CDMX - Canals and Luchas and Gringos

This past week has been about routine building. Bike riding, exploring, gymming, establishing my taco spots. I love Chapultepec, the huge park in the center of the city. I had a nice time exploring Reforma (the fancy business center area). I checked off the Anthropology Museum and the Museum Soumaya.

I quit my job last Monday and am currently midway through my two weeks notice. Everyone’s reaction was “Congrats!” Even my boss. Makes me feel like I’m on the right track. It’s nice to shake the tree of reality once in a while.

Gringo Invasion

There are Americans everywhere. I know I am too an American, but damn.

I thought I was boldly going where no gringo has gone before, that this was the first stop along a wild and exotic LatAm trail.

Then, I walk out of my apartment and immediately I see a hipster with a tiny hat holding his matcha, or hear Lulumen-clad joggers, or spot a flock of tourists waddling their way into a café. Of course, I know am not the first to trailblaze here. I am, if anything, late to the party. But this may as well be Brooklyn. I literally ran into an old college friend on the street yesterday!

Lucha Libre

On Friday I went to Mexican wrestling, AKA Lucha Libre.

I arrived with a friend to a packed house at Arena Mexico on Friday night. The event was on in full force. Before sitting down in our nosebleed seats, my Mexican friend stopped to order us a standard beer–a double cup with a chili salt rim and an injection of Maggi juice (beef bouillon cubes). Beer is cool, beef bouillon inside it, less so.

Lucha Libre has its heroes and villains. Maybe the most exemplary match was Hechicero (the Sorcerer) vs. Roderick (a white dude). When Hechicero walked out, a beefy mask-donning local luchador, the crowd went nuts. Even the grandpa next to me was shouting and making a ruckus. Then, a pasty-skinned gringo emerges from under the Jumbotron and the whole stadium let out a huge boo. A woman behind me shouted “pinche motherfucker!” and our section clapped with agreement.

This was a recurring theme. Most matches were Gringos vs Mexicans. Match after match, the stadium went wild as Mexicans of all shapes and sizes slammed gringos inside and out of the ring. Sometimes the home team won, but other times the evil Americans would steal a victory.

I camouflaged myself, booing the gringos along with everyone else. It seemed to work. By the time we left, I stopped outside and got a bobblehead of Hechicero to take home. Pinche gringos, right?

Whoops

In other news, I have been reaching new heights of losing things. On Tuesday, I left my phone in a dressing room. The following day, I left my Airpods in Decathlon. Somehow, I recovered both.

I also screwed up my flight. Yesterday, I was supposed to fly from CDMX to Oaxaca. I left the apartment 2.5 hours early, thinking I was ahead of schedule. When I arrived at the airport, I was a bit puzzled to not see my flight on the departure boards…

Turns out, my flight was from NLU, the domestic only airport, one hour away! By some divine miracle, I made it twenty minutes before takeoff. Thank you Lord.

Xochimilco

I was advised by a local that I needed to go to Xochimilco to see the Chinampas (Aztec-made floating farms constructed on squares of sunken mangrove trees). Kind of like Mexico’s version of the sunken trash barges that created downtown Manhattan. I imagined canoeing through the early morning fog on ancient canals, docking just in time to for lunch, smelling tortillas cooking over an open fire, eating a meal harvested from the very same earth you sat on.

Excited beyond belief, I looked up the tour. I was startled to see it cost 100 USD. Sorry, but this was too much than I was willing to bear.

So, I decided I would hack the system. I would find the same experience for much cheaper. Ultimately, I choose a tour of the canals on a traditional, colorful boat in Xochimilco. I knew I had to go early so I booked the earliest one for 10am.

The next morning, I took a hour-long uber from Condesa arriving in Xochimilco at around 9:40. It was dead. No one was around, except a few mariachi singers sat on the ground with their heads in their laps. I texted the tour guide asking if there was anywhere nearby to grab a coffee. He responded, “yeah, there are probably some businesses around.” Thanks dude!

Then, Ernesto arrived, sporting a baseball hat and a chipper smile. He told me there would be no others on the tour that day. Good, I thought. I can ask him all the annoying questions I want :)

Ernesto and I walked down to the canal and hopped on the boat. It was a colorful dragon-barge with a huge picnic table down the center of it and a bunch of wooden dining chairs arranged lengthwise. He dropped down his backpack on the table and opened it, unsheathing a sizable bottle of tequila.

Sorry, we finished yesterday’s bottle, I only have this for us today…

I look at him, confused. Tequila? Then, I recalled videos of loud gringo parties cruising the canals in colorful boats. I looked out over at the canal and saw the waterway is completely clogged with other dragon-barges just like mine. I notice the shot glasses and the JBL party box and the sticky smell of spilled Micheladas.

Then it hit me. I am not on a Chinampa tour, I am on a party boat. I am staring down the barrel of a 1-liter bottle of tequila at 10am with a tour guide who has a stack of drinking games at the ready….

Honestly, we still had a great time. Ernesto took us off-course to a decent Chinampa. There were squares where they grew stuff, it seemed. We didn’t stay long because he told me he had dated the heiress to this chinampa and had ended things on vague, but definitively bad terms.

As Cristian, our oarsman, prodded us through the river on a long stick, Ernesto asked me what music I wanted to listen to. I said, “whatever you listen to normally.” So he turned up the JBL and put on a rapper named “El Pingüino.” Christian and Ernesto talked amongst themselves and I sat in the sun, watching the other gringo-filled dragon boats take shots as Mariachi bands serenaded them.

Hungry for some cultural information, I asked him why this was the only canal left in Mexico City after the Spanish drained the lake. He paused and began his answer with: “Um, I think…”

Listening - Nothing interesting.

Watching - I discovered Cineteca Nacional and it’s easily my favorite place in CDMX so far. It’s a little movie village with restaurants and bars in an awesome building. It just feels so alive with culture. This week I saw:

• La Reserva - movie about a park ranger in Chiapas, a jungly region in the south. Think I will go there.
• Bugonia - Newest Yorgos Lanthimos. Weird and dark and fun. Loved it.

Reading - El Matrimonio de los peces Rojos. Short stories by a contemporary Mexican author about fish and marriage troubles.