Mexico City, or “CDMX” as all the purple taxis refer to it, is one of those places that, when you say you’ve been there, people stop and frown and say “How was that?”, as though in their mind you should have been shot, stabbed, or kidnapped down there instead of talking to them over a mocha latte. “It was great!” I’ll reply, then follow up with, “We went with someone that grew up there. You know…someone that knew what neighborhoods to avoid.” Satisfied with my explanation of why I’m not shot, stabbed, or kidnapped, the person I’m talking to will make polite for a few minutes as I try to describe what a colorful, lively, and wonderful place Mexico City is, but the lights never really come on, and the magic of my trip remains inside my own head.
And yes, in case you were wondering, Mexico City can be dangerous. So can driving your car. So can playing pick-up games at the rec center. So can putting your pants on in the morning. However, I returned from there in one piece, and it was so worth it. In fact, it was so worth it that I actually had to overcome some serious post-vacation depression when I got back. Let me show you what I mean.
Ice cream shop near Xochimilco, Mexico City. Taken on Nikon N2000 with Kodak Ektar 100.
It rains pretty much everyday in Mexico City. Here, a woman walks through Coyoacán with an umbrella. Taken on Nikon N2000 with Kodak Ektar 100.
When the opportunity first came up, I was working an empty, silent office and must have listened to hundreds of adventure podcasts to fill the void and keep me out of a straight jacket. So when my friends at church approached me about going to Mexico City, I jumped at the chance, ready to live out my Walter Mitty-esque day dreams. After a red-eye connection through Miami, passport in hand, I was on my way. I wouldn’t say I was nervous going through customs in Mexico, but it was definitely a new experience. The customs agent and I had a brief conversation (in English) about my visit, and then waved me on into the rest of the airport.
For some odd reason, the cell towers in Nashville didn’t reach Mexico City, so I had no way of calling my American friends to pick me up. I wandered the concourse with my leather “4-H is All That Jazz” duffel bag looking around, wondering what I would do if I couldn’t find my friends, when this white kid came up to me out of the mass of Spanish-speakers, pointed to my Atlanta Braves hat and said in American English, “Go Braves.” I smiled at him. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world…
The two members of our party tasked with meeting me at the airport, Paul S. and Max, attempted to skulk through an entire concourse to sneak up on me, but my Jason Bourne skills were too much for them, and I spotted them long before they got close. Paul S. is a rather tall man from Kentucky who married a beautiful Mexican woman named Yara (pronounced “Jah-dah”) after meeting her on a beach in Mexico (no, it’s not the plot of a chick-flick, but it should be). Yara, having grown up in Mexico City, was our guide for the trip. The other would-be sneaker-upper, Max, is a retired investigator who frequently stays in South American countries for months at a time, and whose life story would easily nominate him for the title “most interesting man in the world.” After a ride in a stick-shift Volkswagen taxi we meet up with the rest of the gang at the hotel in an area called Zona Rosa, an area known for its restaurants and nightclubs (no nightclubs were visited in the writing of this blog).
La Torre Latina de Mexico. Taken on Nikon N2000 with CineStill 800T
With my nose practically pressed against the taxi window like a five-year-old, the first thing that popped into my head as I watched the city go by was that it seemed like a “toy city.” I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. What I mean is that things in the United States are so big, grey, and spread out, while things in Mexico City seemed so small, colorful, and tightly knit. The people, the cars, and the buildings are all more compact than their American counterparts, but aren’t afraid to stand out with flashy clothes and brightly-colored hues. But that’s just my take on it.
