Day 1 - travel to Mexico

For the first time in our travel history, we opted for a home pick-up (via Uber) to bring us to the airport and start our travel. There is something so freeing about stepping into a vehicle at your home, driving away and saying, well – that’s it! No turning back now. Financially it was wiser and frankly more convenient to walk outside, throw our bags into the trunk of Syed’s Uber and be dropped directly at our Terminal at JFK than parking a vehicle there for three weeks. The ride was smooth, without traffic and our check-in process was quick. We were the only white people in the line of 40-50 people heading to Mexico City with the stewardess at one point confirming “are you going to Mexico City?” Si, senora! We are! We witnessed lots of families traveling together and romanticized the sweetness of it the more we saw it. There is something uniquely independent, solitary and self-sufficient about Americans where we forget about the joys of sharing experiences with our kin. We watched a couple hug for long and hard before splitting up – that kind of hug where the people don’t sway or say anything to one another, just feeling one last time before goodbye, one going through security and the other watching from the barrier. We watched the way the passengers boarding Viva Aerobus opted to gather around the ticket man rather than lining up, but still in a calm, quiet and patient way. Our flight was smooth and without any comforts – tight legroom, no free food, very slow food service preventing people like your girl bouncing her knee for nearly an hour waiting to pee. Good times! We landed in the evening, grabbed our luggage as the city smells of sulfur wafted into baggage claim. An Uber brought us right to our place, we checked in and (of course) went right back out to grab some much needed grub. Tacos, sopa (soup) and guacamole! We stopped at a nearby 7-Eleven to grab a 10.1 liter container of filter water (because, well, Mexico) and designated a water bottle for brushing teeth and brought two reusable bottles to refill as needed. We retired around 11PM and fell asleep to the sounds and music of nearby bar-goers having the time of their life on a Wednesday evening. But we weren’t upset, we are in Mexico.

Day 2 - CDMX Walking Tour, Frida Kahlo, first observations

Mexico City is 7,349 feet above sea level giving us dry, cool air in the mornings and evenings and strong, warm sun during the day. Between the high altitude, dry air and post-travel, we are actively staying hydrated and taking things slow with food. We had some coffees and croissants at a nearby spot to start the day before a free walking tour hosted by local college students. Just like any city, CDMX (Ciudad de Mexico City – for short) offers a range of cuisines. We are staying in the neighborhoods of La Condesa and La Roma which are known to be hip, generally safer and Paris influenced in the layout and architecture. One USD gives us 20 pesos with half hour Uber rides costing $10, tacos around $1 each and espressos or cappuccinos around $2.50. We toured the historic city center for two hours with a group of people spanning Israel, Netherlands, LA and Houston before grabbing tacos, flautas and tostados for lunch at a place recommended by our guide, La Casa de Tono. We arrived at our 1:45PM reservation to the Frida Kahlo Museum 15 minutes late but was added to the group going in at that time. Frida Kahlo was an artist from Mexico who persevered through a polio diagnosis at age 6 that left her with a lame leg and a bus accident at age 16 in which a metal rod tore through her torso. She struggled with depression, suicidal ideation, chronic illness and disability but had a personal style for fashion and presentation that was unique in her time. She infamously has a unibrow and actively redefined beauty norms and standards without giving a damn. She was the subject for photographers and her portraits are stunning. She had a natural ease in front of the camera and knew how to pose her body in a way that accentuated her upper body to distract from her imperfect lower half, according to the museum documents. If you don’t know about Frida Kahlo, just know she was a powerhouse, a badass and a feminist icon. We enjoyed a second round of hot bevys for lunch accompanied by some salads and caught an Uber to reset for the evening. We passed men on the backs of garbage trucks, people shuffling into buses, mothers with their children waiting to cross, older women with arms linked waiting for rides and men swiftly cleaning windshields of vehicles waiting at red lights. I’m trying not to go on too much with details of our day - in an attempt to keep your interest - but my work in photography and my interest in human behavior has made me so attuned to the crazy faceted aspects of culture, the many similarities amongst all humans and the seemingly mundane parts of life that I find so fascinating. There’s so much to observe if you just look. And although we are just looking from the outside as newbies to this city, we have already witnessed and learned so much.

