Glory, hallelujah!

There were Yule lights on the potted plant abutting the garage door.

It was the sex hotel, and we drove in. New Year´s Eve.

The Hotel del Dorado on the Eje Central has two sections. One faces the busy boulevard. That´s for regular folks.

Section Two, out back, is quieter. In Mexico this is called a Hotel de Paso, a pass-by hotel, and you know what that means.

We had stayed in this hotel´s regular section a week in January 2007 while we were redoing our nearby apartment. We liked it, so we headed there New Year´s Eve in search of a night of peace. The regular hotel was full, so they sent us out back.

Yipee!

Normally, they don´t let all-night customers go there.

We´d never stayed in a Hotel de Paso. The Hotelito de Mal Reputito next to our Ranchito on the ramshackle outskirts of Pátzcuaro is, you may recall, a Hotel de Paso.

After paying cash (370 pesos, about 29 bucks) to the guy roaming the parking lot, we drove the Hellacious Honda into the garage. The lot attendant pulled the door down behind us.

The room is above the garage, the usual layout for a Hotel de Paso. We walked up, hand in hand. The huge, well-appointed suite is split-level like a 1950s home in torrid Florida.

Two interior walls of glass brick give a nice touch and divide the entry alcove from the king bed ahead and the jacuzzi at left.

In the ceiling, above the firm mattress, is a huge recessed circle with subdued, green lightning. Sweet. A bed halo.

We felt blessed. Thank you, Jesus.

The blessing was confirmed when we saw the jacuzzi, a massive affair made with marble. Over the jacuzzi is another ceiling circle. This one has stained glass, a woman on a beach.

It is backlit.

Sporting sunglasses, a halter top and wrap-around skirt, the woman totes a big urn on her sensual shoulders.

The marble bathroom has a shower, a throne and a bidet. The last time we had spotted a bidet in a hotel bathroom was Paris in 1976. We decided to try it out. True, they are not intended for men, but the sensation was thrilling nonetheless.

But this was after we´d filled the jacuzzi, stripped naked, the two of us, and slid down into the well-aged marble. There were huge mirrors on the jacuzzi´s two open sides.

My, my, my. We felt like Scarface snorting cocaine.

Later, we ate sushi we´d bought in a nearby shopping mall, the Plaza Torres. We lay in bed under the halo and watched TV.

So, you´re thinking, this is a sex hotel. Did you do it? Consider that old coots who lay their crusty hands upon their child brides too often are courting a coronary.

But their souls and prostates scream: Glory, hallelujah!

Café in Coyoacán

The air in the breezeway is cool.

It´s a clear sun shining out there as we sit alone just inside the coffee shop.

Named The Italian Coffee Company (in English), it´s a Mexican chain, and this locale sits on the tree-shaded plaza of Coyoacán, a ritzy area of Mexico City.

We´re enjoying a hot expresso and chocolate biscotti while reading La Reforma. The building is a recently renovated Colonial edifice, and the home of Hernán Cortés is nearby.

He lived there with his turncoat woman, Malinche.

The Lady Zapata is walking the streets, shopping.

Reforma´s Page One: In what appears a surprise move, the federal government ousted most Customs agents in that famous One Fell Swoop, replacing them with new folks trained in high technology. Why? Corruption rampant in the ranks.

Page Six: the Army is running the State Pen in Chihuahua after prison officials resigned. Guess that turns the Pen into a Stockade.

Page Seven: A top hood of the crime family called La Familia was captured in the State of Mexico, which circles much of Mexico City. Seven cronies were caught too. This is sweet. We smile.

Travel Section: Quito, Ecuador, is a fine place to visit. Merida, Yucatán, too. But after sweating 18 years in New Orleans and 15 in Houston, Merida (a very hot place) lacks appeal.

Maybe Quito one day.

Lady Zapata sends a message. Here she comes, she says.

The two of us head to Café del Barrio on Calle Cuauhtémoc, and yours truly orders a chapata vegetariano and the Lady chooses a chapata de pollo. These are chased with smoothies de fresa and de piña colada, respectively.