The rest of our crew met when we arrived us at the hotel. Brad and Caitlin are a married couple in their thirties from our church in Middle Tennessee. Brad’s a big guy with a soft heart and loud laugh. Caitlin’s a small, fiery red-head who suffers no fools and wishes Brad would laugh more quietly. Mitch, the preacher at our church, and his fifteen-year-old son Dayne are also with us. Mitch is a short Hawaiian man with a competitive streak a mile wide, and who can’t deliver common colloquialisms to save his life, but we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. Dayne, who looks just like Mitch in the ‘80s, is a teenage ball of energy, bouncing from one interest to another, but learning at a frightening pace when he finally zeroes in on something, like speaking Spanish with other teenagers at the little church in Teoloyucan. Finally, there’s Paul B. and his fifteen-year old daughter, Sierra. Paul B. is a cerebral kind of guy who looks like he’s jumped out of airplanes in the military; put-together, always ready to go. Sierra is a pretty blonde girl with a knack for leadership and public service, who’s probably going to be elected to congress one day.
The first full day we spent as typical tourists, riding the train and seeing the sights. One of the most colorful places we went was Xochimilco, famous for their boat rides. By boat rides, I mean a heavy wooden boat painted with several layers of primary colored-paint with a tin roof, driven by a man with a long wooden pole. The boats have benches and a table for eating on our Mexican river cruise. As we float down river, vendors in other boats quickly discover that Americans are aboard, and begin peppering us with offers of Mexican dishes like elote, a tangy mixture made with corn, and tamales, which we gladly trade a few pesos for. Mariachi bands float up and down the river, too. I decided to hire one.
“What song do you want?” says the band leader in broken English.
I say, “‘Stardust,’” like an idiot. ‘Stardust’ is a jazz standard written by Hoagy Carmichael.
“You do not want to hear a Mexican song?” the band leader says with a justifiably puzzled look.
I look at Paul S. and say, “I don’t know what to ask for.”
“‘Guadalajara’ is a classic,” Paul replies.
“‘Guadalajara,’” I parroted, handing the man my money.
The food there was amazing. Mexican restaurants in American neighborhoods don’t even come close. A quesadilla at any run-of-the-mill Mexican or Tex-Mex place back home means a burnt tortilla filled with too much cheese and maybe a shred or two of chicken if you’re lucky. In Mexico City, we walked into a cinderblock building with only a roll-up door for front wall, flies buzzing everywhere, shouting at each other over the din of a fan, and waited on stainless steel stools for a woman in a hair net to dish up the best quesadilla of my life. The cheese-to-meat ratio was on point. The tortilla wasn’t just a tortilla. It was some fluffy, flaky corn wrapping of delight, like a Pillsbury croissant. I washed it down with a Mexican Coke in a glass bottle. Perfection.
Day two was about visiting a small church in a nearby town called Teoloyucan. We found out about local preacher named Daniel (in Spanish it sounds like “Danielle”) through a connection that Yara made a few years ago, and since then our church in middle Tennessee has been sending money to help him preach and teach around Mexico City. His efforts connected him with other preachers, such as Juan, who preaches in Teoloyucan. We met up with Daniel and his family at the church in Mexico City, then walked to a bus stop where we caught a bus out of town. Buses in Mexico are different. Imagine our interstate system in the United States, only with bus stops on them, with pedestrian bridges to get folks from one side of the bustling highway to the other without becoming a character in Frogger. A one-hour bus ride outside of CDMX put us in Teoloyucan.
Following Daniel to the bus stop. Taken on Nikon N2000 with Ektar 100.
Teoloyucan appeared to my first-world eyes to be a poor community. Things looked dingy and run down. Homes were thrown together out of cinderblock with concrete roofs. Dogs wandered around in the streets and people eyed us suspiciously from their doorways as we walked by. I didn’t feel unsafe being there. Not with a group that knew the area, and not in the day time, but it sure wasn’t what I was used to.
Teoloyucan. Taken on Nikon N2000 with Ektar 100.
Dogs wander all over in Teoloyucan. Taken on N2000 with Ilford Delta 400.
A street in Teoloyucan, mid-day. Taken on Nikon N2000 with Ilford Delta 400.
The church in Teoloyucan was a simple one-room brick building with a concrete floor and a tin roof within a brick-walled compound for security. As part of the worship, we sang a few songs out of their Spanish hymnal, which had familiar tunes but very unfamiliar words. I mumbled along as best I could. I’m a fine mumbler when I want to be. Mitch preached a short sermon through an interpreter named Elver. He kept his sentences short so that Elver wouldn’t have so much to process and regurgitate in his native language.
