Mexico City
Hola fam and friends!
I’m a few days into my first stop of this year’s adventure, Mexico City aka CDMX. As a few of you had mentioned, CDMX is a great starter city for our year long trip because of the prevalence of American brands, english speakers, and Starbucksuses (there’s one across the street from my apartment, and the bro-ista drew a wink on my cup so we’re totes dating now).
First off, Mexico City by the numbers. Mexico City is the 5th largest city in the world, only out-peopled by Tokyo, NYC, Sao Paulo, and Seoul. While flying in I was pretty dazzled by the size of the place, but pleasantly surprised by how colorful and green it was. Unlike American cities, there wasn’t one cluster of tall buildings representing downtown surrounded by endless grey rectangles, but a never ending smattering of lone skyscrapers surrounded by red-roofed buildings not much taller than the trees and greenery down almost every single street. Most of Guatemala (including the capital Guatemala City and Antigua) had stray dogs I had to restrain myself on the daily from attempting to befriend, but CDMX sadly seems to have animal control on lock. One peso converts to roughly a nickel, meaning most meals are in the 2–3 dollar range and a beer is 2 bucks. A giant bottle of filtered water, 50 cents. A ride home at night, a dollar. A coffee, a wink. #LivingtheDream
What have I seen? Friggen giant streets, guys. In the 20 minute walk from my apartment in Cuauhtémoc to our co-working space called Público in Roma Norte, I cross two 11 lane avenues, thankfully equipped with crosswalks and full time crossing guards to direct and override the signal when things get dicey. Mexico City’s round-abouts have round-abouts, but you’re going around some super swank fountains and statues so I imagine most drivers go around 3 to 4 times just for fun. If you took the color palette of San Francisco and upped the saturation, you’d have what I’ve seen of CDMX. Smooth exteriors with faded and chipped paint where the building meets the sidewalk, swirly wrought iron over the windows, and big wooden doors seem to be the game here. Safe to say it’s dusty and beautiful, full of broken sidewalks, great music and smells, and garden lined streets.
A few lessons learned. Most apartments have balconies and terraces, most of which have PVC drain pipes, most of which are rinsed and cleaned in the morning and drain onto the sidewalk from above. So. That involved a change of clothes. Coffee, which is beautifully cheap, follows the Skyline coney rule and seems to come with sugar and cream unless you say “no sugar, no cream” a la “no onions, no mustard.” The garbage man rings a bell (to shame the populace into bringing out their trash I assume) while driving down the street. Grocery stores keep the eggs out of the refrigerated section and have a type of cheese called “chihuahua” which I imagined was made from the milk of chihuahuas, cracked up, and looked like a crazy person in the middle of my first grocery trip.
A few of you seemed quite concerned before I left that my Spanish was so crappy. Well on day one I too was suddenly muy concerned-o, but by day four I would like to once again pay homage to my home in Silicon Valley and thank the techie scum for their amazing apps. I can get anywhere with Uber on the cheaps with no worries of getting screwed or dealing with pesos, use Google Translate to read signs or menus in english while offline via my phone camera, and Whatsapp Slack iMessage Facebook chat Facetime and GroupMe (in retrospect, way too many chat apps) are keeping me in constant communication with my new crew and friend fam back home (#RIProaming). I’ve got the entire map of Mexico City synced to my phone via Google’s offline maps feature, and have been dropping pins everywhere I go to start learning the city and keep track of my discoveries. Add Spotify offline playlists, Venmo to quickly reimburse and request cash from friends, and Netflix original programming, and it’s a bit like I never left San Francisco. I guess what I’m really saying is if I lose my phone, I’m doomed, but until then easy peasy limón squeezy.
Long story short, so far so damn good. The folks I’m traveling with are exceedingly interesting, the coworking space is brand spankin new, and my apartment is nice. I haven’t had to use any of the exciting travel medicines I bought (cough cough you know what I mean) and there’s so much to see I’m liable to walk myself right into something resembling fitness.
I’m off to grab some lunch and hear a talk by a local anthropologist about Aztec history! See ya’ll on the flipside!
Carrie
