Mexico City is Big

Mexico City is really, really big.

The plane we flew in on, was also really, really big.

Mexico City is surrounded by mountains, which we could see in the distance as our plane came in for landing. Between us and the mountains was nothing but thousands upon thousands of houses. As we came closer, we could see that they were in all sorts of strong colors, but we could also see that they looked pretty run-down.


The airport somehow felt small, too small for the airplane and much too small for the city. Mexicans aren't rich, they obviously don't fly as much as us spoilt Europeans. After some paperwork and much queuing, we finally got through customs and were greeted by a small crowd of cheering Mexicans, so happy to see us! Well, happy to see someone anyway...

On the plane we had realized that we had forgotten to write down the address of the room we were renting. The only contact details we had for the landlord were phone numbers in my phone's outgoing call-list, numbers that had never been answered. We filled out the immigration forms from memory. We did pretty well, we only got the name of the street and all the numbers wrong.

I figured we would find an Internet connection soon enough to discover the truth. Airports always have WiFi, right? Ewelina was a bit skeptical, I lived the Icelandic motto: Þetta reddast! (It will work itself out).

It did. After the cheering Mexicans, we hung out outside some random café, borrowing free WiFi and reading GMail on my phone until we really knew where we were going. Then we extracted much money from an ATM and found a cab 'home'.

We have a nice, if quite basic, room and our own bathroom. We have WiFi and cable television. We share the house with an American/Mexican couple and the cleaners come on Wednesdays. We are about 15 minutes walk from the center of Coyoacan, which we are told is one of the city's nicest neighborhoods. We are 2 minutes away from a subway station which takes us directly into the center. We have walked a lot, we have eaten in ridiculously cheap restaurants, we have played pool and we have gotten drenched by the rainy season's storms. We have listened to beggars shout, sing and act out little plays on the subway. We have waged war with mosquitoes, we have gone shopping and we have cut my hair.

I have become quite addicted to my Android's GPS and the AndNav2 program which has kept us from getting lost at all.

Jeg-lag hasn't been a problem and we haven't gotten sunburnt or robbed or sick.

So far so good!