A tourist's experience in Mexico City  -- 

Near the Zocalo, the heart of Mexico City, is a clock counting down to the bicentennial celebrations of Mexican independence, which will occur in September of 2010. I recently traveled to Mexico City and I would enjoy making another trip before the clock reaches zero, and you might too.

A trip to Mexico means good food, the visual feast of displays of exotic fruits and handicrafts in innumerable markets, and art ranging from colonial to

contemporary. On a larger scale there are magnificent boulevards and alluring narrow streets. There are lovely small residences and grand and fanciful commercial buildings constructed with dramatic verve and sometimes whimsy.

But a trip to Mexico might also raise  thoughts of swine flu and the menace of petty or even deadly crime.

On my recent trip to Mexico City I savored the food and was enthralled by the antiquities and the architecture. I also paid attention to the risks of traveling in a city of 20 million souls. In any of the great cities of the world you are subject to many sorts of risk. Can you freely enjoy the city, or would you be happier staying home? In my experience, the risks in Mexico City are manageable and the rewards are tremendous.

First, let’s talk about the risks.

Consider swine flu. We remember the images on the news last year: crowds of people wearing blue surgical masks walking on city streets like characters in some science fiction thriller. But what is it like now?

I must have seen tens or hundreds of thousands of faces during my five days in Mexico City, but I saw very few masks. Hand sanitizer dispensers are common in places like restaurants and hotel lobbies, but I did not notice many people using them. More tellingly, people did not appear to be reluctant to shake hands, or to embrace and kiss when greeting one another. It’s clear that people have realized that swine flu is not the threat it was once feared to be. Fortunately, people have not allowed the fear to change their traditional habits of expressing themselves warmly and physically.

In Mexico, crime is a far greater threat than swine flu. In spite of the potential danger, thousands of people choose to visit Mexico, and so it makes sense to look at the crime situation from a practical point of view.

Any tourist in a big city has to acknowledge the possibility of becoming a victim of a crime. We lock our cars and we keep our backpacks and purses close to us when we are on a bus or walking on crowded streets. We are mindful of who is around us and pay even more attention on empty streets at night. We feel safer in a museum or a busy tourist site at Noon than we do leaving a bar at closing time. These things are true in Mexico City too. You decide what you want to do and where you want to be, and you know that some choices will expose you to more risks than others.

A writer I know has been living in Mexico City for several months gathering material for her next book. She has an apartment in the beautiful and relatively affluent Condesa neighborhood. She feels generally safe on the streets, but she takes a few precautions. For example, she gets cash at ATMs in convenience stores rather than the more public ATMs near banks. She usually does not carry credit cards or ATM cards with her. Better to lose a limited amount of cash than risk the hassle of canceling credit cards, or worse, being forced to withdraw money from an ATM by a robber. She knows one person in her circle of friends and acquaintances who has been robbed.

It is fair to say that you will see more armed security personnel in Mexico City than you will in the Bay Area. That is both reassuring (I am being protected) and a bit alarming (Why is there a need for so much security?). From my own perspective, I did not find those guys with guns to be unsettling. Throughout the world there is a problem with crime and terrorism. I have seen fully armed military personnel in Grand Central Terminal in New York City. And in Israel, in addition to the heavily armed police and soldiers patrolling the streets, there are a surprising number of shopkeepers who carry a pistol in their belts.  In general, in Mexico City the amount of security is noticeable for a person who lives in California, but for me it was not disconcerting or out of line.

When you go to the most important sites in Mexico City, the ones you don’t want to miss, you will find plenty of people and more than adequate security. Probably the greatest danger comes from pickpockets. Likewise on the metro, I felt very safe except for the possibly of having my pockets picked. 

I certainly don’t mean to suggest that a visitor has to stick to the main tourist routes to feel safe. During my stay, I visited a few places that felt perfectly safe, were very interesting, and were not heavily visited by other visitors.

The Plaza Romita is a block or two from the Cuauhtemoc Station on the Number One Metro line. The plaza is very small and lovely and shows the quiet and intimate side of the city. Go through the square and walk three or four blocks south and you will come to the Jardin Pushkin and Avenida Alvaro Obregon, the heart of the appealing Roma District. There is a large Sunday market in Jardin Pushkin and the median of Alvaro Obregon, with its greenery and fountains, has an antique and art market on Sunday. There are comfortable hotels on that street and, again, I felt perfectly safe and comfortable strolling around the district.

