Overland Adventure Excursions

We woke from the lockdown to a cold morning. I used the nice parking lot there to raise the camper from the truck, recenter the rubber mats, and reposition the camper in the bed. I got the three turnbuckles retightened and then made a quick breakfast before heading out. The autopista was open and traffic was light, but flowing. We mapped to the destination and it said 5.5 hours. At the next exit it had me turn off and I passed a ferreteria, backed up, and checked to see if they had any eye bolts. No luck so we proceeded. Over several other Topas and then another blind, unmarked one in a shady area. I hit the brakes, but we bounced again. UGGH. No more back roads until I get this thing secured again. We turned around, adjusted the map for toll roads, and the time dropped to 2.5 hours.

We cruised comfortably on the highway for 90 minutes or so and paid the tolls as they came up, about $300 pesos. Then we had to turn to the loop road around the northern part of the city. Right after we exited the toll gate we were driving behind two semis and noticed a police car up ahead. We merged to the left and then one of the cops flagged us down to stop. I obediently pulled over, my first mistake.

Crooked Cops

The cop walked up to the passenger side of the truck and started to speak fast spanish. We said no comprendo and he was quick to pull out his phone and type in that the radar had caught us going 110kph and we had to get a ticket. I told him that we have not gone that fast all morning and that I have a camera mirror that records everything. He agreed to look at the footage, which I was glad to show him. My speed never got above 81kph from the time we left the booth until he flagged us down. He was undeterred and said it was before that. I said great, show me the radar, I’ll look at the time stamp, and we could look at the video. He said they were sending it to him.

Then he pulled out his phone and said the fine was $11,000 pesos (which is something like $600 USD) and I said no way, I was not speeding. I said ok, let’s get the radar and we could see. He said no, we will write you the ticket and you’ll get the radar when you go to pay. I said no way. By that time he had my license and our TIP paperwork and was being really stubborn. And then, he brought out the 50% pay now discount. I told him no way, I wasn’t speeding. He went down to 5000 pesos. Again, no. Finally he was starting to walk away and Kathy let out a panic cry and he quickly dropped it to $3000. I offered $1000 and he ended up with $2000 ($100USD). I told myself I would never pay a bribe, but I ended up doing it. Uggh. Embarrassing. But we got our paperwork back and were on our way. Paid the stupid tax, once, not again.

Safe at camp

We continued on and mapped out a Home Depot to get the eye bolts that we needed. I bought all 5 that they had. We stopped at a grocery and got some food, as the place we were heading is up in the hills and a good distance from larger markets. The next was to find a bank to replenish what had been scammed from us, which took a while because apparently you cannot park free here or with larger rigs. Finally, about 4PM we made it ot the camp safely.

The camp is basically the yard of a young couple that are taking care of their mom’s house. They have built their own place next door but keep that open for an AirBnB as long as their mom is away; she’s been in Indiana for the last 20+ years and our host Jaime went to school there. He is a forest ranger on the weekends and goes to school during the week and is an adventure guide as well. They started this camp because people hiring him for the adventure recommended a campsite for overlanders since sites were few around CDMX. We can use the AirBnB bathroom and shower as long as its not occupied for $50 pesos per day, so we signed up for the hot shower. There is a horse here to amuse Kathy and we can hear cows and goats in the neighboring properties. And of course, dogs everywhere.

Jaime and his wife, Monica took us to town to a great bakery the first night and really made us feel welcome. The bread was sweet and fabulous and we had some Goat Milk Caramel Cheesecake for dessert that night. He offered to guide me up to the local mountain with is something like 4000 meters high, and I may take him up on that after my chores are done. Its a great quiet location to hang out. His place is called Quetzalcoatl Travel Experience if you want to stop by. He is on iOverlander as well.

Some cool Germans neighbors showed up last night, Tomas and Cristine, and we will be able to hang out for a few days. They have been traveling since 2016 off and on and started in South America. They travel for 4-6 months, store their vehicle, then go back home for a while. They excitedly shared all the great places they’ve recently spent as well as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, etc. They said don’t miss any of it. They also told me how much of a PIA it is to get a tourist visa for the USA due to the last 5 telephone numbers they’ve had, all social media, etc. I joked that we are great at red tape. Here is their website: www.vollzeitreisen.de if you are interested.

