On the flight from Hartsfield-Jackson to Mexico City, hovering 40,000 feet in the air with all my possessions for the next year crammed under the seat in front of me, I started thinking. I grabbed the armrests, eyes squeezed shut, pushing, pushing. Sweat ran down my forehead, my legs spasmed, until finally it hit me. "I got it!" I yelled. "A thought!"
I was thinking (am still thinking) about the extent to which I could (can) commit to the general backpacker lifestyle. Mostly, the backpacker lifestyle from what I've seen is about pursuing fun. You put aside other concerns (health, relationships, money) for a while, and you drink a bunch and do a lot of drugs and every now and then do some yoga, and you hook up with strangers in the common room, and you live a sort of floating existence. It's neat.
It's neat, but I'm not sure it's me. As I realized during my brain blast on the plane, the way I've lived for the past three years has been somewhat antithetical to the smoking-poop, ride-the-high community I was submersing myself into like a diver in the deep sea, surrounded by strange, misshapen fish. Comparatively, the past three years I've been, well, kind of buttoned-up. Even respectable, sometimes. It's best explained through examples.
First, an example of the backpacker lifestyle, as explained by my new friend Cas.
"There I was in Medellin, doing a whole bunch of blow all night at this party, taking shots, wham, bam, dancing, doing my thing, doing bumps of tusi (tusi), and I woke up on a roof with all my clothes gone."
And here is my daily routine from the last two years:
"There I was at 5:45, cold-showered, cup of coffee in my hand, driving into the high school to educate the immigrant youth. Took a bump of breakfast (oatmeal with blueberries every day for the past two years), ripped a shot of lunch (chicken breast and quinoa salad every day for the past two years), then went for a run, drank a gallon of water, avoided processed sugar, said no to drugs, spent time in the sun, monitored my screen time, read a book, and went to bed at the moral hour of 9 pm."
(I was kind of neurotic.)
The thing is, that lifestyle has served me well. It made me better at my job. It helped me run strange distances. It made me feel good. And it made me like, better than everyone else?
I debated this debacle as I climbed onto the most crowded bus I've ever been on from the airport. I twirled the thought in a two-step as I pushed my big backpack through the crowds of a busy, muy-caliente street. I rodeo-wrangled the reasoning as I found my hostel.
I decided, screw it!! I'm not freakin' changing!! This is me!! I'm on top!! Mexico will change!! Everybody's running!!
I walked in to the hostel reception and smelled patchouli. The guy behind the desk came and gave me a hug. "Bienvenido, brother," he said. They sold condoms, Coronas, and Pedialyte at the desk. Salsa music blared from the courtyard. I swallowed, a chicken-quinoa-salad-sized lump stuck in my throat.
First views of Mexico City off the bus
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A rundown of the days:
Day 1 (Tuesday): Nutty bus from airport. Big, hot, colorful city. Make it to hostel around 3, go to exchange money, eat tacos from street. Yes. Good. Make hostel friend (Cas). Went to lucha libre tour with hostel. Kind of like WWE, but more spinning (I think). Drink beer in stadium watching men wrestle in underwear and masks. Good day.
Day 2 (Wednesday): Sleep not great. 12-person bunk bed room. 1 person snoring. 1 person in and out of room all night. Why? Wake up at 6am. Run (yeah!!!). More tacos ( yeah!!!). Walking market tour, eat scorpion (so-so!!!). Pulque bar. Drink at hostel, then bed.
Day 3 (Thursday): Start to feel not great. Maybe tacos. Make resolution to eat less tacos. Walk to market, buy oatmeal and fruit and vegetables. Eat one small taco on walk back. Go to park and exercise with hostel friend Cas. Start to feet more not great. Hot. So hot. Stop at pharmacy. Back to hostel. Get sicker and sicker and sicker. So, so ill. In and out of room all night, in and out.
Day 4 (Friday): A little better. Yoga in AM. Go to big park with three hostel friends. Nap in park on grass. PM, go to bar in different neighborhood. Drinks and food. Try to find club, unsuccessful, return to hostel.
