This post originally appeared on Frontier Psychiatrist on July 2nd, 2013.
We stayed at a hotel on Paseo de la Reforma, a massive avenue lined with hotels, embassies, museums, and monuments located in the center of the numerous roundabouts, not to mention a Starbucks every other block. The awful traffic in Mexico City is famous, yet they close major portions of the avenue on Sunday mornings and afternoons to only bike traffic. I had missed out on the opportunity to participate in Sao Paulo’s similarly programmed Cyclio Fixia, so I made sure to enjoy this. I was actually surprised at the city’s thriving bike culture, even on weekdays days of the week. There were more bike lanes than I had expected, and their bike share program is undoubtedly a success after launching a few years ago, well ahead of New York, which rolled out CitiBike on Memorial Day, and Chicago, which rolled out Divvy Bikes, last week.
If you have an adventurous stomach, Mexico City (abbreviated DF for District Federal) is a culinary playground. Street food is plentiful and great to grab for a quick munchie. Not to mention, eight tacos for 30 pesos (~$2.28). The city is known for tacos al pastor with delicious, juicy, spit- cooked pork, but there is much else to be had. Tortas and burritos are all over and filling as well. The best surprise we discovered were pambazos. White bread dipped in pepper sauce, filled with papas con chorizo, lettuce, salsa, cheese, and sour cream. And unlike much of the “Mexican” food Gustavo Arellano chronicled in Taco USA, chicken quesadillas are apparently not just for gringos.
On the opposite end of the culinary spectrum, we dined at Pujol, ranked the seventeenth best restaurant in the world according to San Pellegrino. The 13-course menu lasted three hours, covering chef Enrique Olvera’s twists on classic Mexican dishes, including: Ant tostadas, fried frog tamales, and a fantastic squash tamale topped with salsa roja. (Mexico’s Next Top Squash?) The small restaurant certainly caters to the expat and traveler crowd, with more English spoken around the restaurant than Spanish to a soundtrack of Air, the Cure, and Notorious BIG.
While Pujol paints a very moden picture of Mexico City, about an hour northeast are the ruins of Teotihuacan, a pre-Hispanic city created more than 2000 years ago. Along the avenues and near the various pyramids, hawkers try to sell crafts of fake-obsidian, a black, volcanic-formed rock common to the area. The Pyramid of the Sun is the high point, reaching over 70 meters high, offering a clear view of the surrounding mountains, valleys, and quickly encroaching suburbs and farm towns. This was definitely one of the more touristy parts of the trip, but also one of the more worthwhile. Living in Chicago, a city that has essentially only been around for less than 150 years, it’s refreshing to experience cultures that lived, thrived, and have been long gone, and nearly forgotten by the rest of the world.
Of course, only so much can go right. After a morning walking around the Museum of Anthropology, examining Oaxacan codices and Aztec skulls, we decided to try to eat at El Caguamo, known for its ceviche. Though normally open all weekdays, the street stall was closed when we went as they were out catching fresh fish. Oh well, no big deal. It didn’t seem like we were too far from La Merced, so we hop in a cab, growing deliriously hungry, hoping this grand market will confuse us with overwhelming number of options. But our driver couldn’t get through where he was planning on going. There was apparently a protest of some sort, blocking off streets around the Zocalo (the city’s main public square), corralled by police in riot gear. Normally I would have stuck around to see what was up, but there was no action at the moment, and at two in the afternoon, we were all long overdue for some calories. Onwards to the market. We find it. We see purses, we see pants, shoes, flowers, even women for purchase, lined up as if no different than these other material goods, before we find food. We decide to cut our losses, as we are already lost. We leave the market, and head down a street that smells so bad I almost vomit despite having nothing in my stomach. The intense sunlight radiating through the yellow coverings doesn’t help my disorientation from the smell. We finally escape olfactory death, find some street quesadillas, and continue on our way.
Though this afternoon was chalked up to a loss, there were still many pleasant surprises. A side street found crates of full of records for sale, including classical music, 70s American rock, and absurd looking covers of Mexican music. Disappointed by the rest of our experience with nightlife in the DF and growing bored of Modelo, Pacifico, and the like, we found Crisanta, a bar near the Plaza de la Republica that actually brews their own porter, and imports various other combinations of hops and barely from around Central and South America. And I’m proud to say I lived through my first earthquake, although none of the four of us felt it when we were walking around, confused as to why so many people were standing outside our hotel in their pajamas when we had returned.
Mexico City was clearly a much safer city than many Americans insinuated. Anyone in a restaurant was happy to serve (some of our group was fluent in Spanish, some of us not so much), and even occasionally someone at a street stand is happy to practice English and share his story with us. My paranoia only got the best of me on our first night in. We stumbled across a dark bar on Eje Central Lazaro Cardenas near Plaza Garibaldi, playing industrial and goth music, patronized only by people in black leather, messed up hair, and piercings. Seemed like a place we wanted to be. That is until some woman, who may or may not have worked there, and may or may not have just been offering to get another drink, but nonetheless put her hand over my friends drink without him noticing. It seemed sketchy enough not to trust, especially since we already stuck out enough as targets. I like to explore when traveling, but there’s no reason to feel bad for playing it cautious sometimes.
Alas, we did not exert this same caution on our street food choices. It took five days for Montezuma to reclaim his revenge on us. I’ll spare the details but I certainly exclaimed “dios mio” on the toilet at least once and was glad it was mostly out of my system when I returned to the States the following day and made my way to Brooklyn to sample a beer garden and a night of African music in Prospect Park with the FP staff from New York and Chicago. Sad to say I spent my last night in DF planning all the things we wouldn’t have a chance to do, eating room service soup and potatoes, watching Argo and Ted. Yet here I am, still feeling the after affect of street-food induced nausea,. Perhaps I am in immature traveler to say: I would do it all over again.
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