Day 3 - Teotihuacan, good eats and a museum

You know, sometimes things don't go as planned… and that’s okay, you just have to roll with it! Intrigued yet? Well, today we started the day at 4AM to grab a shared van to a sunrise hot air balloon ride over the archeological area of Teotihuacan – about an hour and a half from the city. What started as a normal early-morning-pick-up-by-an-unmarked-van-with-all-strangers-kind-of-ride soon turned into the plot of some Todd Philips film. We were about a half hour out from the city when the driver pulled off on the Mexican highway in an unlit, dirt area and exited the running van without a word. He ran across the busy 4 lane highway and was not to be seen for a few minutes. Someone joked nervously, “and this is where our Mexican adventure beings.” Turns out, the driver was helping a fellow colleague whose vehicle had a flat. The tension was felt amongst the eight other passengers who were scanning the road, the desolate area to our right and the driver door as time passed wondering, what the heck is going to happen. But all was well! We made it to the grounds in a little over an hour and waited for an hour before learning that the winds were too strong for us to complete a successful hot air balloon ride. While a handful of the 80 guests were able to continue on to the grounds for a pre-paid tour, Matt, myself and the majority of guests were placed back into the vans for the return back to the city with the option to reschedule or get a refund – we opted to reschedule for another day with hopes for better weather. We were bummed, but honestly made the best of the whole morning by laughing at the balloon used to measure wind speeds, admiring the sunrise, befriending and sharing stories with our van mates from Minnesota and California (one of which lived in our very city in CT years ago!) and observing neighborhoods on our way back but this time, in daylight. Having woken so early, we were pretty tired by early afternoon (and as Matt would say, I was extra cranks) with normal tasks feeling giant and any plans seeming annoying (again, only to me. Matt is a saint and if you don’t already know… it takes a lot for him to get rattled. Give me an hour less of sleep and a skipped meal and I’m a *tad* cranky). But we ate our first meal of the day around 11AM at a place Matt found called Maque which had some of the most amazing pastries and muffins – holy COW – apparently it was featured on Goop’s site though I only learned this looking up the restaurant upon arriving. We have never had a corn muffin that 1) actually smelled like fresh corn upon its arrival and 2) was so moist it had pockets that were both dense and doughy and just so good. We walked the Centro Historico and enjoyed a moment of reprieve in a museum featuring artwork, sketches and murals from Russian native and Mexico raised Vlady that we both admired. We grabbed fish and shrimp tacos from El Pescadito, drinks at a cocktail bar and ended our evening early with churros and Mexican hot chocolate from the famous El Moro.

Day 4 - Food tour!

​This morning we bundled up to grab early morning coffees and walk Bosque de Chapultepec – one of Mexico City’s biggest parks and nearly twice the size of Central Park. We quickly learned that most cafes do not open until 9 or 10AM but that allowed us more time to slowly roam the quiet corners of Chapultepec while people jogged by dressed in Christmas colors. Our only plan for the day was a food tour which we were excited about. It spanned about five hours and was perfectly paced and full of authentic Mexican food and such a kind and open-minded group of people. Matt and I quickly made friends with the two Indian families from the Bay Area who were traveling together as friends (one of their sons had a connection to CT!) and the solo Black female traveler from LA who we actually saw the day earlier at the hot air balloon tour. The 10 of us sampled black mole authentic to Oaxaca, toured a wet market equipped with butchered geese, baby pigs, deer all with trails of blood leading to the nearest drain (not for the faint of heart), ate some tapa-esque meat and cheese on local bread, sangria, crickets, ants, boar meat, tres leches cake, sauces, tostada de ceviche (a crunchy flat tortilla topped with cooked fish, shrimp, calamari and avocado), a cantina stop for margaritas and mojitos, bean and plantain empanada, tacos, oat water (similar to horchata) and ended with authentic Mexican candy made from guava, milk and fig. I added a photo of our guide book for reference to anyone looking for food spots in town. Our guide was kind, informative and educated us on any topic we wanted to know about. She mentioned how her boss greatly admires quality and authentic food and only selected places that reflected that. We learned about local industries, the socioeconomics of Mexico City residents, the history of their foods, art and other aspects of their culture and even received some honest food recommendations to try including reliable and cheap street stalls. The cantinas today only charge customers for drinks and with it they are allowed any number of the six or so menu items that are served free of charge. We learned that Mexicans have their big Christmas celebration on the eve of the holiday and use the actual day to rest and eat leftovers from the prior night’s big feast. We shopped nearby in the holiday hustle and shuffle and grabbed a ride back to our place before taking it slow the rest of the night. 

Day 5 - Christmas, baby!