Day 5 (Saturday): Go back to park, solo run. Eat at little food counter in market. One taco for good measure. Listen to young punk band. Watch movie, bed.
Day 6 (Sunday): Wake up early, take bus to Teotihuacan (pyramid). Get lost. Find bus. Make it to temple. Do audio tour to save money. Very cool. Bus back. Food w/ friend. Read, bed.
Overall, a most excellent week. High highs and low lows, as adventures should be.
The dream job, nap time, fuel, sunrise, pulque bar, and buggy lunch
Following, a few thoughts/explanations of the above:
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Tummy Trouble
(This is gross and I apologize)
Mexico City is a bustling metropolis of 22 million people. Its busy center is dominated by the impressive El Zócalo square, and the city contains a plethora of neighborhoods featuring tree-lined streets, colorful open markets, food stalls, urban parks, and the conveniences and delights of a modern mega-city. And everyone visiting there, I think, has diarrhea.
The first two days in Mexico I hadn't come to this realization yet. I walked through the markets, marveling at the colorful buildings, the crowds, the wide, blue sky. I ate taco after taco after taco on the street. The meats, the salsas! Oh, the shelter of innocence!
And then it hit me. First, a rumbling in the tummy. I went to the pharmacy and said, "Me duele el estómago." The lady leaned in close to me. "Diarrhea?" she asked in a whisper. I nodded. She gave me a packet.
As Thursday progressed, the little rumbling started to resemble the rumbling of a millionaire mega-yacht. I was sick as a dog. Fever, chills, diarrhea. In and out of the bathroom, in and out. I shit so much on Thursday I threw my hips out of alignment. I shit so much my teeth hurt.
I took the pills from the pharmacist, which turned out to be an antibiotic mixed with pectin, the thing they make Jello out of. So, which the antibiotic fights through the ocean of e coli inside you, your contents turn into more of a Jello instead of liquid smoke. It works.
But that's when I realized, that's just Mexico City. It was happening to everyone around me, all the time. I would sit in the hostel's shared bathroom with diarrhea while all around me in the other stalls people had diarrhea too. It happens so much, in fact, that there's a whole mini economy around it. In response to the gringo need (constant toilet access immediately right now), there has also sprung up a sweet public-restroom-for-pay model. For just 5 pesos (30 cents), you can wander into some alley, do the unholy over a metal toilet with no seat, and then go about your day. When everyone has it, it's like no one has it.
"I don't feel good," I said at one point to my friend Yaron.
"Nobody feels good," he told me in a thick Israeli accent. "You just shit and keep going."
Words to live by.
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Highlights and Memories
Food
Gastric distress aside, there has been some really great stuff here. The food is fantastic, and the drinks are fantastic and cheap. Not a lot of vegetables. On my first day I got three tacos from a street vendor and they were delicious and I gave the person the amount of money they asked for and after walking a block I saw the woman running towards me. "Massachusett!" she yelled at me. "Massachusett!" I turned and she handed me some change.
I sat down at a counter at a stall in a market on Saturday for late lunch and the lady asked me if I wanted pierna o muslo. I said, what's muslo? I could feel everyone there looking at me, the skinny white guy at the lunch counter. "I don't know how to explain it," the woman told me. This guy got up from the other end of the counter and walked over behind me. He squeezed my calf and said "pierna" and then squeezed way up on my thigh. "Muslo." Everyone laughed. I got the pierna.
The people have been fun and kindhearted, and it's always neat to get into the mix.
The lunch counter
Friends
On Wednesday I made three good pals in Casper, Yaron, and Lisa (they're hostel people so I don't have to protect their identities), and I spent the next few days exploring the city, going to markets, and eating street food with them. We had a great night on Friday at a bar in a trendy neighborhood playing drinking games at our table while the server brought us a whole host of things we didn't ask for (mostly mezcal shots). On Saturday Yaron headed back to Israel, and Lisa left to California today. Casper's still traveling, and I think I'll meet up with him down the road for Day of the Dead in Oaxaca.
