MEXICO CITY: PASEO DE LA REFORMA AND CHAPULTEPEC PARK

March 11, 2018

I had eaten a large plate of rich, spicy mole, and I had about the worst case of acid reflux I had ever had that night. I was up until 3:00 AM, at which point I finally took two Benadryl just to get some sleep. That totally knocked me out until after 9:00 AM, so we got a late start. We left the hotel around 10:00 and headed for Paseo de la Reforma. 

The Paseo de la Reforma, or the "Promenade of Reform" is a very wide divided street modeled after the great boulevards of Europe, such as the Champs-Élyseés in Paris or the Paseo del Prado in Madrid. It was designed and built in the 1860s to link Emperor Maximilian's castle to the city center. 

Today it is the hub of the downtown business area and home to most of the city's tallest skyscrapers.

Photo from here

Our goal was to walk along the Paseo de la Reforma to Chapultepec Park (where Maximilian had his castle), about 1.75 miles from our hotel, 

In the aerial photo at the top of this post, you can see that the Paseo splits around a monument. I remember this monument well from my first visit to Mexico City with my mom in 1978. We could see it from our hotel room window. It is known locally as El Angel, and more formally as The Angel of Independence. It was built in 1910 during the presidency of Porfirio Diaz to commemorate the centennial anniversary of Mexico's War of Independence. 

It is always the hub of activity, but more so than usual on this day. There was a large demonstration  going on to raise awareness for the "poor and marginalized."  It involved a biking or running or walking or/rollerblading from Revolution Plaza, past this monument, to the Zocalo we had visited the previous day. There were lots of families out, and it looked more like a day of fun and celebration than a day of protest.

As we walked towards Chapultepec Park, Bob was having a great time chatting with the squirrels and Inca doves. I think his photos are especially beautiful.

We eventually made it to Chapultepec Park, one of the largest city parks in the Western Hemisphere, measuring about 1700 acres. By comparison, New York City's Central Park is 840 acres. The word "Chapultepec" means "grasshopper hill" in the indigenous language, and refers to a rock formation in the park. With 15 million visitors per year, it is one of the most popular hangouts in the city.

We hadn't had any breakfast, so the first thing we wanted to do after entering the park was eat, so we found a large outdoor restaurant that looked like it had lots of good options and was popular with locals.  

The shade was also appealing.

I had chilaquiles, which cost about $4.00. Delicioso!

Bob had a huarache of some kind that cost about $2.50. He enjoyed it.

We also had some fresh juice of some kind, which is always good in Mexico.

Overall the meal was wonderful, but the service was SO SLOW. It took over an hour to eat, which is maybe the Mexican way, but we had gotten a late start and wanted to get out and about.

After we paid our bill, we followed the streaming masses to the zoo. It seemed that everyone was going there, and we were particularly impressed that most of them were family groups. 

The Chapultepec Zoo is the only free national zoo in the world. It was founded in 1923 and houses almost 2,000 animals from more than 200 species. It was the first zoo outside of China to successfully breed giant pandas in captivity, and it has also had success in breeding California condors and Mexico wolves.

We hit the desert and Africa sections, but were exhausted by the crowds and heat and decided that was enough.

Hyena

Impala

Giraffe

Wildebeest

Sable antelope--the only animal here that we haven't ever seen in the wild.

Oryx/gemsbok

Oryx/gemsbok

Kangaroo

Next up: The National Museum of Anthropology, the largest and most visited museum in Mexico and one of the best museums of its kind in the world. It is full of ancient treasures from the Aztec, Mayan, Olmec, and other ancient civilizations.

The exhibition halls surround this courtyard with a stone "umbrella" in its center.

We speed walked through, but it still took over an hour and a half. It's a shame to give just that much time to this splendid museum, but it was better than missing it altogether.

Between my cell phone and Bob's photos, we captured a few highlights. This is a reproduction of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan (a site we went to later in the week) from about 1,000 AD.

We had already seen this model of Moctezuma's palace in the main zocolo, but here it is again.

Who can pass up a coiled rattlesnake? Not Bob.

One of the most iconic items in the museum is this enormous Aztec sun stone. It is almost 12 feet week and over 3 feet thick and weighs more than 54,000 pounds. Archaeologists place its creation in the early 16th century, right around the time of the Spanish conquest. Its complexity reveals a very sophisticated culture. Scholars have been trying to decipher its meaning for centuries. This is image is often used to represent Mexican cultural identity.

A second iconic piece in the museum is Moctezuma's headdress, said to belong to the Aztec emperor at the time of the Spanish conquest. The original is in a museum in Vienna, and this is a replica made in 1940 by a Mexican artist. It is 4 feet high and almost 6 feet across and features gold inlay and iridescent feathers of the quetzal bird as well as feathers from parrots roseate spoonbills, and cuckoo birds.

Yet another iconic artifact is this colossal head, carved by members of the Olmec civilization long before the Mayans and Aztecs. Altogether, 16 of these heads have been discovered in Mexico and 1 in Guatemala. Two of the heads are in this anthropology museum. This one is one of the smaller heads, measuring a mere 5.5 feet tall and 4.6 feet weed and weighing only 8 to 10 tons. Tiny.

I have no idea what the significance of this mermaid is, but I love her and the fish that are catching a ride on her.

I also have a weakness for tree of life sculptures. There were two in the Anthropology Museum and represent a more modern Mexico.

After the zoo and the museum, it was already time to eat again.We went back to the same outdoor seating area . . .


I ordered tacos al pastor (trying to keep the spice level down after a spicy breakfast), which were outstanding.

(Just a little salsa. How could I resist?)

Bob had a torta cubana, recommended to him by our nephew John Pedroza and one of the biggest sandwiches I've ever seen. This sandwich was invented by a cook on the Calle Republica de Cuba (Republic of Cuba Street) in  Mexico City--hence, its name. He used everything he had available that would fit in a roll.

What's in a torta cubana? There is no standard list of ingredients, but it is just about everything you can think of.

This was one of the few sandwiches Bob was unable to finish. He only got through about two-thirds of it.

We had hoped to make it to Maximilian's Castle, which I remembered from my visits in 1978 and 1979, but the park was closing and we were out of time. On our way out, however, we slipped in for a quick walk through the Modern Art Museum.

Photo from here

I was so glad we did because they have one of most favorite Frida Kahlo paintings: Los Dos Fridas, or The Two Fridas. Painted in 1939 shortly after her short-lived divorce from Diego Rivera, this almost 6-foot square painting shows Frida's dual nature: a modern, European woman in a white dress and a a traditional Frida in native Tehuana dress. Their two hearts are connected, and the European Frida's heart is cut open and exposed. That Frida clamps the main artery closed with a pair of scissors. I could write a few pages about this painting, but I'll spare you and just say it is fantastic.

We walked out through the sculpture garden . . .

. . . where I was intrigued by this place where it looked like visitors could re-enact the crucifixion, albeit in a less painful and permanent way.

Hordes of visitors left the park with us.

We walked back to our hotel, stopping to admire a beautiful fountain with a statue of Diana the Huntress in the center.

 This is a pretty bizarre bronze sculpture--lizard birds paddling a lizard boat. This and thirteen other bronzes by the artist Leonora Carrington were part of a temporary art installation and are probably no longer there. Too bad--this was really fun.

Our two meals in the park were more than enough food for the day, although we did return to Neve Gelato in the shopping mall near our hotel for our kind of a nightcap. It wasn't the best gelato we've ever had, but it sure tasted good after the 10 to 12 miles we had walked that day!