Mexico City travel diary

With a flight of about four hours we went from North to Central America and more precisely from San Francisco to Mexico City. We arrived at our destination around 17:30 local time, slightly ahead of the flight plan. For this reason too we circled over the airport for a few minutes and were able to appreciate the vastness of the Mexican capital. In fact it holds a series of more or less edifying records: it is one of the highest capitals in the world, it is the largest urban agglomeration in the world and also the most polluted... we absolutely had to visit it! On our arrival we were welcomed by an Italian friend, Claudio Fogale, who has been working in Mexico City for almost a year. We had contacted him previously to ask him a favor...

after more than six months of travel, we had planned to have a package sent to us from Italy containing t-shirts, sweatshirts, medicines and other comforts; Claudio was our address for having this package sent! Our good friend had truly thought of everything and besides coming to pick us up, he had even reserved an excellent hostel for us to set up our lodging. Once in the car we headed toward the city center, a wild chaos of cars busy exchanging insults with each other. In fact Mexico City can fully deserve the record of most congested city in the world as well. While we were slipping between the cars, Claudio informed us that our package from Italy had encountered some problems at customs and had been held up right there.

Claudio however seemed optimistic and reassured us that within a few days we would be able to take possession of our goods, all that would be needed was the issuance of a new invoice by our sponsor, in which some specifications about the goods contained had to be pointed out. With this consolation in our pockets we headed to the hostel and once we reached the dormitory we treated ourselves to a super shower and even a nice nap. Waking up in the late evening we headed out to have our first Mexican dinner, together with a Brazilian guy (Rodrigo) who shared the dormitory with us. The menu featured enchiladas in mole sauce, with the inevitable black bean cream...

a classic! After dinner, even though tired from the journey, we couldn't resist taking a stroll to visit the neighborhood where we had ended up: it was the Zona Rosa, the most touristy and lively one and also the safest for poor tourists like us. We didn't resist for long though and after a little while we plopped into bed.

The next day we got up very early and after consuming an excellent breakfast offered by the hostel, we reached Claudio's office by taxi, to try to sort out the paperwork concerning our package. In reality good old Fogale had preceded us and was already taking another route to manage to take possession of the goods: he had declared that it was material to be given in charity to needy people... it wasn't such a big lie!!! Unfortunately though this Mexican customs seemed to have it in for us because not even this stratagem had produced the desired effects. We left the office downhearted, without any certainty but aware that the matter would not be resolved soon. The rest of the afternoon we spent visiting the "Zocalo", the historic center of the city located in the Plaza de la Constitución, where the National Palace and the old and fascinating Cathedral stand.

Night fell in a flash and the time came to have dinner... we had decided, for obvious budget reasons, to try to avoid restaurants and eat at the little stalls we found along the street. In reality these improvised kitchens seemed, in many cases, to give off an even inviting smell, not accompanied however by an equally inviting hygienic condition. The fact is that we didn't have much choice if we wanted to make it to the end of our trip and so it was that we headed toward a sheet-metal shack near our hostel that promised very rich burritos. In fact all the promises were fully kept and we went to sleep with a good dinner in our stomachs.

For the following day we had planned an Italo-Brazilian expedition (we would in fact go with Rodrigo, the Brazilian who shared the dormitory with us) to the city of Teotihuacan, to admire two of the most important Mayan pyramids present in Mexican territory. Such importance is attributed to it by the fact that it is the first Mesoamerican city, the result of careful planning and with peculiar urban characteristics. The sun was beating down on our heads, almost as if it wanted to cook them, and we had even forgotten our hat. The pyramids were two, the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon, oriented accordingly and both equipped with enormous and very steep steps... but if these Mayans were as short as they say, who made them build steps of those dimensions??? Bah...

mysteries of history that we are not given to know! It took a good four interminable hours to visit the entire site, fortunately the sun had also kindly thought of taking a break and this allowed us to survive. Back in the center, exhausted and thirsty, we headed to Carlito the burrito man to repeat the deliciousness of the previous day... super rich! If four hours at the pyramids had seemed like an eternity to us, we still didn't know what awaited us the following day. We had planned the visit to the much-praised anthropological museum that just about everyone had recommended we see. The history of man from his beginnings up to the development of Mexican civilization.

Without a doubt it contained some interesting sections, useful for understanding the history of a people as rich as the Mexican one; at the same time it proved interminable and repetitive as far as other aspects were concerned. Suffice it to say that we spent a good six hours inside that building, during which, room after room, all our vital energies were drained from us. We came out shattered, almost unable to recognize each other, with a desperate need for liquids, food and sleep. We had already spent four days in the capital and still nothing had been sorted out as far as our package was concerned; it was risking becoming a trap from which we couldn't free ourselves.

The next day, with this worry in our heads, we headed again toward the "Zocalo" to visit the interior of the Presidential Palace and the Cathedral. We also took the opportunity to walk through the very colorful and lively market that develops in the streets adjacent to the main square... a beauty! Meanwhile evening had come and we were already savoring in advance the flavor of yet another burrito but back at the hostel we realized that Carlito the burrito man had kindly decided to take the day off. Panic suddenly fell upon our minds, we were completely thrown off... one of our greatest certainties had failed. How to remedy that situation? How to procure new food? Ideas were at zero but suddenly, just a little beyond Carlitos the burrito man's stall, a new sheet-metal shack stood that proclaimed a new promise: Tacos 5 X 10 pesos.

It was just what we needed and after some initial hesitation we immersed ourselves in the new world of tacos.

The next day we no longer knew what to visit... time passed and the situation did not improve; the idea of abandoning the package and continuing on our way loomed as a possibility. But the following day turned out unexpectedly positive. Waking up in the late morning we headed toward the Azteca stadium: the largest in the world, another little check to add to our collection of records. It is the stadium where the legendary Italy-Germany 4-3 match was played; the stadium where Diego Armando Maradona scored that incredible handball goal known to most by the name "the hand of God"! Back toward the hostel we realized that Carlitos the burrito man had betrayed us for the umpteenth time, but not all evils come to harm... The owner of the hostel kindly invited us to dine in her restaurant.

And it was right there that we met Gina, the girl who proved to be our ace in the hole in unraveling our customs paperwork. Gina was a girl of Korean origin who dealt with import-export of works of art and who for this reason had close ties with the Mexican customs authorities. No sooner said than done, all it took was a phone call to the right person and a "little bribe" of one hundred dollars to get our longed-for package.

The following morning Claudio called us to inform us that the package had magically been delivered to his office. We were free and once we retrieved the package we immediately headed to the bus station to make our way to our next destination: Oaxaca