March 14, 2020
Our time in Mexico City was up. Before we came to Mexico City we had a view that it was dirty, polluted, crime ridden place with 20 million people stuffed into 1980’s brick buildings. This view was bolstered by many Mexicans we had met, some of whom had previously lived in Mexico City. Instead, we found a busy, modern metropolis with busy but wide, tree lined streets with bicycle lanes and rental bikes and scooters everywhere. Most days had blue skies and try as we might we couldn’t even get our pockets picked.
As we checked out of the InterContinental I felt that while the InterContinental did have nicer sheets, more TV channels and a bellman out front in a top hat and coat tails, I still preferred the Holiday Inn Express Reforma. The Holiday Inn was in a more central location, bigger rooms and a free breakfast. If the two hotels were the same price I would choose the Holiday Inn over the InterContinental. I have never understood how “Luxury” hotels that cost twice as much often make you pay for amenities that cheaper hotels offer free such as breakfast. Maybe I am nit picking but although both hotels provided two bottles of drinking water free every day, the bottles at the InterContinental were smaller.
We had one more place to go in Mexico City, not a museum, not a zoo, not a historical site nor anyplace found in any tour book. We went to the Super Mikasa Japanese supermarket. Here we found a store selling Japanese goods along with a couple of small Japanese restaurants. We had lunch at one of the restaurants serving…. Stuff on a stick. We had some teriyaki on a stick, some ribs on a stick and a few things not on a stick such as stuffed portabella mushrooms and grilled Salmon. Olivia got a bowl of Udon noodles with beef that she really liked. After lunch Holly went to make some last minute grocery purchases while Olivia and I enjoyed a really delicious snow cone.
With our final purchases made we took an Uber back to the north bus station for 153 pesos. There we faced the bewildering task of figuring out how to catch the bus back to Teotihuacan. There are eight departure gates and literally dozens of booths selling tickets for different bus companies offering routes all over Mexico. Eventually we found the right ticket booth and were able to get our 52 peso tickets. As we got to the airport style security checkpoint we found people going through a metal detector which was constantly beeping, putting some smaller bags through an X-ray machine while simply wheeling larger bags through the metal detector and a female security agent patting down just the women while the men did not need a pat down. Ah, security theater at its best, providing inconvenience without any actual security.
As we waited in line, two federal police men approached me, asked for my passport and wanted to inspect the cardboard box that I was carrying. After looking through my cardboard box full of dried noodles, Chinese sausage and other food stuffs they walked away without checking my backpack or the large rolling suitcase I had. I guess I can say that our first contact with the Mexican Police was positive, they didn’t murder us, arrest us or even ask for a bribe. On the contrary, they were very nice, if not exactly thorough. Well there goes that common conception that all Mexican police are corrupt.
We got on our bus with no further difficulties and started our ride back to Teotihuacan. It was a warm day and the bus had no air conditioning. Fortunately, the buses in Mexico stop and let on vendors selling various things to the passengers. We were lucky that instead of trinkets or USB cables (yes, we have encountered touts getting on the bus trying to sell USB cables and even witnessed a sale) we had one smart vendor selling popsicles. We got some Guava popsicles for 10 pesos each and they hit the spot on the hot ride back.
The bus dropped us off in the Central Square and we managed to get our large suite case, three back packs and a cardboard box of stuff back to the RV park. This was a challenge with the uneven sidewalks but we made it. At the RV park we found Jason and Kara parked next to Rover. We had met them in San Miguel and then again at Las Pozas. We didn’t have much time to say hi though as we had to hook everything back up, unpack and then we found that our fridge had gone out again while we were in Mexico City. Everything in our fridge was just cool, but no longer cold and our ice cream had melted. The problem only seems to occur when it is on propane and the fridge works fine on electricity so I just switched it back to electricity while Holly cleaned out the fridge in preparation for filling it back up with all the groceries we had purchased in Mexico City.
By the time we got everything sorted out it was dark and we were exhausted so we just had a quick dinner of noodles before going to bed.