

Following this, we went to a mezcal factory and saw how the famous Mexican liquor with the worm at the bottom of the bottle is made. We also tried several various types of mezcal and I think this may have helped to kill some of the bacteria in my system.

From the mezcal factory, we went to the Arbol del Tule. This tree, right outside of Oaxaca City, has the largest base of any tree in the world. One local guide told us that it required nineteen people to stretch their arms in order to surround it. Legend has it that the tree is fourteen hundred years old. When it’s all said and done, though, it’s just a huge fucking tree.

At night, we ordered pizza delivery – some of the worst pizza I’ve ever eaten, though the hot sauce was good – and played a card game involving civilians, mafia and policemen. The next day, we remained in Oaxaca, while we waited for our overnight bus to San Cristobal, but I can’t say there’s anything exciting to report. We hung around various markets in Oaxaca and then went back to the hotel to drink beer, buy vodka for the bus ride, and wait to catch the bus. I guess that’ll be an appropriate place to pick up the next entry, so I’ll see you then.

Recovery in Cholula

The plan for the group’s final day in Puebla was to visit the nearby town of Cholula, known for its pyramid with the Nuestra Señora de los Remedios on top, and all of its other churches; as well as to visit the nearby volcanoes. That plan, however, began at 8:00 am, and having only gotten home from drinking at 6:00 am, my plan differed somewhat.

My plan involved this: sleep. Sleep until I could sleep no longer sleep or until the pain went away. Sleep until I recovered from being run over by the overnight tequila truck. Sleep until my newly-crushed soul had time to start mending and the fire between my temples began to turn into mere embers. I slept until 11:00 am.

As you know, after a night of drinking, nothing is better than some grease. I walked around to the zocalo and thought about going to McDonald’s or KFC for some traditional U.S.-style grease, but at the last minute I decided to keep with the Mexican-food only (up to this time) diet and I stopped by a restaurant and had an omelette with chorizo and refried beans. It was actually much better than it sounds. After replenishing my grease reserves, I went back to the hotel.

It had become too late to visit both the volcanoes and Cholula, but the hotel could set-up a tour of Cholula at 1:30, so I decided to do that. As I expected, and as I mentioned above, the top thing to do/see in Cholula was to climb to the top of the Great Pyramid of Cholula and visit Nuestra Señora de los Remedios sanctuary at the top. Even though it is pretty hard to even determine that there is a pyramid there, because it appears to be a hill from a distance because of the overgrowth, it is still a popular attraction.

Cholula is legendary as a town in which the Spaniards, after learning of an ambush by the locals, crushed the locals, decided to build churches on top of all of the local landmarks and that now there are 365 churches in Cholula, one for each day of the year. In reality, there are something between 35-45 churches in Cholula, depending on what you count as a church, I suppose. Nevertheless, there are many impressive and unique churches around the city and it was worth a visit. We also visited some artisan shops and tried some mezcal, but the rest of the trip to Cholula wasn’t very exciting.

I returned to the hotel around 5:00 and I decided that a nap was probably a good idea. After I slept for about an hour or so, a group of us went to Vittorio’s, an Italian restaurant near the zocalo that once held (if it doesn’t currently hold) the record for the largest pizza ever made. Nevertheless, I still went with Mexican food as the menu featured tacos de arrachera with pico de gallo and guacamole. The food was very good, but I only put down a couple of beers as I was still recovering from the all-night tequila bar the night before.

At night, I worked on my blogs for a little while and then called it an early night because we were catching a five-hour bus in the morning for Oaxaca. I’ll get into that in the next entry.

¡Lucha Libre en Puebla!

After having a few drinks with some friends in the Plaza de la Constitucion, it was time to go back and get ready for the night’s activities. Those activities were to include street food, rasslin’ and drinking, so a good time was expected.

