Christmas in Mexico City

In this essay: Film and cameras. Art & architecture. Food. Cars. Nature. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

The hotel owner’s son told us that religion and politics are tightly intertwined in Mexico.

We did visit a church mass upon his advice (it was poorly attended). But we also saw ancient temples, absorbed a glimpse of history through art and museums, loved tacos, enjoyed churros, and had our minds blown by moles.

We waded among dense crowds, navigated the public transit system via the iconic system, and found a delightful coffee shop.

This essay is a snapshot of our trip.

Film and cameras.

I brought three cameras: Voigtländer Vitessa A, Kodak Snapic A1, and Nishika N800; Betty had her Instax Mini 90. Of the 20+ rolls I brought, all of which avoided X-rays thanks to my polite requests at both airports, I’ve exposed eleven — all without a meter, using the Sunny 16 rule.

Some of the film had to be developed and stitched into short GIF sequences, which took a while. One roll of Fujichrome Provia 100 had to be pulled to EI 50 using an experimental Rodinal development method, which was another challenge.

I’ve inverted everything with film Q (which cleared up part of the cast on the Provia scans). Scanned with Nikon COOLSCAN.

Lastly, there was a lone roll of black-and-white film, which was easy to process, though I could not batch it with the other films (so it had to receive individual attention).

Anyway, Mexico City:

Art & architecture.

Mexico City is filled with buildings. I found them immediately fascinating. The colours and shapes of these structures are nothing like the houses here in Vancouver.

I wouldn’t call Vancouver a dull city. There’s plenty of colour here; still, it’s not as prolific.

The light is different in Mexico, too. The air quality was usually poor in the afternoons and evenings, which is when the sun cast an orange glow over the town.

Sometimes it worked in my favour: the ashy texture and glow made certain landscapes look painterly, as if they were drawn with pastel pencils — and that visual remained on film without any need for editing. Other times, it added to my workload of colour-correcting the images.

We walked 20-30km every day, which isn’t unusual for us but felt burdensome at times. Perhaps it was the air, or the elevation (Mexico City sits 2km above sea level). But the good news is that we’ve seen many interesting buildings. We’ve also appreciated how many trees lined the streets of the downtown and the adjacent hipster Condesa neighbourhood, where we had some churros.

A lot of our time was spent in museums. Museum of Anthropology. Modern art museums. A royal palace that’s now a museum. And inside those buildings, there were chances to catch a glimpse of a sunlit piece of architecture and a small crowd of people interacting with it.

Both the museums and the colonial-style architecture stood as stark reminders of how this country, in fact, the entire hemisphere changed when Europeans came to claim it by force.

Some cathedrals were said to have been built from bricks taken from the Mayan pyramid ruins next door. And inside those buildings, there was often art that portrayed parts of the twisted histories.

This was likely one of the busiest seasons in Mexico City, so there were lots of people on the streets and inside (museums or not).

Some streets were completely closed to road traffic, only to be overwhelmed by human traffic. The shops closed around 6 PM, when many of the street vendors would pack their belongings and head home. And at that hour, the cars would not move at all. Even a crowded sidewalk was faster to traverse on foot than to move an inch on a street.

But the crowds and vendors only manifested between 10 AM and 6 PM, often leaving us searching for food and late-night snacks beyond our usual street-taco system. This forced us to find new things, which was nice, but it took some brainpower to overcome our indecisiveness.

This is a very large city, and the areas where we found ourselves most often were fairly touristy. That meant it was easier to navigate, but prices were often double what we found a few blocks away from the festivities. The most outrageous deals were often near major landmarks and parks. That’s absolutely expected, though it made budgeting our days a little more challenging, since we couldn’t tell exactly how much each day would cost or how much cash we should carry to get around (it varied, depending on where we were spending that day).