I have stopped saying that we plan to travel less. The thought was genuine, but unrealistic. Unless Mother Nature, Father Time or Fiscal Fear overwhelm you, if you have been a traveler your whole life, it’s not sensible to think you can just throttle back as a normal lifestyle adjustment. I look around our neighborhood for comparables and find that Mike & Melisa (more homebodies than most) have just returned from their African safari, the Mooney’s are jockeying between here and Tahoe every other week, the Panday’s are decamped to their native Nepal for a few months, Winston & Kathleen are forever going on cruises or staying in their timeshares (which they seem to get good value from and are forever flitting off to), and we just spoke to the Hendersons (our Scottish pals) and they are flying to Scotland for a week, having just returned from some Far Eastern extravaganza. Even quiet Faraj & Yasuko, who are back from five weeks of fishing in Oregon were talking about a cruise to Hawaii (I feel like I created a monster because I introduced them to cruising and they know we are heading to Hawaii soon).
Next Monday we are going to Honolulu to spend five days doing all the things on Oahu that we saw Elvis Presley do in his various Hawaiian beach-blanket-bingo movies in the 1960’s. In those days it was all about Waikiki and Acapulco for the in-crowd. None of this hiking the Milford Track in New Zealand or doing the Golden Circle in Iceland. So we decided that with our big Jet Blue credit that was due to expire (use it or lose it), we booked to fly to Honolulu for five days, stay at the Outrigger Waikiki, spend a full day at the Pearl Harbor Memorial and U.S.S. Missouri, go to a luau on the north shore and be the prototypical 1960’s Hawaiian tourists. I will be disappointed if someone doesn’t put a lei around my neck to highlight my Hawaiian shirt (two of which I will be taking). We fly home on Saturday, say hi to Buddy, unpack, reload the carry-ons, ratcheting the weather wear down 10 degrees, Uber on Sunday to the CBX to fly out of Tijuana to go to Mexico City for a week.
Even for us, that’s a lot of closely scheduled travel, but that’s just how it all worked out. We will meet cousin Pete and Nancy again at Mexico City International Airport (MEX), officially Benito Juárez International. There we will be picked up by our friends John & Elaine’s local driver, who will whisk us off to the town of Malinalco, 85 miles away and hopefully only 2.5 hours (depending on city traffic in this 9 million person sprawling metropolis). John & Elaine have had a house in Malinalco for twenty years. Malinalco is a small, lush colonial town in the State of Mexico. It sits in a warm subtropical valley ringed by dramatic rock cliffs, at about 5,700 ft., and is noticeably warmer and greener than Mexico City. It was named a “Pueblo Mágico” in 2010 and has become a favorite weekend escape for Mexico City residents, with boutique hotels, good restaurants, and a relaxed, slightly bohemian feel. It’s home to Cuauhtinchan (“House of the Eagle”): an Aztec ceremonial site perched on the cliff above town, reached by climbing about 400 steps. Its main temple is carved directly out of the living rock, one of very few monolithic temples in the Americas. It’s believed to have been an initiation site for the elite eagle and jaguar warriors. The views over the valley are supposed to be superb. There is also ex-Convento del Divino Salvador: a 16th-century Augustinian monastery in the town center. Its cloister walls are covered in rare black-and-white frescoes depicting a paradise garden of native plants, birds, and animals. The town is divided into old neighborhoods, each with its own small chapel, cobbled lanes, and a lively weekend market. It promises to be a touch of the real Mexico that so many people rave about.
After three days there, we will head into the city to do the traditional Mexico City tourist tours, focused heavily on the architecture, archeology and anthropology of Mesoamerica. Mesoamerica is the cultural region stretching from central Mexico down through Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Its civilizations shared traits such as maize farming, pyramid-temples, the ritual ballgame, a 260-day ritual calendar, and pictographic writing. Mexico City sits in the Valley of Mexico, one of the region’s core areas with Tenochtitlan, the Aztec (Mexica) capital, founded around 1325 on an island in Lake Texcoco. It is now buried under the city center. Its main temple, the Templo Mayor, has been excavated right next to the Zócalo. There’s also Teotihuacan, about 50 km northeast of the city. At its peak around 450 AD it was one of the largest cities in the world, and it’s home to the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon (we may or may not make it there). The rest of the time will be spent with museums and city tours. It will be an interesting contrast to our week in Hawaii.
We get back on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, which we will spend at home with our favorite homies Gary & Oswaldo and perhaps several other stray guests and neighbors that are footloose that day. The carry-ons will not get too much rest since the week after that we head to NYC for our annual holiday family gathering at the Cornell Club, which is a place we feel like we just left since we stayed there last weekend when we were in NYC. After that fun-filled long weekend, we get to relax (a.k.a. Decorate for Christmas) for a few weeks before the troops gather at our house for the actual Christmas holiday. That always ends our year with a fun bang. This year we are having a What Would Dolly Do Christmas (Kim’s idea) so we will all remember that great icon of Americana and give each other our favorite books…just like Dolly would want us to. So, we are girding our loins for the seven airports we will see and traverse in the next 60 days. We consider ourselves travel-ready.