Day five, Mexico City: Is it safe to drink the rain water?

It was a quiet day for the most part. There more to see, but my dad and I just needed a break. I think we’ve seen more than our fair share.

So with nothing to do for the most part, we just stayed around the house and walked around the neighborhood through the beginning of the day. Our cousin was delayed in picking us up to take us to a huge produce market call “El Merced” where there are just seemingly endless rows for produce.

My cousin is very familiar to those that work at the market. He just has to honk once he gets close and someone opens a spot for him. He walks in and goes to his known vendors and reels off what he needs from them. As soon as he orders he usually walks away to pick up other items and parks them at a location at a vendor while he gets more stuff. Towards the end, he runs into some runners that know his vendors. He gives them his car keys and they pick up his items and drop them off in the trunk of his car. He tips the guy that helped him with the spot too.

We made it back home but I still needed to buy certain items for friends back home. Another cousin gave us a ride back to Centro Historica. It was an interesting walk. I did learn that a Big Mac meal costs about half what it does in the U.S.

We came home and had a late lunch/early dinner with my aunt making me plenty of food. After a while we walked back to my cousin’s restaurant. We didn’t eat, but we talked for more than an hour.

While we were there, it began to rain heavily with flashes of lightning. It came and went in a matter of 20 minutes or so. I came home not tired for a change, which was a nice feeling.

Today, family from the state of Jalisco is coming in to see me and my dad and should arrive in the morning. Then, me and my dad with my cousin and his two sons will head to Estadio Azteca for the World Cup Qualifying match as Mexico will take on El Salvador. And, the winner will not be considered the greatest country on Earth, no matter what the Simpsons say. It should still be fun and if Mexico wins, they qualify for the 2010 World Cup with a match in hand.

Day Four, Mexico City: More Aztecs

I spent the first two nights without knowing there was a fan in the room. I turned it on and it made the night more comfortable.

The original plan was to go to the marketplace and spend some time at Centro Historica. However, due to time constraints, we could only go to Centro Historica and could not go everywhere there. We made a stop at Palacio de Bellas Artes first. They had an exhibition dedicated to the art of El Greco who’s art was years ahead of his time when he painted them in the middle ages and most of his art on display centered on religion. One of the pieces standing out was “The Disrobing of Christ,” a painstakingly piece of art that is magnificent. There was also a wing showing separate portraits of the twelve apostles and Jesus in center.

On the second floor there were murals drawn by various artist, including Diego Rivera. One was a remake of a mural he was drawing at Rockefeller Center in New York named “Man, Controller of the Universe.” It shows a man at the controls of the entire universe that surrounds him. The original mural in New York was never finished since it contained an image of Lenin and was destroyed since he refused to take it out.

The building itself is a three story complex with art deco design and marble everywhere.

We walked towards Catedral Metropolitana. It is another huge Catholic church that is also sinking and tilting in the soft soil of Mexico City. Inside, there is a pendulum showing the angle of the tilt, and how bad it used to be. The cathedral contains much religious art work and shrines. One that stopped me was the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. It was hard not to think of my mom yesterday and today walking in these churches. Seeing the shrine stopped me. I asked my cousin if they sold candles here and he said they did. So I bought a candle for her and my cousin lit it front of the shrine where I placed it.

Being pressed for time, my cousin said: What would you rather see more; Palacio National and Templor Mayor? I chose the ruins of the Aztec temple. The temple was built less just over 100 yards away from the cathedral with artifacts found as much as three blocks away. The temple is actually seven layers; each emperor ordered another layer placed on top of the previous one. Archeologists uncovered the layers, artifacts rooms and alters found in between.

The museum at the end of the walk through the ruins held many of the artifacts uncovered during the digs that began just over 30 years ago. There was a giant stone named Monolith of Coyolxauhqui, the goddess of the moon. On one level you can get right next to it. On the level above it you can see it better and illumined with color. The museum also showed many artifacts that included masks, gods and pottery among all the other items one can find during a dig.

My dad and I returned home early. We had lunch and dinner with the family. My dad and I needed a break.

Tomorrow, we don’t have much planned actually. Maybe we’ll get that shopping done.

Day three, Mexico City: Into the past

Our cousin took us to nearby juice stand that also makes light milkshakes called licuados. It is an interesting store as it is run by a family and the two brothers making the jugos and liquados are blind. My cousin met the family years ago and said they used to do that on the street before the stand. They asked him for help on getting a store and he did.

Organization is the key for them. They know where everything is in their stand. They even take phone orders and are ready for deliveries made by the staff. If you didn’t know they were blind, you would have never thought about it. There drinks were really good too.

My cousin took us to make a run for his restaurant. He went to buy meat at a meat market area. If you like seeing a lot of dead meat, you would have been living a dream.

