Curiosity Roving : V.11 : Safety Third

Distrito Federal · a city of monuments

                March 18, 2020

            Curiosity Roving : V.11 : Safety Third

Curiosity Roving
The Grand Adventures of L Rose Goossen

V.11 : Safety Third
in which we explore dangerous liaisons
_____________________________

Greetings and Salutations! 

And welcome to the eleventh volume of Curiosity Roving. I thank you kindly for your attention. It's been a little more than one year since I, hungover and half-blind in Ho Chi Minh City, finally made the long-pondered decision to quit my rich sedentary life and catapult this one-woman traveling circus back onto the road in order to explore fresh frontiers, find friends, and frivolously spend my accumulated monies. I regret nothing. Thank you for joining me on this wild ride.

I am writing to you today from Mexico City, which is North America's most populous cosmopolitan megalopolis, with twenty-one million people living inside its official bounds. Before 2016, the accepted local abbreviation for this place was DF, for Distrito Federal, but it has now been rebranded as CDMX, for Ciudad de Mexico. 
a city of monuments

Three weeks ago, I flew all the way down to Panama because indirect flights are cheaper, and the flight attendants poured me doubles in my handy collapsible travel cup. When I arrived in the big city after nearly three moths in the relative boonies, I wandered the parks and museums with my jaw scraping the sidewalks. I replaced my shoes, which is always a mildly agonizing endeavour as I am only allowed one pair and I like the expensive ones. I took a bus to Acapulco and another one back. I brought along an insidious skin affliction from the poisonwood tree of Belize, and a sweet companion from the Estados Unidos. I said many things in Spanish that I had never said before. I have been watching the grand drama of the coronavirus as it escalates on the world stage, and it swept rather aggressively into my happy little bubble just a few days ago. As it turns out, a taco a day does not keep a pandemic away.
it's still a beer down here

This is a very awkward time to be traveling. I usually begin composing these letters around the tenth day of the month, but with the rapidity and extremity of the developments surrounding this moment of global panic, it was difficult to understand what the real story of this time was going to be. Every day still brings surprises, but that's business as usual for me.

Here in Mexico, awareness of the coronavirus is still pretty minimal. One week ago, I watched the elderly patron of the Barbaroja pirate bar as he gave my companion a very firm parting handshake, and I cringed, and I knew then that my own perspective had shifted. A few days later, that same companion flew home two days earlier than expected, sliding back into the USA just before air travel between the two countries became jeopardized. Many of my readers around the world are now in some variety of quarantine. I'm not quite there yet. By that I mean that I am still technically allowed to leave my rented rooms, but I generally do not. My plans for the weeks and months ahead have been completely vaporized by the fact of uncertainty and I am taking it one day at a time. 
skull and skyline

CDMX and Acapulco are very different places, but they share the distinction of a seriously mauvaise reputation. In global homicide rankings, Acapulco is second only to Tijuana, and the international profile of CDMX is coloured with garish stories of chaos, brutality, and street crime. The selection of these destinations was more opportunistic than intentional; the decision was made based on metrics of cost, distance, and access, without thinking too particularly about what the cities themselves might have to offer. Frankly, I am glad to have made such an ignorant choice, because to have been balked by statistics would have meant missing out on some real diamonds amongst all the rough.
actually pretty polished

The historic center of Ciudad de Mexico is lined with tall jacaranda trees, which are currently blooming in pale purple. There are shoe-shine men serving customers seated in tall red booths on the sidewalks and in the plazas. The bakeries are stacked with pastries that look like cartoons glazed with butter. The local Chinatown, over on Dolores Street, is draped with red lanterns and paper parasols. In trendy, bourgeois Roma/Condesa, the dog park fills each morning with happy mammals in fur and spandex and every night, the bars are full and glittering. In the central square, or zócalo, the ruins of the 700-year-old Aztec city of Tenochtitlan stand right beside the Metropolitan Cathedral and the National Palace. 
view from the canopy

In yet another instance of Spanish language being maybe just a little bit drunk, the word zócalo actually translates as "baseboard". At one point, there was a plan in place to build a column in the central square in honour of Mexican independence, which was recognized in 1836. The building of the column never progressed beyond the baseboard, and somehow that word came to be favoured above all others to signify "central square". I can confirm that, five hours to the south, they've use the same word in Acapulco.
under the dune-coloured dome

Acapulco is the grand dame of Mexican beach tourism. In the 1950s, following an upgrade in basic infrastructure, the port town became a fashionable place for Hollywood celebrities to go on vacation, and many stars acquired second homes for convenience. The economy boomed, and the population exploded. By the 1960s, the resort culture of the middle class was swiftly encroaching on that of the A-list.
nice place ya got here

These days, there are almost no foreign tourists in Acapulco, due to the city's statistics of violence, an official warning from the US government to avoid traveling there, and the accessibility of new and novel destinations like Cancún. However, domestic tourism is still booming, and Mexican families are masters of the beach game. On a typical day in Acapulco, it is quite normal to see three generations of people sitting around a little plastic table on the crystal sand, with a fully stacked picnic and/or cooler minibar, everyone playing in the surf and smiling, more than likely accompanied by some bubbly pop music on a portable speaker. Pray to your hypothetical higher power of choice that their playlist may be longer than three songs, because they will definitely be there until sunset.
bay of Acapulco

Of course, it's not all Disney. I rode one local bus that had me fearing for my life and another for my eardrums. When a person is a pedestrian, the traffic lights are not the babysitters. I watched two very large and very drunk men get swept into the undertow at sunset on a normal weekday. La Tortuga, a modest Acapulco restaurant since 1960, suddenly and mysteriously closed in the middle of the week. One morning there were police, then all the furniture was out on the sidewalk, then the sign was gone, and it had effectively disappeared. Out on the beach, I turned down a number of wandering salesmen with grey heads and bound knees who had probably been working the local market for about the same length of time. And where I'm sleeping these days, I certainly do not go out at night.
but it's fine in the daytime

So yes, diamonds, and yes, roughness. On a last pandemic note, here in Mexico, the government is officially choosing to prioritize the economic hamster wheel over risk mitigation. Testing is not an option, and the borders of the neighbouring countries are not exactly open. I am grateful that I still have the option to take buses and go for walks. It is tense. This evening, I will begin a journey to the southeastern mountains in the state of Chiapas, because staying in a tightly crowded and highly charged city center is a definitively bad idea at this time when total annihilation seems to be just a handshake away.

Reader, fear is the mind-killer. Let's all keep breathing.

Until next time, stay curious. -- Rose

Appendix: Odds and Ends
The last videos from the crop that I produced in Belize are now online:

A session of singing crystal bowls with Nancy Kaasay Watters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jELLe1p3tlI&t=6s

Two live numbers from a Blues Meets Girl kinda day:

https://www.facebook.com/BluesMeetsGirl/videos/2806535142764978/

https://www.facebook.com/BluesMeetsGirl/videos/2609411465969186/

Future Joy's recap video from Eternal Sun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UCYa6w2GM8

And here are some very soothing albums from some people who let us sing along:
https://samanvayakirtan.bandcamp.com/album/samanvaya-kirtan
https://www.luminous-tones.com/portals-of-grace-cd.html

And another healthy dose of party time from good old San Francisco:
https://soundcloud.com/sidebet/sets/

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