el crispito

Exterior, la Casa Azul, Coyoacán

We had nearly 24 hours to kill when we learned that our flight was cancelled, so we made plans for the following day to visit the Frida Kahlo Museum, housed in her family home in Coyoacán, also known as the Casa Azul.

We took a cab from the Camino Real that they 'arranged' for us, which ended up taking about 40 minutes and cost us about $25 USD. This was a 'tourist taxi,' which basically means it's a service that rips off tourists. The driver was nice enough, and the cab was very comfortable. We'd heard horror stories about getting kidnapped by illigitimate taxi drivers in Mexico City, so we wanted to be safe rather than sorry. The tourist taxi was guaranteed to be 'secure.'

The ride to Coyoacán was our first real chance to get the feel of Mexico City. It was nice and cool, being overcast and considerably higher than Guadalajara (about 2,200 feet). We were shocked to see how green and lush Mexico City was. We expected wall-to-wall urban landscape, but that was not the case. We passed park after park and went along many roads shaded by trees. In Guadalajara, it seems that people are terrified of trees, as people take any opportunity they can find - being near power lines, growing too tall, taking up space - to cut down the few that exist. Such didn't seem to be the case in Mexico City, which seemed like the Amazon in contrast.

I expected the Casa Azul to be pretty far out of town and in a dusty little pueblo, but Coyoacán is anything but that. It's a very nicely groomed, smart section of what seems like another part of Mexico City, like Tlaquepaque seems to be another part of Guadalajara.

Exterior, la Casa Azul, Coyoacán

While it does contain a few of works by Kahlo, the Museo Frida Kahlo focuses more on the life of the artist. There is a huge display case containing various medicines she took and a couple of self-decorated torso casts from a few of her numerous surgeries. There are a few interesting works by others too, and a little museum store where we bought postcards that we dared to send out through the infamous Mexican mail system. To date, nobody has mentioned receiving one. It's been almost three weeks.

The Casa Azul is very interesting, and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in Frida Kahlo. Those wishing to see a lot of her work will likely be disappointed, but the fact that one can see unusal 'works' of hers (like the painted casts, the decoration of the kitchen, pages from her journal) is quite a treat. More interesting is being in the house where she worked and lived, and getting a sense of the history that took place there.

We left the museum to find some lunch. Normally, we have a decent guide book to get some direction in such matters, but because we were not at all expecting to spend the day in Mexico City, we had nothing but a barely adequate map of Coyoacán in a Mexico City tourism pamphlet given to us by the concierge at the Camino Real. We figured that if we headed toward the center of the neighborhood, we'd probably find something. We were not disappointed.

We came upon a nice park that had an information booth, where we asked for restaurant suggestions, being that we're vegetarians. I thought the woman there would suggest going to some sit down place that would have the usual: quesadillas, cheese enchiladas, enfrijoladas, chilaquiles, etc. Instead, she told us to go to Vege Taco, a place that serves nothing but vegetarian food.

For us, this was an amazing delight. So often people tell us, "You HAVE to try the pica..., oh, that's right. You're vegetarians." There are so many dishes down here that gringo meat eaters tell us are simply the best dishes in the world, and for the first time in my vegetarian life, I am ignorant of what something tastes like. That is, I'd tried pretty much everything meatwise in the United States that is common there. If someone eats a hot dog, for example, I know all too well what that tastes like. Yet there are several things here, often times sauces that are vegetarian in and of themselves, but end up always being served on meat, where I can't even imagine their flavors. Like the traditional sauce, pipian. It's always used to stew chicken or pork, so I never get to order it at restaurants here.

But at Vege Taco, I could get all kinds of things like that. Unfortunately, we had to choose just one dish each. Shawn got flautas, and I, being really into learning new things about our home state of Jalisco, ordered faux cabrito (young goat), Jaliscan style.

I won't knock anyone that digs goat, but I don't know that I would have really been all that jazzed about eating goat had I come down here as a meat eater. Okay, that's probably not true. I'd end up trying it one night while drunk and thinking it was okay. However, the nice thing is, even for people that eat meat, if you have a hard time stomaching even just the idea of goat, you could try the vegetarian version (made with seitan) and understand how it's prepared without having to eat goat. There were a lot of vegetarian versions of traditional Mexican fare that might give your average gringo pause, and I'm sure that a lot of meat eaters would be hesitant to eat at Vege Taco. However, all the people there (and it was pretty crowded), were chowing down without hesitation.

