Mexico City the ‘Conservative’ City

It was a tortures journey that day on the bus to Mexico City. It wasn’t that I had a normal hangover but instead after drinking all that Kuhlur it felt like i had eaten a whole Coffee Cake and my body was trying to process the Sugar but not having much luck. The worse thing about this whole episode is that I have now been put off Kuhlur which is a great shame as it is an ingredient in my favorite cocktail, the White Russian. The bus ride was 6 hours and Chris and I hardly spoke all the way, we just tried to sleep and watch all the couples on the bus making out. This is another thing about ‘conservative’ Mexico which makes me laugh. The amount of people you see on the streets, plazas and parks making out is unreal. I’m guessing as its such a strict catholic country there is no ‘hanky panky’ allowed at home so they have to go anywhere they can for a bit of slap and tickle. Its rather off putting seeing everyone snogging, maybe I’m a little bit jealous or maybe we are more conservative than we think in the West….

Wow its busy, really busy. Coming in to the suburbs of Mexico City I can see why it is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Tiny dull grey matchbox shacks line the mountains as far as the eye can see. As you get closer to the centre the shacks turn in to houses and real streets start appearing. Its not much different to many of the other large cities i have been too. Dirty, populated, cramped and a little ‘dangerous’ so every American (not backpackers) I meet keeps telling me. We pull in to the bus station just after 7pm, We caught a taxi to our hostel and watching more people making out in the taxi queue we finally made it to the hostel where we met up with Ying but was to tired and unwell to do much that night. There was plenty of English staying at the hostel, most of them on there way back home for Christmas. Again it was nice to see that the travellers weren’t 18 year old gap year students coming from OZ on there round the world ticket. The crowed was a bit older so it was a pretty good and at least you could have a good conversation and were safe from all the making out outside in the streets. I didn’t get much sleep that night as some muppet was blowing a whistle through the hostel at 3am….. little did I know I would meet the whistle blower face to face in Cancun, more about that in the next blog.
I did meet one really interesting person who was in my dorm room, a girl called Nova from Canada (I have changed my option about girls from Canada now, remember the mare I was having with them in the first half of my trip?).Nova was studying spanish in Mexico and was on her way back home for Christmas in the next couple of days. The poor girl had caught a bug so was unable to do very much during her visit to Mexico City. A very beautiful and bewitching girl. dreadlocks, tattoos and piercing all over her body which was a welcome change to all the ‘normal’ looking travellers I have met on this trip. She had lots to say and introduced me to Pan’s Labyrinth. A wonderful but very dark Spanish film set in the Spanish civil war.
I wish Nova well in whatever she decides to do or be in the future, I have a feeling whatever she does she will bring sunshine to the people around her.

The first full day was spent getting use to such a ‘dangerous’ city. The first stop was the Presidential palace, there wasn’t much to see or do there, in fact if it wasn’t for the very large and very beautiful murals painted by Diego Rivera I wouldn’t have bothered. Still its nice to see and it was free. (I’m still a cheap skate).

The rest of the day was spent wondering around the markets which seemed to only sell large amounts of pirate porn DVDs and ten year old kids mixing and selling rather pokey tequila cocktails. We also spend rather a lot of time darting in and out of hotel toilets as we both been suffering from the Kuhlur effects.
Later that night we found Ying in her favorite spot of a hostel…. the computer room, we dragged her in to the bar to have a drink, Ying isn’t the best drinking in the world and after one beer she was all over the place. Good girl. The funniest thing about this hostel was the bar. Every night and I mean every night the bar tender who looked like a has been Chippendale from the 80s. He slapped Rage Against the Machine on the CD player, cranked the volume up and poured Tequila in to everyone’s mouths until the bottle was dry. In one week I have never consumed so much of the dirty liquor. Even drinking so much I can still say I think that Tequila still tastes like drinking dead people.

Chris had rounded up a number of people from the hostel for a tour to the Floating Gardens of Xochimilico. You can call this area the ‘Venice’ of Mexico as canals replace roads and colourful gondola style boats replace the never ending stream of green and white Beetle Taxi’s. I have seen some wacky places on this trip but this place is just down right strange. The Islands around these canals are either garden centers selling exotic flowers and plants or islands full of…. doll parts….. yes thats right, we came across this rather erie sight. The Island of Dolls. This island is an art insulation come tribute for a girl that drowned in the canals. All the dolls and toys have been fished out of the canals over the years and hung from trees on this island. Very, very strange and very very creepy.