Most of the group headed out to Lucha Libre in Puebla. Lucha libre, as you know if you’ve ever watched Telemundo, is Mexican professional wrestling. But before heading into the event, we needed to get some dinner, so we stopped at a local street vendor to get some food. At the stand, the woman behind the grill was making cemita pueblas (if I’m not mistaken, but I may be), Mexican sandwiches commonly cooked by street vendors here. The most popular sandwich appeared to be the milanesa sandwiches on bread, but I opted for chorizo on tortillas because I do love me some chorizo. The sandwich/taco came with chorizo, quesillo, potatoes and cactus. There may have been other things on it as well, but that’s primarily what I recall. After doing my happy dance, I scarfed down the sandwich and moved on.

Across the street was the stadium for the Lucha Libre. In Puebla, I understand that the atmosphere at the event is much more mild than it is in Mexico City, but that everything is much more intimate in Puebla because it is held in a tiny arena. About half (seven) of us bought tickets for the close-up section of the stadium and we got seats four rows from the ring. After entering the arena, but before we had even gotten to our seats, we had been stopped by a vendor to buy beer. She didn’t have change for a 100-peso note, so I had to get my change in more beer. Already, I was beginning to suspect it was going to be a long, but good, night.

The wrestling show was a lot of fun and it was great to sit so close to the action. The action wasn’t significantly different from the action at an American wrestling match. Lots of jumps from the top ropes and people being thrown around the ring and commotion on the floor outside of the ring. There were crowd favorites and one thing that I found interesting is that fans of either wrestler or teams of wrestlers would sit on either side of the stadium in the upper decks. The wrestlers would play to their audience and insult the other side of the room. It was odd for me to see wrestlers standing on the top ropes and flipping off the other side’s fans. Do we get away with that in the United States? (I’ve only been once in the U.S. and that was over twenty-five years ago, so I don’t remember.) Anyway, there was also a hell of a lot of beer, which made it that much more fun.

After wrestling, the downstairs group decided to go to a tequila bar. As you can imagine, there was a lot more beer and . . . wait for it . . . tequila. I had a shot of tequila and told the rest of the group that it would be “just this once.” I told them this for all six or seven of my shots if I remember correctly. I also recall dancing more than I have in a long, long time – perhaps the longest I’ve ever danced without knocking somebody down and stepping on her. We decided to stay until the tour leader broke his record of longest time at this bar with a group, which was 4:30 am. We left at 4:32, but then decided to re-enter. Don’t ask me why. (Incidentally, the photo for this paragraph is from the trough in the men's room at the bar. Like everything I've encountered in Mexico, it's full of limes. I found that interesting.)

We left around 5:30 am and a couple people stopped off for street vendor hamburgers. While this happened a couple women in our group disappeared. We looked around for them for about 20-minutes, couldn’t find them, and went back to the hotel. We arrived around 6:00 and they were there, so all ended well. We all knew that it was going to make for a painful final day in Puebla, but it was a great time.

On to Puebla!!!

After several days in Mexico City, I was ready to move on and up next was Puebla. Puebla is the fourth largest city in Mexico and is most famous, historically-speaking, for being the site of General Ignacio Zaragoza’s defeat of the French army on May 5, 1862 that gave birth to Cinco de Mayo, which Estadounidenses have celebrated ever since by drinking Corona and perpetuating some of their favorite stereotypes. (Of course, the French took back Puebla soon afterwards, but nobody here seems to remember the date on which that happened.) That being said, the only things that I really knew about Puebla were that its soccer team has the same logo and sponsor as D.C. United and that I needed to try some Mole Poblano.

The bus ride from Mexico City to Puebla took a little under two hours, though that is not factoring in the forty minutes or so in which we waited at the bus station. We arrived around noon and checked in to the hotel. We stayed at the Hotel Victoria, which isn’t the cleanest or nicest hotel on the planet but is located very near Puebla’s Zocalo, or city center. My room also had a little balcony that actually provided a nice view into the Zocalo.

