(24) Tequila to Mexico City
We are nearing the end of our few days in Mexico City. Neil and I arrived here on October 12th and Neil’s girlfriend, Paxon, arrived on the 13th. We’ve all had a good time exploring the city. Paxon leaves today. Neil and I will set off tomorrow (October 18) to begin the next part of our trip.
The trip here from Tequila was pretty uneventful. The first day out we overnighted in Morelia and then came into Mexico City the second day. Those two days getting here were just on the toll roads so we really didn’t do too much. The one thing we did do while staying at our hotel in Morelia was to try the local Avocado Beer. It certainly wasn’t the worst beer I’ve ever had, but I don’t think I’d order it again. I think the most telling thing was when I described it as “beerish” when I was talking to my partner John. He just started laughing.
I chose a hotel here in Mexico City very close to the airport. Neither Neil nor I wanted to ride the bikes into the center of the city and having a hotel out by the airport made meeting Paxon easy. It also gives us a relatively easy path out of the city when we leave tomorrow. We’re walking distance to the airport. The down side is that there really isn’t a lot to do or see in this area of the city.
I set up a tour out to the ruins of Teotihuacan for our first day here after picking Paxon up at the airport. The tour guide picked us up at our hotel at 7:00 am and off we went. It was really nice to get an early start out to the ruins. Since it was a week day that meant we were going through town at rush hour, but it meant we got to Teotihuacan before most of the other tourists so we had a relatively leisurely time to walk around the ruins. Getting there early also meant that the hot air balloon tours over the ruins were still going on which made for some nice pictures. I briefly looked at booking one for us but the balloon tours were more than $200/person so we passed.
The pyramids at Teotihuacan are truly impressive and the area of the city is huge. Only approximately 10% of the city has been excavated, but it still took us all morning to walk through. For anyone visiting, it’s definitely on the need to see list. On the way to and from Teotihuacan one drives through the outskirts of Mexico City where the bulk of the metro area population lives. These are incredibly densely populated areas. The population of Mexico City proper (the city limits) is about 9 million people, but the metro area is over 22 million. It’s an incredibly hectic place to get around in but we have really enjoyed it.
After visiting the ruins, rather than having the guide drop us off at our hotel we asked them to take us into the city. We got dropped off at the Zocalo. This is the largest plaza in Mexico and according to the info here the second largest in the world and sits in front of the main cathedral and is flanked by major government buildings. On the day we were there most of the plaza was filled with tents for an international book fair. There were lots of tents with books for sale, others where lectures were going on and at least 2 we saw with concerts going on. After wandering around for a while we stopped for lunch at a place recommended by our tour guide. It was a great place to relax for a bit for a drink and some food on a terrace overlooking the are near the Zocalo.
From there it was time to make our way back to the hotel. So we decided to give the CDMX (the abbreviation used for Mexico City on all the signs) Metro a try. It’s very easy to use and incredibly cheap. It costs 5 Pesos (about 25 cents US) for a ticket and on that you can ride all you want so long as you don’t exit a station. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily quick or calm. LOL. One of the lines we would normally take to get from the Zocalo to our hotel was closed being updated. So we had to route around that. Something happened to one of the trains on our first choice of route to get back and we spent about 20 minutes on the platform unable to get on the train because it was completely packed with people but not moving. During that time the platform started to get about as crowded as the train as more and more people came, but no trains were leaving. Thankfully the cell coverage in the metro is good and we were able to bring up a system map and choose yet a different route back to the hotel.
There are 9 lines in the CDMX metro. by the time we were done we used 5 of them on this trip. By this time it was also starting to be evening rush hour and the trains were absolutely packed with commuters heading home. We finally made it back to the hotel but we were all tired. We picked a small local place for dinner and walked through the neighborhood that our hotel is in to it. We felt fine doing the walk there as it was still daylight, but it was getting dark about the time we arrived. We were the restaurant’s last customers for the day but had a nice meal and caught an Uber back to our hotel and we all decided to just head to bed after we got back.
On our second day here we were off to see the national Anthropological and Natural History Museums and a botanical garden that are in and around the largest park in the city. Both museums were interesting, but unfortunately two thirds of the natural history museum was closed for renovation. Paxon is a plant person so she really enjoyed the botanical garden. After all the walking we decided to take an Uber to a section of town that our tour guide from the day before recommended for restaurants. I really like that area. It’s just packed with sidewalk restaurants, people walking and apartments. Just a really nice section of town. After dinner it was another Uber ride back to the hotel. Each ride between the hotel and the city core is about 30 minutes in duration and our Ubers were running about $8 or $9 each way.
We split up yesterday. Neil and Paxon decided to go back to the Zocalo and see some things we didn’t catch our first day. I chose to go out to Bicentennial Park to check out some of the “Craneos” that are on display in the lead up to Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebration. These are large skulls that local artists paint and decorate for the holiday. I braved the metro again to get out there. Being as it was Sunday the Metro was a much calmer experience this time.
After getting a hold of Neil on WhatsApp we decided to meet for dinner back down in the area we ate the day before. So I hopped back on the metro and headed to meet them. I was a bit early so stopped in to an Irish pub (I think there is at least one in every major city in the world!) that I saw as I was walking to our meeting point. After all my walking for the day I thought a Guinness sounded good, and I was right! Also got a chance to catch part of the Buffalo Bills/Kansas City Chiefs football game lol.
After walking a bit farther along I met up with Neil and Paxon. Neil and I were ready for a change from Mexican food, so we found a Ramen noodle shop and each had a bowl of noodles for dinner. Then it was an Uber home.
I’m not sure if it’s something we ate last night or not, but I had to get up once in the night for an emergency trip to the bathroom. I feel fine today though. Paxon seems to be fine also, but Neil said he was back and forth to the bathroom all night and he’s just laying low in their room today. I hope he’s on the mend by tomorrow. My only big event for the day today was my daily walk over to the airport to get a Starbucks latte 😁. Then it was off to take Neil and my dirty clothes off to a near by lavandaria (I’m learning some Spanish words, haha). I’ll go pick that up after we take Paxon to the airport this afternoon. Neil says he’s feeling well enough to walk over to drop her off.
It was somewhat comical dropping clothes off at the lavandaria this morning, as the lady there didn’t speak English and my Spanish is still pretty much non-existent. We were both using translator apps on our phones to communicate, but we got the info across. 2 bags of clothes totaling about 10 pounds washed, dried and folded for 90 Pesos (about $4.50).
If Neil feels well tomorrow we will take a short day and make the 2 hour ride to Puebla. We don’t want to leave here until 10:00 or 11:00 once the morning rush traffic has dissipated as much as it’s going to. There are supposed to be strong afternoon thunder showers tomorrow. So Puebla will give us a nice short ride hopefully between the traffic and the rain. Then it’s off to the coast and eventually the Yucatan.
While I had the time here I updated the trip maps. The first one is just the Mexico route we’ve taken so far. I couldn’t figure out how to draw the line for the ferry from Baja to the mainland so there are all the waypoints for that. The second map adds all the roads we traveled in the US last summer attached to the Mexico part so you can see what we have accomplished so far.
