We survived the drive to Teotihuacán during Holy Week, but left the car unattended since. It's not fear of the traffic that holds us back. The streets of Taiwan trained us in urban stampeding. The roads are rough here, Hail Mary Mother of God rough, but we've got 4-wheel drive and our car was purchased second hand anyway. That didn't keep us off the streets. No, it was something more, something which ran deeper into the heart of what makes it difficult to move a family overseas and into strange lands: I get lost. Simple, really. I cannot understand the GPS. It's even set to English. No luck. Give me 5 miles of road and I'll give you classic, unabashed road rage to cover up my operational inadequacies. What's to be done?
We could let my son drive! Problems solved! He's patient. He's cheerful. He picks up languages quickly. He doesn't have a raging hair on his body. He's three years old.
It was a good plan. Admit it. I was ready to work the pedals with my hands while he played with the steering wheel and punched the buttons on the stereo. Eyes on the road be damned!
Plan B. I would drive. I would keep my cool. I would pay attention to the nice lady in the GPS with hints of Wales in her accent. "After 400 meters stay in the left lane, then turn right." You beauty. You say that to all the angry drivers, don't you?
What made our new plan truly sound was choosing a destination the name of which we could not pronounce, Welsh accent or not: Xochimilco. The Spanish "X" confounds me like nothing else. I like it doubled, in beer commercials, but don't think too much of it as a starter. "Sochimilco." That's better.
Our goal was to find either the canals, or the famous markets, so we set the GPS destination for the archeological museum. It was the only POI our Tom Tom could find which sounded remotely interesting and surely it had to be near the canals. Off we went.
I got lost. There's really no need for filler here. I failed to find either of our two objectives or even the museum, despite repeated calls from Ms. Zeta-Jones to turn right.
I reversed course and punched "Embassy" off the favorites list. I was mad and I needed the Americans to fix this. (It is worth mentioning here that my wife does not have a nickel for every time this has happened, but she was wearing that look. The five-cent smirk.)
I turned right. Dear Ms. GPS Lady, if I ever doubt you again, please give me the courage to pass the keys directly to my son and to give my wife a very large cache of nickels. We had found the embarcadero and its glorious gridlock of colorful, flat-bottomed skiffs.
Dad had not ruined the day. We boarded our barco; it had been simply christened, Doris, unlike most of the other vessels whose names blared proudly from the pages of Mexican Catholicism, local landmarks, or maybe just mothers and sweethearts of gondoliers: MariaGuadalupe, Angelica, Oaxaqueña, Suzi. Enough grace had been saved from the path of my earlier tantrums to put smiles on faces.
There is enough cheese in México for everybody to overindulge, and the short stretch of canals we explored today certainly topped up on the queso early in the morning in preparation for the Saturday onslaught of tourists and city denizen looking to escape the heat. And yet, moments on our simple voyage stand out in memory for their surprising serenity. Moments like this one:
Or this:
And this:
Yes, the cheese was there. It was tacky. Refuse drifted by constantly, lazily in the opaque waters. Paddling vendors hawked Coca-Cola, chewing gum, and tequila, as well as serenades from rhinestone-studded mariachi bands from their floating stages.
But mostly it was just us, our pilot, the lily pads and the most welcome, cool breezes one could hope for. We were joined by an egret and a heron at one bend. Their presence comforted me a great deal, not in the least because I'm sure they weren't there for the tequila.
It should come as no surprise that all this talk of cheese made us quite hungry. So, we tipped our pilot, bid farewell to Doris, climbed back into our dustbox, turned on the sultry satellite guide, and chose the only destination I could think of which didn't involve me leading my poor family around one of the largest cities in Latin America on an invective-laden wild goose chase: the U.S. Embassy. I had been working there six weeks. I must be able to find it by now. More importantly, one of the best little taquerías in town is just down the street from the chancery. These tacos are good!
El Caminero. It's just a hole in the wall, but I've eaten there six times already and it was with great joy today that I discovered they are open Saturdays.
Dad didn't screw up completely. He managed to turn right when it mattered most. He still can't pronounce Xochimilco correctly, but he did succeed in getting his family there. And they didn't go hungry. Hats off to a fine day in México City. Next time you're driving. (I'll bet you a nickel.)
