52 Countries in 52 Weeks, Part 4: Mexico

In Which I Begin Navigating Language Issues, And Experience The Stunning Highs And Lows Of the Biggest City I’ve Ever Been To

“Brake?” I said to the only employee in the bike shop, pantomiming squeezing on a lever to slow down. “Freno?”

Sensing my language abilities (or lack thereof), she replied with the alternative that was available to me for navigation purposes.

“Bell!” she said, helpfully ringing it on the two-wheeled contraption in front of us.

Well, yes, I thought. But getting anxious and lacking the ability to ask the more complex question of “do you have any other bikes available?”, we continued our fun little Seinfeldian exchange.

“Brake?”

“No, Bell!”

It was hot and humid and the other bike shops nearby wouldn’t open for another 30 minutes. There was a bus that needed catching a few hours later. And, I justified to myself, I’d mostly be biking on roads with no vehicles.

Which is how, amidst the 800-year-old Mayan ruins of Tulum, there was one silly Canadian learning how to ride a fixed-gear bike.

Mexico was the first time in my life I was in a place English wasn’t the dominant language, but will now be my reality for 90% of my next 11 months.

As a Canadian, in theory I’ve had a decade of French classes, and as a halfway intelligent person I should be able to learn a couple more.

In reality, most of my education consisted of watching a talking pineapple say “je suis un ananas” over and over again, and despite different attempts over the years, language acquisition was something that never really stuck in my brain.

With my trip spread out among so many different countries, I decided my time would be better spent planning out logistics for all 52 weeks than mastering two or three of the 20-25 different languages I would encounter on my trip.

Instead, I’d learn a few key phrases for each place, be unfailingly polite, take advantage of the modern miracle of instant translation on phones (particularly when it comes to taking a picture of menus or instructions), and hope for the best.

I can’t tell you whether that’s going to be a smart strategy the entire trip. I can tell you that in my sample size of one country, it was fine.

There is, of course, privilege at play: English is the world’s culturally dominant language, allowing me to navigate airports and hotels and museums with a fraction of difficulty that many would encounter trying to navigate the world with their native tongue.

But even with that, you have to accept humility and a certain lack of agency.

At the same time, I already do that when it comes to — as just a couple of examples — having two friends choose a new wardrobe for me every 16 months because I know my own ability to pick out clothes that work for me is lacking, or bringing cheese to every group potluck because nobody, including myself, trusts my ability to cook.

In other words, when you really know your strengths and weaknesses, accepting another weakness on a temporary basis is pretty easy to accept.

(Whew, that was a long preamble, albeit one that was probably necessary to address once during this travel diary.  Let’s head back to Mexico)

I had never been anywhere like Mexico City, in a number of different ways.

There was language of course, but also population: with more than 20 million people, it’s one of the largest cities in the world, with several million more residents than New York City, the next biggest place I had been.

There was also history and architecture. Because of the timeline of colonization in Canada and United States and the nature of Indigenous displacement from their lands, I had scarcely seen any buildings more than a couple hundred years old.   

Mexico City, by contrast, was founded 700 years ago, with the structures to show for it. More than that, it has been a big important city in all its incarnations, from Aztec founding to Spanish conquest, to the myriad battles for independence of the 19th century to its present day status as a world metropolis.

All of which is to say that it is bursting at the seams with people and places, museums and cathedrals, pedestrian-only plazas and walkways, highways and subways, restaurants and corner stores, street vendors and markets, public art everywhere (particularly murals) on a order of magnitude that eclipsed anything I’d ever seen.

It was exhilarating to breathe it in, though I’m sure part of it was the newness of everything to my brain, in a way that won’t be the case in Buenos Aires or Barcelona or any other big city months down the line.

Still, there’s so much to objectively like about Mexico City. The central historic area is compact and packed with different free attractions. The surrounding neighbourhoods are full of tree-lined streets with parks and restaurants. The subway system is extensive, and unless you explicitly seek out luxury, your money goes a lot farther than in Canada or the United States.        

