Mexico City

Puebla is a rather big city, but it feels like a small village compared to Mexico City (or DF, from 'Distrito Federal'), a gigantic metropolis of about twenty million people. Most of them must have been on the metro line that took us to the hotel, or at least that's how it felt as we squeezed in the wagon with our backpacks. The metro is super cheap, apparently the cheapest in the world at 0.20 euros per ride, and therefore extremely popular for transfers within the city. Especially since it allows to avoid the horrible traffic jams on the surface.

The Popocatepetl showed up in the end. Notice the smoke at the top?

We had booked two nights at a super cheap hotel not too far from the city centre. The price was suspiciously low, a couple of nights would allow us to check it out and decide whether to stay or look for another accommodation. As it turned out, apart from catering to tourists, it worked also as a hotel by-the-hour. Considering the number of local couples that continuously checked in and out I'd say that its main function definitely is that of a "love hotel". We found the idea sort of funny at the beginning, but grew tired and disgusted of it after a while. K was especially bothered by the situation and after just a few hours we booked another hostel for the remaining nights.

Walking around Mexico City can be a horror of traffic and noise. Even riding the metro can be a nightmare, as there's always someone that is yelling at the top of his lungs trying to sell whatever product they have. The price is always the same, 10 pesos, be it a flash memory, a set of pencils, a math book for children, a pair of gloves or an mp3 collection of songs. The music sellers were the most incredible. They carry around a backpack with a powerful sound system inside and blast music samples at full volume to make sure that the whole wagon can hear it. During a single ride you can thus listen to techno music, pop hits from the '80s, marimba songs and old Mexican classics. It's kind of nice, unless the backpack guy is standing next to you, with the speaker aimed at your ears. I'm pretty sure that early deafness must be common problem in Mexico.

Traffic jam

Out of the metro, one of the most noisy places is the large "Zocalo" square, with touts selling any kind of stuff, taxis roaming around looking for clients, 'indians' dancing at a drum's rhythm, shamans reading tarots and healing your pains with incense and sacred rituals, and protesters camped right in front of the government house. It's a pulsating and interesting environment, but it drove us crazy. To escape the chaos we sought refuge inside the many museums and art galleries, most of them free or very cheap. We enjoyed a few of them. The famous Anthropology Museum was fascinating, but we ended up slightly bored. Perhaps a little overdose of pre-Hispanic artifacts? We enjoyed much more the mural art of Rivera and Siqueiros, the drawings of Posada and the photographic expositions at the 'Palacio de Bellas Artes'.

Protesters in front of the government palace

Museo de Antropologia

Palacio de Bellas Artes

One of Rivera's murals

The famous mural with Catrina, Frida and Diego in the center

Walking around the Alameda park on a sunny Sunday was also a great experience. The car-crazy metropolis changes completely, as people regain the streets on foot, bicycle or skates. Seeing the city move at a slower pace I started to like it a lot more. We ate great food at a market, observed a free dance class at the park (too shy to join) and envied all the people that were walking a dog from a local dog pound. They brought a lot of dogs to the park and let people walk them for the afternoon. We would have loved to get a dog for the afternoon, but the line was too long and we didn't want to spend our day queueing.

Huaraches at the market

The long line to get a dog

Monument to the Revolution

Barricades in the streets surrounding the government buildings

Dancing class at the park

The public bicycles look exactly like the ones in Barcelona

Mariachis for a proper Mexican ending

Big cities are not our favourites and huge metropolis can be a real nightmare made of steel, pollution and rushed crowds. It took us some time to get used to it, but in the end we started to like Mexico City: good food, friendly people and tons of art and culture... after all this is Mexico!