Only in Mexico---Xochimilco

Yes I know, it's been a while, I think I may have my blogging mojo back, we'll see...

Xochimilco (say: so-chee-mil-co) is a southern delegation, or municipality, located in the southern part of the city. If you are familiar with the history of Mexico City, Xochimilco has miles of canals which is the only evidence left of Lake Xochimilco whose destruction by the Spanish began in the 1500s. The canals are mainly a tourist destination but there is still some evidence of chinampa "a method of ancient Mesoamerican agriculture which used small, rectangle-shaped areas of fertile arable land to grow crops on the shallow lake beds in the Valley of Mexico." Xochimilco is a Nahuatl word meaning "flower field place" or "plantation of flowers" or "flower seeded field" depending on who you ask.  It is the Venice of Mexico. 

I won't go into the history or it's importance on the blog (this is going to be long enough) but in my opinion I find it fascinating and still remember some of the stories from my Mesoamerican/Pre-Columbian course years ago. Probably one of the reasons I was so excited to visit and see it in person.

Out of the entire family, I was the most excited to visit Xochimilco.  The floating gardens as well as the experience of being pushed around on a trajinera (flat bottomed boat) while food vendors kept your stomach happy is quite a treat for this mommy. Once we got to Xochimilco, Weston and Braedon perked up and realized it was going to be a fun experience and of course Jamison was loving the freedom to somewhat roam the boat.

The first thing we noticed was how clean the water was.  We had been told by friends that the water was pretty nasty but it was so clear, clear enough to see fish and the bottom of parts of the canal.  The air smelled fresh, well fresh for Mexico City, but the air was cool and very comfortable.  I find it hard to believe our friends who said it smelled awful, maybe we hit it at the right time because it wasn't at all stinky. 

When you arrive in the city center, men on bicycles will try to get your attention an offer to take you to one of the many boat docks throughout the city center. This guy found us and nearly got run over as he fought his fellow guides over us. We followed him to one of the docks (Embarcadero Belem) where he hooked us up with a canal guide. 

Leaving Embarcadero Belem

Oooh, I wanted so badly to buy some of these plants but I convinced myself to show some restraint.  I bought other things that would be easier to take with us once we left Mexico. 

Bronwyn was a doll the entire trip.  She ate her lunch of carrots and bananas and then sat in her seat laughing and cooing at everyone who floated by us.  She wasn't too happy about the Mariachi music but she liked the marimbas. 

Kris ordered our lunch from this camera shy lady.  Man she knew how to cook and made great pan fried beef, rice, beans, nopalitos and tortillas...delish!  Nopalitos are diced nopal cactus pads.  I think they are pretty slimy when eaten alone but I like them in tacos.  Nopalitos are also the best contraceptives...ha ha ha *snort* ha ha ha...for those of you who speak Spanish, you KNOW darn good and well that's a good joke. 

The kids and I love the Mexican boiled elote on a stick (corn), but keep that mayonnaise nastiness far far away! I know you have seen it slathered in mayo, cojita cheese and chili powder on movies like "Nacho Libre" but if you haven't then imagine corn on the cob slathered in mayo, rolled in crumbled cojita cheese and doused in chili powder. The cheese I don't mind so I take mine with butter sprinkled with the salty cheese.

Here Kris is ordering some for me and trying to convince the woman that "Yes, my wife really doesn't want any mayonnaise on it and only put a little cheese on it please...No really, no mayonnaise...no, not even a little bit, just butter and cheese please"  So she puts mayonnaise on it anyway...These people love their mayonnaise...GAG.  I finally got one the way I wanted it.

Kris and I love Mariachi bands, even the horrible ones.  When we lived in Denver we often went to our favorite restaurant "Las Hadas" on Friday nights specifically to hear the Mariachis.  Another great thing about Xochimilco is that you can have personal "concerts" for your boat. You can wave a group over and they will play for you so have some requests lined up. Xochimilco doesn't only have mariachi bands. Here is a short video of marimbas as they passed by us:

I really wanted to hear salterios...what the heck is a salterio? Ummm, I have no idea what they are called in English but according to Wikipedia it's a type of zither. All I know is that my Grandma Ward had something similar that we always played with but we called it a lap harp...anyway, here they are called salterios and I think they are BEAUTIFUL to listen to when a group is playing them. I especially like hearing traditional Mexican music played on them. Unfortunately, the only group we passed were restringing their instruments...BUMMER! Here's a video I took from youtube just so you get an idea of what they sound like and just imagine 5 of them played together from soprano down to bass:



Which leaves the other musical offerings of Xochimilco; mariachi, norteños y tríos. We had a Mariachi band come over. Here is a snippet of our performance. Of course the kids wanted to her "La Cucaracha"...it's what the musicians get for asking the kids what they wanted to hear. My video of them playing that was completely blurry so here's a bit of what they played before it.



