Mexico City — Week 2
On the first day of week 2 (Monday) I made a small exception, and left the city for a tour to Teotihuacan, a site of Aztec temples 45 minutes from the center of CDMX. As Mexico City is so large, you can claim it’s within the city Metropolitan area. I took the Teotihuacan & My Grandma’s Food, which I recommend (thanks Dina and David for the pointer). There were 10 more people in the tour, all of them about half my age, and most of them from the US with one from Honduras. It’s a great tour that leaves Condesa at 7:30 in the morning (ok, this part is not great), and returns around 15:00. It takes about an hour to get to Teotihuacan, with a stop on the way to get breakfast (coffee, tea and a bun) at the house of the guide near the temples. The temples are super impressive although it’s mostly walking outside and looking at them, with very few locations in the city you can actually get into. I couldn’t resist buying an obsidian mirror, after a short negotiation where the seller hit a great bargain. Back to the guide’s house, we had an amazing lunch (see photo) with enchilada moles, and then tasting of many agave-based alcoholic drinks. Again, I couldn’t resist buying some to take back with me.
Tuesday was a meetings day most of the morning, and only around 14:00 I was able to get out to what was planned to be a long day. First, walking from the apartment thru the park to the Museo Nacional de Antropología probably the most interesting museum in CDMX.
Now, I usually don’t go to museums. I don’t have the patience for spending hours thru exhibits. But I find the era of the Mayan and the Atecs fascinating, so I decided to go and give it an hour. The museum is overwhelming, with hundreds of exhibits from pretty much the entire history of central America. See some photos. I ended up spending an hour and 15 minutes in the museum, and I still can’t decide if I did it because it was interesting, or because I just wanted to put a checkmark next to it.
From there another 20 minutes’ walk to Polanco, where I stopped for coffee at the first Starbucks that I saw. Why Starbucks? Because it was hot outside and I like their cold shaken espresso with brown sugar and oat milk. Thanks Mai for introducing it to me! The problem is that the knowledge of making it right still didn’t make the trip from Seattle to CDMX, but it’s better than any other cold brew I found here.
The target of my next stop was an American icon: Costco. As an avid Costco shopper, I had to see Costco in another country, and was somewhat disappointed to find out it is not very different from Costco in the US. Pretty much same products.. And I ended up buying there what I usually buy at Costco, with the constraint that I had to carry what I bought in my backpack on a long walk back to the AirBnB apartment. I took an Uber from Costco to the Indian restaurant Taj Mahal in West Condesa, and then walked about 15 minutes from there to the apartment.
Wednesday I made the trip to Merida to see Dina and David. Merida is in the Yucatan peninsula, a two hours flight from CDMX. It’s a city of 1 million people, five hours drive from Cancun. David and Dina have a house here, where they usually spend October to March, while they go back to their Sunnyvale, California house in the summer. They have a spacious house in downtown Merida, with a unique architecture where the center of the house is open air area.
After recording a video clip for the Kusto 10-years celebration, David and I went to the supermarket to get some essentials such as chocolate, lemonade soda (called in Mexico Limobada mineral), almond butter and more. Mexican chocolate is yet to be found.
Around 8pm David went to sleep, while Dina and I took a 6km stroll through downtown, the central avenue Paseo de Montejo, and the new park, Parque la Plancha. Downtown Merida went thru a recent renovation and the area is full of restaurants and people walking around. Parque la Plancha is vast, new and pleasant to walk in, where part of the walking trails are under roof, likely to protect from the burning sun.
Which brings me to the weather in Merida. There is no mercy. With winter temperatures of 36 Celsius during the day and 22 Celsius at night, there is really no escape from the heat other than one: air condition. Although at a similar latitude as CDMX, it is at sea level, while CDMX is at a altitude of 2240 meters, and as such offers a much more friendly winter temperatures.
Thursday, still in Merida, David and I walked in the morning to their local favorite Café, Café Baretto. David is a daily visitor of the café and goes with the waiters on a first name basis. There was a mandatory 2 minutes lecture in Spanish on the types of café I can order, which to my surprise, I understood most of it, other than oscuro, which is dark (for a dark blend of coffee). I also suggested we share an almonds-chocolate croissant, but David wanted to have his own, so we ordered two croissants. But the main attraction happened in the two tables next to us in the café. A young American couple opened a dialog with the foreign (could have been an American as well) guy at the table next to us, and the topic of the conversation was…Israel and Gaza. It’s incomprehensible to me that I am in a relatively remote town in the other side of the world, and the topic of the conversation in the table next to me is our small country. How much noise do we — a country of 9 million people — create? They spoke on Israel and Gaza for over an hour, and as much as we could hear, the young American couple — as you might expect — were not taking the Israel side of things or being neutral for that matter. It was all about the Gaza that are the victims and Israel performing a genocide. Now the Gazan are indeed poor and currently live in horrible conditions, and we have to put a stop to that, but we all understand there is more to the story that just this. I had thoughts of interfering in the discussion but eventually decided against it.
Later it was meetings time, including a meeting of the Arab-Israeli situation room to discuss the upcoming restrictions of Muslims access to the Temple Mount during the Ramadan. Someone must do something about it before it is too late. There are no reasons to have restrictions, other than political reasons.
Next David and I took the bikes to ride through the Merida streets to a building materials store where David needed to buy something. We were sent from one store to another to find what he needed, so it ended up being a nice tour of Merida by bike. I haven’t ridden a bike for ages. But it was a fun trip and I got more and more appreciative and fond of Merida. Tired, we had ice cream at Pola Gelato Shop in downtown Merida. Wow, very special sabores and tasty. I will be back. See photos. And as if to provide another signal for the place, they played Bomba Estereo’s Me Duele, one of my most favorite songs. Is it possible that Spotify tracked me here??
We went for dinner at the corner restaurant, Restaurante Exquina, not before I finally found Mexican chocolate — apparently a rare thing — called ki’xocolatl and bought some. The food at Exquina was local Mexican food, good and simple, and as usual I ordered more than I can eat. Luckily David was there to help out.
Still in Merida on Friday, I started the morning with the same coffee at Café Baretto. Dina and David are starting their mornings much earlier, so David was already at the café when I got there. Although it’s hot in Merida, as long as you are walking in the shade during the day, it’s reasonable. Yesterday we found an hotel next to the café called Hotel Kahal. Based on the name, we were curious if it’s an Israeli-owned hotel, so we went in to ask. It is not. Kahal, in a somewhat different spelling, is derived from the word “K’a’ajal,” which in the Mayan language means “to return to” or “to remember”. In the evening, after dinner, we strolled the Paseo de Montejo to the Monumento a La Patria, at the end of the avenue.
Saturday I was supposed to fly back from Merida to CDMX for 2.5 more weeks there, but then everything changed. Our beloved dog, Juno, who is approaching 17 years old, has experienced a sharp deterioration in her health, and cannot stand on her feet. We gave her a shot that is supposed to help, but things didn’t improve, I decided to fly back home and be with her and also help Gali. I flew from Merida back to CDMX, had a couple of hours to pack and go back to the airport to fly back to Tel-Aviv through Madrid. So Sunday was a flight-back day from CDMX to Tel Aviv.
We make plans, but plans are also being made for us. And these are not always the plans that we want, so we simply accept them and hope for the best. I currently have a return flight to CDMX Thursday evening, but I don’t yet know if I will go. I will play it by ear.
This is the time to thank Dina and David for hosting me in their really special home in Merida, and for making me feel at home. And apologies for being distracted the last 24 hours of the visit.
