Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

Wow, what a city!

When we started our trip a lot of people warned us not to go to Mexico City, because it’s dirty, chaotic, polluted and dangerous and we decided not to go. Then again we have been warned of almost any place we visited that it’s too dangerous, so statistically speaking, the odds of getting hurt in Mexico City are slightly higher than in Seattle, but not as great as in Detroit.

This city is really mind-boggling. I thought it was the biggest city in the world, but after doing some research I think it’s only #2 behind Tokyo and every 4th Mexican lives there. I heard all kinds of numbers when it comes to its inhabitants. It must be between 20 and 40 millions, but if it’s “only” 20 millions inhabitants it’s still 40 times more than Seattle. It has 350 neighborhoods and one of the most modern subway systems that transports 4.5 million people every day. It’s also the cheapest subway system (20 cents per person) in the world.

The University of Mexico City has 260.000 Students and 31.000 teachers. The pollution wasn’t as bad as expected. We were told that a lot of people are wearing masks, but we haven’t seen any. There are very strict rules in place which cars are allowed to drive on which days to keep pollution under control and that seems to work for the most part. It wasn’t until taking a shower that we realized how much dirt and dust is in the air.

There also wasn’t as much chaos as we were told. We had to drive to the entire city twice and had almost no problems. Yes, people drive a bit more aggressive than what I have been used to lately, but having driven in almost every Central American capital it wasn’t too hard to get used to. I would however still recommend leaving the car at home if possible. Especially since the public transportation system is first class.

What surprised the most where many of the beautiful neighborhoods in Mexico City that rival any city in Europe in beauty and diversity. I have also never seen a city with as many parks and green spaces.  Maximilian of Habsburg, who ruled Mexico for 3 years before being killed, has done a superb job in bringing European big city elements to Mexico City and other city planners followed in his footsteps, creating beautiful avenues and neighborhoods. Today Mexico City has a great mix of historic and super modern buildings, great museums and in between beautiful mansions.

All of this however is only a small part of Mexico City. There are also areas tourists don’t get to see and we haven’t either, but that’s also just like any other big city in the world.

Other neat things about this city are the small installations they have scattered throughout the city.  When walking through the yellow line of the subway there was a series of pictures on astronomy, animals, embryos, plants, etc.  Along one of the boulevards there was a fabulous photography exhibit on pictures from the Mexico City.  It is those unexpected pieces of culture spattered around that you just happen to stumble upon that make it fun to explore.  What is also great about urban cities is you see the chicest, most well-dressed people, the drunkest, most homeless, plus you see everything in between.

We only spent 3 days there, and it would have been nice to have a bit more time without the kids.  Allison was able to visit a couple of art museums and I took William to the anthropology museum.  All together we went to a bunch of the parks in the city, looked at the Diego Rivera murals in the Palacio Nacional, checked out a few different neighborhoods and took a long double-decker bus ride around the city (great fun for William and Julian). 

After we left Mexico City our next destination was Ajijic (which is near Guadalajara), where our friends Dave and Teri from Seattle live.  They found an apartment for us and we are planning on staying there for a while.  It is roughly 600 kilometers from Mexico City to Ajijic.  We decided to make the long trip in one day on the toll roads.  It took us a frustrating 2.5 hours to get through Mexico City, but the rest of the drive went smoothly, that is until we were 10 kilometers from Ajijic.  After such a long day of driving, about 6 miles from our destination the fan belt broke and the engine started to get really hot.  Allison was driving and noticed a bunch of lights on the dash board went on.  We started to smell a funny engine smell, stopped the car and figured out what had happened.  Within a few minutes the police had stopped and called us a mechanic.  Two guys came with just the right tools to change the belt.  I had a spare belt, but my tools weren’t ideal for the job since you had to take some other covers off, remove the alternator, etc, to get to the belt.  Within 90 minutes we were back on the road, and the little episode of road-side assistance, including a tip for the police, cost us less than $15.00. 

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 19th, 2007 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Mexico-Guatemala. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.