Ways to know you had a successful mini-vacation to Mexico City:

1)      You have a hard time stepping into your pants due to muscle soreness on one entire side of your body. You’d like to say this was from falling off a Mexican pyramid, as that sounds way more adventurous than the truth- you jumped/fell off a wall at some Mexican pyramids.  Instead, the real story is that after climbing up two enormous pyramids, both of which were terrifying, as heights may not be your “thing” and there are not nearly enough safely railings/ropes to make it the smartest choice ever, your legs were like jelly. Rather than thinking through the fact that you were doing well to be upright and making forward progress in the midday heat of Mexico City in May, a city that sits nearly a mile above sea level when you live in a city that clocks in at about 400 feet above sea level,  you considered yourself invincible and without pondering the possible repercussions, you jumped (in the end “fell” is probably a more accurate verb, but for this part of the tale we’ll stick with the more self-guided “jumped”) off a short wall rather than walking around the long way to get to your destination. Said wall was about three feet high, but because your legs were still quivering from the last terrifying pyramid descent, when your feet hit the ground, rather than holding you up in a graceful manner, your thighs melted like butter and you hit the ground like a giant sack of potatoes. Yup. All the way to the ground. As you peel yourself off the red dirt ground, you brush gravel from your palms, calf and rear of your capris and try to make a nimble exit. (It’s hard to imagine an Aztec, native to the temple complex, biting it so hard, although you content yourself with the thought that all peoples must have had klutzes in their midst.)  As with many injuries, it wasn’t the day of the spill or even the following one, but that third one when the soreness really set in seriously. Your colleagues might be sympathetic, but you know they are also laughing because there is no good way to explain your ridiculous limp and the groans that emanate from your cubicle each time you sit or stand. But, limping around the building after a vacation is just a sign that you did it right!

2)      Those same pants fit a bit tighter in the waist because you ate all the chicken tacos and a good number of the churros in Mexico. You might be a picky eater, but the food in Mexico was right up your alley. Imagine a place where most items are brought in pieces and you get to assemble them, as desired. This means you can make chicken tacos without the hot salsa or with a few beans on top or without the fried onions or with a bit of cheese.  You can have it your way, day after day. Plus, there is a lovely little corner restaurant devoted entirely to churros. You can get churros by the foot, you can get little churro nuggets, you can get churros with hot chocolate or ice cream or dipping sauces. You can get churros! (As a side note, because of the current Foreign Service hiring freeze, you did ponder, for a few moments, the need for a new career in the future and churro cutting guy’s job looked pretty enticing. Just you, a giant spiral of freshly fried churro, and a pair of sharp scissors. Churro cutting might be where it is at!) Needless to say, tacos and churros do not make for a skinny-traveler diet.

3)      You caught up of months of chatter with friends, covering everything from common connections from previous posts to current Foreign Service policy and book recommendations to tales of first dates and matchmaking. Yes, you can keep track of friends by Facebook stalking them or through occasional messages here and there, but a few days wandering a city, exploring sites, and eating meals together creates the perfect opportunity to discuss all the things, from tiny to tremendous, going on in your lives and around the world.

4)      You paid a small amount of money to watch grown men (and a couple of women) don tight spandex and fight it out in a sweaty wrestling ring, inside an arena that smelled more than vaguely like puke. You’ve seen it referenced online and you remember seeing clips of WWE on TV as a child, but you haven’t really experienced Mexico City until you’ve enjoyed an evening of luche libre wrestling. Of course, you can’t pass up the chance to sit in the crowd as the hawkers sell beer in cups that look like they can hold a gallon of liquid and bear witness to the craziness that is a luchadores match crowd. You might be a bit horrified by the things being yelled, bilingually, at the fighters, most of it wholly inappropriate for the eight-year-old sitting in the row in front of you, but boy did he get a multilingual vocabulary lesson that night. Yes, you cringed when Sam Adonis, the “American” wrestler runs around the ring with a giant Stars and Stripes flag with Trump’s face plastered in the middle of it, encouraging the crowd in their crazy screaming and you have to cover your eyes as wrestlers thrown themselves off the ropes onto the cement floor of the stadium, but you cannot pass up the chance to experience this ridiculous form of entertainment. (And, of course, your better half can’t walk away from the venue without purchasing his very own luchador mask, so Blue Dragon is now a part of your life for the foreseeable future.)

5)      You spent an afternoon in what must be the party boat capital of Latin America.  Xomilcho is a cultural outing that must be experienced and you had no intention of not taking part. The kinder internet sites refer to it as “floating gardens,” and you give them credit for their diplomatic renderings, but you quickly realize that Xomilcho is a strange blend of bumper boats, picnicking, floating bars, and agile salesmen unlike anything you’ve seen before. After a price (per boat, not person) is negotiated, you settle in to your brightly colored party cruiser (cruising= being poled up the canals by a boatman, Venice-style, without the same panache) and head out for a two-hour float. Over the course of the next two hours you experience a water jam that would make Malaysian drivers proud, with boat owners calling each other idiots as they push off one another and the banks to try to make their way up the waterway. You also enjoy a snack of roasted corn in a cup, sold to you by a man in a small skiff. You can’t leave without the purchase of a plastic flower headband- all the girls are sporting them. You opt not to hire a floating mariachi band, although you do enjoy their music as they serenade other boats full of people out to enjoy El Dia de Los Niños. Oh, and drinks. Lots of drinks. Your boatman’s sidekick brought a bucketful of ice and beverage options at the outset and counted empties at the end. It can’t get more convenient than that!  

6)      You come home with the same passport you had when you left the country (as you know from previous posts, this isn’t always the case with Mexico trips).  There isn’t much else to be said about this. Usually you are a very organized and contentious traveler and then sometimes the world conspires against you and you find yourself passport-less in a Mexican beach resort town. These things happen. But, they did not happen this time, so it counts as a win.  Borders are crossed. Passports are stamped. All is good in vacation-land. (Posts about January’s missing passport can be found here and here.)

7)      You feel like you need a vacation from your vacation to recover from said injury, weight gain, chatter, and hours of sightseeing. You get back to the United States and are a strange combination of exhausted and relaxed. (You fought a bit of a stomach bug on the way back, plus you flew United, so overall you are happy to have flown without any major incidents of any kind!) You are eager to get back to work and catch up on what you missed (and boy, did you miss things!) but you also struggle to wrap your mind around going back into the office and settling back into your cubicle. But, you struggle into your adorable coral-colored ankle pants because no one likes that guy who calls in sick the day after vacation. Sore and scraped and tired, you throw yourself back into your work and begin to daydream of your next adventure (Iceland in June!).

(A *huge* thank you goes out to our wonderful and gracious hosts in Mexico City,Jessica and Paul!)

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(Photo credits go out to Thad R. and Paul O.)