Arrived by air in Mexico City about 2:30 on Tuesday February 18, 2020. Just before our descent we zig-zagged first southeast then southwest then southeast and, though the mountains seemed to have a little more vegetation, probably because they’re steeper than farther north in Mexico, there is a lot of population crammed into the little valleys. Inside the airport I was struck first by the face masks being worn by all the security and Emergency Service Personnel to protect them against the corona virus, already spreading out of China. The line past Immigration to get my passport stamped took a long time, but I was impressed by nice signs along the line saying that if I was worried about returning to my home country I could seek refuge just by telling the Immigration Officer. There were also #eyesopen videos being shown on large overhead digital screens, telling us to look around ourselves for human traffickers. Except for the very long lines, immigration inprocessing was no problem. Once my passport was stamped, I found my way past luggage carousels and must have looked confused to the pleasant security guard who pointed to an entire 40 feet long wall that opened into a hallway that led directly to Puerto Tres, exiting to parking garages, waiting pink and white city taxis, and a metrobus every 15 minutes from Terminal Two to the Central Historic District. It took me a while to realize there is no subway into town. At a currency exchange booth off to one side of the way I purchased $3500 pesos to add to $1500 pesos I’d cleaned it of the Salt Lake City Airport. This second batch was way.90 pesos for each dollar before getting my bus ticket/card from a vending machine for $65 pesos. The bus took me into town. That was quite a trip. The bright red bus labeled CDMX (Ciudad de Mexico) appeared to be almost new. When I stepped onto it the driver point to a light pad over my left shoulder. When I passed my plastic ticket/card over the pad it registered $30 with a green check mark meaning I was good to sit down, which I did in a single high seat right behind the bar holding the light pad.
The single high seat seemed the best vantage point. Within the airport grounds the road was fairly modern, but the traffic was threading across itself as buses and cars entered the flow from different points and made individual ways through the flow to other different points. Outside the airport the traffic was very heavy on narrow streets, with no street signs, and high crumpling cement curbs. The bus driver followed the narrow metro-bus drive way in the streets, trying to get around other bars or diving around crumbling cement pedestrian islands into traffic lanes around the backs of craning pedestrian heads. The route went unexpected ways, then u-turned around more crumbling cement and under the crumbling cement of steep freeway ramps that seem too narrow to carry a modern vehicle. After a couple of reroutes and u-turns I became C Conscious of being on a bus that seemed headed for nowhere I was going. I felt I was in a maze of cement buildinged streets in deepest Juarez. I asked, “A donde es el Zocalo?” The driver seeming non-plussed, waved his hand and rattled some rapid-fire Spanish over his shoulder at me. Then he stopped to pick up two women and a blind man. As the unsighted person climbed onto the bus, one of the women said in Spanish and with her eyes that I was sitting in the new guy’s seat. So, I moved.
The single high seat seemed the best vantage point. Within the airport grounds the road was fairly modern, but the traffic was threading across itself as buses and cars entered the flow from different points and made individual ways through the flow to other different points. Outside the airport the traffic was very heavy on narrow streets, with no street signs, and high crumpling cement curbs. The bus driver followed the narrow metro-bus drive way in the streets, trying to get around other bars or diving around crumbling cement pedestrian islands into traffic lanes around the backs of craning pedestrian heads. The route went unexpected ways, then u-turned around more crumbling cement and under the crumbling cement of steep freeway ramps that seem too narrow to carry a modern vehicle. After a couple of reroutes and u-turns I became C Conscious of being on a bus that seemed headed for nowhere I was going. I felt I was in a maze of cement buildinged streets in deepest Juarez. I asked, “A donde es el Zocalo?” The driver seeming non-plussed, waved his hand and rattled some rapid-fire Spanish over his shoulder at me. Then he stopped to pick up two women and a blind man. As the unsighted person climbed onto the bus, one of the women said in Spanish and with her eyes that I was sitting in the new guy’s seat. So, I moved.
Later in the long ride a woman transit cop boarded. She was well uniformed in neat blue pants and hat, with a starched white shirt and horn-rimmed glasses with large clear lenses. She honestly looked like a smiling model in a catalogue for how a police woman should look. She and the driver must have talked, because when our lines 4 bus was on Avenida de Venezuela in deepest and darkest Mexico City, she turned to me and said, “Zocalo.” It was another six blocks walk straight south to get to Constitution Plaza, Mexico City’s Zocalo surrounded by the National Palace, Santa Catarina Cathedral, the National Cathedral, my hotel, the Majestic and adjoining legislative offices, all over dozens of sparkling gold jewelry shops, and City Hall.
It was immediately obvious something unusual was afoot. I could hear Military band music, and see over head screens as in a rock concert and formations of soldiers wearing helmets and carrying their weapons. Before long I figured out that Mexico’s Armed Forces Day was about to be celebrated below my second floor room in the Majestic Hotel the next day. Until late into the night, with my head sandwiched between two big pillows, I heard Mexican Military music, with lots of drums and brass trumpets playing to a Latin beat. I slept well, and on waking the next morning decided not to take a bus from the airport north to Queretaro, but instead spend my time in Mexico City, the pumping heart of our southern neighbor. Outside my daylight window there are hundreds of armed security guards, bands playing more music, and thousands of soldiers and airmen and airwomen. Someone just shouted over the loud speaking system: “Viva Mexico!”