On departing, tummies full, we notice a condonería across the street. We know taquerías (tacos) and zapatarías (shoes), but it´s a first seeing a condonería which is, of course, where condones (condoms) are sold.

We tour the cute little store but, being a committed couple, leave empty-handed and head home via the Eje Central.

We go to Coyoacán almost every visit to Mexico City. Sundays are super lively.

Getting around

We´ve lived part-time in Mexico City now for about 2.5 years. We're far more comfortable now than at the get-go.

Let´s talk about transportation and later, if there´s time and you´re not bored, we´ll address some other topics.

There are four basic ways to get around Mexico City:

1. The subway system, which is called the Metro. It is dirt cheap, almost free, and it´s a pretty good way to get around. It used to be jam-packed in the mornings and in the late afternoons. Now it´s jam-packed most of the time.

2. Taxis. Most all cabbies use their meters, which is more than you can say in Guadalajara, and prices are very cheap, compared to the U.S. However, many cabbies drive like total lunatics, and we always are shocked to arrive alive.

3. Peseros. These are small buses. Sometimes they are big buses. These cost more than the Metro but less than taxis. The drivers also are out of control, but their antics are restricted by the beefiness of their buses. That´s a pesero in the photo.

And it also looks like Princess Diana´s last night, that photo.

4. Your own car. If you are not familiar with Mexico City and you do not own a Guia Roji book of maps, you will be lost in, say, 30 seconds. And that´s on a good day.

The fastest way to get somewhere is the Metro, but you often have to stand with someone´s elbow in your side or, if you´re a woman, with someone´s creepy fingers on your ass. Latin love.

Taxis imperil your life, and it´s not because you risk being robbed or worse. That's overrated. It´s because you risk being impaled by shards of metal and glass.

Your own car? If you choose this option, and we often do, remember these things:

1.Traffic is beyond belief, almost always. And rude.
2. Drivers often ignore stoplights.
3. Speeding traffic can come at you from any direction, absolutely any of the 360 degrees of the standard circle. They prefer doing this from the direction you least expect.
4. Lanes and the directions they go often contradict international norms. And good sense.

Sometimes fun things appear. Picture this: You are in one of, say, 15 lanes of traffic headed thataway on a humongous thoroughfare. All other lanes are jammed. Engines are revving!

Imagine the opening race at Churchill Downs.

You and everybody else in the 15 lanes are stopped at a red light. You are at the front of your lane, numero uno. The light changes and you, like everyone, floor that baby!

You notice, however, halfway across the intersection that those 15 lanes are just 14 lanes on the other side of the stoplight. Imagine the ensuing fun. One lane has vanished!

Driving your own car in Mexico City is never boring.

Of your four basic transportation modes, we prefer the pesero. The exception is Sunday when we use the Hellacious Honda because traffic is far lighter on Sundays.

Hopefully, you are not bored, but we have run out of time. Other topics will be addressed at a later moment. Or day.

WHAT DID YOU SAY?

The capital city says it´s gonna reduce noise.

Yeah, sure.

The municipal government will start in the Historic Center, installing noise monitors, and violators will be fined.

Later, the program will be expanded to other parts of town.

They´ll start with fines, but later jail could be called for.

Yeah, sure.

As one Mexico City resident observed: They can´t even get the garbage picked up, and they´re gonna control noise?

Strangely, we find our Mexico City neighborhood significantly quieter than in Pátzcuaro where we live most of the time.

So long, cerro

Before, looking out our wide, living room window, we saw a tall brick wall that hid the property next door.

Visible above that wall was the tip of the Cerro de Chiquihuite. At night blinking antenna lights were beautiful, and we liked knowing Moctezuma saw that same cerro back in the day.

It must have satisfied him after a bloody afternoon of slicing opponents´ hearts out with a black obsidian blade.

When we arrived last week, however, the high wall hiding the lot next door had been reduced significantly, and construction was under way over there in plain sight.

A condo complex is going up, and if the apartments are even as high as our fourth-floor perch, as they reportedly will be, we will lose our view of the Cerro de Chiquihuite forever.