After checking in, we did a little orientation walk around the center of Puebla. We went to the Zocalo and it was similar in outlay, if not scale, to that of Mexico City. It was Valentine’s Day so there were balloons and flowers and people selling the aforementioned everywhere. On one side of the square (as in Mexico City, called the Plaza de la Revolucion) are the city government buildings and on the other side is the cathedral, which was built in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Once again, the weather was unbelievably gorgeous and it allowed us to take lots of photos of the picturesque plaza.

By this time, it was time to eat and we went to a little restaurant a few blocks away from the Zocalo for lunch. Because we didn’t have much time in Puebla, I knew that if there was Mole Poblano on the menu, I was going to get it here because I couldn’t leave Pueblo without trying it. Sure enough, it was on the menu and I ordered it. What came out was a plate with a large chicken leg smothered in mole sauce and some refried beans. Like the mole negro that I had tried in Mexico City, the Mole Poblano was sweeter than I was anticipating, but it was much better than the mole negro sauce that I had tried before. It went well with the chicken and the beer and a good time was had by all.

After lunch, I went back to the hotel to work on my soccer blog for a while and a few friends were going to text me when they had finished shopping so we could grab a few drinks before the night’s festivities – which included street food and wrestling. After a couple hours, I heard back from them and found them sitting on a balcony overlooking the Plaza de la Constitucion, sipping on some margaritas and I decided to partake. I had a few and have come to the realization that Mexican food and drink contain significantly more lime than I’m used to. I’m not saying that it kept me from having a second one. I’m just making a comment.

This entry seems a little short but I think the story of the Cemitas and the Lucha Libre may take a little while, so I’m going to hold off on those until the next time. See you then.

Mexican Food

Thus far with respect to Mexico City, I’ve written primarily about the places I went and the things that I saw. In this entry, I think I want to talk about food and some other passing thoughts regarding Mexico City.

As I write this, I have been in Mexico for a week. Thus far, I can say with pride that I haven’t eaten anything but Mexican food. I almost broke down today and grabbed a hamburger because I was extremely hungover and needed some greasy comfort food, but instead I grabbed an omlette with chorizo and refried beans. I’m getting ahead of myself, though.

I heard a lot of talk before I came here about how authentic Mexican food was very different from the Tex-Mex stuff that I get in the United States. I have to say that I have found that to be very true. There are not very many of the ground beef and cheddar dishes that are common at Taco Bell here in Mexico that I’ve seen. I have had a lot of tacos here in Mexico City. Some look similar to what I’m used to, meat and toppings in a folded-over corn tortilla. (I’ve seen a thousand tortillas in Mexico thus far and I don’t think I’ve seen a flour one – all corn. The smell of frying corn tortillas is everywhere in Mexico City.) Other tacos have been wrapped up like a mini-burrito but with the same fillings as the others.

My favorite tacos so far have been Tacos de Arranchera, which is tacos with flank steak. The meat has been marinated and the typical toppings provided have been pico de gallo and onions as well as a white cheese that I don’t find too flavorful, but the cheese flavor isn’t necessary with all of the other flavors going on in the food.

I also tried mole, I believe for the first time. Mole is probably the most famous of the Mexican dishes and there are several varieties that are found all over the country. The primary ingredients are chiles and chocolate, but it’s not necessarily either very spicy or sweet. The most famous is Mole Poblano, which is mole from Puebla, but I’ll write about that when I get to the Puebla entries. In Mexico City, I tried enchiladas with mole negro. This was my first experience with mole and I found that the mole that I tried was a little sweeter than I liked. Specifically, the chocolate flavor was a little too obvious.

I tried a few other Mexican dishes as well. I must admit, though, that the majority of the meals that I had in Mexico City were pretty generic because of where I ate them. In Mexico City, there are two restaurant chains that are on almost every corner – VIPS and Sanborn’s. I ate at VIPS twice in Mexico City and Sanborn’s once. These chain restaurants are sort of Mexican versions of Denny’s and Chili’s. They are a step above the fast food joints but not places in which you would expect to find fine cuisine, either. I ate at these places while I was travelling alone, figuring that I would have better meals when somebody with some local experience directed me towards more authentic cuisine. Even after that happened, though, I have to say that nothing I ate in Mexico City blew me away. I still expect that to happen, though, before I leave Mexico and enter Belize.

