Mexico City

31 Dec – 3 Jan

The adventure started when we landed in Mexico city on New Years Eve. The temperature was a lot cooler than we had expected – to be fair we had not given the weather much thought, and coming from sunny South Africa, naively expected it to be warm.

We headed straight from the airport to Histórico Central, our hotel for the first two nights. All things considered (30+hours of travel) we felt confident that we would stay up until midnight and cheers 2019. We were expecting quite a celebration, being in the 6th largest city in the world, just shy of 21 million people.

We headed to the Zocalo (the main public square), a short walk away and were surprised to find it fairly quiet with only a few stalls still going at 21:30. Turns out that new years is not a massive excuse to party as it is in other parts of the world. Apparently the Mexican people traditionally prefer to celebrate new years at home with family and friends. We heard there were some celebrations taking place at another Square somewhere in the city.

We immediately bought a taco and esquites (spicy sweet corn in a cup with mayonnaise, cheese and lime juice – it tastes a lot better than it sounds) from one of the local food stalls, but our hopes of making midnight were quickly starting to fade.

Our first glimpse of the Zocalo

Tacos and Esquites

Moments before we started to fade…

Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral

Historico Central – our home for two nights

Historico Central hotel

For our first full day in the city, and to start the new year, we decided to do a hop on hop off bus tour.

Being new years day, many attractions were closed and the streets were extremely quiet. Not what we had expected from a city of this size. In some ways we saw this as an advantage as it was nice to get to know the streets without the typical hustle and bustle that you come to expect.

We did the Central Route, which focused on the historical and downtown areas. The only real stop for us was the Soumaya Museum, a non-profit museum housing one of the largest private art collections, owned by Carlos Slim, the 6th richest man in the world. The museum is an architecturally iconic building, and the collection comprised a number of notable classical artists.

After the museum we hopped off at Polanco (a very trendy area with designer shops, lots of restaurants and a lot of trees and greenery) and walked around for a while before heading off to meet a friend.

Jojo and Alika have “known” each other for 25 years (through Jojo’s sister, Jess, having done an exchange program with Alika’s family and staying with them for about 6 months), but had yet to meet. So finally having the opportunity to meet was quite exciting!

She introduced us to pulque (an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of the maguey plant), El Califa gringas and showed us the Olympic stadium and CU (the university area). The library facade was very interesting, adorned with mosaic tiles and each side depicts a different important aspect of Mexico’s history and culture.

Impressive architecture of the Soumaya Museum

Rodin’s “Thinker”

Alika and Jojo in front of the impressive university library

On the 2nd we did a cycling taco tour (Christmas gift from the Dobie sisters). Cycling around Mexico City was not something we thought we would do (or even less, survive) but it turned out to be great fun. The food was delicious and we made some friends along the way who even gave us tips and advice for some of the South American countries on our itinerary.

We also checked into our new digs, Casa Decu in the trendy neighborhood Condesa.

Ready, set, cycle!

Ciudad de México (Mexico city) sign on our route

The tacos from our tour, including one from the famous Pujol (top left)

For our last day in the city we decided to check out Chapultepec Castle, Palacio de Belles Artes and Torre Latinoamericana. In between we also walked around Zocalo again and saw Templo Mayor, ruins which were discovered fairly recently.

By this time the ‘hustle & bustle’ that you would expect from the city had definitely returned. In some streets, as far as the eye could see was just a mass of people wandering around going about their business.