Back to Ciudad de Mexico

We leave peaceful Macheros after saying our goodbyes to the ladies, to Joel, to the quiet of the mountain top and hop in a taxi that has come for us. The taxista blasts down the road, narrowly averting major holes and hitting the brakes just before the speedbumps. We jump on a bus, somewhere in the middle range comfort-wise of the other two — clean and no standing room with a little orange muffin and a bottle of water. I sit beside a young woman on her way back to school in Tlaxcala. Her mother and cousin stand on the loading dock watching her through the window. They wave at each other and call each other on the phone. Her mum doesn’t want to leave. Once a mum, always a mum, I tell her. Is this your first time leaving? Is that why she’s waiting for you to go?, I ask. No, no, she says, I’m just going back to school. I’m studying to be a school teacher. Her mum finally agrees to leave, waving and blowing kisses after a phone call repeating all the little things they’d just said.

The bus ride is uneventful. The landscape flows by. A giant mountain range appears on our right with what looks like snowcaps or maybe it’s just a trick of the light. It seems like in no time we’re pulling into the suburbs of Mexico City which just goes on and on.

This time we’re staying in a different neighbourhood. La Condesa is lovely. Art deco buildings, lots of trees hanging over the narrow streets, cafés and bakeries interspersed with two storey buildings. If you saw the movie, Roma, you get the idea. The shapes of the roads remind me of Barcelona, with the occasional glorieta (roundabout) and lots of little parks. Smartly dressed Mexicans and foreigners out with their dogs. Makes me realize just how badly we’ve managed our urban planning by excluding commercial enterprises from our residential neighbourhoods. How great is it to step outside your house and choose which restaurant to feast at within two minutes of your front door. Nothing like a local haunt to foster community spirit.

Our apartment is gorgeous. The kind of place I want to live in when I grow up. The kind of place that makes you able to pretend that you live here and fantasize about what that would be like. The large, curved multi-paned window of our bedroom looks out on a very pretty corner and I’m very happy. We dump our stuff and head out to the Merced, Mexico City’s biggest market. The metro that takes us there (built by Bombardier!) on Friday afternoon is totally jam-packed. We barely have to hang on as we’re entirely squished. The commuters come from all walks of life — women clutching their young babies across their chests (not a lot of strollers in this country), old guys in their cowboy hats, young granola student types with crazy hair and piercings, the gamut. Transferring from one line to another sometimes involves a ten-minute walk going up and down a number of stairs so it’s not exactly wheelchair friendly but neither is this city, with pavement that is sometimes perfect but mostly more like an obstacle course, with ankle-breaking foot-deep holes that are unmarked and sidewalks that have adopted the organic shape of the roots below. You can not walk without watching where you’re going. Thankfully our trip is only five stops. I saw a poster in a metrocar last week that said that 9 out of 10 women experienced sexual violence on Mexico City’s metro last year. For that reason, there are orange barriers that cordon off whole sections of the station exclusively for women and their kids. If the barriers aren’t enough, there are signs all over the metro reminding commuters to respect the women-only zone. We finally get off and follow the flow of people leaving the station, taking us right into the market.

I could write a book about the Merced. It is too much of everything. An assault on the senses. Piles of avocado, stacks of limes, jicamas, dried peppers. Sausages and chicken parts and fish & seafood. Piñatas and the candies and confetti to fill them. Cheesies the size of big sausages in a mammoth plastic bag. Songbirds and pigeons, chicks and chickens, ducks and turkeys, goats and puppies. They don’t play fair — putting the cutest, tiniest puppies into your hands if you stop for more than a second to gawk. When you tell them you can’t take one home they point to the carrying cases hanging from the ceiling and tell you you can. Also every non-motorized kitchen appliance you could ever want, displayed vertically to maximize visibility. Every variation on a tortilla press and lemon squeezer, dishtowels, aprons, jeans, shoes and more shoes. Some of the vendors are listless on their phones, others scream out the benefits or the prices of their wares in a singsong. “Ricos tamaaaaaales.” “Seis por diez.” “CarNItas, carNItas.” Piñatas hang above the aisles, looking like brightly coloured planets wearing five party hats with a fringe. They dangle at a height that allows the average Mexican to clear but require Wil and Henri to do a lot of dodging.And the food! Chubby women in their embroidered aprons fry quesadillas and tortillas in huge, piping hot comals. Their clients sit parked on squat plastic stools holding a little plate with a little scrap of wax paper on top, chowing down on their yummy, juicy food. If the food is good there will be someone standing behind each diner, waiting for them to be done.

Men with handcarts piled high with toppling bags of stuff plough down the aisles which are only wide enough for the cart and one person standing sideways. Walking through the market is a kind of dance involving a series of apologies and excuse me’s, pulling back into stalls to let people by, trying to stay in the current while it’s moving without losing members of your team. There are lots of small kids keeping their vendor parents company, sometimes very small kids spending long hours sitting still or finding something to entertain themselves. It would take all of a minute to completely lose someone here. It is a labyrinth that goes on and on. And for someone with as poor navigational instincts as me one wrong turn could mean being permanently separated from my family. All of this combined with some very loud music, the constant negotiation of who yields and who moves and a walkway that is sometimes slick, sometimes full of holes. After two hours, we were exhausted but I loved every minute.