Depending on who you ask, Mexico City is either the largest or second-largest city in the world and the largest city that I’ve ever visited. That becomes obvious when I look at all of the places that I visited and the things that I saw in and around the city and realize that I saw only a very small fraction of the city. In the north, there is much poverty and I know there are some dangerous parts of the city. I didn’t see any of that. I think that five days in Mexico City probably were enough for me, but I’d definitely recommend paying it a visit. Now, it’s on to Puebla.

Mexico City - Finally to Teotihuacan

On Saturday, I met the group with which I would be travelling through Mexico. I could tell right off that this could be a fun group. It consists of people from several countries around the world and varies widely in age. As I write this, I’ve witnessed everybody drink at least a little bit after only two days, so I have high hopes. On our final day in Mexico City, we did a lot of sightseeing so I think I’ll just talk about that in this entry.

We hopped on a bus early in the morning with a local guide to visit the Basilica de Guadalupe. I’ve read that this is the holiest religious site in North America and it houses the shroud of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I won’t go into the whole story about the Mexican man who became a saint in 2002 (I think) but one of the miracles involved in his story (I believe from the 16^th century) involves the Virgin Mary casting her likeness onto a shroud that is displayed in the Basilica de Guadalupe. There also are several statues and posters of Pope John Paul II, who visited the Basilica in 2002.

Since it was Sunday when we visited, mass was being held at the site. There actually are two churches at the site, the original one which Mary requested to be built in the 16^th century and a more recent one which I believe dates back to the 1970s. I’m not really one who goes in for all of the religious history or mythology, depending on your views, but witnessing people to react to something that is supremely important to them is always a very humbling experience.

Later in the day, we went to Teotihuacan, which is outside of Mexico City, about an hour drive to the north. Teotihuacan is best known as the site of the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. I found these to be much more interesting than the pyramids in Egypt that I visited around this time last year. One reason for this likely is that you are permitted to climb the Pyramid of the Sun, which we did. On a difficulty level, with ten being walking along the towers of the Great Wall of China, I’d place this around a six. It was a little steep, but not too bad. The lower part was probably more difficult than the higher part, but I made it to the top in about fifteen minutes and took some photos of the Teotihuacan site from there.

From the Pyramid of the Sun, we went to the Pyramid of the Moon. The Pyramid of the Moon is smaller than the Sun, but also impressive. Having climbed to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun, I didn’t feel the need to prove myself by climbing the Pyramid of the Moon, and you’re not allowed to climb to the top anyway, so I just stood at the base and marveled at the structure from there.

Finally, at night, we went back (for me) to Plaza Garibaldi-Mariachi in order to get some dinner and listen to mariachi music. The whole atmosphere was pretty mild, I suppose because it was a Sunday night, and the food was good enough. It’s one of those things that you have to do in Mexico City when you’re here, but I can’t say that it’s necessarily my cup of tea.

That’s pretty much it for what I did in Mexico City. I think I’ll have another entry about the food and some passing thoughts before moving on to writing about Puebla.

Still Running Around The Same Barrio In Mexico City

After sightseeing in the morning of my first day in Mexico City, I went to get something to eat. As I normally do, I have been going to get something to eat quite frequently. I think I’ll talk about food in another entry, though, so I’ll skip past that for now.

The rest of my first day wasn’t particularly exciting. On Saturday, I transfer to another hotel and meet people with whom I will be travelling. Since I was anticipating a hike across town, dragging eight weeks worth of baggage with me, I decided to locate my destination early. I looked it up on Google Maps and as fate would have it, my new hotel is only about 3/8 of a mile away from my current hotel. ¡Que suerte! Later on, I got some food, but again, I’ll talk about that later.

