The Bosque de Tlalpan is located in the southern part of Mexico City and is also known as the Bosque de Pedregal.  This huge green area was acquired by the city’s authority back in 1968 and opened its doors to the general public, short after.

As you may know, I am a nature lover, and am happy to inform that this forest is considered a protected area since 1997 and it boasts a biodiversity that includes a number of plants and animals, among which it is common to find a variety of pine trees, oaks, eucalyptus, cacti, fungi and a diversity of colorful flowers; also squirrels, opossums, birds and even snakes.

Since 1981, an association was created which is dedicated to the preservation of this place and the organization of different sporting events.   The truth is that once entering the park you tend to forget that you are actually in one of the greatest cities of the world.

In this forest you can enjoy a numerous of outdoor activities, opening from 5:00 AM to 5:00 PM.   The entrance is totally free and there are plenty of parking spaces, restrooms, several kiosks and dining areas, and many running and hiking/walking paths where you will simply admire the beauty of the surrounding.

As a bit of additional information, at one end of the parking lot, you will find the Casa de Cultura de Tlalpan (“Tlalpan’s House of Culture”), distinguished by its original architecture of Chiluca carved stone, completed in 1940, but moved inch by inch to its present site in 1975, rebuilt in 1986 and inaugurated in 1988.  Interesting!

The Casa de Cultura de Tlalpan leads temporary art exhibitions with free admission and also offers courses and workshops (a small fee is charged) of various visual arts, theater, music physical expression, among others.  It is open for the mentioned activities from 9:00AM to 9:00PM.

Both places are located on the Road to Santa Teresa in the Parque de Pedregal neighborhood, in the Tlalpan Delegation.  Nearby, you will find the Metrobus “Villa Olimpica” station.   For more information about the Bosque de Tlalpan you can call 5606-3980 and 5528-6498 and for the Casa de Cultura de Tlalpan call 5606-3839 and 5606-9002.

So if you are in the southern part of the city, I do hope you take the time to visit these places, which are not so touristy but are definitely worthwhile.

Entering the highway at Bosques del Lago, possibly the worst onramp on the highway. Despite the proximity to the Tech de Monterrey and the nice homes in the Bosques, the area is rather ugly.

Translated from the Original on Eldefe.com by Isaac Vazquez. Photos are by the author. Click any photo to enlarge.

Picture this: a mountainous area dotted with trees and fields. In the distance, the gleam of a lake hidden between hills, and further afield, some houses on top of the next hill still further away.  To the east is a huge city laid out in an enormous valley. And if are lucky, far off in the distance, on a clear day you’ll catch a glimpse of a couple of gentle volcanoes. Idyllic landscape?

Now imagine that all of this passes by your window at 120 miles per hour. Beside you the lights of tractor trailers lights stream and other – even faster cars – pass you by in the high lane. This postal landscape changes dramatically to big neighborhoods – houses that appear to be gray cinderblock climbing the slopes. Against the distance, the lake is no longer the only thing flashing. Now you see the bright shopping mall lights and the windows of skyscrapers. Suddenly, everything becomes wooded and provincial. Traffic only takes you to the edge of  Mexico City: Welcome to the Autopista Lechería-La Venta at the extreme west end of our city.

With 4 big lanes and hyper-inflated tolls, the highway runs from Cuautitlan-Izcalli up near Santa Fe, and connects the Mexico-Queretaro and Mexico-Toluca highways. Literally cutting through the mountains, this highway exemplifies some aspects of the landscape through which it charges: brutality alongside Interlomas’s opulence, poverty in some of the neighborhoods surrounding the heights and the claims of Atizapán and suburban Lomas Verdes. And one should not forget the post-card like views from the mountains that the Edomx government likes to boast about.

Atizapán from the highway. Mile after mile of gray cinderblock homes give way, in the south to some more middle-class color.

For Chilangos who’ve never been there or who’ve never bothered to admire the landscape, I present first a set of photos: from the entrance at Bosques de las Lomas to the Lomas Verdes offramp. As one simply cannot ride public transportation here, it is understandable that this corner is not well known in the city, and although this road is far from inexpensive, on a clear day, the view alone makes the ride worth it.

Galleries Atizapán. The Emerald Zone on the other side of the highway, with its incredibly green golf courses, like the meadows of Condado Saayavedra, home to very pretty girls (so they say).

