CHAPTER ONE: TAXIS & TROUBLE
I have been many things in life, but a fan of long haul flights is not one of them. After a large number of hours in the air, mostly spent playing backgammon against a computer and failing to sleep, I eventually landed in Mexico City, at 9pm on the 29th of December. Boy was it worth it though.
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| Mexico City at night |
To state the obvious, that is a LOT of lights. Ridley Scott could have shot Blade Runner here without needing any special effects. Also, what you see here is nowhere near the whole city. Mexico City is despicably enormous. When you arrive, you know you're at the airport. But venture out into a dark metropolis of 22 million people, and good luck figuring out where the hell you are.
The second I stepped off the plane, I was in Spanish mode. To an extent I was already in Spanish mode before that, since ninety five per cent of the passengers on the flight from Houston to Mexico City were Mexican, and talking away in Spanish accordingly. Eventually I made it out to the authorised taxi stands, lugging a twenty one kilogram suitcase with a broken wheel as well as a backpack and laptop. Oh yeah, authorised taxis are a thing here in Mexico City. Unless you want to be taken out into the middle of the desert and beaten repeatedly with a dead scorpion while everything except your skin is taken from you, it pays to use them. I used Sitio 300, a company with good reviews. As the driver took me to my hostel in Coyoacán, I had a mostly successful conversation with him in Spanish, though I had difficulty contributing much to our discussion on the quality of the roads, since I had forgotten the vocabulary for both 'flat' and 'bumpy.'
Once I got to the hostel, disaster struck. Almost as soon as I had got out of the taxi and greeted the hostel owner, I realised I had left my backpack and cellphone in the cab. Lo and behold, in the few seconds that had elapsed in the interim, the taxi had already left. On top of that, the hostel owner would only take cash, which I lacked at the time, so before I could even think about addressing the backpack problem, I had to cycle down to a local supermarket to withdraw four hundred pesos for the night.
When the money business was done, the hostel owner and I came up with a plan for how to recover my pack. Since Sitio 300 wouldn't pick up the damned phone, and instead spat hold music at the poor owner for ten minutes, we decided I would have to return to the airport and talk to the company in person. Catching a taxi at eleven o clock at night from a quiet part of town would have been a prickly proposition, had the owner not known a guy who could take me. Once we found the Sitio 300 stand at the airport, the manager got onto locating my pack, and it was recovered within a quarter of an hour. Needless to say, I was extremely relieved - both emotionally, and of several hundred pesos.
There was more trouble to come back at the hostel though. Before my little backpack rescue excursion, the owner had shown me which room I would be sleeping in, put my suitcase and laptop in there, and given me the keys. Well, I have never had a good memory, and when I got back at about midnight, I went for the wrong room. I must have fiddled with the wrong key in the lock for about ten minutes before somehow miraculously getting the door open. Of course, when I got in, my laptop and suitcase were gone! Where could they possibly be, I wondered? After half an hour of obviously fruitless searching, I gave up and went to bed. In the morning I told the owner my stuff had disappeared, and he accompanied me to the building, informing me that I had slept in the wrong room. My things were, of course, in the room I was supposed to have slept in.
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| My (wrong) room at the hostel |
Embarrassed, I wolfed down the cornflakes and cheese on toast I was given as a complementary breakfast, while the owner kindly called me a taxi. By 10:30am I was out of there, having said muchas gracias, or some variation of it, a million times.
CHAPTER TWO: SETTLING IN
Hidalgo 92 is a big residence with 12 rooms, none of which were occupied on my arrival. Aside from two maintenance people, I was the only one in the place, since the owner is away on holiday, and the other students aren't arriving for another few days. Was it a strange feeling moving into a large student residence soon after my arrival in Mexico and being the only one there most of the time? Yes, yes it was. But it's a nice joint, and I quite enjoyed the silence for a while, after the hectic events of the recent past.
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| A relaxing area |
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| A decorative fountain, declaring that it isn't an ashtray (cenicero)
Though I wanted to rest immediately after unpacking my bags, there were things to be done. For one, I had no drinking water. In Mexico, you don't drink tap water unless you want to be reminded of what vomit tastes like. Instead you have to buy large containers of spring water from a local store. It's dirt cheap, but a little cumbersome.
