New Beginnings and Mexico City, January 1-9, 2024

Over Christmas break in California and Arizona, we had some time to assess Leg #1 of our trip. We’d gone to the UK and (sort of) circled around the Mediterranean and traveled through Spain and a bit of Portugal. Scott got to use the incredible amount of knowledge he has amassed of European history; I got to connect with family members and reflect on my dad’s and his parent’s lives as immigrants. It was a fantastic trip. But could we improve on the next leg?

- Three of us decided to downgrade our bag sizes (Scott took my backpack, I took Luke’s backpack, and we bought Luke a smaller, kids backpack at REI).

- I left ALL THREE of the ‘luxury’ items I brought on the Europe leg at home (battery-powered toothbrush [didn’t work great], workout bands [getting real, I only used them a handful of times], and my blow-up body pillow [as a side-sleeper, I need that knee and shoulder support, really, but I realized I could just bring an extra long pillowcase and then stuff throw pillows or our clothes into the pillowcase and get the same effect!].

- Scott did not bring hair clippers (we had clippers on the Europe leg, but decided all the boys on the trip would manage with no cuts for three months or find local barbers)

So we lightened our loads! We assessed our speed of travel (moderate pace, not adjustment needed); I self-committed to not get soooo far behind on blogging and bought a sun hat. With those pretty-minor trip improvements, we turned to planning for Central & South America; I struggled with this planning. For Europe, I’d been thinking of the leg for many many months and it had some clear guide stars – we had to go to the UK because of the 90-day visa rule; we had to go to Italy for my family; we wanted to go to Greece and Spain to align with 7^th grade history curriculum, etc. These requirements sort of provided the ‘bones’ of our trip. For Central and South America we had… no real visa restrictions (we are only traveling for 90 days total on this leg); we had no one to go visit (poor us!); and the 7^th grade history book has only two short chapters on early-Americans: Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs. Also, neither Scott nor I have ever been to South America.

I started reading whatever Lonely Planets I could download on Kindle Unlimited. The planning was a bit overwhelming; which place has busses in and out? which place has airports? actually, which place has airports that are so small each flight is +$1000? which place is too hot? which place is too cold? which place has activities for all ages? which place is shown as “red” on the State Dept safety-maps and which is just orange or yellow? should we start in the north or start in the south? argggggg, I could not decide on one thing!

Finally, somehow, the seventh grade social studies book intervened and we decided to start in Mexico City, with fascinating, pre-Hispanic history, when native Americanos tribes, republics, and Empires lived and thrived in Central and South America without contact with Europeans. Phew! I had a dot on the map, place #1! From there, we sketched out a plan to:

- Tour Mexico City then make our way east to Cancun, through some Mayan sites

- Fly from Cancun all the way south, to Chilean Patagonia

- Depending on the weather, stay a bit or quick-make our way north to Buenos Aires

- Potentially spend a few days in Montevideo in Uruguay

- Fly up to Ecuador to the Galapagos Islands

- Fly up to Colombia to Cartagena

- Then back to Arizona or, if we have extra time, head to Panama to finish up this leg of the trip

- Drive from Arizona to Texas in time for the solar eclipse, April 8

Phew! I was soooo happy to have to outlines of a trip.. Now, we’re off!

In the Tucson airport - Not sure what Alex's face is saying, maybe, I got up too early.?

We flew from Tucson (where we spend Christmas with Scott’s parents) to Mexico City. Easy (but small, bumpy plane) ride to start off. We arrived in Mexico City to a bit of a mess. First, the airport has these nice immigration lines, one for Mexicans, one for foreigners, and these great electronic gates that all adult tourists can go right through. Anyone with kids has to stand in the foreigner line and sadly, many, many adult foreigners who should go through the electronic gates were confused and instead clogging up the family line without anyone telling them to move on. My glares did nothing, so we had to wait a good hour for immigration. Customs and bag wait was also a bit long and Katie had been feeling a bit nauseous (we never figured out why, we got up quite early for the plane, maybe tired+bumpy plane ride) for a while so all pauses in progress were tough. But! We made it to our apartment via taxi by around 7pm. Driving through the city in the taxi was very interesting; it is huge; the main road we stayed right near, called Avenue de la Reforma, reminded me of Wilshire Ave in LA; big, fast road, tall buildings on either side, big enough sidewalks for pretty ok walking. It was dark and we were tired, but we needed water (our apt host told us that the water is safe to drink from the tap but that we should buy giant water bottles, like, the size of office-delivered water bottles, and drink that). We started to run down to the corner store, but the security guy in our apt was handily selling such bottles for only about a dollar more than the grocery store, so we did not have to carry it very far.

