Mexico City - 1

There are many anxieties that seep in when thinking about travel to Mexico that isn't one of the major resorts. As is the way with the world, negatives often overpower positives. We are fed the doom and gloom, no matter how much we might crave the happiness and light.

Initially Mexico City was going to be a family trip over Spring Break. Then my son got accepted into a good university and we had to go visit that campus. Eventually we found time to go; my son was on a trip to the beach with his friends, so it would be the first trip by my wife and me as empty nesters.

Mexico City in the off season is fairly cheap; and it's not a very risky off season, which is very long thanks to the rainy season and the persistent threat of hurricanes during the summer and autumn. We went in late May, Memorial Day Weekend (plus a couple of days). The average temp was supposed to be upper seventies; Mother Nature decided to be an overachiever, though, and it grew steadily hotter every day we were there, peaking at ninety on the Wednesday we left.

Understand that, for me, ninety isn't all that hot. I'm from Tennessee. From July to early September we long for days with a high temperature of only ninety. Plus, we have humidity, the sort that feels like a physical weight on your body, pressing in from all sides.

But damn it was hot. We found ourselves often walking east-west through the historic district, so there was almost no shade. And when there was, people crowded into it making it very crowded on one side of the street and almost empty in the middle.

Finding shade became an obsession, and my wife and I were quick studies. I have no accurate way of knowing how much the temperature dropped in the shade. It was enough to make a difference, even if it was just a light pole. You might laugh at that, but I challenge you to try it. 

Another tidbit: our hotel had no air conditioner. There was a fan. And a window, the sort that tilted in from the top. That worried me a lot on day one. But the problem with our room wasn't the temperature; at night temps dropped to the mid fifties, and the room became cold enough to need a light blanket. The problem was the noise from outside.

Mexico City is a noisy place. That's a generalization, of course; for the most part we stayed around the historic district. And one person's "noisy" is another's "lively." It's hard to keep a city of nine million people quiet.

One final general note: there are some parts of Mexico City that are not safe. Mexico has a bad reputation for gang activity, kidnapping, etc. But never once did we feel nervous, other than the way you should feel nervous in a big city, such as when you find yourself on a deserted dark street at night. Because that's what Mexico City is: a big - huge - metropolitan area with all sorts of people. Cities are melting pots. Of course there are gangs in Mexico City. There are parts of Los Angeles that I wouldn't go to if I was paid. It's a fact of life that there are bad people in the world.

Having said that, it is incongruous that a nation of such incredibly nice people can actually have such violent elements. Because that was the big takeaway from the trip: despite the obvious hardships of life, people were smiling, laughing, always willing to help. Nobody bumped into you on the street, and when I sneezed there would be a few people calling "salud" from the crowd. I've seen this before, both in my home in rural Appalachia and in India: the more poor people are, the happier they seem to be. There are lessons there, I'm sure, and complex reasons. Perhaps it's best summed up as this: hardship makes you appreciate life. Humanity has tens - hundreds - of thousands of years of evolution behind that. Hard living was just the way it has been for us. The easy life was unknown for pretty much everyone in your and my family tree.

Mexico City is just a nice place.

More on the particulars of the trip in Part 2.