A short bus ride from Puebla lies Mexico City - according to the latest statistics the most populous city in the world. At the same time I had read that within a few months Mexico City would be considered one of the most worthwhile cities to see alongside New York, London and Rome. To get this out of the way: sometimes my research is not the most thorough. Why Mexico City will soon be on that list I cannot tell you. Sadly I never found the source again afterwards either.
With over 20 million inhabitants the city offers hundreds of options for where to stay. On the recommendation of the couple we did the mountain bike tour with in San Cristóbal de las Casas, we found an AirBnB in the district of Condesa, which along with La Roma is Mexico City’s hip quarter.
Condesa wins you over with its period buildings, three parks and a flourishing café and restaurant scene. I also discovered another wonderful yoga studio, where early in the morning I felt my physical limits very clearly.
The hardest task was first getting an overview of Mexico City’s practically countless options and then picking a handful of activities from them. Our previously tried and tested method of first walking to the Zocalo, the city’s respective market square, and strolling through the old town from there did not get us far in Mexico City.
While our district was lovely for walking and trying out the various eateries, Mexico City is barely comprehensible because of its size. Even for manageable distances you need an eternity, despite the good underground network.
Speaking of the underground: if you need anything, the best thing is to get on the metro and a seller will almost certainly come past before long with exactly what you were looking for. Headphones, purses, music, mouth spray… all available for under 20 pesos (about 1 euro).
In the end we did almost everything that ended up on our list (yes, for the first time we needed a list to keep track of all the activities!), but over the week we saw only a fraction of the city in total.
1. Bosque Chapultepec
This enormous city park happily lay on our doorstep and, with a zoo, two of the city’s most important museums and a castle, offered enough to fill a whole day.
A sort of funfair strip runs through the park that would genuinely have been worth an audio recording! Every market stall touts its wares at full volume, each with its own melody, drowning out its neighbour, and of course everything is almost free or at least available at the amigo price.
Something that looks very funny at first: in Mexico City parents walk their children on a lead! In fact for a serious reason: child abductions.
2. Frida Kahlo Museum
Beginner’s mistake! I had read (several times!) the urgent tip to buy the tickets online in advance to avoid queueing outside the museum - and blithely ignored it. Who could have guessed that I would spend two and a half hours in the queue outside the museum?! That was longer than I ultimately spent inside!
What ’luck’ that Jan was not feeling well that day and I did not drag him along. That would probably have been my death sentence.
In case you are wondering who Frida is again and why there is such a rush:
Frida Kahlo is (probably) the most famous painter in Latin America. Not only for her works, though, but above all for her eventful, fate-battered life (polio in childhood, which left her with a withered leg; a serious bus accident in her youth that led to countless operations; an unfaithful husband; the amputation of her lower leg and an early death) and her strong revolutionary personality.
3. Folk ballet at the Palace of Fine Arts
Somehow every activity people review on TripAdvisor is, in their opinion, ‘THE must-do’ you cannot miss. That does not exactly make picking the real must-dos any easier… I let myself be convinced only too happily that the folk ballet at the Palacio de Bellas Artes had to go on our list. I was surprised, though, that Jan wanted a ticket as well…
We were a little unsure whether we had suitable clothing in our packs. After all, the agonising choice of appropriate theatre couture lay between leggings or hotpants and trail runners or flip-flops. I went for leggings with trail runners.
All clear: nobody noticed! Or I have grown so used to my sporty look that I no longer notice it myself…
This much I can say: it had nothing whatsoever to do with ballet. It was much more a Mexican folk-dance romp with a mariachi band, lasso dancing, oversized figures and, in places, a few very questionable pieces. But entertaining all the same!
Here are a few bad photos to give you an impression of the romp:
4. The pyramids of Teotihuacán
Now these really were the last prehistoric ruins we looked at in Mexico!
Although this site was not built by the Maya and is therefore not really comparable with those we have seen so far. Around 500 AD Teotihuacán, with up to 200,000 inhabitants, was the largest city on the American continent. The scale is still tangible today and the site very impressive.
5. A trip into the Popocatépetl-Itzáccihuatl national park
A trip to the Popocatépetl was an absolute must for me, but seemed not to be blessed with good fortune…
Climbing the Popocatépetl has been forbidden since its eruption in 1994 (after a 70-year period of quiet). You may, however, climb its sister volcano Itzáccihuatl at a good 5200 m. That was exactly what I had been toying with for some time.
After some email exchange with an outdoor agency, though, it turned out not only that the 2-day tour is fairly expensive at 300 US dollars per person, but that we are simply not sufficiently equipped:
- you do not just climb to 5200 m from one day to the next (altitude acclimatisation);
- an ice axe would be provided, but we had sent our other warm gear (waterproof trousers, good gloves, warm sleeping bags) home and would have had to hire quite a lot.
So, gritting my teeth, I abandoned the idea.
When our Airbnb host mentioned that a friend of hers works at an agency offering day trips into the national park, I drew new hope. Sadly said friend replied neither to my message nor to our host’s…
So we booked a day tour through an online platform. Two hours later a message came: sorry, the trip should not have been listed any more.
Time was slowly running out on us!
The only provider we found online had a 1 out of 5 star rating on Google. Since it seemed to be the only choice, though, we dropped by the agency anyway, which looked incredibly unprofessional at second and third glance too.
But it was simply the only option left to us, and so with heavy hearts we booked the trip there.
Thanks to the email exchange with the professional outdoor agency I had a certain respect for our walking trip. In the end I was the only one there with walking poles and - let us say - somewhat over-prepared. Most of the others were even wearing jeans…
From around 3800 m we walked up to 4200 m. That was strenuous because of the altitude, but it took us less than an hour. The view was breathtaking all the same and Jan and I were incredibly happy to be there! ❤️
And everything went like clockwork: 5/5 stars from us for Amigo Tours.
And in case you are now wondering why we did not go to the Lucha Libre wrestling or to a football match in the second largest stadium in the world: please ask Jan.
Next destination: Puerto Escondido