Later, I came up to Mitch and said, “I guess it’s nice preaching with an interpreter. It gives you more time to think what to say next.”
“Actually,” he replied, “it’s not so nice. It messes up my flow of thought.”
Not train of thought. Flow.
Afterwards, the church fired up a make-shift grill using what appeared to be a big pizza pan spanning a couple of cinderblocks with a fire underneath. The July sun had finally burned through what had been a cloudy day and shone down with some intensity onto my unprotected arms, which were a shade of pink later that night. We stood around in the little walled-in yard, hanging out near Elver so he could translate for us as we talked with the church family there. There was lots of smiling and nodding. Smells of grilled chicken, peppers, and onions wafted our way from the grill. Lemme tell ya, those Mexican ladies could cook. We loaded our plates with the fajita mix on top of corn tortillas. It was delicious, naturally. Finished, I went to throw away the paper plate and plastic utensils I had eaten with, but the older man holding the trash bag stopped me and collected them for washing later, which made me feel a trifle careless. Not that he was cross with me. On the contrary, everyone was so kind and eager to learn more about us, and we were just as eager to learn more about them. We left Teoloyucan with a sense of warmth and connection, and then promptly fell asleep on the bus ride back.
Some of the women cook a savory meal over a makeshift grill. Taken on Nikon N2000 with Ilford Delta 400.
Our group from Mexico City walks back to the bus stop in Teoloyucan. Taken on Nikon N2000 with Ilford Delta 400.
Later that week, we paid a visit to Coyoacán, a picturesque city square surrounded by shops, lush green trees, park benches, and people milling about. We met up with some of the church members from Mexico City to go exploring in the area. A group of us loitered by a park bench until everyone arrived. My Spanish was meager, but I had been practicing before our trip, and I was picking it up fast, being totally immersed in it. A real sink or swim scenario. I was having a conversation with a woman with a twelve-year-old daughter, who Dayne was presently entertaining. Maybe I was teasing Mitch for being short (because he is) or something like that and I laughed, when suddenly, with the sweetest face, she touched my cheek and said, “Tienes una sunrisa bonita, “ or in English, “You have a beautiful smile.”
Aw shucks.
Dayne and I went off with some of the younger folks just off the square in Coyoacán into what I might call a cross between a farmers’ market, a flea market, and a Middle Eastern bazaar. The building looked like a storage facility, only instead of storing junk, people were selling things out of them like booths. There was color everywhere. Colorful fruits, colorful clothes for sale, colorful spoons (I bought one)… I searched diligently for a bottle of Mexican vanilla. I couldn’t even tell you where I heard this, but somewhere I heard the legends of the vanilla from Mexico, and I was bound and determined to find the superior liquid somewhere on our trip. The Mexican kids in our posse didn’t understand my enthusiasm, but helped me look for it, anyhow. I came away with a brown plastic bottle of vanilla with eerily similar qualities to that of American vanilla, but at least it came from Mexico. That’s what counts right?
A vibrant display of foods in the market near Coyoacán. Taken on Nikon N2000 with CineStill 800T.
Patrons grab a bite to eat at a shop inside the market. Taken on Nikon N2000 with CineStill 800T.
There were many other things we did, food we tasted, people we met, and places we went, (including a pyramid, an archaeologist named Jesus who yelled like a bandito, and lucha libre wrestling), but this blog post is long enough already. Unbelievably, it’s been nearly three years ago this month since I made that trip, my first outside the country. And now that I’m practically fluent in Spanish after three months of stop-and-go practice on a Spanish app, going back has been on my mind. In case you were wondering, I thoroughly enjoyed my stay in Mexico and would recommend it to anyone with an itch to travel, especially if you’re fond of Latino culture. Mexico is so rich and vibrant, and if you’ve never left the country, like me when I went, it’s really a eye-opening experience. So hurry up and get your passport, already.
Lucha libre masks hang outside an arena. Taken on Nikon N2000 with CineStill 800T.