And the beautiful lights at night.

(Note: At top is a dusk view from our window. At bottom is a noon shot. We don´t know what that huge, gray, commercial building is. It will be the new condo´s other neighbor, also hidden from us when the work is completed, thankfully.

(The condo will fill the lot where you see the dirt and the crane. The lot extends very far to the right of the photo and will have a subterranean parking lot.)

Softer reality

One drawback to Mexico City is we leave our croissantitos behind.

Our Ranchito croissantitos come from CostCo, and the nearest CostCo to our capital digs is too far away.

After two years of making do in the morning, we have found a wonderful honey-dripping alternative.

And with those hot, morning cafecitos, all is sweet again.

Just three blocks away is a new Bisquets Obregón, a Mexican restaurant chain. Their specialty, as you likely guessed, is the biscuit. It´s tough to find a good biscuit in Mexico.

And Bisquets Obregón sells them to go.

Our morning routine now is hot cafecitos, warm biscuits with honey as we sit on the faux-leather loveseat watching, via TV Azteca´s traffic helicopter, endless traffic jams.

And dead bodies of narcos and cops in places like Tijuana and Ciudad Juaréz. Warm biscuits, honey and hot cafecitos soften the blows of harsh Mexican reality.

The bullet Virgin

We don´t need to dodge the bullet anymore.

Our protector has been located down in the mean streets of Iztapalapa.

It seems that Mexico City is protected on its four sides by four Holy Virgins, or so said Fray Francisco de Florencia who died way back in 1695.

The tough Eastside is protected by Our Lady of the Bullet.

Didn´t know that, did you?

But somebody snatched her, a small wooden statue, from the capital's Jesus of Nazareth Hospital in 1901, and she´s been missing since. Probably explains the Revolution.

Lots of gunfire during the Revolution. Lots of bullets.

But, whoa! A university student did some sleuthing, and found her recently in the National Sanctuary of Our Lord of the Cave in Iztapalapa, an eastside barrio. She never skipped town.

Turns out a priest found the Bullet Lady in a Mexico City hock shop in 1913. The priest bailed out our Lady and deposited her in a Iztapalapa church. She´s been there since, in plain view.

So the priest found her in 1913, and the university student found her in 2008, so it seems nobody was hunting her very hard.

Perhaps this drug war business could have been avoided completely with a little more diligence on the part of the Vatican which, one supposes, keeps track of its Virgins.

The Bullet Lady´s fame got started, it seems, when an angry Mexican during Colonial times took a shot at his wife. The Virgin, which the wife was holding before her, took the bullet.

The wife was saved, and nobody has been able to get that bullet out of the Virgin since. Bet you could do it with a Swiss Army knife if you put your mind to it.

Oh, the irony

The city´s Legislative Assembly is moving forward with plans to reduce use of plastic grocery bags.

The plan includes economic incentives to supermarkets who play along.

Lots of government entities have cracked down on plastic bags. South Africa has outlawed them entirely. ¡Qué bueno!

The best idea, of course, is for customers to simply bring their own bags, cloth or whatever, and the markets won´t have to provide anything. They could save a bunch of cash.

In the U.S. and other nations, it is popular and ecologically correct to bring your own supermarket bag. Yours truly did it years ago above the border.

But don´t try that in Mexico. The security guard at the door won´t let you enter with a grocery bag. If you get in with a bag, you will steal. That´s the notion.

This is not universal (Wal-Mart´s Superama stores let bags in) but that is an exception to the reigning rule of suspicion.

If it´s a wholly-owned Mexican market, forget about it.

Stepping out

We scraped the donkey dung off our Zapata Street brogans.

And we headed to the, ah, theatre.

Specifically, the Centro Cultural Telmex at Cuauhtémoc and Chapultepec in the ritzy Roma neighborhood.

The play was Dulce Caridad (Sweet Charity) by Neil Simon with the royally, deliciously talented Mexican stage actress Lolita Cortés in the title role.

Aside to women: If your name is Lolita you will immediately attract the notice of men. A woman called Lolita is an automatic attention-getter. Blame Nabokov.