Buying and carrying giant bottles of water definitely changes your relationship with drinking water.. Writing this now, at 9pm, reminds me to boil tap water for my tomorrow-morning’s coffee, as it is just too wrong to use our hydrating, bottled, filtered water to make coffee that is, delicious!, but ultimately is the opposite of hydration.. 😊 We developed a little routine around the giant bottle of water, to take turns carefully pouring from it into our big-mouthed water bottle and then using that to pour into the extra, “small-mouthed” plastic water bottles we had on hand after buying water in the airport. We had to do this ~2x a day to keep everyone hydrated. Mexico City is at almost 7,400 feet altitude; pretty high for sea-level-dwellers like us, so staying hydrated was super important. Sidenote about the high altitude, Alex and Luke swore up that they could definitely jump higher, having been relieved of such a big proportion of the atmospheric weight (CDMX – common shorthand for Mexico City, meaning Ciudad de Mexico – has only 67% of the atmospheric weight at sea level).

OK! Water and altitude! I swear, we also saw important sights in CDMX, but one more note about the place – Street vendors! Avid readers of this blog will likely NOT know that I have a fair amount of (unhappy) professional experience related to street vending, stateside at least. You see, in 2018, CA changed its laws regarding street vending, essentially decriminalizing it. There are many good reasons to do this, however, this change in law soon became an unwelcome focus of my job. Very quickly after the law’s passage, food and merch vendors set up many many small carts at tourist hot spots, many along San Francisco’s waterfront like Pier 39, Alcatraz landing, Ferry Building, Giants ballpark, etc – where I was in charge of real estate. Guess who really really dislikes street vendors? Restaurant and shop operators selling items right behind the vendors. Oh, it was a royal conflict that continues today. Fast forward: CDMX has … such a tremendous number of street vendors! Once I got over my Pavlovian-hives from seeing so many vendors right near restaurants and shops (don’t the restaurants just hate paying rent and taxes when the person right outside doesn’t do either? how do they manage permitting and food safety?) we quickly came to appreciate the taco stand right outside our apartment. However, I noted on our last day in CDMX that we had NEVER even tried the little restaurant right downstairs from our apt because the taco guys were so convenient and cheap (and.. tasty!). Also, on long walks, I definitely noticed when there was a break in the vendors on the sidewalks because the walk got just a lot more pleasant, with more space and the ability to sort of “look around” that is a bit harder to appreciate when there are so many stalls. The little urban planner (amateur “urban planner”, I am not trained in such things) in me came out…

So many many street vendors.

Taco street vendors right outside out apartment, where we had breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

OK ok ok, on to the sights!

Teotihuacan – Giant ancient city, about an hour northeast of Mexico City; considered to be the first advanced civilization in North America; built around 100 BCE; abandoned for some reason around 600 or 700 CE. The place is known for its incredible Pyramid to the Sun and Pyramid to the Moon (both of which the Aztecs, developing their own incredible city around 1300, admired and mused about) and, interestingly, for its multifamily housing! At some point as it grew to ~125,000 people in population (one of the largest in the world at that time), Teotihuacan halted building giant, pyramid temples and turned resources to building housing. Fascinating! In addition to the great sights, I was pleased we figured out the bus to get out there from CDMX (we mostly took Ubers around the City, but we managed to try the bus and the metro, too). We came away very impressed by this sight.

Approaching the Pyramid del Sol at Teotihuacan.

The family makes the descent down the steep steep steps.

Alex at Temple of Feathered Serpent.

Alex and Luke far away, stretching their legs on a run, toward Pyramid of the Moon.

In front of the elegant Pyramid of the Moon.

Archeological museum – Wow, this museum is excellent! Located in the giant and lovely Chapultapec Park (giant, Golden-Gate-Parkesque city park) with great rooms arrayed around a giant central courtyard with a memorable, giant rain-fountain. Outside the museum, we walked around a big lake with boat rentals and enjoyed street performers (including a group that scaled a ~50 foot pole, attached their feet to ropes, and then gracefully fell backwards off the pole-platform to form swirling, upside down bodies; one person on top held the ropes to ensure they all fell slowly enough for safety and a great show!). On our second visit to the Archaeological museum (yes, we went twice, because we are cool like that, second time to review some rooms we missed and do a bit of drawing of pieces), we got caught in a bit of rain outside and we sadly missed walking around the giant Park a second time.

Luke in front of the famous Aztec Sun Stone.

Kids in front of the cool, museum courtyard art piece.

Alex, reading about the ball courts.

Castillo de Chapultepec – Yes, in the big park, there is a giant hill, sacred to the Aztecs, where the Spanish built the castle as a residence and administrative center in the late 1700s for the Viceroy. Best part of the visit was getting to see the Mexico’s Declaration of Independence from Spain , 1821, and the the great view from the spacious building.

Very cool ceiling art at Castillo de Chapultepec.

We cannot pass up this ginormous bag of cotton candy, can we Katie?

We got the blue cotton candy.

Symbol of Aztecs and Mexico, the eagle with the snake, on the cactus (it's an eagle Luke, an eagle, not a turkey)!

