Day six, Mexico City: ¡El Tri!

When I woke up in the morning I found that my aunt and cousin from Jalisco had arrived. My father had been talking to them for a while. I didn’t know what time they were coming in and tried to sleep in a bit.

There was plenty to do for everyone. They were going to go to Palacio de Bellas Artes while my dad and I had other plans. So we quickly split up as they went downtown and my dad took me to a nearby flea market. I hadn’t been to a flea market in years and this was unlike the ones I remember. About 10 city blocks were closed as vendors sold where cars usually roam during the week. I found some items for friends and my dad bought produce.

We walked back and my aunt from Mexico City made me lunch. During the meal I had some food caught between my teeth around where I had a temporary crown and it popped out. My dad and I were going to a nearby pharmacy to buy denture adhesive – which I was told to do by my dentist if that happened – when my cousin showed up. Fortunately for me, he had to make a delivery to his restaurant which was by the pharmacy. After we were all settled, we were dropped off at the nearest Metro station.

The Metro in Mexico City is unlike any I have been on because they are on pneumatic tires and not the standard rails. It did make for a smoother ride and only cost two pesos or about 15 cents. The other thing I hardly ever see are people trying to sell stuff on the trains. Anything from music to candy is being sold.

We made several transfers, including a complete change in transit systems to get to Estadio Azteca and the closer we got to the stadium, the fuller the train was.

When we arrived I was amazed by the stadium. I can see why opposing nations have a hard time playing there; the sheer size is intimidating.

We sat in the top deck, on a corner. The stadium was designed in a way that every seat can see the center of the field without any difficulty. The stadium was also designed with concrete seats in the upper deck that were not that bad. I have yet to see an official attendance report, but I’m sure there were more than 100,000, if not capacity crowd of 105,000 as people were standing up around the stadium and sitting in the aisles. My cousin was telling me tickets were selling for about five times its face value.

There were also precautions taken by the police as the fans for El Salvador were all guarded by the police and a no man’s land of empty seats.

The crowd was lively before the match as many of the top deck crowd was there 90 minutes before the match. They were fine for the most part, except soccer hooligans are everywhere. There was a beverage battle between the people sitting above us and those sitting below us leaving us in the middle. The second and third goals for Mexico were the worst as they used it as an excuse.

As for the match, it began and after had to be stopped after a minute for nine minutes because bees were flying around the El Salvador goalie. It turned out an entire swarm got loose and unlike getting a bee keeper like the San Diego Padres this year and delaying the game for 45 minutes, they got fire extinguishers.

Mexico was in control throughout the match. They pressured the El Salvador defense often and the only goal of the first half came on an El Salvador own goal. There were four goals in the last 23 minutes as Mexico won 4-1. We joke often in the sport department how that is sort of like a seven touchdown football win. In a way, that’s what it was.

As crowded as it was getting to the stadium, it didn’t compare to leaving. It was the most jam packed I’d ever been just to get to the train station. Getting in the train car was no easy feat either as they were full until we got to the metro station.

Tomorrow is my last full day in Mexico City and I want to stay around for the most part. There is another flea market which I’ll go to. I want to by this candy that I could find in the U.S. but it would be so much cheaper to get here. After that, I really don’t know, but I look forward to it.

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.