About a year ago we saw Cortés steal the show in Confesiones de Mujeres de 30, which means Confessions of 30-year-old Women, in the Teatro Jorge Negrete.

We look snazzy rubbing shoulders with the cultured, and we pray our brogans don´t smell funny.

Two capital years

January makes two years since we hit the Big Tortilla, part-time.

We come here about every two months for about ten days or so.

That means we are in Mexico City about two months a year.

The contrast between Zapata Street and Calle Margarita Maza de Júarez is enormous.

The contrast between the spacious Ranchito and the rather cramped condo is equally vast.

Mexico City would be livable were it not for two problems: Pollution and traffic. Both are perilous to one´s health.

On a day-to-day basis, the bigger problem is traffic, which is nightmarish. We often hang around our neighborhood because the prospect of driving very far is overwhelming.

Average car speed in the city is 13 mph.

Yes, there is the subway, but it is increasingly difficult to jam into a rail car, much less find a seat. Still, we use it occasionally.

Taxis are plentiful and cheap, but the drivers are often like kamikaze pilots. We prefer peseros, the mini-buses.

Pesero drivers often are kamikaze too, but they are driving less-agile bombers, not the Zeros piloted by cabbies.

Two things that Gringos can put out of their worries: Being robbed in a taxi or being ripped off by traffic cops.

The first is highly unlikely unless you catch a cab at the Plaza Garibaldi or the Tepito slum at 2 a.m. If you do that, you deserve to be murdered. To improve the human gene pool.*

In our total of four full months in Mexico City, we´ve never spoken to a traffic cop, and judging from how people drive, all the cops are eating donuts somewhere.

And in March, we will make the final $1,200-peso (about 90 bucks) mortgage payment, and the digs will be all ours.

* Please don´t email about your run-ins with traffic cops. We cannot explain why you have difficulties, and we do not.

(Note: Although pollution is a big problem in Mexico City, the situation is considerably better than some years back due to government measures that are actually working.)

The magic angle

Running stoplights in Mexico City is rampant.

Driving in the city you see motorists ignoring red lights every few seconds.

But there is one situation in which it soars:

We call it the magic angle.

If one street intersects another at anything other than a right angle, ignoring stoplights escalates significantly.

And since Mexico City streets often collide at wacky angles, there are plenty of opportunities for the drivers to ignore the lights even more than usual.

Drivers behind you at a magic angle will sometimes honk if you don´t run the light. Ignore them. Let them stew.

Anyone driving into Mexico City for the first time who does not have the massive Guia Roja book of capital street maps will probably be hopelessly lost within minutes.

If not suicidal.

Traffic cops are far less a problem than you probably have heard, which is why people run stoplights willy-nilly.

Especially at the magic angles.

On the road

About halfway between Pátzcuaro and Mexico City sits a surprise.

It´s 12 kilometers off the autopista.

Can you say Tlalpujahua?

This Michoacán town is one of Mexico´s Pueblos Mágicos or Magic Towns, and we had never set foot there.

On our recent drive to Mexico City, we made the short detour out of curiosity. We poked around for about an hour.

We were flabbergasted. Yours truly´s first reaction was that it looked more European than Mexican.

La Guapa Señora was more specific. It´s like Toledo*, Spain, she said, a city she has visited.

Tlalpujahua is a beautiful town in a beautiful setting, and one rarely hears anything about it.

The area concentrates on cantera stone products and Christmas decorations. Directly downtown is a huge and amazing store, open year-round, dedicated to all things Yule.

We will be returning for overnight visits often. There are a few hotels, one a three-star.

Here is a video made by someone else. Neither the video nor the photos above quite do the place justice.

* That´s Toe-lay-do, Gringos. Toledo is in Ohio.

Lick the spoon

An incredible pastry shop called Pastelería Ideal on Calle 16th de Septiembre in the very center of Mexico City sells monster wedding cakes.

And way, way more.

But it´s the wedding cakes on the second floor that really take your breath away. Let´s get married one more time.

Toro! Toro! Toro!