Farther south is the Coyoacan neighborhood with its handsome colonial streets and lively public places.  Cortez himself had a house in the area centuries ago.

Jardin Centenario and Plaza Hidalgo are adjacent to one another and provide a marvelous variety of things to see and food to try. The Parroquia de San Juan Bautista faces the Plaza Hidalgo and was established by the Franciscans in the 16th Century. The morning I visited the church a baptism was in progress. As it ended the happy family filed out of the church to the appropriate but somehow incongruous strains of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah played on the church organ.

A few blocks away is the striking and popular Frida Kalho Museum. It is worth the visit just to see the rooms in which Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera lived and worked and entertained their numerous guests.  There are also galleries displaying the art of both of them, and numerous letters and mementos.

In the nearby San Angel neighborhood, I saw the Saturday art market in the Plaza del Carmen. I then bravely crossed the busy Av. Revolucion to visit the Museo de El Carmen, which is located in a monastery building dating from the 17th Century and houses a collection of colonial art, and a rather macabre crypt with the mummified remains of persons who were probably friars or benefactors of the monastery. An unexpected delight was the garden in back of the main building. It had been an orchard in other years and was an amazingly quiet and peaceful oasis in a busy neighborhood. There was only one other person enjoying the cool green silence.

Speaking of crossing the street, I caution my fellow Californians that pedestrians are not subject to the deference that they receive here. Given the horrendous traffic in Mexico City, Mexican drivers are surprisingly courteous. However, if they are not also quick and attentive, I’m sure that they would not be on the road for long. The flow of traffic is fast and chaotic. Use extreme care when crossing streets. The traffic pattern is different than from the Bay Area. There are many traffic circles and streets that intersect at odd angles. There are usually fewer traffic signals at intersections than I am used to and it sometimes takes some careful observation to determine which signal applies to which streets.  Interesting signal note: in some intersections, the green pedestrian walk signal shows the image of a little green character running for his life, rather than the static green figure icon familiar to us.

Driving in Mexico City is another matter. Over many years and many trips, I have driven in Paris, Warsaw, and Tel Aviv. I am proud of that achievement. I would not drive in Mexico City unless I absolutely had to. The traffic is very heavy most times of day and the traffic patterns are unfamiliar and complex, even for someone who drives in Oakland.

Luckily, you don’t have to drive yourself to get around. There are a lot of taxis. Some  warn tourists against using the common Volkswagen taxis because they don’t have rear doors and it would be harder for a passenger to escape a kidnapping attempt. However, the writer I know told me that she uses VW taxis regularly. That said, she advised me that taxis at regular taxi stands are generally considered to be more reliable than taxis hailed on the street, although they are a bit more expensive. She also says that if your instincts tell you that a situation is unsafe, you should pay attention. That’s true in a taxi and anywhere else you may be.

The metro is an easy way to cover a lot of distance for very little money. The fare is only about 15 cents. The directions are clearly marked and the trains and stations are in excellent condition.

Finally, I should mention the possibility of arranging for transportation by van from the hotel you are staying in. On my trip, a half dozen of us wanted to go out to dinner at a restaurant some distance from the hotel. The helpful people at the front desk called a van that arrived in about 15 minutes. We were all able to travel together inexpensively, and we were picked up at the restaurant and returned to the hotel at the time we asked for.

There are several airlines that serve Mexico City from the Bay Area. The service on the economy class on Mexicana Airlines I took was perfectly fine.  Gone are the days when stewardesses were registered nurses and dressed like rather elegant cocktail waitresses. But the pleasant staff served the beverages and food with friendly efficiency. The flights were mainly on time and the ground staff was helpful and competent in at least two languages.

The expression “welcome home”  (in both English and Spanish) was used by a few people in greeting our small group from the Bay Area.  As sincere and cordial as the welcome was, I had the sense that tourism officials had encouraged the use of that particular greeting. I thought about it a bit and decided that it was perfectly natural and appropriate. All of us were residents of the Bay Area, but several were born in Mexico, and so the greeting had deeper meaning. But the welcome also touched those of us who are not of Hispanic ancestry, but who live in California. Climate, landscape, names, food, and history all connect California and Mexico in profound ways. So any Californian is in a sense going home to Mexico. The whole world is getting smaller in many ways, and those of us who live on the Southwestern side of North America share a great deal.