Day 38 – Thursday 27th October 2005
After nearly 4 weeks in Mexico I finally made it to the capital. I had heard stories that it was incredibly dangerous and that I was bound to get robbed or scammed, so on the bus travelling there I worked out how I was going to get from the bus station to my hostel in the city centre. All those plans went out the window as soon as I arrived.
I went to the tourist information desk and they told me I could use the Metro system, despite my Lonely Planet saying I couldn’t as my bag would be too big. I decided to trust the human over the book and used the Metro, whicxh incidentally runs rings around London’s Tube. Firstly there are new rolling stock, and trains turn up about every minute or two. Secondly, the fare to use it is $2 Pesos to wherever you need to go. None of the zonal pricing. I must admit I did keep hold of everything tightly for fear of being pickpocketed, but nothing untoward happened.
After the twenty minute journey I arrived at Zocolo station. I had heard the air in Mexico City was pretty bad, due to the amount of traffic on the street (5 million cars in Mexico City) and a phenomenon that meant the air from the valley that Mexico City lies in gets trapped & so fresh air doesn’t get in. This combined with the altitude (approx 2,000m) means the air quality can be pretty poor. I noticed this straight away. As I came out of subway system, the air was thick with the smell of traffic and it kind of choked me for a while.
It is said that if you spend more than a few days here you may developbreathlessness, tiredness and a sore throat or headache. I eventually was in the city for 4 days and didnt really experience any discomfort, apart from the first 5 minutes when I could virtually taste the fumes.
Anyway I arrived, got a bed and went out for a walk. The city is about as busy as anything I have ever seen. The street my hostel was on (Calle Moneda) had been turned into an illegal street market and the noise tgether with the hustle and bustle was immense. One thing about street markets here in Mexico is that the overwhelming majority of goods being sold is complete tat. Some of it is worth buying, but most is utter crap. This market was no exception, with street and street of stalls selling nothing but rubbish. I walked down one street for about half hour and didnt come close to seeing the end of the market.
The foods that are sold at these markets do make up for the rubbish goods. Weird and wonderful foods are sold in these markets. One of the oddest combinations I have tried is diced mango, sprinkled with chilli powder and lime juice. This is a hugely popular snack, with it being sold on many street corners. Another wierd one is called elotes. This is sweetcorn, covered in thick cream and chilli sauce. Elotes I don’t really like, but I do like most of the other things on offer.
In the evening I had a few beers at a local cantina before hitting the sack, with no bad incident to report from the biggest city in the world.