Upon doing a little research, I found that there were still plenty of sightseeing opportunities in my general vicinity. I wanted to take a few photos of Torre Latinamericano, a famous skyscraper in Mexico City, so I went back out into the neighborhood in which I was the previous day. On my way there, however, my eyes were caught by some older structures on Avenida Hidalgo, so I went in that direction and took some photos. Once I walked a little further, I realized that I had gotten close to Plaza Garibaldi-Mariachi, a famous square that is full of mariachi groups on weekend evenings. Even though this was a Friday morning, I decided to head over to the Plaza just in case I didn’t get another chance. I saw a lot of mariachi performers sitting around with their instruments, but as I expected, nothing much was going on.

I turned around and headed back towards Torre Latinamericano. On my way, just before I got to the Palacio de Bellas Artes that I wrote about in an earlier post, I found a pedestrian street with lots of stores and street vendors and I felt the need to check it out. It wasn’t as bustling as, say, Avenida Florida in Buenos Aires, but again, this was a Friday morning, so I wasn’t expecting it to be going full blast. I walked down about five or six blocks and I saw that the street let out at the Plaza de la Constitución. How did I miss this the previous day? I must have walked right by it. No problem, though. I walked back down the pedestrian street and I was able to get my photos of Torre Latinamerico from there.

I returned towards my hotel down the Paseo de la Reforma but when I got to the street on which my hotel was located, I kept going. I had discovered that further down the Paseo de la Reforma was one of the main icons of Mexico City, the Angel de la Independencia, or “El Angel.” It was only about a fifteen-minute walk from where I had eaten dinner the night before, but at that time I hadn’t realized that I was so close. By the time I got to it, I was hungry so I stopped and had my first (though far from my last) tacos in Mexico. At El Angel, I took some photos, but because of the strength of the sun right overhead, the pictures are a little dark. I hope to return at night and take some better photos when it is lit up.

Okay, that’s it for now. As I write this, it’s Saturday and I’m getting ready to check out of one hotel and walk to another. Then, some more sightseeing this afternoon before meeting people at the new hotel this evening. I’ll be back.

Seeing The Sights In Mexico City

On my first morning in Mexico City, I started out by consulting an online Mexico City tourist map to try and determine where my hotel was located in relation to the bigger tourist attractions in Mexico City. It turned out I was pretty darn close.

I could see the Paseo de la Reforma from my hotel room window. The Paseo de la Reforma is pretty famous in its own right but, more importantly for me, it links to many of the attractions that I wanted to see. During my first walk down the Paseo de la Reforma, however, I was on a quest. I needed some coffee. Fortunately, there are as many Starbucks in Mexico City as there are in Washington, D.C. At the point where the Paseo de la Reforma meets Avenida Juarez, I stopped at a Starbucks for some coffee and to leer at the architecture in the neighborhood. I have to say that I am really impressed with the architecture in this city.

I knew that if I turned right onto Avenida Juarez, I would eventually end up at the Plaza de la Constitución or Zócalo. Even though that was my primary goal of the morning, I saw a structure down the left side down Avenida Juarez and I went in that direction instead. The structure that I saw turned out to be the Museo de la Revelución. I didn’t go in, thinking that I may get back to it later but there were other things that I wanted to see. Nevertheless, I found the building in which it was housed to be fascinating.

After strolling around for a while and taking some photos, I turned around and headed towards the Zócalo, knowing full well that there would be other things to see on the way. Not too long after re-crossing the Paseo de la Reforma and heading down Avenida Juarez, I came across a little park. I don’t know the name of it, but there were numerous little statues throughout the park and several vendors selling touristic goods. (When I walked back through the park in the afternoon, the number of vendors had quadrupled.) As I walked through the park, I discovered even more interesting architecture and statues. It was a great place to sit and rest for fifteen minutes before heading on down the Avenida.