I’ll be here for the next week while Kathy flies back to the home base to get some medical appointments completed and Rx stocked back up. I already replaced the two eye hooks and have some inquiries out on how to eliminate this issue in the future. This week I’ll get our taxes done, fuel filters changed on the truck, spring cleaning in the rolling home, adding more tiedowns to Howie, and I’ll finish off the app I am working on.

Thanks for reading.

We got up slowly from the boat launch and I had mapped out a path to a city outside of CDMX named Salazar. We had taken the expensive toll road to Patzcuaro so I wanted to take the slower roads through the towns and mountains of central Mexico. It is dry season, but the views are really nice and the roads are pretty good, give or take a few topos (speed bumps). I set the GPS for a little campground near the Mariposa Butterfly Sanctuary outside a town called San Felipe de los Alzati. I figured it would be nice to at least pet the butterflies since they are world renowned in their migrations.

Busses

The day started off fairly normally and about an hour into our drive we came across a valley that was on fire or had recently been burned. Things are pretty dry here and we passed some flames at the edge of the road. Not far past there was a burned out carcass of a Ram 700 and what looked like a Honda or Acura on the other side of the road. We commented that this must be the source of the fire. There were wrecker trucks backed up to each of the cars to take them back to the scrap heaps, and we were ushered through by some National Guard officers. Another 30 minutes down the road and we came across a bus that was across the road, still smouldering, and another National Guard crew routing traffic around the accident. He said something in Spanish about cables, which we saw were electrical lines laying across the path, apparently burned in the bus flames. We snapped some photos making comments about sending them back to our friends about narrowly escaping the cartel here in Michoacán.

We continued down the road and thirty minutes later there was another bus in the road, blocking the lanes with two flat tires. There was a bit of a edge to the road, but this seemed odd to have both tires blown out on one side. Again, the National Guard was routing cars around the block. I got to thinking how lucky I have been with the Falken Wildpeak tires, not having the issues the other drivers on the road here seem to have. We kind of joked at that being an odd place to leave the bus, unless it had been high-centered.

Please forgive the camera photos. I ordered this last March and have been carrying it in the truck since and I finally installed it on the camper in Patzcuaro. I am still getting to know it, but it records the front and rear cameras as we drive and has a g-force sensor to capture if major events occur.

Bumps

So we continue on down the road and of course, on these back roads there are the famous Topos (speed bumps) that are used to regulate speed; some are painted, some have signage, and some are just plain hard as hell to see. Well after going over several, one caught me in an area that was shaded and I did not have other cars to watch over the thing. This time it was bad on the truck as it hit the shark fin antenna and dented the top of my truck. UGGH… more on that in another post. It straightened the eye in the eye bolt and I had to go back and get my tie-down from a considerate observer. I had another eye bolt in my spare bin, so I replaced the (now bolt) and got it all situated on the truck. I’ll have to figure out how to straighten the roof dent. But more on that later.

We were noticing that the region was kind of devoid of activity. Regular types of stores were closed on Sundays, but additionally, nothing was really open, including the convenience stores at the gas stations. Something is always open in Mexico. About that time Kathy was noticing some warnings on our Pan American Travel Facebook group about issues in Mexico. And then her brother and sister-in-law started texting. It turned out the Mexican Army killed the head of the cartel in Puerto Vallarta on Saturday night and there was backlash and the Cartel was warning everyone to stay indoors while they fight it out with the army/guard/police. Now we know why there was such a strange setting on our drive today.

Well we were about 30 minutes from our stop, Kathy was getting a bit nervous, and I was just working my way around all the road construction. We hit another bump on the road construction where a cement drainage was not completely level with the new pavement and of course I had to stop and gather the stupid tie-down again from the road. Uggh.

Roadblocks

So as we pass yet another gas station with a handwritten sign on the doors “Cerrado” and entered the little town of San Felipe de los Alzati, cars were backed up again. As we approached, there was a lot of foot traffic and I could see the road was blocked by the minibuses that shuttle people around in Mexico. Some guy was indicating we had to turn around, so we 5-point-turned in the road and headed back out. (I wish I had saved the camera footage from that town.) I knew enough we needed to get back to a safer area and I went to the iOverlander map to find a place to stay. There was nothing in the area and I could not find a route around in town I felt safe enough to get to the campsite.

About 30 miles back we could get to the Autopista which had a place to stay the night. The toll roads are considered much safer for travel, mainly due to the barriers they already have restricting traffic and heavy Guard patrols.

