I have ambitiously bought a book in Spanish. Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal.
The other day, Guadalupe, my portera (doorperson) announced that it was the first rain despite it both technically being in the dry season and it not being the first time it’s rained at all. But it felt invigorating in a way previous rains have not.
Big drops hailed down for hours in the evening, rivulets overtook street edges, puddles formed, and it felt damp. To go outside was to be soaked. What relief it brought! The air feels fresh, the sky bluer and my daily battle with constant dust feels winnable.
I do think I feel a shift of late. I say that nervously cause it’s a good one and I’m not sure how long it’s sticking around for. Still sad, still crying, but I feel like I have a bit more energy. A little closer to the end of a tunnel. Like some of the things I’ve been doing are genuinely giving me joy rather than just being a part of my “fake it till ya make it” strategy. The one that really still stings is losing the Healy clan. And no one’s been like “I’m not talking to you”, but it’s different. In part because I moved and I chose that. But it’s hard not to think about how different it would be if we had had kids. How I couldn’t just be irrelevant. Cue feminist righteous anger.
Note to self: do not go to Polanco on a Friday afternoon. Or really anywhere you can’t walk. I have successfully purchased hiking poles though. Just a quick 1 hour and 15 minute Uber ride home… well mostly home, I got out and walked the last mile. This is lending credence to my theory that it’s quicker to walk everywhere here. It’s about a 7 km (4.3 mi) jaunt. It’s also confirming Fran’s belief that Polanco is “soooo far away”.
Work continues to be a little elevated with continued response to flooding in southern Oregon, which sadly means, I am missing the Saturday hike for which I bought the stupid poles.
Leo is incredibly in love with his new school/daycare. We arrive and he sits and just trembles with excitement while his tails pounds on the floor and does a little happy eager whimper. They have daily activities. Here is a video of Leo being smarter than the other dog (and also trying to cheat a little),
In addition to my ridiculously long trek to Polanco, I also joined my Spanish school on an outing to the Franz Mayer museum. Franz Mayer was a German who moved to Mexico in 1905, I believe in his 20s, and fell in love and stayed the rest of his life here. He was a successful investor and became an art collector, more than art really, almost like artifact. He collected crosses, ceramics, furniture, photography, paintings, compasses, etc. A lot of focus on antiquities, but also folk art. Prior to his death in 1975, he set up a trust to bequeath his collection to Mexico and establish a museum. It’s almost like a history museum, but oddly so. Focused on the upper classes of Mexico in the 1800s, maybe? Then with random Asian influence. Our tour was guided and in Spanish. Ok, now this may have been the clearest, crispest Spanish accent I have ever heard, but particularly given the subject matter and that the tour last 1.5 hours, I cannot believe how much I learned. It was a lovely moment of affirmation when a lot of my daily interactions seem to contradict the idea that I know any Spanish. Though I do imagine tour guides speak a somewhat more formal Spanish than my Uber drivers.
On Saturday I trekked down to Coyoacan to visit Viveros in hopes of encountering vegetable starts. My plan was simple, walk down to get some mileage in and then depending on purchases, maybe walk home. The latter did not happen, but it’s still a good 6 mile when you take the circuitous route I did.
And of course stopped for tacos on the way. Los Parados hold a special place in my heart. I came here on my first trip to Mexico City and have made it back on every time since, despite having forgotten the name. It’s a classic taco shop, with trompos and parillas going, big metal bins of salsa, and standing room only. It now has a Michelin recommendation.
Viveros is a park and a plant retailer in northern Coyoacan. It features a shaded running track and big wide grassy lanes up and down the center, it also serves as the city’s nursery and baby plants and trees are grown here and then relocated to their permanent homes. And one small corner hosts a plant market. A large plant market. While I didn’t have much luck on the vegetable start front, i did manage to find genovese basil (OMG! The Mexican basil sucks, so this is a fantastic find!), chives, hoja santa, oxalis, and thyme. Then found a very friendly maceta vendor to buy some pots from. Real estate is spendy in Mexico, so they go up. Which make stores extra 3 dimensional. This stall was maybe 10ftx15ft, but simply listing those dimensions would negate the 20ft high stacks. In the back left corner a young girl was playing lottery, next to her baby sibling who was tucked and well blanked in a crate between macetas. As in the states, too many plants were purchased to consider walking home.