Another short video of a Mariachi band we passed but notice what is written on the ceiling of our boat..."Propina $150 Gracias"...which brings us to our next experience.



Propina means "tip" and our canal guide has a recommendation of a $150 peso propina, about $12 USD.

Kris and I tend to be very generous tippers so even before we saw this we had both decided to tip our guide very well and agreed that the peso equivalent of $25 USD would be good.  We really liked the guy. Turns out he was nothing but a common shyster, what a surprise.  We found this out only after we got home from our trip to Xochimilco.

Several friends had commented on how affordable a day trip out to Xochimilco was.  We were shocked to have been charged about $225 USD!!!!  We thought "wow, our friends must be pretty hoity-toity if they think that's affordable.  We won't be doing that again!"  We still gave him his tip after Kris had to run to an ATM to get more cash to pay for everything. 

We get home and I looked up some more information on the history of the canals which took me to the Xochimilco government tourism page and to a list of prices per boat size.  I was fuming to see it was $140 pesos (about $10 USD) for the boat size we got per hour, that's the price PER BOAT, not per person by the way.  We had been out for 3 hours.

 By chance I saw this at the bottom of one of the pages:

"Cualquier alteración a los precios y tarifas oficiales, reportarla en los Módulos de Atención Turística ubicados en los Embarcaderos"~~~Translation~~~"Any alteration to the official prices and tariffs, report it at the Tourist Stations located at the docks."  So these guys rip people off enough for it to be posted on the government website.  Yea, too late and we learned a very expensive lesson...again.  You must research everything before you leave the house!  We are just too dang trusting.  

This same thing happened to several others after we told a few people, turns out getting ripped off is a common occurrence here...ya think?

 

One friend, who is from Colombia, (oooh, and she's got the attitude to match, don't mess with her! Love her to pieces) told us about some friends who came to visit and went to Xochimilco on a recommendation from her that it was a very affordable little excursion.  They called her on their cell and said "you said this was affordable!  Are you crazy!?!?  It's over $200 USD!  You didn't tell us to bring that much cash!"  My friend told them to give the cell phone to their canal guide and she proceeded to threaten him down to a lower price complete with "it's people like you that ruin Mexico!"  I told her we should have thought to call her but we just figured our definition of "affordable" was WAY different from how our friends defined it.  

 

The worst thing about the whole trip was that it was such a perfect, fun, relaxing day with my favorite people and I let the shyster ruin it.  It had been quite some time since we had all enjoyed such a trip.  Usually one of the kids is bored or Kris is grumbling because he hates road trips and crowds but this time EVERYONE was happy and having a great time.  Then we find out how bad we got ripped off and that's all I could focus on.  Why I let some piece of trash canal guide ruin a perfect day and have that much control over me shows an obvious weakness.  It took me several days and a lot of prayer to get over it and re-focus on how much I enjoyed being with my family in spite of the smarmy scum bag.  To be honest, I just hoped he had a wife who was sick or a kid he was trying to put through school.  It's just part of the tourism economy here to take advantage of stupid gringos...it is so common to the point it's a national joke.  I was more  furious with myself for falling into the "stupid gringo" trap and not doing the research before we left.  It is still taking a lot of work to get over my stupidity.  My only consolation is I'm not alone at all. 

Kris and I are "fly by the seat of our pants" types when it comes to trips.  Lets just get in the car and see where it takes us.  You can't do that here in Mexico and we have learned our lesson several times over.  I'm ashamed to say this wasn't the first time we've been ripped off but it is definitely one of the worst.  Since this trip I have taken the time to research everything.  It takes some of the fun out of our "spontaneous" trips but we'll just make up for it when we get back to the US. 

Fortunately he was the last straw in a very long list of people who have ripped us off here.  Kris and I have gone from being very trusting people to scrutinizing everything.  Our furniture guy is not part of this group, of course, because he's just a truly good person and has proven to be so from the very beginning.  I think that's why good honest people here in this country stand out so much.  When you are a good person here in Mexico, you are truly a gem in a pile of poo and really have a wonderful spirit about you that is magnified a thousand times over.  According to our Stake Presidency (the leadership over our church area), those are the type of people who are the only hope Mexico has and I completely agree. 

After all of that I would still go back in a second.  If you visit Mexico City you MUST see Xochimilco but just don't get ripped off. 

This creeped all of us out.  I only took a few shots of a small section of about 50 yards of headless and limbless dolls.  Turns out it is the entrance to a curandero, or a healer.  He must be very good because one step towards this entrance and I'm thinking "yep I'm healed, lets go"

Next....Our fabulous trip to Cholula and Puebla...this next trip was nothing but amazing but then again, Puebla is one of my favorite cities here in Mexico and I'd live there if I could even if it is at the foot of live volcanoes...ok, maybe not live there because I've been to Pompeii and still have nightmares but the place is great.