Presa Madin from the Madina Bridge. I don't know how people can sleep living next to this dam, especially in rainy season.

The newly built Lomas Verdes exit. Before this exit was completed one had to fight the deadly curves of the avenue that runs along the Madina Dam. If one takes this exit one arrives in just a few moments to ... another shopping mall.

My next entry will cover the next leg of our journey, from Lomas Verdes to Santa Fe!

The best soap in Mexico

No, not Roma-Norte. Roma-Detergente!

There is a part in Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London” where the author is literally scraping grease off the dishes with bits of newspaper – the Paris water is too hard.

I am reading that book with a bunch of my English students in Mexico City – because in a lot of ways the descriptions of the “Down and Out” just make a lot of sense. References to Paris and London seem like they are from the middle ages now if you go to Paris or London. But the book is perfect for the advanced student of English.

What’s the point ? One thing you learn fast in Mexico City is that the WATER IS HARD!! Everyone knows not to drink it – though truth be told – I do drink it sometimes. Not often.

The mother of a friend of mine is having some kidney stones removed this weekend – and that may very well be among the most dastardly long term consequences of drinking hard-as-rocks water.

Available in half-kilos - all the way up to the mega 20 Kg size above - Detergente Roma is like finally getting all the filth washed out of your life.

But on to the true pleasures of Mexico.

No. Everything is not perfect in Mexico. The water is too hard. The natives want to kill me and sell drugs to my kids and my glassware just doesn’t rinse clean!

Well, that last bit certainly used to be true!  That is, until I discovered the true secret of washing up in Mexico.

Hot water? Cold water? It just doesn’t matter.

I was buying those pretty colored liquids for the first several months I was in Mexico and you know what?  They didn’t work. I felt like Orwell in one of those dastardly Paris kitchens with bits of newspaper. Detergente Roma is a god-send! And switching to Detergente Roma, whether you are living in some gated gringo compound, or out in the jungle smoking whatever it is you smoke out there – Detergente Roma makes almost everything in Mexico clean up easier and faster.  Even in the hardest water situations.

Don’t just trust me. Buy the little half-kilo bag and try it in the kitchen. It rinses away far better than anything from the big chemical companies and it makes you feel like you are going native.

Locally spent money works better than global corporations would have you believe.

I’m becoming a raging activist, but check out this post at Small Mart (which I found via Corrente). My last argument was for increased tax revenue, here, but come on, this is so simple even an economics ignoramus like myself can see it. This is really something I think about every single time I have to buy something at Oxxo instead of from the lady with a table – and that’s why I try to always buy from the lady with a table.

Growing evidence suggests that every dollar spent at a locally owned business generates two to four times more economic benefit—measured in income, wealth, jobs, and tax revenue—than a dollar spent at a globally owned business. That is because locally owned businesses spend much more of their money locally and thereby pump up the so-called economic multiplier. Other studies suggest that local businesses are critical to tourism, walkable communities, entrepreneurship, social equality, civil society, charitable giving, revitalized downtowns, and even political participation.

Oddly, all of this stuff is what a conservative, pro-business party should be arguing for. This is what a chamber of commerce should be yammering incessantly about. Oddly, those clowns – in both countries – seem really most content with business models based more in the Halliburton/Northrup Grumman model. Eventually they will all, only sell everything to the US Military. What a great economy that will be – oh wait. That’s what we have now.

The government of Mexico City's perception of the role of the consumer economy as a part of the overall economy illustrated above.

La Jornada reported this morning that the total number of “informal” street vendors has increased by 150% over the last ten years in Mexico City.

The lack of employment opportunities, continuing staff turnover and low incomes have meant that more people have received their main source of income on the street – whether they have an established metal stall or they have to watch out for the cops and unfold something onto the asphalt. (My translation)

I’ve made a fuss about it before, but by refusing to “formalize” – or basically making the process of formalization nearly impossible – expensive, ridiculously complicated and prohibitively pretentious, Mexico deprives itself of revenue and lives very much with a 1950s style version of what business and commerce is.

The Jornada article seems to imply that the solution is to “move” the vendors into public markets. It doesn’t mention that any government figure anywhere is making any attempt whatever to simply formalize them – ie; simplify the formalization process and prohibit selling shit on the streets without a license. Oh well, I guess I will survive.

Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl visible across the eastern neighborhoods of Mexico City (click to enlarge).

Maybe it’s obvious, I have a special consideration for some of the neighborhoods in the east of the city.

The most working class, and some of the roughest places, are also where on a clear day the mountains become the most striking.

Yesterday was spectacular almost everywhere in the city, so a quick hop up to the tallest roof I could find seemed in order. In this case it was on the edge of colonia Valentin Goméz Farias, (check the location here) overlooking the airport to the east and beyond that a really exceptional view of the volcanoes dominated the horizon.

Cristina mentioned the Iztaccíhuatl volcano in her post just last week,  but I guess like any mountain it is not the sort of thing you really get used to seeing. And this weekend, after all of the February rain and the flooding in places not far from here, was exceptional.

looking south to Ciudad Deportivo along Avenida Zaragoza

Filmmakers tend to think that Mexico City is difficult – the light is “hard.” And technically I don’t know exactly what that means, but it is not so easy to photograph.

It’s one of the reasons that they say that Mexico City produces world-class lighting technicians. My hat’s off to them.

I guess I liked the indoor outdoor thing with the roof-top laundry room and the sunlit courtyard in the photo at left. And of course Ciudad Deportivo to the south doesn’t hurt anything.

Here’s one more with Ecatapec sunning itself on the moutains to the north and east from the same roof top.

Ecatepec to the north and east

Double "Sky" to the west. Torre Latino America is visible immediately to the right of the dish on the left. (click to enlarge)

Yes, that is the morning Mexico City sunshine

One has to assume that in the United States there is probably a sub-field of litigation dedicated to helping people who’ve been wantonly exposed to process interruption, down-time and  working mechanical parts.

Exposure to mechanist solutions – one would think – could very well interrupt the operational mental paradigm – after deployment – and that’s been so long strengthened, optimized and maintained. Core competency and focus can be seriously misaligned resulting in opportunity loss and unnecessary preservation of features.

One of the pleasures of life in Mexico is that such mitigating fantasies are a lot less necessary. The fact is, there is a little hydraulic pump under the seat that opens the door. It  pushes or pulls a rod connected to the door. The shots below illustrate the change-delivery process better.

WARNING: Graphic Images

Closed

Non-innovators think that all number of difficult to understand derivative solutions agreements or partnerships needed to be undertaken thus “driving” the charged particles immediately around the access portals, facilitating change and prompting a robust market based solution with strong public-private incentivization to fuel the process of delivery. The analytics prove otherwise.

On the contrary, it’s a matter of the driver pushing a button.

Open

When one starts to think about the inefficiency of business discourse that surrounds all these various “solutions,” and the dis-incentives to actually just facing the working mechanical universe – one finds that life in a non-compromised functioning “public” is ultimately preferable to the mitigated, mediated and sanitized world of your own core competency.

Maximizing return for complex needs could just mean taking it easy and enjoying the fact that some of life’s best working solutions are not only exposed, but beautiful in and of themselves.

Santa Fe never looked this good

Mostly as a follow-up to my own snide post about getting to Santa Fe by bus – this post is also in tribute to Isaac who is half way to convincing me that Santa Fe’s severe dysfunctionality is actually interesting – even captivating.

Like a little part of the United States, Santa Fe is best seen from the air - and doubtless – most of the people who are trapped down below – are only imagining  the moment when they can sign onto the helicopter time-share – and escape the traffic nightmare that has ruined their lives.

The video below is how they like imagine it – complete with more serious smog than has been seen in Mexico City in a decade. And the Sigur Rós song must confirm something. I will update this post when I figure out what.

There’s something invigorating and at the same time peaceful about doing downward dog and tree pose in the pouring rain. Well, not in the rain…but with the rain pattering on the rooftop over your head while you’re safely cozy and twisted into a pretzel. I don’t know what’s up with the rain all over central Mexico, but the only place I’m not shaking my fist angrily at the sky is in the wooden cabin where the Asociación de Yoga Dharma, A.C. offers various yoga classes.

I’ve been going to yoga for a little over three months now, and it is one of the best “fitness” decisions I’ve ever made (and probably the only one I’ve stuck with). When you think of yoga, you might either think of sexy stretchy ladies doing poses on the beach, or of frumpy housewives trying to stretch out of their “stooped over the stove” positions. Regardless, many people think of yoga as a form of exercise that’s really just all about light stretching. However, anyone that goes to classes with “stormin’” Norma, the Tuesday-Thursday morning yoga instructor, would know that if you can get through the session without finishing flushed and sweaty then you are just super-human.