It felt like the whole of Mexico City was on the canals that Sunday afternoon and when Mexicans get together you can bet your life there will be a fiesta. Big family get tog-ethers, eating, singing and even dancing on the boats. If you need or run out of food you are in luck as on hand are cooking boats selling overpriced tacos and beer. If you need to buy some tacky jewelry for a loved one then you are in luck too, men hop from one boat to the next selling all kinds of ‘fake’ silver. Its all going off, boats with old school photographers taking instant photos for the family albums and one of the funniest things are the very excited mariachi bands trying to board your boat and sing for you. So much is going on in these small canals I don’t know where to look next and am starting to doubt myself if I have woken up at all and this is some kind of wacky Tequila induced dream.

But the madness of that afternoon doesn’t stop there, the next stop was the surreal world of Diego Rivera. Dolores Olmeda Museum is an art gallery/garden of craziness that has you wondering what planet you have just landed on. Between staring at the endless sculptures and sketches done by Rivera and his lover Freda Kahlo you have to navigated your way passed ‘guard’ Peacocks that seem to try and Psyche you out when you get close to them and the wait for it…… Black hairless dogs that wonder around the gardens looking a bit silly and lost. I had know idea what we were going to see next…. oh how about the rooms full of bright, fluorescent life size skeletons that were acting out some kind of ancient Mexican Story. And then we were back to the kissing, as we were waiting for everyone to finish looking around the Museum there was a couple of teenagers on the bench next to us who I think were trying to break the world record for the longest kiss, They locked lips before I got there and 10 minutes later when we were ready to leave they still didn’t come up for air. Those naughty catholic kids!

A day later and we were off to the mighty Pyramids of Teotihuacan which is about 45 minutes outside of Mexico City. This is a Toltec site (Before the Maya) and compressive of two massive Pyramids which I’m told is the third largest pyramid in the world. One is called the Sun and the other is called the Moon. The happily named ‘Avenue of the Dead’ links both of them together. This was my first gimps in to the past and how these ancient civilizations lived. I will say humans are capable of building some great things… Ok, what they used these alters and Pyramids for is not so great, sacrificing children and women to please the gods but we learnt from that now haven’t we? I guess the new type of sacrifice is watching those media whores/children/teenagers on the X Factor, American Idol or the Disney Club. And then watching there life spiral in to a drugged up, suicidal single parents who has a criminal record by the time they are 25 years old. You go Brittany Spears!!!! Sorry, i’ve just gone off on one as she is the headline news on CNN over the story about a massive bomb that has gone off in Iraq today.

The next day Chris, Ying and I headed to the Museum of Anthropology.. Walking through a rather large park and which Lonely Planet calls a ‘dangerous’ place we come across a stall selling cheap “Lucha Libre” wrestling masks, feeling very childish Chris and I bought a couple and then started to pretend to wrestle to the delights of all the Mexicans around us who thought that we had a screw loose. The horror of Yings face said it all when we wouldn’t take them off and walk all the way to the museum with them on. After about one and half hours of looking at pots and stone heads we got a bit bored and put our masks on again and decided to have some fun around the Museum. Ying managed 8 hours in there!!! 8 Hours looking at pots, You go girl?

That night was Lucha Libre!!!! Yes thats right Chris and I went to the Mexican wrestling. Mexican Wrestling is very similar to the American wrestling as its all staged and it was all about good vs evil. The only differences i could make out are that the wrestlers wear ridiculous looking ‘gimp’ masks and are far camper than there American cousins. The crowd were very entertaining, chanting and swearing at the wrestlers egging them on to pick a fight with them. As the cheap beer flowed I found myself really getting in to it. After the match was over we headed back to the hostel and once again drank tequila this time with our masks on and again to the delights of Ying face. Bless her. From that point on the rest of the night was a blur……. and all i could see in my head was black hairless dogs followed by a massive hang over the next day.

Next day Chris was flying back to Canada for Christmas and Ying was heading on to Oaxaca. We said our good byes and I was left alone twiddling my thumbs wondering what to do for the night, so like any good traveller I sat on my arse and did nothing for a day…. Something tells me it wont be the last time i see those two crazy kids again on this trip.

Next stop, Mexico’s little slice of the American Pie, Cancun.