Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

By Allison

Well, we are back in Mexico again. This time I will be here for 5 weeks with all 3 boys and Matthias is here for the first 2 weeks. We did this last year as well, but last year we spent the time outside of Guadalajara. This time, with the help of a long-time family friend, we decided to spend the majority of our time outside of Mexico City in the town of Cuernavaca. In the first 4 days in Mexico City I was flooded with memories of our year-long trip – the smells of the showers, men’s hair gel sold by the tub, stores that specialize in one commodity (you buy umbrellas at the umbrella store, raincoats at the rain jacket store, cleaning supplies at the cleaning supplies store, …, you get the idea). I had forgotten what it is like to stick out like a sore thumb. In the subways in Mexico City I never ever saw another gringo once. With the exception of the Zocalo or the world-renowned Anthropology Museum we were the only white guys around. This draws the range of stares: friendly, suspicious, amazement, shock, curious, loving, and on and on and on. With all the bad press Mexico has had recently it is comforting to see the random people who look out for us. People in the seriously crowded subway were holding others off and asking them to be mindful of our little ones oblivious to the crowds cramming their way into the subway. Two (not particularly clean-cut) men walking close to us saw that we turned the corner and Julian continued to walk straight ahead. They tapped him on the shoulder and pointed him in our direction. These are just two examples and we could tell more. In this daunting city of 24+ million people (2nd largest in the world) we still have the same experiences that we have had throughout our travels in any country (including the US): you WILL encounter swindlers, if you are looking for trouble you will find it, and a bit of humility and common sense will lead you to millions of people who are nice and decent.

However, nothing in Mexico seems to come off without a hitch. Part of the fun is adjusting plans and adapting to these bumps in the road at a moment’s notice. After Mexico City our first obstacle was to find a place to live. We had two places lined up that we were going to check out and decide. We arrived at the first place much too early and sat around for close to an hour waiting for the woman to arrive. Once she got there she realized she forgot the keys, so we sat and waited some more. The situation with this first apartment was a bit delicate, as the woman who was showing us the place is 21 years-old, her mother passed away some time ago, and her father died about 2 weeks ago. The apartment we were looking at was her father’s apartment, and we knew it would really have been a great financial help for her to have the place rented out. On paper everything sounded perfect – cul-de-sac with almost no traffic so the kids could play, great central location, tortilla lady down the street, next to a park and walking distance to the bus station. Alas, so perfect on paper, but in reality so very, very bad. The apartment felt like they had removed the deceased, shut the door and we were the next people to return. The bed was slept in and not made, half-full glasses on the table, dishes in the sink, garbage cans full, dead roaches on the floor. The “pool” had no working filter and you couldn’t even see the bottom in the deep end because there were so many leaves and sticks settled at the bottom. In retrospect it is not surprising that a 21 year-old in mourning is not ready to step in as landlord and think about prepping the place to show to prospective tenants. Also a bit unfortunate because we would have been happy to help her out in this hard time for her, but there was no way this was going to work with us.

We decided to take a look at the second place, but of course I forgot to write down the phone number or address. A few hours later we were this close to checking into a hotel when Matthias finally got a hold of the owners of the second place. We got the address and taxi and were on our way. We were looking for house #28, but for the life of us could not find it anywhere. The house numbers are by no means sequential in Mexico. You may find 20, then 22, 24, 28, 14, 103, 22 (again), 8. Although the numbers we were random, we did find 28, but it was a car wash. No one seemed to know what place we were looking for. After about 30 minutes of driving up and down the street we found a woman who offered to call again. It turns out we shouldn’t have been looking for 28, we should have been looking for 20H. In English both sound quite similar, and we’ll just attribute this to Matthias’ language barrier. Once we made it to this bungalow we knew right away we wanted to stay. The bungalow is just big enough for us, and we have access to the pool, basketball court and the owners George and Ines are very helpful. They have an enormous garden and our kids are really enjoying the dogs, bunnies, birds, geese, cats and 4 peacocks on the grounds.

The next day our only agenda item was to pick up the rental car. Through a Yahoo group we found a woman who was willing to rent us a 1998 Ford Windstar van. Now this car is usually a piece of shit, but the price was reasonable and she was flexible, so we decided to give it a shot. We met Gloria at the bank to get insurance (which involved a lot of time, waiting around and many hand-written receipts on scraps of paper). We checked out the outside of the car and she showed us everything we needed to know. With the engine running, hand brake dis-engaged and the car in Drive she returns, “Oh, one more thing, when the automatic transmission switches gears it is bit rough, but it is ok. Just slow down or accelerate and maybe move it into second gear and you’ll be fine.” Huh? Well, whatever. It doesn’t sound so bad, let’s just get a move on because this whole ordeal has taken nearly all day already and we were anxious to get home. We get on the road and when the transmission changes gears it JERKS into gear and we lurch forward in our seat. When you press the accelerator it backfires nearly every time, it takes about 10 seconds from pressing the gas to the time the car actually starts to accelerate. This car is the true Mexican experience, and after about 15 minutes Matthias gets the hang of it. The next morning we get everything loaded up and are about the head out for the day when this Mexican man comes running over waving his hands and pointing at the tires. The left rear tire is completely flat. We inspect the tires and there is a huge gaping hole in the tire. The other 3 and the spare are also completely bald and I realize we didn’t check the tires before we left. The jack in the back is missing parts and there is no tire iron. Luckily George has one, and the neighbor’s gardener, Mario, came out to help. None of the jacks were tall enough on their own, so by propping up one tire after another on cutting boards and wooden planks, we finally lift it up enough to get the old tire off and the spare on. We ended up returning the van and got most of our money back. In the end it cost us about 80 dollars and two days of time. Sad for Matthias because this is his vacation where we could have been doing other fun stuff. In the end it was a good lesson to learn and we now have a solid list of things to check when renting a car: take a look at the care BEFORE you start agreeing to charges, check the body, check the tires and take it for a test drive. It may seem obvious now, but at least it was a cheap lesson to learn.

In the meantime the kids have started summer camp and Matthias and I have had two days to ourselves. We went downtown, did some shopping in the market, and on Tuesday we had a cooking class. We made 3 fabulous salsas, marinated onions, cochinita pibil, a great marinade, tortillas, gorditas and have learned the fundamentals of cooking with chilies. Regardless of the bumps to come we will already take a lot with us from our visit here.

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.