Templo Mayor – We are reading this great book together called Conquistador, by Buddy Levy, about Cortes and Montezuma. It is an amazing and tragic story, the Spanish conquistador Cortes destroying the powerful and rich Aztec empire, recommend for kids learning about the Aztecs. In 1519, Cortes manages to fight, cajole, and trick his way into meeting the Aztec emperor Montezuma; by 1521, the dominant and wealthy empire fell to the Spanish and the capital city, Tenochtitlan, including its giant 120-foot tall temple, was destroyed. In 1978, utility workers in Mexico City came upon an 8-ton carved, stone disc and Mexico decided to demolish colonial buildings excavate what is called Templo Mayor, to uncover what they could of Tenochtitlan. Right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Mexico City, the excavation site is thought to be on the exact spot where the Aztecs saw the eagle atop a cactus, with a snake in its mouth (the symbol in the center of Mexico’s flag) and decided to build their temple on that spot. Very interesting sight and museum; I think it is in this museum where there is an apt and moving poetic phrase on a prominent wall, stating something like, the meeting of the Aztecs and the Spanish led to the bloody birth of modern day Mexicans (the majority of whom are mixed-race Native-Spanish ancestry).

In front of the Zocalo (aka Plaza de la Constitucion), Mexico City Metropolitan church in the background, along with the giant Mexico flag.

Museo Mural Diego Rivera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, and Museo de Arte Moderno - The Museo Mural Diego Rivera has one, giant mural called Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central, “Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park”, is 50+ feet long and compacts +400 years of history into the mural. The Palacio de Bellas Artes is a large concert hall/arts center turned museum filled with fantastic murals, including one Rivera called El hombre en el cruse de caminos, Man at the Crossroads, which was originally painted at Rockefeller Center, but the Rockefellers had it destroyed as it was too anti-capitalist and thus Rivera re-created it in Mexico. Interestingly, the top floor had an exhibition for an extra fee that we decided to spring for that was fascinating; it was a series of drone pictures and maps that show the mountains (volcanos), all the former creeks and lakes, and existing concrete waterways that feed Mexico City’s water. It was just arresting to see how humans had changed the landscape to allow this great metropolis and to understand how difficult it is for people to understand the landscape – the photographer interviewed people literally living in neighborhoods constructed on the edge of an extinct caldera (the photograph from above made it clear, little houses on the top edge of a giant hole in a mountain) and none of them knew they were living in the caldera, the form was so altered. Great museum in a fantastic building! Finally, we also visited the Museo del Arte Moderna (honestly, because I did not heed to warnings in the Lonely Planet that implored me to order Frida Kahlo Blue House tickets in advance; of course, I could not get them for our last few days in Mexico City, so we settled for a walk-by of her house and we went to Arte Moderna museum because they have one of her most famous pieces, the Two Fridas.

Amazing Rivera Sunday Afternoon mural of Mexico's history.

Inside the Bellas Artes museum.

Another picture of this great interior, murals in sight.

In front of the awesome Man at Crossroads.

Two Fridas at Arte Moderne.

Graphical art pieces I didn't love, but which led to a short lesson on the areas of circles and pi.

Canals – At the south end of Mexico City is a neighborhood called Xichimilco famous for canals; the canals are what remains of the Aztec’s practice of piling up vegetation and mud in shallow, Lake Xochimilco waters to grow food for Tenochtitlan. Buildings and greenhouses are now built on the canal edges and colorful ~15 person small rafts, punted by a long, thick stick (maybe 20 ft long) are on offer. The canals we hear are very popular with party-goes and families, they bring food and drinks onto the boats; we visited on a weekday, in the morning, and it was pretty quiet. The boats (called trajineras) are punted along the canals and every 10 or 15 minutes, you pass another trajinera selling something – mariachis selling songs, food vendors selling corn, quesadillas, and vendors with hats and drinks. It was a peaceful rand pleasant ride.

Headed out to sea!

Main thing to do on the canals is.. buy food...

... buy songs...

.. and buy more food!

Since we were in the far south of the city, we headed down to Coyoacan....

... and walked by Frida's Blue House (couldn't get tickets).

Carnival – Our week in CDMX happened to coincide with Three Kings Day on Jan 6; all the kids are off school and it seems a lot of folks were not working because there were so many Mexican families out and about on weekdays; plenty to enjoy a big street carnival that was just a few blocks from us – We went several nights and, in addition to eating corn on the cob, giant meat on giant stick, and fried plantains, we noticed these amazing, giant photo-booth scenes where families could take a photo together in a ~12-foot tall scene with actors and props as a keepsake – there were Disney scenes, cartoon characters, but the most popular one we saw was an all gold stall, with the nativity scene where the three kings come to give baby Jesus his gifts. Also, I tried again to ride a carnival ride (avid readers will know I tried a ride in Lucca, Italy with the kids and saw the tunnel of light beckoning me to the underworld, it was so terrible); I decided to try again because Alex wanted me to go (he had his puppy dog eyes on) and the ride was on a track attached to the floor, no flinging in the air, I figured I could take it. Wow. I do not know what happened as you age – I used to love rides - but this one again, was just terrible torture. Disappointment and maybe, the last ride I voluntarily go on.. How sad.