Hola Mexico! Part 1

A short while after leaving San Fran, Little Aussie and I found ourselves in a completely different world--Mexico. It may be close enough to home but it does not feel like it one bit. Especially not where we were heading. We must be the only girls in their 20s, who rather than vacationing at a beach in Mexico like normal people, decide to go to Mexico City. I joked to friends before leaving that they better be willing to negotiate with my kidnappers or else risk finding one of my fingers in their mailbox. Spoiler alert--we made it out of Mexico unscathed!

Now we didn't just choose this at random. My friend OG, another Hamburg friend, was from there and had invited us to visit. He was the final stop on our reunion tour. I hadn't seen him since he had come to visit me in NYC last spring and I was excited since OG is always fun. We weren't going to be staying with OG though, since he lived a bit outside of this massive mega-city and he thought it would be better if we stayed in the center of things. So he booked us a room at hostel in the city center. Except he booked us the penthouse suite, where we not only had our own private room but also had our very own rooftop patio overlooking the royal palace and the cathedral. Baller status! A sampling of our view:

I had spent the cab ride from the airport with my face pressed to the window at the view outside and now I couldn't stay away from the balcony, watching the hustle and bustle of the city before me. This was probably the craziest place I had ever seen. There were people everywhere, and the traffic was ridiculous. There were no lines in the roads and apparently no rules of the road. It was crowded and busy and loud. And we did not fit in. There didn't seem to be many tourists, not surprisingly, and those that were definitely came from Latin America. We are about as white as can be and were noticed, as we walked the neighborhood around our hostel looking for a bank and snacks. Neither of us spoke Spanish, my phone didn't work and OG hadn't responded to my last emails. It was getting cloudy and people were starting to clear the streets. We had somehow gotten turned around and weren't sure which way to go back. Of course it started to downpour and we were running through the streets, soaking wet, trying to figure out where the hell we were. When we finally did, we walked back into our hostel dejected and dripping wet and definitely not feeling like ballers.

We got some much-needed sleep that night and in the morning woke up early for a tour put on by the hostel. We visited some cathedrals and Aztec ruins around the city, including a square where 1,000 student protesters were killed by the government in 1968, before heading outside the city to the pyramids of Teotihuacan. Our tour group was made up of a variety of foreigners, including a few Europeans. I was the only American and this suited me fine. On the van ride out we listened to the Olympic soccer game in which Mexico was playing, and I again stared out the window at the slums lining the mountains outside. Before heading to the pyramids we stopped at a local store, which made it's own crafts, like sculptures out of volcanic rock, and tequila and mezcal. They gave us about 3 shots and then Little Aussie and I went to town in the store, buying up little statues and bottles of liquor. I'm sure it was wildly overpriced but neither of us seemed to care. (Sidenote, when I returned home to NYC I realized that the bottles of mezcal I had bought had the worm at the bottom..sick).

We then headed over to the pyramids to get to climbing. It was an absolutely beautiful day out--the perfect temperature, with a breeze that had a balmy smell and the sunlight was almost blinding. I have never experienced weather like that and I was pretty happy as I trucked up the steep steps of the Pyramid of the Moon. Once at the top Little Aussie and I had a photoshoot with the amazing landscape surrounding us. Then I realized I had to climb back down. I am really scared of heights and the steps were pretty narrow. Climbing down was tedious and I decided I wasn't even going to chance it with the Pyramid of the Sun, which was even higher. I sat sprawled out in a grassy area in its shadow, while Little Aussie headed up. I was nice and relaxed even though I had to shoo away a guy selling something every five seconds and I caught two random men taking my picture. Had they never seen bare legs before??

After awhile I started to get worried--Little Aussie hadn't come back down the mountain and it was nearing the time when we were supposed to meet back up with the tour group. I began to grow concerned. We were separated in a country which wasn't exactly the safest in which neither of us spoke the language. I wandered around growing angrier until we were eventually reunited. My mood was not the best for a bit but it improved after speaking to a cute little Swiss guy who was part of our group on the van ride back to the city. We didn't get a chance to exchange info so if I am meant to see him again I will. Little Aussie and I met OG for a delish dinner of authentic tacos and then watched the Olympics in our room. The next day we went on another tour of the Cathedral outside our hostel and then the National Palace. The tour was entirely too long but I did get to see the famous Rivera murals I had studied in college was pretty effing awesome.

That night we had plans to meet up with one of Russian Rocher's friends--her roommate from Penn, who was also from Mexico City. I had never met him but I figured it would be good to have one more person to take us out. He invited the two of us to a Penn alumni happy hour, so we took a cab that the hostel called us (we were advised not to hail cabs on the street because it was likely they would mug us) to the neighborhood--Colonia Roma. It was quite a difference from the neighborhoods we had seen so far, which looked pretty sketch. It was filled with architecturally interesting buildings and tall palm trees. We were headed to the Hotel Brick and after our driver got lost, finally made it. We walked in and I felt like I was back in New York. It was fancy and hip and Russian Rocher's friend greeted us in perfect English. He led us to a room with fancy apps and a bunch of tooly guys in suits. I could tell Little Aussie was immediately uncomfortable, especially when some of them started asking what we do for a living (she is a bartender at a strip club in Australia..probably not the answer they were expecting). I was eyeing a guy with slicked back hair who looked a lot like Ibanker until I noticed the wedding ring on his finger. Russian Rocher's friend was nice though and we eventually got in with a nice little group and had a competition to see if he could name all the Mexican states and I the US. I made it to 48--stupid Mississippi and Idaho!

It was an interesting evening, observing the wealthy in Mexico City, especially when the country has such a great divide. We really didn't notice many middle-class people at all while we were there; it seemed to be one or the other. And we had even more interesting times ahead of us....to be continued.....