The Old Man awoke beside the Beautiful Woman as a blood-red sun rose over the Cerro de Chiquihuite.

It was bullfight day.

They breakfasted on bread from Bisquets Obregón. There was raw honey and black cafecitos, just like back at the Ranchito.

A few hours later, the Silver Meriva barreled south down Insurgentes, past the naked protesters who never give up, past the Paseo de la Reforma where jet planes crash.

Past the World Trade Center, and right on the Eje 5 Sur.

There it loomed: Plaza Mexico, the biggest bullring in the world. It´s a massive hole, not obvious from inside or out, where it still towers into the sky. Most seats are below street level.

The Plaza holds 48,000 bullfighting fans and passing dilettantes, but it´s rarely more than 25 percent full these days. Interest in bullfights is waning. Hemingway´s days are gone.

Sundays from November through March at precisely 4 p.m. a bull comes charging through the gate. And he´s really pissed off.

Fighting bulls are not simply big and angry bulls. They are a breed apart. Their wives, the cows, look like dykes and have tiny udders. This may add to the moodiness of their menfolk.

The Old Man and the Beautiful Woman sat on cement seats pretty close to the ring, but not too close. They purchased cushions from a street vendor, ten pesos a pop. There are back rests.

Vendors strolled about offering hot dogs and hot cappuccinos. Cappuccinos?! And beer, of course.

A bullfight consists of three matadors fighting six bulls, two to a man. The matadors on that day were:

1. Uriel "El Zapata" Moreno.
2. Leopoldo Casasola.
3. Guillermo Martinez.

The Old Man and the Beautiful Woman had been standing in the scattered crowd outside the ring when Casasola arrived in the passenger seat of a new, cream-colored Lincoln Navigator.

The matador game pays good.

He was young and handsome in his Suit of Lights, flashing a killer smile, so handsome the Beautiful Woman seemed to consider a swan dive through the Lincoln´s window into his lap.

But she did not, perhaps because Casasola is young enough to be her son. Perhaps because her Old Man isn´t chopped liver but Southern paté, tasty on cornbread. She stayed true.

As expected, the first bull thundered through the gate at 4 p.m., right on time like a fascist train.

The goal is to tire the bull, break his spirit and kill him.

First, one or more picadores decked out like Sancho Panza on heavily padded and blindfolded horses taunt the bull till he charges. It doesn´t take much. He´s on edge.

The picador stabs the bull in his hump with a short-pointed lance. Sometimes the bull knocks the horse off his feet. Score one for the bull, but his victories come hard.

Next, the bull gets stuck with pairs of banderillas, which are delivered by the matador or one of his helpers.

These are pointed sticks that are far shorter than the picador´s lance, and they are delivered as the matador or assistant and the bull run directly at each other. Fun to see that.

By this time, the bull has run around the ring a lot. He is overweight. He has been stabbed in the back by the picador. He has banderillas hanging from his hump. He is bloodied.

He is tired, and nothing is going right for him. He is having serious doubts about himself. His ego is deflated. It´s a bad day.

He needs a therapist. But not even Dr. Phil can save him.

Instead, the heavily panting bull faces a man decked out like a Christmas tree in a leather bar, holding a big red cape and sword. It´s killing time.

Ideally, one quick sword thrust over the bull´s lowered head brings him down rapidly. That only happened with one of the six bulls that day. The others went down slowly and messily.

And that´s the norm.

Casasola was the best of the three matadors and the only one tossed by a bull. Twice! Luckily, he dodged the horns both times, only injuring his dignity.

The dead bulls are dragged out by a horse team and sold to a butcher. Waste not. Bloody sand is swept up.

The Old Man and the Beautiful Woman rode the Silver Meriva to Titanic Hamburgers on the dark, night median of Margarita Masa de Júarez. Perhaps they ate one of last week´s bulls.

With lettuce, onion, tomato and mustard.

And a side of fries with blood-red ketchup.

The bullring

This shot was taken about halfway up the stands, far above where we were sitting. It gives an idea of the bullring´s immensity. Everything you see is well below street level.