Out of the City

My birthday present to Alejandro was an overnight excursion out of the city the weekend after his birthday.  As always, the biggest challenge is the Mexico City traffic.  On Saturday, that challenge was even worse.  This past weekend was the beginning of Holy Week, when many Mexicans take their vacations and head out of the city.  Traffic was moving at a crawl.

We finally hit a spot where traffic was moving smoothly, and we were hopeful that the worst was behind us.

We should have known better.  We turned onto the northern stretch of Insurgentes Avenue which leads out of the city, and the traffic was again moving at a snail's pace.  Insurgentes was a part of the Pan American highway, and the route stretches north all the way to Laredo, Texas.  Although it is no longer the city's only northern entrance and exit, it is still an extremely busy thoroughfare.

 

Wherever traffic is slow, you will see vendors making their way between the cars and selling snacks, bottled water, cigarettes, or in this case, candied apples.

 

The hill in the background is part of the Sierra de Guadalupe, the mountains that form the northern city limits.  We were almost out of Mexico City, although not out of the metropolitan area.

While driving through Ecatepec, a sprawling northern suburb with a population of more than 1.5 million inhabitants, we passed under a couple of routes of the "Mexicable", a public transport system of aerial cable cars that inspired the construction of the "Cablebus" in Mexico City.

At long last we were out of the traffic and breezing along through semi-rural countryside (although we were still within the Mexico City metropolitan area).

It had taken us over two hours, but we finally had traveled the 30 miles to reach our destination, San Juan de Teotihuacán, the city located next to one of the largest and most impressive archaeological sites in Mexico.  I had reserved a room at Hotel Quinto Sol (the Fifth Sun Hotel).

 The place was by no means a 5-star hotel, but our room was clean and pleasant.

We knew that the hotel had a pool, and we had brought swimsuits.  However, the last few nights had been usually chilly for this time of year, and we thought that the water would be very cold.

We tested the water, and discovered that the pool was heated.  We spent a good portion of the afternoon enjoying the warm water.

After our time in the pool, we got dressed to go have dinner.  Most of the restaurants in Teotihuacán are tourist traps that cater to busloads of tour groups who come to see the pyramids.  We decided to try out the hotel restaurant, and we were glad we did.  Our meals were quite good.

Alejandro had a chicken medallion in a mezcal sauce.

I had chicken stuffed with goat cheese and covered with a sauce made with "xoconostle", the acidic fruit of a type of cactus.

So just what was the reason for our overnight visit to Teotihuacán?  We were not planning on visiting the archaeological site.  Over the fifty years that I have been traveling to Mexico, I have visited the ruins at least nine times, and Alejandro has been there many times as well.  No, we were planning on a unique experience that we have talked about doing for a long time.

Stay tuned...