A little beyond the park is the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts), which is yet another example of the brilliant architecture in this part of the city. I took some photos of the façade, but I don’t know if there’s enough room in this entry to post all of the photos that I’d like to add. Make sure to check out my Mexico City photo update on Facebook whenever I get around to updating it.

Eventually, I made my way down to the Zócalo. The Zócalo is one of the largest public squares in the world. It was pretty deserted while I was there, so I kind of felt like I was walking around in a large, empty parking lot. The Zócalo is bounded by La Catedral (Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary), the oldest and largest cathedral in the Western Hemisphere, and the Palacio Nacional, the executive seat of power in Mexico. The entire areas brought back memories of Tiananmen Square, even though I was in Tiananmen Square on National Day so there were about a million less people in the Zócalo while I was there.

Adding to the majesty of the experience was the fact that the weather was absolutely perfect. The temperature was in the mid-70s and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I have no idea how this will compare to the rest of my trip in Mexico City, but I am really enjoying the start.

On The Road To Mexico City

It’s been a few months, but I guess it’s about time to get this going again. I’m on the road, so I might as well get back into the swing. (By the way this first entry is about the flight to Mexico City and there are no accompanying photos. I’ll put up some random Mexico City photos to make up for it.)

This trip started just like all of the others – by getting on a plane. I was flying from Raleigh to Orlando to Mexico City. While I was waiting for my flight in Raleigh, we had a little bit of excitement – or I guess it was silence, the opposite of excitement. There was a ceremony outside in which the body of a soldier killed in Afghanistan was presented to the soldier’s brother for the funeral. It drew quite a crowd over to the windows and the entire terminal was silent in his honor. Otherwise, the trip to Orlando was rather routine.

In Orlando, I couldn’t find my flight on the Delta screens even though my flight had a Delta flight number. I looked for a while and then went to get some help. Delta Dude acknowledged that my flight did indeed have a Delta flight number, but he told me that it wasn’t a Delta flight. He told me that it likely was an Aero Mexico flight and that I should check out the Aero Mexico gates. Since Aero Mexico just has the one gate, it shouldn’t have been too difficult to figure out. I got to the Aero Mexico gate and my flight was posted on the board. At least, I assumed it was my flight since it had the same departure time, same departure airport and same destination as my own flight. All I had to do was ask the person at the counter, right? Well, nobody was at the counter, but my flight wasn’t for three hours, so I waited. A few hours later, there still was nobody at the counter. Now, I was starting to get a little concerned. Forty-five minutes before my plane was supposed to depart, the sign at the gate said that the plane was boarding. Nevertheless, I held on to my faith that I was in the right place. About five minutes later, somebody finally came to the counter. I went to make sure I was at the right place, and I was. Whew!!! I checked in and the lady behind the counter told me that I may or may not have luggage when I get off the plane in Mexico City because I checked in so late. In my mind, I cursed her because the only reason I checked in so late is because the stupid airline had left the gate counter unattended until just before the flight. From my mouth, though, came the word “gracias.”

Aero Mexico isn’t the frilliest of airlines, but it got me to Mexico City more or less on time. I went to baggage claim to see if my bag was there. The one thing I had going in my favor is that I knew that if my luggage was there, it would be out quickly because it would have been one of the last bags on the plane. Unbelievably, because my luck with luggage almost never runs this way, my bag came right off and I was able to leave the airport without trying to come up with enough Spanish to file a baggage claim (though I was able to do it when my luggage was lost in Madrid).

Immigration and customs were easy. I went to the taxi counter and purchased a ticket for a cab to my hotel. I got in the cab and the cab driver and I spoke with each other in Spanglish (about 80% Spanish) throughout the 30-minute trip. It was my first time in a Spanish-speaking country since July and I was pretty happy that still I was able to communicate. My teachers in Argentina and Spain would have been proud.

That’s it for now. In the next entry, I’ll write about Mexico City, itself.