At the same time, that feeling of bursting at the seams manifests itself in three negative ways, at least compared to most other “world class” cities.

Mexico City’s poverty rate was 24% in 2022, when by comparison, the average for the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (of which Mexico, Canada, and the United States, and most EU countries are part of) is just over 10%.

Measuring traffic congestion globally is a tricky game, but invariably Mexico City will pop up in the top 20 congested cities in the world in some sort of study or rankings, and its lack of grid system and boldness of drivers doesn’t help matters.

And in 1992, the United Nations declared Mexico City the most polluted city in the world, and shortly after the sun rises a light haze still tends to descend upon the city to this day.

In all three of these measures — poverty, pollution and traffic — they’ve made improvements this century, from dedicated bus lanes to all sorts of environmental regulations on new buildings, but the ways it comparatively lacks are as apparent to any visitor as the ways it comparatively shines.

It was an interesting and exciting place for me to begin the main portion of my journey, and I left with plenty of thoughts that will likely be repeated in different shades in the months to come.

Two, however, stick out the most.

The first was in a hot air balloon, hundreds of feet in the air over the famous Teotihuacan complex, where the Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon still stand nearly 2000 years after they were built.

Aside from the novelty of being in a balloon (it’s calmer than you would think!) and the giddiness of sharing the experience with a dozen slightly shivering people at seven in the morning, it was fascinating to see those structures from that sort of angle. The size of the compound, the imperfections in the rocks after centuries of decay, the sheer scope of the pyramids compared to its surroundings; all were amplified from getting a top-down view.

But there’s another thing in Teotihuacan you can only really view from a balloon: the tiny hovels that surround it, garbage strewn across backyards, abject poverty right next to temples. It’s a dichotomy seen in different places around the world. There’s a starkness when it comes next to one of the great wonders of civilization.

The second experience was in Arena México on a humid Friday night.

It was the weekly big fight night for CMLL, one of the country’s longest-running wrestling federations, and arguably the archetype of the style dominated by leaping and masked performers known as Lucha Libre.

And it was a particularly big main event. Bryan Danielson is one of the most famous American wrestlers this century, best known for his WWE run as “Daniel Bryan” where he once won the undisputed championship in the main event of Wrestlemania, on the back of a populist uprising against the WWE administration, where he would point two fingers in the air and shout “YES! YES! YES!”

(I’m now feeling that weirdness any writer does when they try and dryly describe a wrestling plot to people who don’t follow wrestling.)   

Danielson left the WWE a few years ago, and recently has been on something of a presumed retirement tour, travelling the world in a series of dream matches. It harkens back to the days before Hulk Hogan and cable TV taking over wrestling, where the famous travelling American champion would visit everywhere from Brazil to Japan to prove he was better than the local hero and worthy of the title, looking just vulnerable enough in defeat to make the hometown feel that their guy had what it took.

The atmosphere in the arena had a throwback vibe as well. The age of the building (constructed int he 1950s) and lack of luxury suites gave everything a cramped feel, and Danielson’s opponent was Blue Panther, a 62-year-old luchador beloved in Mexico for generations.

The American had his fans due to his fame and technical prowess, but on a night like this, there was no mistaking who the hero was.

Despite his age, Panther gave as good as he got, even doing a crossbody leap off the stage onto Danielson at one point. As is tradition though, the travelling American got the upper hand, and got Panther to tap out.    

There was plenty of animated shouting from the crowd that I couldn’t understand, though probably unfit for publication.

What followed though was as predictable as it was poetic: Danielson got on the microphone, and said that he respected Panther. The crowd cheered, the animosity five minutes earlier immediately gone. Panther raised Danielson’s hand in endorsement.

Danielson started pointing. The fans started chanting “YES! YES! YES!”

Language can be a barrier. But some feelings are universal.