Mexico City, 2009, 5

Thursday, October 29, 2009, 11:50 AM

I am laying low right now.  I think the combination of rich, and occasionally contaminated food, the stress of travel and social  overload have left me feeling a bit delicate and having to make many unscripted trips to the bathroom.  Or it could be Montezuma´s Revenge.  Stress from constant noise seems to play a role as well.  I had to break up a party in the courtyard below my room (I was polite this time) so I could get to sleep last night.  It seems that I´m the only person in Mexico City who likes to be in bed by 10:30 or so at night, which makes negotiating rest time a little bit tricky.  Earplugs help, because in a place this small with so many people coming and going one can not expect a lot  of quiet.  I´m really not sure that I am cut out for travel because I am so affected by noise, but I  think it´s better at times to fight this  instead of staying at home  to rot  inside of my comfort zone. Over the meridian of Avenida Amsterdam for two or three blocks they have hung these colourful plastic banners that look rather like Tibetan prayer flags, only they feature cut out designs of skulls and sneakers.  I believe this is part of the Day of the Dead celebrations.  Rather odd this association of skulls and sneakers, unless it is a way of conveying that some people´s running shoes smell like death! One guest here who has visited this city several times has commented that the city seems a lot cleaner since the swine flu last spring and people are more diligent about keeping surfaces clean.  I have also noticed that some  people still wear medical masks in public, I believe because they may have flu and don´t want to spread  it. I just met two women from Calgary at breakfast.  One is in Mexico for six  months traveling around.  They seem quite enamoured with this city, but the Mexico City that they are in love with appears to be largely in the Polanco neighbourhood which is very wealthy with fine restaurants  and pricy boutiques.  I tried to tactfully suggest to them that they might try getting around on the transit system to give them more of a sense  of the rhythm of life and the people who live here.  Of course, not every tourist  is really interested in encountering the real people and life  situations of the countries they are visiting. I´m still feeling under the weather, though a bit stronger today, and got out to walk around in Chapultepec Park and then took a long  route back to the hotel.   I sat for a while on one of the exquisite green wrought iron bences in this city on Salamanca  Street, which has very heavy one way traffic. Across the street I could here a tenor practice his vocalize from  a window in the beautiful yellow  and grey building  shrouded in branches and leaves.