Die in Mexico City

Since no attempt was made on our lives during the work week, Jim and I thought we’d continue to see the sites in Mexico City. So on Friday (July 23^rd for all you scrap-bookers out there) Jim and I made history by finding the first die in Mexico City. After searching for 3 weeks and in 15 department stores, we found it hidden in a $20 Rummy set. The clerk could not understand that Jim just wanted the game for the die, but sold it to him anyway. Riding triumphantly high, we headed to a concert of Floridita and Emsi Burron. While I was hoping for more of a Sarah McLaughlin/The Fray type concert, I was not disappointed: both bands dropped some hot fire.

On Saturday we headed to Coyoacán, the stuck up, fancy-schmancy neighborhood of Mexico City. I will say though that it was so nice to get away from all the ignorant, uncultured people of the city for once and walk among the dignified homes of famous artists like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who sucks by the way. We went straight to the only important place in the neighborhood: our great leader Leon Trotsky’s house and grave. When Stalin came to power in Soviet Russia, he exiled Trotsky to Turkey, France, Norway, and then Mexico City, which no one saw coming. In Russia, he had been the right hand man of Lenin and the merciless commander of the victorious Red Army; in Mexico City, he couldn’t even ask where the library was in Spanish. So for the next four years, in between writing commentaries on Russia, Trotsky spent the days getting drunk with Diego Rivera and throwing scrap metal off bridges at peasants, as well as pretending to like Frida´s artwork so he could sleep with her. He said his most beloved Mexican activity was to buy the schoolhouses in poor pueblos and burn them down. When asked why, Trotsky said he wanted to abolish the classes. Scholars are unsure if this was a joke or not.

But in 1940, a Spanish assassin named Mercador snuck into Trotsky’s house and bludgeoned him in the head with an ice-axe, which are just everywhere in Mexico. Stalin, who ordered this and previously unsuccessful assassinations, celebrated the good news with a well deserved Coke and annexation of the Baltic states. The museum had most of the Russian’s things untouched from when he died, and I especially found its depiction of Trotsky’s passionate lust for sensual Mexican cleaning ladies very well-illustrated.

After that we snacked on churros and chocolate, perused the National Art Museum, and tackled our greatest challenge yet: pulque. Pulque is the Meso-American alcohol made from the fermented sap of maguey plants. It’s naturally white, stringy like saliva, and it tastes like something I hope you will never come to know of. The name was incorrectly derived by the Spanish from the Nahuatl word for “spoiled wine,” which is misleading since spoiled wine tastes better. At least as far back at 200 AD, the drink was used sacredly by the religious elite and elderly until the Spaniards showed up and ruined religion for everyone. Its popularity peaked in the 19^th century but hardly anyone drinks it these days now that there’s beer and anti-freeze. Jim and I charged through the saloon doors of Antigua Roma, grabbed a chair that wasn’t broken, and confidently ordered two cups of it. We were quickly humiliated when a giggling group of 14 year old girls next to us ordered a bucket for themselves. The guy sprinkled some cinnamon into my two glasses but it didn’t help much. In the end, it gives you a nice, bubbly feeling, but the taste is not of this world.

The next day we grabbed tacos at a stand outside the apartment, hopped on the metro to the outskirts of the city, and caught an hour long bus to Tepoztlán. I’ll save you the trouble of googling it: it’s awesome. We walked through the small, colonial town in a valley, which has been inhabited since 1500 BC, to the foot of a mountain and started climbing. Now Mexico is in a dangerous state right now. Between the violent drug wars and rampant corruption, there seems little to pray for. But nothing makes me lose more hope in Mexico’s future then seeing numerous fat, middle-aged Mexican women starting a steep, one hour hike in 3 inch stilettos.

At the top was an Aztec temple called Tepozteco, dedicated to the Aztec god of pulque, Tepoztecatl, who is the man. Upon hearing this interesting fact and the mention of pulque, we threw up. We then scampered around the top, ate lunch, snuck into a couple Mexicans´ photos and started heading down when Jim suddenly took off into the woods. I followed him to a waterfall, and then we just kept going. More than an hour later, after climbing up 40 ft vertical walls by roots and squeezing under car size boulders caught in between two wall faces, we found ourselves at the top.

We took more stupid pictures and savored the view before sprinting down the mountain and back through the town as everyone cleaned up the streets and prepared for the inevitable karaoke night that plagues towns of this size. We caught the bus back to the City and fell asleep with the pulque still firmly in our stomachs.