Mexico City DF

To begin with, I must say that Mexico City Districo Federal was oh so good for my ego. I was the centre of attention in a way I had never imagined before.
On the street corners the cops would stop whatever it was they were doing and look, not stare, but absorb the sight before their eyes, almost every third person I walked by on the street would have this amazed look on their face and it would make me feel so good, so alive, so amazing.

Now that the moment of vanity is over, let me tell you a little bit about Mexico City DF.

As we were landing in the city, I could see that this was a place of many, many people, later to find that a whopping 22 million people currently called this place home. From the air, the ant-sized city seemed over crowded, busy and highly concentrated. This didn’t bother me at all, as I thought I knew business, I thought I knew over crowded and overpopulated, but oh my, DF definitely showed me that I knew nothing. I thought Johannesburg had crazy traffic, oh no, no young one, Johannesburg traffic is nothing compared to DF. Peak traffic started at about 15: 30 and ended around 19:30. Coming from the airport at about 19:00 was absolutely manic. Thankfully we were in a big vehicle, where we felt we could trample all over the other little cars if they didn’t get out of the way. (from this you can tell I’m a terrible driver)

DF is about 7200 feet above sea level; therefore the air is extremely dry. When I was told about this big number I didn’t care much because that didn’t mean much to me, until of course I experienced what thin dry air means. My eyes were watering and red for most of the time, my sinuses started playing a game of ‘I hate Akona’ which I’m pretty sure was a lot of fun. My lungs felt like they were going to disintegrate into nothingness and leave me dead, but I’ve come to realize that I’m a rock star. After about three or four days of excruciating pain, I came out of it well and truly appreciating the organs that I have been given as super accessories for my body.

We lived in an area called Districto Historico, very cool, ancient, full of um, history, strange artistic beauty and some entertaining traditional mariachi here and there. A couple of big and beautiful churches, some art galleries, some stalls just off the street where I bought some great earrings – did I tell you how much I love earrings?

When I arrived in DF I discovered that the airline had lost my luggage, oh my what a disaster. I’ve lost luggage only once before, and only for a few hours. It was a domestic flight and the airline was able to return my very valuable and priceless items on the same day. This time it was a long and international flight from Buenos Aires to Mexico City, instead of my clothes and other very important things coming with me, they took a little holiday from their seemingly demanding master and ended up in Sao Paulo, that’s a step ahead from me because that is where I was supposed to go after DF.

So, for the four days that I was without my precious belongings, I had to shop. I don’t mind shopping, but it’s not one of my favorite things to do. Shopping for toiletries wasn’t too bad; the worst part came when I had to find clothing. Oh dear…

As a woman with curves in all the right places, it seemed that my curves were all wrong. I had to try on at least 20 pairs of jeans to find the one that was halfway good enough to fit over my behind. In the T-shirt department I was mortified to find out I was considered a large. What?? Yeah well. I’ve learnt my lesson and hopefully a good travelling tip from now on, carry some underwear and an extra outfit in my hand luggage for each flight.

It was so much fun going out in my new clothes though… Went to the finals of selecting our ninth member of the Smirnoff Ten, or rather soon to be Ten…. Audette- that’s a whole other blog on it’s own, for now, I have to have dinner with Kung- diddy aka DJ dizzy D aka Kung Foo noFighter aka rock lobster.
Oh and remind me to tell you about the trip to the pyramids, where the Smirnoff Eight soon to be ten failed to take a picture of us doing the pyramid….