Don't drink on the bus in Mexico city...

...you might spill!


(good form!)

I went to Mexico city last weekend. Nobody calls it Mexico city. They call it DF (day-effay). DF is ridiculous enough at a normal time. Take that ridiculosity and multiply it by religious and cultural holiday (Santa Semana = Saints week, surrounding Easter), and you get a true whoopah! And whoopah there was! I was meeting my friends in the "touristy" area, and the whole place was PACKED, shoulder to shoulder. Mostly with Mexican's visiting the cultural center of their city during the holiday. I guess that's what you get in a city with > 25 million people.



(DF in Santa Semana)

While waiting for my friends, I decided to walk around. There was tonnes of street theatre going on... Astec dancers, hundreds of artisans selling their work, musicians, and of course, clowns.

There were a few hundred people standing around in a circle, having a good laugh, so I got close enough to see what was going on. Then, of course as the life would have it, I became part of a clown show. They saw a funny looking white boy, and called me into their circle. I have no idea what they were saying, but I threw out a few broken Spanish phrases once in a while, and put on a dramatic face and display of animated behaviour, and we all had a good laugh. I'm sure that most of it was at my expense, but what did I care, the people were having fun.


(3 clowns)

My friends that I met on the beach in Nexpa eventually came, and we spent the weekend touring around markets, and laughing.


(that might be booze)


(a totally normal underwear dance party in DF... why was I the only one in my underwear?)

A few comments on DF. The city stinks. I mean, of course it's got it's beautiful old downtown core with buildings older than Canada, and impressive displays of architecture and other things that bore tourists to death but we consistently go and visit, like churches and historical centres. But this is not the essence of the city. This is what people come to see, when they want to experience Mexico.

Actually, I don't know what is truly the essence of DF, but I got to experience it in a more local way, and I'll share a little of the experience.

We stayed at Betty's house, which took us > 1.5 hours to get to from the centre of town using the public transit (and surely would have been far more than that if we were trying to fight traffic in a car). She lives in a rough neighbourhood. To get there, we took two (of the TEN) subway lines to their ends, and then a bus for another 45 minutes. She doesn't go out of her house after 5pm, and doesn't like to be alone in public places, for fear of having some crime committed against her. And based on what I saw, these are not unfounded fears.

On the bus, we drove past entire neighbourhoods made of garbage. We passed through an area where they dump most of the city garbage (the source of the building materials for the previously mentioned neighbourhoods), that went on for miles in all directions. We drove past a river, well, I'm not sure I feel comfortable calling it a river, but what once was a river and now I'm pretty sure has a higher percentage of human feces than water. Nothing can possibly live in there, but I'm sure that some of the more poor people in DF not only use it to bathe, but to wash and cook with, and probably even to drink.

We are so unbelievably lucky. I am so thankful.

Of course, there's the pretty glitzy side of the city too. Modern buildings, pretty boys, and girls in skirts and make-up, paying far more than is reasonable in this economy to be able to show their faces in the more well-to-do restaurants and night clubs, while millions struggle to find clean water to drink. I suppose this is no different from any big city. But this is the biggest. And it was all right there, in my face.

When I got back to Tepotzlan/Amatlan, I need a few days just to recover. I was exhausted. No wonder so many people from the city need to escape for the weekend, it's just too crazy. And it gets inside you, and all over you, and you are blowing it out of your nose and washing it off your feet for days.

Am I ever thankful that I don't live there. But it was great to visit!