After he dropped the meat off at work, he picked up his wife and made a stop to the Basilica de Guadalupe. It is two churches in one location. The first church was built centuries ago and is slowly sinking in the soft soil of Mexico City so a new one was built and completed in 1976. The first church was closed when the new one opened but has since been reopened as they have been able to stop the sinking, although it is tilted. The church is also the most visited in the world; well, at least that is what the tour book said.

The next and final stop was a trip to Bosque de Chapultepec, a park in Mexico City host to the anthropological museum and the Castlio (castle) de Chapultepec.

When we arrived at the park we were in for a treat as natives were performing high atop a poll playing music. My dad told me to watch them. As I was setting up to record them, and right before I hit the record button they jumped off. They were tethered to the poll and hung upside down playing music as they slowly descended for about four minutes. It was an amazing site.

If you ever enter a museum or park like we had done yesterday at Teotihuacan you have to pay 35 pesos if you want to film. It is an interesting fee and something that might be hard to enforce since my camera doubles as a video camera.

There was so much to see about the history of Mexico before the Spain arrived. We walked around to learn more about Teotihuacan and they had some replica architecture there along with models of how the city looked.

The further you walk in the museum down each hall, the closer to our time it gets. At the midway point was the Aztec hall which was the biggest since they had the most artifacts. One of the biggest actual artifacts was this giant human sacrifice stone with a channel for the blood to flow out so it wouldn’t splatter all over the place. After several hundred sacrifices, you learn to do it efficiently. The hall also contained an actual Aztec calendar carved out of its location.

We then walked down to the Mayan hall where they had examples of their architecture. I was told it was accurate by my cousin and I believed him when I hit my head on the doorway.

On the way to the castle on top of a steep hill, we stopped off at a monument called the Monumento a Los Niños Heroes that honored six students – all teenagers – of the school that died defending the castle when it was a military school. The last survivor took the Mexican flag off pole and jumped off the cliff because he didn’t want it to fall in the U.S. hands.

The trip up the castle is a long walk uphill or a 13 peso ride up; we opted for the ride. The castle not only served as a military school but also a presidential palace. The castle is now a museum and it picks up right where the anthropological museum stopped; the history of Mexico with European influence. The building is preserved well and all the paintings and murals were beautiful, not to mention the view of the city.

I was pretty tired when I got home, mostly because I’ve been up since 8 a.m. local time, 6 a.m. PDT where I live. Tomorrow, we are going to do some shopping then go to the historical center of Mexico City where the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Palacio National and Templor Mayor are.

Day two, Mexico City: Amazing architecture, steep steps

I woke up after an hour of sleep with a huge headache. It felt as though someone was hammering a spike from the top of my head to my eye. I remember reading somewhere that a common aliment for someone that travels to a higher altitude is headaches. After almost an hour, the pain went away and I went back to sleep.

We went to the Pyramids of Teotihuacan at about midday and they are an amazing site. Walking up to the Pyramid of the Sun, the biggest of the pyramids, is intimating. My father and cousin stayed behind while his wife and two children came up with me.

The first main assault, or stairway, takes you half way up the pyramid. Now, the ancient Mesoamericans could not have been taller than five and a half feet tall, yet they made the steps so steep. I brought a set of walkie-talkies for the hike up so I could communicate with me dad because he told me he was going to stay behind. When we reached the half way point he asked me how I was doing. I told him I was winded.

The second assault wasn’t as bad since it wasn’t as long but the third one began with the steepest stairs I’d ever seen; almost latter like. Once past that, the stairs went back to “normal” and you’re on top. The view is amazing. You get to see the entire city of Teotihuacan with views of the other pyramids. I took a video and several photos and we began walking down as carefully as we could.

We then walked down to the Pyramid of the Moon. On the way we saw an ancient mural and ruins of the former city. My cousin’s son and I walked up the second pyramid. You can’t get to the top of that pyramid because it is closed off. You still get a nice view of the other pyramids and down the Avenue of the Dead.

We walked outside of the park and went to a nearby restaurant. As soon as we walked out of the gate we were met by met by at least eight food vendor vultures (for the lack of a better word) trying to get us to go to their restaurant. They just swarmed us and wouldn’t stop until we went to a restaurant. While there, I ordered enchiladas rojas and they looked like enchiladas café. The molé looked like chocolate, but they were very good.

We spent the rest of the day with family around the house. My father caught up with his sister. It was also my sister’s birthday. She visited here in months ago and they remember her so I turned the yahoo messenger on and had her have a webcam video conversation with the family here. They especially loved seeing her son talk on screen.

As for tomorrow, we plan to go to the marketplace to purchase meat for my cousin’s restaurant. After that we go to the Bosque de Chapultepec, a park that is home to museums – such as the Meuseo Nacional de Antropologia – and other monuments.