Every day the poses change – class with Norma, or any other instructor, is never routine. Not only are the classes varied with different rhythms and focuses, but instructors pay close attention to their students’ physical needs and conditions. For example – my class has young adult and middle age women, and if someone’s back hurts (even us 20-somethings get a little achy sometimes!) then we start of stretching our back and lumbar zone; if someone can’t do the full extension of the pose (leg over your head, arms twisted around your back – or something fun like that), there are always alternatives depending on your level. Of course, instructors always push their students to their full potential – don’t think you can get away by slouching through a pose – you’ll get caught!

My favorite parts of the class are watching the “Normāsanas.” Āsanas, or postures, not only help your flexibility, but the produce a balance of mind as well. However, “Normāsanas” are the full, perfect postures that our yoga instructor can do – the kind of posture that inspires you to maybe not eat that Carlos V chocolate bar so that you can lift your leg just a little bit higher, or twist your spine a little further. “Normāsanas” are what all students aspire to be able to do some day…

The Asociacion de Yoga Dharma, A.C. offers many different classes at all levels, including training for instructors. While my class meetings are Tuesday – Thursday, from 9:45 to 11, there are earlier classes and late afternoon classes, and some classes on Fridays. You can see their complete schedule and a list of yoga centers on their website right here .

I’m working on improving the map on the Mexico City Museum guide page which seems to account for a good number of visitors here.

The map is not finished yet – I’ve got a million more places and walks and cool Centro Historico places to add in there – not to mention all the supplementary info  – but one of them that couldn’t be left out is the fabulous Farmacia Paris at the corner of 5 de febrero and República del Salvador.

Alright – this is not your typical tourist haunt – it’s Mexico City after all which is not really suitable for typical tourists anyway. But Farmacia Paris deserves all the accolades of a full fledged museum. Your Mexican friends still visit because they stock all the strange old-school, frequently Spanish, cosmetics that only grandmothers love  – and frankly that is just the beginning of the stuff that you can’t get anywhere else.

Farmacia Paris is actually four full stores lined up almost end-to-end along República del Salvador in Centro Historico. Each of them specializes in something more arcane and useful than the last – though I have to admit – there is one I think I have never gone into.

85 República del Salvador, You'll remember why South Africans still call any pharmacy, "The Chemists'"

The first one, pictured above, is for prescriptions fulfillment – check out the crazy conveyor system that trolleys the stuff from upstairs -AND it includes a full museum of funky, old, traditional and totally contemporary items – all for sale. It can feel like the Museum of Jurassic Technology if you’re really looking closely.

But more important, if  you still feel guilty for buying the imported stuff from your local Walmart de México, this is the city center for domestically produced Mexican soaps, shampoos and similar body care products. These are available in an incredible array of fruit and vegetable varieties. Though there may not be a single decent salad bar in Mexico, Farmacia Paris offers a salad bar for your hair! Chile and Garlic Shampoo, Tomato soap, Nopale hair dressing – you name it. All of this mixed in with all the other stuff that makes a good hands-on pharmacy fun.

There is also a store that specializes in Medical and Orthopedic Equipment (I think I’ve never gone in there). And just a few steps away, at 85 República del Salvador you can buy all manner of basic raw materials – nothing too controlled mind you – but I picked up a couple of kilos of raw and beautiful beeswax here once.

More little Jars than you'll know what to do with. Click to Visit www.farmaciaparis.com/

Finally – all the way at 81 República del Salvador – you can pick up all manner of medicinal plants, herbs and select decorative house plants. These are dirt cheap, functional and it’s not like wandering into an overwhelming greenhouse with too many options. Their selection is nicely edited.They also carry some sort of Medical Supplies and stuff here.

If none of that excites you, then check out the beautiful cap to the right. Not only does it depict some of the amazing and beautiful stuff available, but it links to the no-nonsense website of the Farmacia Paris – where you can get an even better idea of all the cool stuff they carry – and that you can’t get in the big capital-extractive, finance-dependent and now frequently teetering-on-bankruptcy chain stores. Give them a visit, on-line or in person, you will be glad you did.