Running, Crowds, Vendors
Nobody really runs in El Centro except for early in the morning, so I got a couple early morning runs in. Once 8 am comes, the streets are packed. Crazy packed. When they expect protests, the police put up big metal barriers around the most important governmental buildings. The most important governmental buildings are everywhere, and the protests are generally all the time, so essentially there are always big metal barricades up all over. On Saturday I was walking back to the hostel and the crowd was just insane. The whole street was being funneled through this two-person-wide hole in the barricades, going both directions, and it felt like all 22 million people where there pushing up against me. Hot, muy hot, and loud, muy loud. Finally I pushed through to the other side only to find another street market, and the street markets are always nutso. Everyone in the markets sells either trinkets or counterfeit Nike gear for cheap, and the predominant sales strategy is to yell, as loud as you can, the thing you're selling and whether it's cheap or expensive. So, block after block of crowded streets, cars, motorcycles pushing through, stray dogs, hot sun, food vendors, and all around you people are screaming, "Trinkets! Cheap fucking trinkets!"
The noise pollution is real. I bought socks.
Child Punk Band
On Saturday afternoon the hostel hosted some sort of local music thing in the courtyard, which turned out to be a bunch of high school bands jamming out in front of a crowd of essentially only their families. I sat amongst the parents and grandparents and listened, sipping ginger tea. Turns out, they were kick-ass. One thing about high schoolers is that they go for it, no matter what. My favorite band of the evening was called Pamela Roth, after their lead singer, Pamela Roth, and they wore all black and Doc Martens and chokers and jumped around the courtyard and made obscene comments to their grandmothers in the crowd. Their originals slapped, and at one point they asked the audience to join in on the chorus of a song called "Vete a La Mierda" -- essentially, "fuck you." Young Pamela Roth belted the chorus:
"Don't look for me anymore // I don't want you here // You're stupid and ..."
They'd cut and Pamela held the mic out to the crowd of maybe 20 people, and me and the grandmas yelled "Vete a la mierda!"
As the great Jack Black once said, you're not hardcore unless you live hardcore.
Teotihuacan: When the Aztecs arrived at Teotihuacan in the year 1400, they found the remains of what was once the largest city in the Americas and thought it must be the origin point of the gods, which is why they named it Teotihuacan, which means the origin point of the gods. When I arrived at Teotihuacan in the year 2023, I thought, Damn, that's a big-ass temple. The city peaked around the year 500 with a population of 150,000 (Rome, by comparison, peaked at like the year 300 with a population of 1,000,000, but by 500 had fallen to around 100,000). But unlike Rome, the people who built Teotihuacan didn't leave too much evidence, so not a ton is known about the origins of the giant city, framed around two main avenues running north-south and east-west in a tee formation. It has some sick fricken' temples, though. I took two busses to get there early in the morning and had a blast exploring, seeing the sights before the crowds came. One thing science people do theorize: a volcanic winter in the 6th century -- possibly from an eruption in present-day El Salvador and the effects of which were noted all the way in Constantinople -- could have precipitated the end of the city. Also cool -- the audio guide told me that inhabitants of the city would flood the main square in ritual, and use the reflection of the water to observe the night sky and do science with it. Nice.
Teotihuacan
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What I'm Kicking Around
With all this me-time, I've been thinking about what this big old trip will teach me, since I think it should teach me something. Here are the early inkings of epiphany I've been gator-wrestling:
Becoming my worst nightmare
I'm trying to find the balance between being a good, upstanding, mostly respectable boy and a complete and utter hostel rat. Slowly, I fear I'm transforming into that which I fear the most. I've already, for example, decided that socks can be worn three times before washing. Shirts, more or less infinite times. I've been in Mexico for six days.