All throughout yesterday we were scoping out spots we hoped would be open for Christmas. We had had a late meal last night which was honestly one of the funniest experiences we have had together and will go down in the books. We were very out of place and could not stop laughing at how ridiculous the whole situation was… I‘ll spare details but just picture this: Matt brought in massive jug of water passing people in their Christmas best that he then placed next to him and covered with a jacket. I had on jeans and a decal tee that most would consider cropped only to result in me wearing my puff winter jacket to avoid the eyes of shamers. And it was an expensive, Christmas Eve themed dinner with back to back reservations booked. Anyways! I’ll leave it there. But we were very much expecting to scrounge for food on Christmas day but luckily, we didn’t need to. To our surprise, so many places were open as a majority of Christmas celebrations happen on Christmas Eve for Mexicans. They cook meals family style, drink heavily and recuperate the next day. We woke early and roamed the streets after getting coffee from none other than Starbucks – go America! Our plan was to rent bicycles and bike down this street called Calle de Reforma which closes down to vehicles every Sunday and opens up to bicycles only. And although the street wasn’t closed to vehicles today, we were still able to bike freely for about an hour before grabbing lunch and checking out the Museum of Anthropology just as it started to rain. We witnessed fossils, old tools, read about the history of the country and the migration and start of humankind – it was slow, intentional and a perfect way to take it easy. Part way through the museum, we found ourselves so tired, dehydrated and overall low energy. It wasn’t until that evening that we remembered the altitude and that exercising in that sort of way can knock you out. We grabbed food in the rain later on and called it an early night because tomorrow – we go hot air ballooning (take two!).

Day 6 - Rest Day

Despite my predilection to never wake before 6, today we once again awoke at 4AM for a second attempt at the hot air balloon ride. Now, as you may have already guessed based on the photos below – we did not take a hot air balloon ride for the second time. We did, however, drive an hour once again to the same location (this time in an even more cramped and steamy van with a new set of strangers) with the tantalizing options of either standing in drizzling rain or in a overpacked room of strangers with the open-door bathrooms in one corner and the sweet sweet scent of stale cigarette smoke wafting in another. Although there technically could have been a slight chance that the thick fog and rain would stop upon sunrise, it did not. And we proceeded to wait until 8:40AM for them to call it and gather back into the vans and make our return back to the city. But this time, both of our attitudes were not as silly or lackadaisical as the first attempt on Friday. The weather was awful – that miserable, raw, cold and wet weather that makes your bones ache, your circulation slow and your nose run. As Matt put it, we are sure our core body temperatures dropped in those two hours as we stood outside waiting for them to make what we thought was a pretty obvious call (you could hardly see the car in front of you driving on the way there). Compound this with what I now believe to be a symptom of my period coming – the worst onset of nausea I have experienced in a long time. I actually couldn’t stand up straight, squatting down moment to moment to gain some relief. I couldn’t tell if it was from a) food, b) waking too early, c) the altitude or d) premenstrual – but truly was a combination of them all. I was near gagging when Matt passed me my water and I put on Sea-Bands that I had worn during our drive (as I do for nearly all long-distance rides. Placebo or not, they work!) Upon arriving back to the city, I napped on and off the entirety of the day – I’m talking 10AM-8PM. I couldn’t stand without getting nauseous and had absolutely no appetite with just the thought of food seeming revolting (which you peeps know is not my baseline.) We arrived back mid-morning, laid under the comforter wearing our winter coats, hats and with our hands tucked to for about an hour of sleep before being woken by the city. Matt had his own outing, bringing back an herbal tea and a plain untoasted bagel before venturing more which I ate with caution before falling back asleep for a few hours. I listened to podcasts or watched Emma Chamberlain’s travel vlogs in between naps. Matt revisited some fav food spots and sent photos along his way – I love when he ventures out on his own, especially a few days into our travels as we’ve familiarized ourselves with the area. It's fun to hear his perspective on what he saw or places he found. He returned home with miso soup and lily flower for me and some rolls and soup for him. We ate at the dinner table and were both in bed by 8PM, listening to Armchair Expert as we fell asleep. We are wiped at the end of the days and can sleep so much longer without feeling like we have overslept. It's weird! I don’t know if it’s the altitude, filling our days too much, the change in food (and, well, the result of changes in food if you catch my driftttt) or the waking at 4AM one (well, two) too many times… but CDMX seems to be kicking our ass. 