This is my fake young goat, in the Jaliscan style:


"Cabrito" Estilo Jalisco, Vege Taco, Coyoacán

Here's Shawn's flautas:


Flautas de "Barbacoa" Vegetarianas, Vege Taco, Coyoacán

I wanted to stay and keep ordering things from the menu, but a full stomach and the hour dictated that we return to the hotel, pick up our bags and return to the airport for our flight to Bogotá. We hailed a cab and paid about $18 USD on the return trip from Coyoacán, and on the way, I had a nice chat with the cab driver. He asked us all the standard questions, and I gave him all the standard (for us) answers. We talked about politics, the fact that we much prefer the relaxed rato de vida of Mexico, and that, despite the fact that all the Mexicans we knew that were from places other than Mexico City say that chilangos (a term for people from Mexico City, and supposedly pejorative) are rude and self-centered, we had not found that to be the case. He explained that it all depends on where you go in Mexico City. He claims that in some neighborhoods in Mexico City (he named a couple that unfortunately, I have since forgotten), people are very rude, but in many parts of Mexico City, people are very friendly.

We must not have gone to any of the rude places, because we found everyone to be quite friendly, polite, and when the need arose, helpful. Like when we got to the airport and got in line to check our luggage, the men going through and running chemical tests on the insides of our luggage were quite friendly. We spoke Spanish with them initially, but then one of them said that his co-worker wanted to practice his English with us, but was too shy to ask. We then switched over to English and had a nice talk with them while they processed our luggage with this funky device that checked for explosive residue on a piece of plastic (?) tape that was wiped along the interior of each of our bags. After passing the test ("TNT: OK!"), we stepped up to the counter where the same guy that had told us the previous night that our flight had been cancelled a month before was waiting with a pleasant smile. He was exceptionally friendly as he told us, "I have bad news for you. Your flight has been cancelled."

He was very friendly as he tried to calm us down, and he was exceptionally nice in putting us up at the Sheraton María Ísabel right across from the Ángel de Independencia on Avenida Reforma. Everyone in line behind us was also on this cancelled flight, yet instead of making a general announcement, they let everyone go through the security check of luggage, and then told them individually that the flight had been cancelled. I can think of no reason to do this besides really enjoying making people wait in line needlessly, but you get that kind of irrational stuff in Mexico all the time. Eventually, they herded us outside, to wait for a van that would take us to the hotel.

As we stood and waited, Shawn asked a young man who was also waiting if he spoke English. I thought this was strange at the time, but Shawn explained later that he presumed that the guy was English because he was paler than we were. It turns out that he did speak English, but he was a law student from Monterrey, and was heading down to Buenos Aires (our flight continued from Bogotá to Argentina) to study dance for three months during the summer break. He was quite cute, and we were delighting in the conversation, but then he started in on the whole thing about how he hates Mexico City and thinks both the metropolis and the people are ugly there. After that, I couldn't help but think of him as a little too prissy for my tastes, but luckily about that time, the van pulled up and we all got in.

The driver (David Montaño, cell 044/55/8560-9261, 044/55/2965-1437; office 55/2643-2406), who drives tourists around Mexico City for a living, was absolutely delightful. He asked me the usual questions, and upon my telling him how we were not really all too disappointed to be spending another night in Mexico City (since before we'd only been to the border towns and Guadalajara), started telling me all about other beautiful places in Mexico that needed to be checked out. I found us to have similar tastes in how we visit other cities. He recommended Acapulco, but when I said that I didn't really go for resort towns, he wagged his finger and said, "No, no, no." He suggested going for at least three weeks, finding a cheap apartment or condo that rents by the month and just living there, maybe checking out a couple of the big hotspots if you're into seeing what they're all about, but otherwise, just living there among the locals and asking around among them for recommendations on where to eat, what to see and how to pass the time. His loving description of excellent food, beautiful muchachas and thoroughly enjoyable time spent there sold me.

As we drove along, he pointed out a lot of sights in Mexico City, although it was hard to see many of them because it was dark out. Even the Ángel de Independencia wasn't visible, being under scaffolding for cleaning. Still, he gave us a rundown on the basics of our local layout, talking about the two Mexico Cities: the old and the modern. When at last we pulled up at the hotel, I was a little sad to have arrived. I would have liked to have hired him to drive around a bit more and show us some of the late night hotspots, but we had to check in with the others to be sure that Aerolíneas Argentinas would pay for it. After we got to the room, despite planning at the airport to go out and party down in the city, we were beat and just crawled into bed. The double-paned glass kept out any city noise, and those soft Sheraton beds were so comfortable that we passed out within minutes.

Here are some photos of the view from our room on the 20th floor.

Mexico City, from Sheraton María Ísabel

Mexico City, from Sheraton María Ísabel

Mexico City, from Sheraton María Ísabel

[part three]