Back toward the metro. The traffic is like a game of chicken, even with a policeman whistling for dear life. U-turns across two pedestrian walkways and a lot of us standing on the narrow median waiting for someone to balk and then the whole flow changes. The only way to find the metro that is right in front of you on your little online map is either to ask or look for a place completely congested with stalls and therefore invisible until you’re at the turnstiles. These ones are manned by security guards making sure no one is getting on with a goat. The amount of stuff people are carrying around is spectacular. I take us one stop in the wrong direction but it turns out to be godsend as there is a backdoor way to get home on a much quieter metro line.

Coming out in La Condesa is like shifting gears. A fraction of the people and most of them are out walking their dogs on the shady sidewalks, often in the most crazy outfits — on the dogs, that is. We change for dinner and go to Loup Bar, a natural wine bar with an amazingly talented young chef cooking up tapas. He’s come up with a super varied menu of dishes from calamari to tartare that are crazy-creative and original and YUMMY. Hands down the best meal we’ve had in Mexico. And terrific wines. I sneak into the kitchen on our way out to give my compliments to the chef and the kitchen is about as big as my bathroom. The chef is just lovely, accepting my awkward praise with grace. He tells me it’s complicated because natural wines are not easy to get here. If you’re ever in Mexico City, look him up.

We decide not to rush in the morning which turns out to be a good thing because Henri is down for the count. We’ve learned not to waste time thinking about the potential causes of digestive discomfort but he’s fevering and achey so we hang with him for a while and then let him sleep while we head down to Coyoacán on the metro. As with most subway rides it’s not dull. A blind man in a cowboy hat with a tiny speaker strapped to his chest playing a beat with a bass line sings and strums a guitar with a little red cup hanging from a string near the keys. He is followed closely by his blind companion who shakes her cup, sometimes singing in harmony sometimes imploring us to give generously. They exit right and enter left, a man with the deepest voice I’ve ever heard holding up earbuds that are worth 30 pesos but selling for 10. He lists every phone or computer or ipad the earbuds could connect to in a singsong, his pitch timed to correspond to the distance between stops. Exit right. Next, a very young girl comes through the car on her own, making her way to the end of the car where she sits, looking bored, to wait for her mum who comes along behind her selling cheap candies. All this in a five-stop metro ride.

A sign warns against smoking with a risk of fines. The amount you pay here depends entirely on your income. It is calculated based on your daily income, this one being 10 to 30 days' worth. A very egalitarian system that ensures the fines squeeze everyone equally.

We find our way to Frida Kahlo’s house and have a good look — at the line-up which goes up and around the block — and decide to pass. Instead we wander around Allende Park, finding and devouring our first good churros of the trip and then heading inside to the mellowest of markets filled with vendors selling Mexican handicrafts. We do some shopping and Wil and the girls sit down for some tacos after being handed a sample of some carnitas by a stall owner. I say no thanks, telling him I don’t eat meat. When I come back to check in on them after 15 minutes he runs over to pick up the menu and points to the one thing that is “vegetariano” for me. This is not an easy place for vegetarians. Not that it’s hard to find food but it’s so hard to resist because the Mexicans do meat SO well.

We come back to check in on the boy, who’s thankfully doing better. Wil and I wander around the neighbourhood, looking for the Camper store, then a little helado (ice cream). We sit in the park and watch a couple teaching their little boy how to ride a bike. I kept thinking how to translate “look where you WANT to go, not where you want to AVOID”. Chocolate ice cream and nostalgia are a heady mix as the little guy goes headlong into the shrubs that line the walkway a few times before making it the whole way and running back to dad to share his deep sense of accomplishment. Some experiences are just universal.

We hang out en famille over many rounds of Asshole and then we tuck Henri in and head off to Maximo Bistrot, another topnotch resto in our hood for the only reservation we could get, at 10pm. The reputation did not let us down. Kickass sommelière, as Alice put it, and some amazing dishes. Morels stuffed with slow-cooked beef, caramelized onions dauphinoises with Comté cheese, flat iron steak, some amazing pasta and a terrific fish dish. Tarte tatin and chocolate mousse with raspberry ice cream for dessert along with some terrific Mexican wines, which the sommelière is happy to tell us are all made by women. A terrific night out. I chat with the cab driver on the way home about how business is and he tells me it’s been mostly ferrying parents around as they shop for the Dia de los Reyes on the 6th. Gifts on the 6th as well as Christmas?, I ask. Oh yes, he laments. That’s why I only have one daughter. Her present cost me 6,000 pesos (about 400$). I can’t afford another child.”

Tomorrow is our last day.