Another thing to do was withdraw cash to pay my rent. Unfortunately, when I finally found what seemed to be the only two ATMs within a hundred square miles of my residence, they were both switched off. It didn't occur to me before that they could be, but, they can. I tried withdrawing the cash at a local shop, but apparently they 'couldn't.' Whether that was due to their not having enough cash in the register, being forbidden from doing it by some legal notice, or simply their being unable to figure out that a nineteen year old white guy in a small suburb of Mexico City is probably paying rent and not preparing to buy cocaine, I don't know. Later on when I went out for dinner, I returned to the ATMs and was relieved to see that they were back on.
Speaking of dinner, food in Mexico ain't bad. But if you're a vegan, forget it. It's difficult to find an item of food in a Mexican restaurant that doesn't contain either meat, cheese, or both, in large quantities. Expect to do half the preparation yourself - if you order tacos, you will receive the tacos and filling separately on the plate. Sauces and limes are presented in separate dishes too, so that you can decide how much damage you want to do to the roof of your mouth. There's not much more to say on the food front, other than try not to have a peanut allergy. Not because the food has lots of peanuts in it, but because every single damned time I ask 'Contiene cacahuates?' - 'Does it contain peanuts?', I get looked at askance and have to repeat myself.
CHAPTER THREE: URBAN EXPLORATION
On the evening of my second full day in Mexico, I ate at a local Japanese restaurant of all things. That my first diversion away from Mexican food coincided with my first feeling that something was overpriced was probably no coincidence. Anyhow, while I was eating, a man who I'll call Pablo - because that's his name - introduced himself and said he was getting into the renting game and looking for ITAM students to inhabit the house. Oh, ITAM stands for Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México by the way - it's the university I'll be attending here. More on that in later entries, if you haven't abandoned me by then.
I already had accommodation, and told Pablo as much, but he was happy to show me the house anyway, and I thought why not. After that, he even showed me the way to a nearby centre, San Jacinto, which had larger shops, necessary for acquiring certain items. In my case, the item I had wanted to acquire was a funnel. Yes, a funnel. The spring water cannisters you buy come without handles, a veritable stroke of genius on the manufacturer's behalf. Try holding and pouring a ten litre container of water into a 750ml pump bottle and see what happens. There is a funnel at the residence, which I have used several times to get the job done, but I thought it would be good to have my own.
Pablo recommended a 'bombilla' instead - a pump, which can be placed in the large cannister and used to siphon the H20 into a smaller container. Eventually we located one, though the amount of time it took to do so was staggering. In the process we entered several stores, and almost in every instance, I had to relinquish my backpack to a security guard at the front. I guess theft is more of a problem in Mexico, even in classy establishments like supermarkets. Anyway, I was very grateful for Pablo's help, and while we were walking between destinations, he answered all the questions I threw at him about the city.
The following day - today, as it happens, I returned to San Jacinto, intending to see a museum called Museo del Carmen. Being New Years Day, it was closed, but it wasn't a wasted trip. I visited a church, ate lunch at a taco joint, and saw a squirrel at a local garden.
Said squirrel
Wandering the cobblestone streets was also nice, albeit not for my shoes.
A typical cobblestone street in San Ángel
Pablo had told me not to walk these streets alone at night, which is fair enough - I can't think of a place one would be more likely to get robbed than in a dark, cobblestone alley in Mexico City. But at two o clock in the afternoon, it was quite nice.
Later, I ate dinner out at yet another taquería - a place that makes tacos - and this time, I frankly found it disgusting. I made the mistake of ordering some cheese taco, so I was essentially served a few wan wraps and a bowl of congealed cow's milk. Don't come to Mexico expecting every taco to be the best thing since sliced bread - some may in fact be little more than sliced bread.
But enough complaining. So far I have found Mexico a cool place, and conceding a few minor misunderstandings, my Spanish gets me by. The title of this blog - 'Padrísimo' - is a Mexican slang word meaning 'awesome' or 'super cool.' I have a feeling that I will be using this word a fair bit here over the next six months.
Hasta la próxima!
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Intriguing and often hilarious read, e.g."...while the owner kindly called me a taxi"....what, was there a translation issue? ;)
ReplyDeleteAnd it's 'complimentary breakfast', not 'complementary breakfast' ;)