Ciudad Mexico, less a city than a medium-sized European nation of 20 million souls jammed into a place built almost entirely on a drained out lake-bed. These uncertain boggy foundations cause a structural engineers nightmare of wonky, squint buildings with highly questionable perpendicularity. Throw in the odd earthquake to rearrange the substrata and it makes for a quirky, somewhat irregular skyline. In the Centro historico a grid of grubby avenues stretches hazily to the distant mountainous horizon through the claggy air. Whilst the cobbled streets reverberate to hordes of cute green VW Beatle taxis of untrustworthy and now unlicensed origin – a sure-fire route to a rip-off apparently (still cheaper than a London black cab I’ll wager). Big, noisy and dirty – we loved it. Where else is your metro station built around a restored Aztec temple?
Staying next to the Zocalo, the famous central square, our hostel’s roof terrace bar had impossibly good views over the cathedral. The ambience marred only by the barman’s aspirations to run a hard-core techno club judging by his gallstone shatteringly loud musical choices. We also explored Chapultepec park, the largest urban green space in Latin America and Mexico City’s wheezy lung that offers some respite to the distinctly
‘Chinese’ atmosphere. Alas our stay was cruelly brief as we headed to the Veracruz coast for the festive season.
We went to stay with Omid Khayyam, a British-Iranian friend of a friend.
‘Look for the guy who seems most ‘Taliban’’ were Omid’s instruction on how to identify him at the bus station. He’d also promised to be wearing yellow cycling shorts and a peephole bra, which was lucky as it uncannily matched my own choice of attire. We’d effectively invited ourselves to spend Christmas with strangers so were a little concerned about the random-ness of it all. Our reservations melted away quicker than a celebrities entourage after a
‘kiddie-porn’ conviction however, in the face of the warm welcome we received.
‘I hope you like dogs’ Omid had said. He wasn’t wrong. A veritable canine menagerie awaited us at
‘Taboga’ the family home he and his lovely Mexican girlfriend Vania are in the process of converting into a hotel. The gang consisted of a gaggle of small, black woolly Schnausers (Docker, Kenya and Malibu),
‘Zeba’ a petite half-fox like beast,
‘Puppy’ a Labrador: Alsatian cross and Vania’s sister Azul’s dog
‘Patricio’ a big, if slightly flouncy, Terra Nova. The resulting pack mentality was complicated by the fact that Puppy was
‘King’ dog of the hotel and he and Patricio were threatening to tear each other’s throats out at every opportunity. I couldn’t really blame Puppy as he was merely defending his turf, and if a bloke in a pub had behaved in similar fashion to Patricia he’d have got what was coming to him. As a consequence we all became bouncers, operating a
‘one-in, one-out’ system on the doors of the house.
‘Your name’s not down you’re not coming in’.
Dog-fighting aside (Mexicans prefer cock-fighting anyway) the Veracruz coastline has an earthy charm. Omid and our adopted Mexican family the Costello’s were consummate hosts, as we enjoyed blazing beach bonfire’s, bountiful banquets, ruinous visits (well, visits to ruins) and long, loud laughter into the night. We even, as well you know, made a
film.
Our stay built up to a climax on New Year’s Eve when, amidst the firework celebrations, one of the family cousins Manolo added to the pyrotechnics by emptying his pistol into the air, thus ensuring we saw in 2008 with perhaps more of a bang than we intended. We, on the other hand, mangling the pronunciation of
‘Año’ (year) had been merrily wishing everyone
‘Feliz Ano Nuevo’ – ‘Happy New Anus’. Guns and arse, welcome to 2008.
Ciudad Mexico, less a city than a medium-sized European nation of 20 million souls jammed into a place built almost entirely on a drained out lake-bed. These uncertain boggy foundations cause a structural engineers nightmare of wonky, squint buildings with highly questionable perpendicularity. Throw in the odd earthquake to rearrange the substrata and it makes for a quirky, somewhat irregular skyline. In the Centro historico a grid of grubby avenues stretches hazily to the distant mountainous horizon through the claggy air. Whilst the cobbled streets reverberate to hordes of cute green VW Beatle taxis of untrustworthy and now unlicensed origin – a sure-fire route to a rip-off apparently (still cheaper than a London black cab I’ll wager). Big, noisy and dirty – we loved it. Where else is your metro station built around a restored Aztec temple?
Staying next to the Zocalo, the famous central square, our hostel’s roof terrace bar had impossibly good views over the cathedral. The ambience marred only by the barman’s aspirations to run a hard-core techno club judging by his gallstone shatteringly loud musical choices. We also explored Chapultepec park, the largest urban green space in Latin America and Mexico City’s wheezy lung that offers some respite to the distinctly ‘Chinese’ atmosphere. Alas our stay was cruelly brief as we headed to the Veracruz coast for the festive season.
We went to stay with Omid Khayyam, a British-Iranian friend of a friend. ‘Look for the guy who seems most ‘Taliban’’ were Omid’s instruction on how to identify him at the bus station. He’d also promised to be wearing yellow cycling shorts and a peephole bra, which was lucky as it uncannily matched my own choice of attire. We’d effectively invited ourselves to spend Christmas with strangers so were a little concerned about the random-ness of it all. Our reservations melted away quicker than a celebrities entourage after a ‘kiddie-porn’ conviction however, in the face of the warm welcome we received.
‘I hope you like dogs’ Omid had said. He wasn’t wrong. A veritable canine menagerie awaited us at ‘Taboga’ the family home he and his lovely Mexican girlfriend Vania are in the process of converting into a hotel. The gang consisted of a gaggle of small, black woolly Schnausers (Docker, Kenya and Malibu), ‘Zeba’ a petite half-fox like beast, ‘Puppy’ a Labrador: Alsatian cross and Vania’s sister Azul’s dog ‘Patricio’ a big, if slightly flouncy, Terra Nova. The resulting pack mentality was complicated by the fact that Puppy was ‘King’ dog of the hotel and he and Patricio were threatening to tear each other’s throats out at every opportunity. I couldn’t really blame Puppy as he was merely defending his turf, and if a bloke in a pub had behaved in similar fashion to Patricia he’d have got what was coming to him. As a consequence we all became bouncers, operating a ‘one-in, one-out’ system on the doors of the house. ‘Your name’s not down you’re not coming in’. 
Dog-fighting aside (Mexicans prefer cock-fighting anyway) the Veracruz coastline has an earthy charm. Omid and our adopted Mexican family the Costello’s were consummate hosts, as we enjoyed blazing beach bonfire’s, bountiful banquets, ruinous visits (well, visits to ruins) and long, loud laughter into the night. We even, as well you know, made a film.
Our stay built up to a climax on New Year’s Eve when, amidst the firework celebrations, one of the family cousins Manolo added to the pyrotechnics by emptying his pistol into the air, thus ensuring we saw in 2008 with perhaps more of a bang than we intended. We, on the other hand, mangling the pronunciation of ‘Año’ (year) had been merrily wishing everyone ‘Feliz Ano Nuevo’ – ‘Happy New Anus’. Guns and arse, welcome to 2008.
1 comments:
Hey Ed,
The VW beetle cabs are brilliant value - we took one for less than 20 pesos for about 3km and not a robbery in sight. The trick is to get them to use the meter.
Hope Fi has stopped erupting now ... and that she's still talking to you after the extensive details you provided!
All the best
Mark.
Post a Comment