Day 7 - Last day in CDMX

​After a cool 10 hours of sleep, we were ready to face the day. I woke up without nausea and Matt was ready for our last day in CDMX. We agreed to take it slow with food and walk the city. We had breakfast at Maque, Matt getting two tamales, an empanada, cup of grapefruit in cherry juice and an orange juice (not so slow now that I type it out) and I got the elote (corn) muffin, an orange juice and hot cappuccino. The waiter laughed when he realized both entrees were to be placed in front of Matt – dude can EAT. We strolled for about an hour with our jackets on, occasionally getting blessed by the warm sunlight as we passed through street openings before arriving at the Monumento de Revolucion built to commemorate the Mexican Revolution. It is the most beautiful structure we have seen since exploring CDMX – four massive archways frame this building with an open interior and two observation decks around it’s dome. We paid the $5 to take the panoramic glass elevator centered in its structure to the first tier providing views of the city unobstructed with bars and then climbed a series of tight, spiraling stairs reminiscent of the Eifel Tower’s to the even higher upper deck. It was a super fun, slight nerve racking and rewarding experience – our fav! We basked in the sunlight, walked around it’s circumference reveling the views, speculated about CDMX’s range in architecture down below and Matt got himself a pressed coin and a silly photo of him riding a horse. We took an Uber back, grabbed food from Tacos Don Juan (one cactus taco + one liver/onions taco for me and an al pastor torta for Matt) and an afternoon hot bevy before returning home to do laundry and pack for tomorrow.

Day 8 - On to Oaxaca

We caught an early morning ride to the airport to catch the 8:15AM bus to Oaxaca. It is a six hour ride (which ended up being more like 8) that goes out of the city and swerves through the mountains before descending into Oaxaca. The bus was comfortable despite the radio playing for the first two hours – hello, noise cancelling headphones! Our first impressions of Oaxaca are positive – colorful streets, low buildings, fresher air and quieter streets. For the first time in a week, we ate fresh vegetables! At a restaurant called Casa Teviche. We have been a little overwhelmed with how heavy the food was in Mexico City – a lot of meat and dairy. Whereas our first meal here contained fresh greens, lentil soup and some other veggie options. We love all kinds of food but have found eating this type of food for a week has been a bit rough for us as we were just not used to it. Matt is on the struggle bus today with something similar to a sinus infection. He was sniffling, had facial pressure, a clogged nostril and is just not feeling it. We stopped at three pharmacies before landing at the correct type of pharmacy to grab some nasal spray. He fell asleep as I was researching some places to eat the following day. Poor guy! We have had an interesting time with this country thus far. But it is all a learning experience! Our accommodations are quaint with good access to nearby restaurants and the city center. Tomorrow we will tour the neighboring regions of Oaxaca.

Day 9 - Oaxaca regions

Our first day in Oaxaca! We grabbed breakfast at the place we had dinner last night (because, delicious) and got picked up for a private tour to visit nearby regions of Oaxaca. Oaxaca is a region of Mexico that is the birthplace squash and corn and we are staying in the region’s capital, also named Oaxaca. It has been inhabited since 11,000 BC and is surrounded by pueblos or villages dedicated to specific crafts such as rug weaving or pottery. The city drew us because of their food culture. Because of its proximity to many farms and land used for growing food, the ingredients are fresh and the history is rich. The city is known for mole which is complex paste or sauce created with a lengthy list of ingredients ranging from chiles, fruits, nuts and sometimes chocolate (like mole negro) – it is placed on top of food, as a compliment to food or can stand alone as the main dish. It is also known for their hot chocolate which is void of that back-of-the-throat sting from the American sugary alternative and has a smooth and rich texture, sometimes made with milk but can be made with just water. And lastly, it is known for mezcal – a smoky, tequila-esq alcohol made from roasting the agave plant before distilling it. It used to be consumed by only poor people but, like so many other things, has been taken over and rebranded as artisanal and craft resulting in any number of mezcalerias around the city to taste and drink mezcal. Our tour was a bit of a disappointment with very little information provided by the guide who wasn’t that professional, a lot of driving between spots and the stops themselves being less than informational besides the rug weaving. We watched how they made the natural dyes for the yarn out of things like an insect that lives on cactus, when ground up is bright red and when you add acid from citrus turns bright red and when you add an alkaline like ash to that, turns purple! It was epic. We returned home and ate dinner near our spot. We sat on the steps of the Museo de las Culturas of Oaxaca to people watch and walked through a market where we bought artwork from local artists before turning in for the evening.