Somehow, though, I also just stopped caring so much about the things I used to care about so much. One day I ate two ice cream cones and four tacos and nothing else -- that's no chicken-quinoa salad. Some days, I didn't exercise (gasp!). I've gone to bed at variable times, have been awoken by the snores and laughter and farts of others, and I haven't really had a conniption fit about it. Before, if my roommates so much as breathed on the wall between my room and the living room during my holy sleeping hours of 9 pm - 5 am, I'd have an internal Huberman-fueled meltdown about the risks of interrupted sleep. This week, I even did yoga.
Point being, if I come back in a year with a mandala chest tattoo and start talking about your energy field, it all started here. Jokes aside, though, it is interesting, in a sort of surgery-on-yourself type of way, to see the ways in which the values and things you hold steadfast can shift based on your circumstances. I won't be doing any Columbian tusi anytime soon, and I hope to wake up with my clothes on each morning with full recognizance of the night prior. I'll still run and exercise and do strange outdoor adventures every time the opportunity presents itself. But the cosmic scales are shifting, and I'm a Gemini with loosening hips and aligning chakras. The times are a changin', starchild.
Relationships
Here's the scenario: I made three great friends in as many days, we hung out, shared laughs, got shmammered in a mezcal bar, etc, and then we all went our separate ways by day 5. Saturday and Sunday, I didn't have the social energy to try to make new friends, knowing I was leaving Monday.
I think this is the start of something I need to learn. Relationships, in their nature, are finite. With the exception of maybe like 10, most relationships and friendships we have come to some sort of natural end. That doesn't diminish their importance and it doesn't diminish their meaning. But I think it's pointing me towards something about being okay with change, about being present with the people around me, about where my anchor points are. More to think about on this one.
Downtime
My brother told me this story one time, I think while I was about to go for a run and he was about to smoke weed and eat cereal. The story goes like this:
"There are these two lumberjacks chopping wood. They start at the same time in the morning, but around the middle of the day, one lumberjack disappears for a little bit. Then he comes back and keeps chopping wood, and the two stop at the same time every day. And at the end of each day, the one who disappears always has a bigger stack of wood. So finally the other one asks him, 'Man, what do you do when you disappear in the middle of the day?' And the lumberjack says, 'Oh, I sharpen my axe.'"
The lesson, I suppose, is that taking downtime is a good thing (I'm not sure getting high and eating cereal really counts as axe-sharpening, but the point stands). So I've been thinking about the notion of downtime.
My first day in Mexico City, I wrote three goals in my notebook:
1) Don't spend money like an idiot
2) Eat okay. Fruit and vegetable
3) Exercise
The fourth, and the one that I think requires the most work for me, is about downtime. It's kind of an essential in the backpacker thing, since you can't run around all day nonstop. The routine goes out the window. Sometimes, in my prior life as a human being, I'd be alone with my thoughts and get quite... uncomfy. Those moments where there's no phone service, your headphones have died, and it's just you? With your thoughts? Those really kind of tweaked me out, and normally I'd respond by doing pushups or something.
So, as I move on from Mexico City, I'll keep exploring the balance of nice boy and hostel rat.I'll keep thinking about the relationships I've had and have. And an important part of the exploration will be exploring the notion of downtime, of being more comfortable alone with just me, of not feeling the need to go-go-go all the time-time-time to feel valued-valued-valued.
All in all, Mexico City was a trip. It was great fun, and I feel like it cracked the door to some of the things I've been playing water polo with in my brainpool. Overall a great, beautiful, happening city, if a little big and hectic for me. I'm excited to move onto Puebla and see a smaller side of Mexico, and to keep kicking around what I've been kicking around.
The clothes get stinkier and stinkier, but the axe gets sharper and sharper, baby.
Feedback:
- Your sense of humor is even more apparent and visible in your writing than it is in your speech. Its gold.
- You write A LOT. Tbh, it is a little too much for my little dyslexic brain to read.
- I can verify for anyone who doesn't believe the bit about the oatmeal and blueberries every day, that it did, in fact, happen. EVERY. DAMN. DAY. Love that you're trying new things now. <3