Day Two of the Frequent Flier Diaries

The second day in Mexico City started out a little better than the first one--primarily because we got more than two hours of sleep. We decided to go the easy route and get breakfast at the hotel again. At this point I was still a little leery about eating elsewhere. And once again the food was great (although the lack of Diet Coke forced me to drink coffee (which I don't really care for, but during the middle of a vacation is not the most opportune time for caffeine withdrawals--although I forgot to mention that on the first day, I tried a coffee drink that I'd read about in our guidebook called Caffe Olla, which was coffee that was sweetened and flavored by cinnamon. Upon reading the description, I had to try it and it was AMAZING! Margaret took a picture of me drinking some and I had a completely rapturous look on my face--if you've heard of "Better Than Sex Cake" Caffe Olla is even better than THAT!) Anyway, back to day two. We finished up breakfast and since we wanted to see the Aztec pyramids but didn't want to pay for a personalized tour guide that cost too much and went to several other places that we weren't too keen on visiting--like the Basilica of Guadelope, we went to the tourist information booth and got directions for getting there on bus. The instructions were pretty straight forward and game for saving $80 on tour guide fees, we decided to take the more adventurous route--and I'm glad we did. First off, the city bus to the regional bus station was quite an interesting ride, going through parts of town I would be having a heart attack in if we were on foot. When we got to the bus station, we bought our tickets to the pyramids: 54 pesos for the both of us (About $2.50 each!) The ride out of the city was so eye opening. We got to see the slums of the city and the houses that stretched as far as the eye could see that were almost exclusively built with cinder blocks. Some of them were carefully painted and had beautiful gardens, while others were on dirt roads completely surrounded by trash with only a tarp roof. A couple of times we saw people searching through piles of trash alongside the filthy river that ran through the area. It just blew me away that that abject of poverty could exist so close to America. It was then that it struck me at how much the illegal immigration problem makes sense. Here were people digging through trash holding their babies, scrounging up who knows what just to survive. I'm sure risking life and limb to sneak into the U.S. would seem like nothing after living like that. Despite being completely depressing, it was incredible to see and was actually one of the highlights of the trip for me.

After riding through the suburbs of the city for about 45 minutes, we started getting out into farmland and pastures. The fields of agave (for making tequila) and cactus (which they use in cooking) was quite different from the wheat and lentil fields of Idaho. Soon we could make out in the distance what looked like a small hill, but upon closer approach could see that it was one of the pyramids. I had no idea they were so big, but our guidebook said that the largest of them, the Pyramid of the Sun, has the same base as the Great Pyramid in Egypt, but is only half as high. That still made it over 200 feet high! We entered the park and started the mile-long walk up the Avenue of the Dead to the Pyramid of the Sun. All along the avanue, there were people hawking items like masks, jewelry, statures, etc. It was like walking a gauntlet to get to the pyramid. And of course they were always taken aback that I didn't speak Spanish, thinking I was Mexican. When we were almost to the Pyramid of the Sun, one of the peddlers tried to sell us these big stone carvings of Aztec figures. Looking at the hundreds of steep steps that we were about to embark on, carrying an additional few pounds was the LAST thing we wanted to do (and by we, I mean ME, since I had the backpack. Climbing up the pyramid was an ordeal--the steps ranged from steep to vertical and fortunately was broken up into several tiers, or our hearts would have burst halfway up. Getting to the top, however, made the effort completely worthwhile. The view was amazing, but more than that, it was surreal to be standing on top of a structure that had been built thousands of years ago and knowing that thousands of people were sacrificed on the very spot we were standing. I have a list of things I want to see and do before I die, and seeing those pyramids was one of them and was an experience that I've wanted to do since I first learned about the Aztecs in grade school.

Walking back to the bus stop, we caved about bought a couple of souvenirs from the peddlers. Margaret bought a very cool obsidian war hatchet that had an obsidian blade at the end of it and had figures of snakes and an Aztec warrior with a carved obsidian face. I got a cool carved obsidian letter opener, but looked enough like a dagger that I was going to tell people it was a replica of the knife used to sacrifice victims to the rain god Tlaloc. We caught the bus back into the city, and I felt completely ridiculous walking around the bus station carrying that tomahawk, but we stuck out as Americans anyway, so I guess we just looked the part. After getting back and cleaning up, we went out to eat at a restaurant recommended in our guidebook that used to be a mansion of one of the conquistadors. It was a beuatiful building and the food was great (although a coke cost 15 pesos and a Diet Coke cost 19--I guess sugar is cheaper than Nutrasweet.

After the long day of riding the bus through the slums of the city and hiking to the top of an ancient Aztec pyramid, we didn't have much energy to do much besides stumble back to the hotel and go to bed.

The adventures and experiences on this day really opened my eyes to the fact that Mexico was a nation of Indians. Throughout the day, I saw many people that looked like tribal members that I know. It was weird, though, how much I could resemble them, yet feel so conspicuous in my clothes, language, and relative wealth. In some ways, I felt more conspicuous in Mexico around people I resembled than I did in Norway, amongst people who were blonde and blue-eyed. I'm sure it was me that was imagining the conspicuousness, too. I guess that's one of the great things about traveling, though; you learn just as much about yourself as you do about the locals. Maybe it was the feeling that a person's situation is so luck-of-the-draw. I could just as well have been born in the slums of Mexico City but through no effort on my part, I was born in the U.S. where I've never know hunger, homelessness, or despair. I certainly made me appreciate our life here in Portland, but it also made me hope for a day when such poverty doesn't exist. Maybe I should take a page from the life of Ché Guevara and help start a revolution!