Mexico City
After getting up at an ungodly hour to catch our flight to Lima (planning to then spend the day in Lima before flying to Mexico that night) and even getting as far as checking in the flight was cancelled. Appeared not to be an unusual event, apparently there was too much cloud about. Didn’t look that much to us, but it is probably a landing by sight airport. We were moved onto the evening flight, which all being well would connect with the mexico flight, and then had an unplanned day in Piura. Not necessarily where you would choose to spend another day, but a better place to get stuck than Pomabamba which is where we were when we had our last transport failure.
Connection was fine. Lima airport is horribly expensive, definately works on “international” prices. Flight to Mexico was uneventful, though never been served a 3 course meal at 2am before!
After finding our hostel (and a power nap!) went to Xochimilco, which is the canal district of Mexico city. We weren’t quite sure what to expect, and were none the wiser when we got to the embarcaderos (mini ports) as you cannot see any of the canals from the street. We bit the bullet and hired a boat and man. The boats are like giant punts, and can sit 16 to 20 people. We were just the two of us, but there were boats full of families and groups with massive picnics and crates of beer being punted around. Almost all of them local, it seems to be the thing to do on a Sunday afternoon. There are also smaller punts somehow squeezing in between the big ones selling food, beers, souvenirs etc, and some carrying floating mariachi bands who (for a fee of course) would float alongside your punt and serenade you for a while (also surprisingly popular!)
Xochimilco is also the garden centre area of Mexico city, many of the plots that back onto the canal are garden centres, and there are floating plant stalls too (obviously!). The atmosphere was really fun, the whole thing felt like a jolly Colombia road market meets punting on the Cam in the sunshine.
We had intended to visit more of the sights of Mexico city the next day, but it turns out that Monday is not a good day to be a tourist in Mexico city as most things are closed. We did visit the Palacio Nacional, which is a huge and impressive building on the main square, famous for the Diego Rivera murals that it contains. These were also impressive, absolutely huge and with loads and loads going on in them. You had to look at them for a long time to notice all that was going on.
The market was interesting (as usual). It sprawls over lots of streets, and the main market area is a huge fruit and vegetable hall, a lot of which we didn’t recognise. You can tell what goes into the national food from the market, here there were huge piles of onions, tomatoes (red and green), garlic and more types of chilli than I have ever seen. They sell onions (even in bulk) ready peeled, which seems like a very sensible idea to me. They also do this in Peru and Ecuador.
Later on we visited Plaza Garibaldi. This is a square with bars and restaurants around it, where the mariachi bands congregate to serenade you. We were quite early, so there were only a few bands around, but they were already being hired. We had a Pulque in a little bar. Pulque is made from an Agave type plant and was supposedly the favourite drink of the Aztecs. I had a juice flavoured one which was OK. Nicks plain one was vile, and had a really thick texture too which didn’t help. Apparently the square is somewhere Mexicans end up after a few beers elsewhere and can get pretty rowdy. We didn’t stay late, but got the general idea.
Tags: Mexico, Travel
Jenni
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