Today, I thought I’d try Central de Abasto y La Nueva Viga. I’m not sure if they are technically one, but at worst they are neighboring markets. Covering 810 acres, this is the largest food market in the world. They are tours. I probably should’ve opted for that.
Central de Abasto was built in the Iztapalapa neighborhood in the 1970s on top of the last chinampas in the area. The neighborhood was undeveloped at the time, and the previous center of wholesale, La Merced, had already been swallowed by city expansion and could not further expand to meet the demands of a rapidly growing population. Fost forward to now and Central de Abasto has many of the same problems. Iztapalapa is now the most populous borrough in Mexico City and over 90% urbanized. Central de Abasto remains an important economic driver, providing financing to farmers and directly supporting 70,000 jobs. It’s the largest employer in Iztapalapa
The building itself reminds me of the Kingdome in being concrete, dark, and a bit ungainly. It consists of wide hallways between which even wider hallways go up, to allow for trucks to enter and then back to access the next hallway. These are really long. I think I went up and down about 3 and clocked almost 7000 steps. To say this was overwhelming, may be a be of an understatement. You walk down the fruit aisle and catch the smell of overly sweet mamey, moving into the sour sweetness of passionfruit and then a waft of Mexican guava. Past pollo vendors who snip snip chickens into wings, thighs & breasts, down the chile aisle where the air is spicy and even the vendors cough on occasion, through the teary eyed sweetness of mounds and mounds and mounds of onions, to the fresh and clean smelling citrus aisles.
Each stall is designed so that a truck can back into in and be unloaded directly into the stall for display. For citrus, they have what reminds me of those cages they use for shooting baskets in an arcade. Sometimes there is a person in the cage sifting through piles of oranges. A conveyer belt overhead distributes the fruit between cages. Each cage has a chute toward the bottom where vendors can fill boxes with the product.
Things I don’t know: if there is a map somewhere. if there is a part that is more friendly to non wholesale customers. Most products were sold by the box or bag, not even by the kilo. Upon asking a tomatillo vendor if I could buy a kilo, he kindly shook his head and explained, caja only. Apparently visibly crestfallen, I explained that was a bit too much for just me and was then instructed to open my bag and 20 tomatillos were deposited within it, free of charge.
So, I knew somewhere buried in this or adjacent to it or in some way very close is Nueva Viga, the second largest fish market in the world. Not shockingly I had very limited reception in the building. I had read on the internet I need to find “the wall of empanada vendors” and go past it. After an hour or so of navigating the perimeter to check if I was heading in the right direction and still having no idea where my destination was, I abandoned all hope. I needed to do a little work, feed Leo, feed myself, etc. And I gave up. Found an exit that I kinda knew and crossed over the pedestrian bridge, which led to a large bus station. About halfway through the bus station I was suddenly bombarded with empanada vendors. And yes, to my left was a sign that read “La Nueva Vega”. I did a very short stroll, cause I was insanely overstimulated, grabbed a beautiful looking tuna loin and realized I have some fish name googling to do before I return. But the fish looked beautiful and for a massive fish market, the space really didn’t smell.
Tacos of the week:
The sign said Ricos Tacos. What could go wrong. This was a lovely human in the Central de Abasto who very kindly recommened a campechano taco, let me do things all out of order, asked about where I was from, advised me on where to buy tomatoes.
We had taco of the week cause it was enormous.
This campechano was with longaniza and bistec with some deliciously grilled small onions, I think we’d call them spring onions in the states. The ones that have a bulb and also a green shoot. I think they must boil or roast or in some way cook them before they char them on the griddle, cause they are so tender and just beautifully salted. Experiments will be done.
Year One Project 
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