Mexico City is an awesome to place to arrive into by plane. And if like me, you have left your trip somewhat unplanned; and if like me, your spanish skills amount to pretty much nada; and if like me, you have no friends or family waiting at the airport to give that feeling of reassurance, flying into Mexico City is a trip!
I was cool as a cucumber the whole flight. Chit chatting the whole way to a chap who buys jewellery in Taxco and sells it on market stalls around the UK. Then I caught a glimpse of Mexico and my jaw dropped. Double take. Hummina hummina. My head started spinning (it continues to do so any time I hang out in the big smoke. Drunk on altitude). It was the never ending city. The plane flew in one direction, no holding pattern, no circles, no banking this way and that. We just kept on going. And the mass of glittering lights below just kept on going, getting denser and denser even. How the hell was I going to find my way around in that? Ok, calm. In too deep. Not enough research. Why put yourself in this crazy situation. I don't know anybody here. Way over my head. No back up plan. Definitely haven't done my research. I started getting panicky. Not much, but I remember not feeling so cucumberish anymore. Heart pounded a little more. Mind raced. Words became stilted. Brain stuttered. Turns out, Mexico City (Distrito Federal) treated me gently.
Sure my bag was the last to show up on the carousel. But it was pretty easy to get some pesos, it was pretty easy to get an overpriced sitio taxi and it was pretty easy giving the driver some directions to the hotel, which I had written out in spanish. Through some stroke of genius or fate I had somehow booked myself into The Red Tree House, the friendliest, comfiest, bestest hotel in the world. There's a reason why that little b&b is constantly booked out and always unavailable for my last minute jaunts to DF. May sound like an advertisement, but I consider it more of a shout out - if I hadn't stayed at the RTH, I don't think I would have stayed in DF as long as I did and I doubt that I'd still be in Mexico now. Which is many months in the future.
So I tried to find a good vantage point which would convey something of the sweet jesus-ing hugeness of the city. But even from the plane I could only get mere fractions of it in my camera sight. Still, check out the horizons. Because just when you think that's the city done - there's more...so much more.