By this point Kathy’s research fingers were finding all kinds of real and fake news of the area and she was getting pinged by family and friends in the states and we had to put down the phone. She has crossed into fear at this point. In the next town of Tuxpan, I stopped to top us off with fuel, and spoke to the attendant about safety and the road. He said he had not heard anything and heading back to Maravatio and toll road was a good idea. So we bounded forward.

Buffets

We have a rule, like most, to not drive after dark in Mexico. Some of it is for safety from bandits, but mostly it is due to animals in the road, people without lights, potholes, topos, etc. So we arrived at the Mobil station about 15 minutes before sunset. We had not stopped for lunch and were famished, and there was a Mexican Buffet place with two busses out front. Time to treat my beautiful bride to a celebratory dinner after escaping certain death.

The place said it was open til 9, but today only until 7. It was 6:25 and we were hungry. The food sucked!!! Maybe it was because we were there right before close, or because they had just been ravaged by two busses of people, but nothing was really tasty. I miss those early days of Mexican Buffets in Tucson like Gordos or Pancho’s. The cactus even tasted bad here. LOL.

Well we asked to stay the night and they said yes, out front. I checked with the lady in the convenience store next door and she talked too fast and basically said no. So we asked the Mobil station attendant next door and he said yes, park in the back. Two to One, she looses. We settled in for a rather rough night, not knowing if the country was in a full out war. Google maps showed the Autopista closed until 7:30 am and several roads blocked on the way toward Mexico City. I got about 4 hours of sleep, but I could not comfort Kathy as this was her first experience with events like this.

Fun times… and I still had to fix the broken tie-down on the truck.

I am a few days behind in the blog, due to being sick and some long days on the road. Publishing this on the 24th, but dating it the 22nd.

We both caught some sort of cold as we got to Patzcuaro and decided to stay an extra day to recover from it. The campground cleared out on Friday and we were the only ones left on Friday night. Other than the booms that seem to constantly go in in Mexico, it was a really quiet night and we both got some good rest. We packed up the traveling road show and since we paid the premium price for the toll roads on the way out here and we had several days before we had to be in Mexico City again for Kathy’s flight, we’d take the back roads to a cool little town I was surprising Kathy with named Salazar. But before that, Graeme recommended a local town called Tzintsuntzan that has an old Aztec ruin that we could visit. It was a quick 30 minutes down the road, so we headed that way.

The town is named Tzintzuntzan, which means “place of the hummingbirds” and was settled in the 12th century and was the most powerful from 1450-1521. The ruins were built between the 12th and 14th century and contained 5 circular pyramids, each with a wooden structure on top that was for ceremonies and burials. The town was conquered by the Spanish in 1521, the emperor was burned at the stake, and most of the population left the area. The Spanish resettled it and built a monastery in the 16th and 17th century, using most of the stones from the pyramids. It was a nice walk around the HUGE structure (430 meters by 240 meters) and the grounds. Here is a link to some more information if you are interested. We headed back to the truck and headed out to find some camping.

We stopped and had lunch at a little cocina; me chewing on the carne asada and the grilled nopalas (cactus) greens and Kathy having some fried shrimp and a horrible margarita. We settled at a spot at the local town boat launch beneath some huge trees. It was a Saturday night and we expected to have some visitors later in the evening with stereos, but only one showed up around 9:30 and left soon after. It was hard to tell if his bass was louder than his truck with it’s missing muffler. We slept pretty well and of course the pups got their nightly and morning walks that ensure they deserve the 18-20 hours of sleep they get every day. LOL.

Here are a few additional photos from Tzintzuntzan.

We found a really peaceful campground here in Patzcuaro. Graeme Bell stopped by the first night to say hello and we had a nice chat. We met again for dinner the following night at a nice little restaurant in the main square. We had a nice discussion about traveling, places to go, things to see, and people we met. Graeme and his familly have been traveling since the early 2000’s and have so far been to Africa, South America, North America, and Europe. He has published 5 books (four travel memoirs and one how-to). He is a very experienced traveler and holds a wealth of knowledge. You can read about him here. He has a store with his books and other items. I’d recommend his books as he is very witty and down to earth on his experiences.

I had picked up some sort of nasty sniffle the night we arrived and was fighting it with nasal spray and Vitamin C, but it did not work. I had to bring in the Nyquil and Dayquil to get this under control. On the 18th, I did not sleep much, as I was battling it. I slept better the next night with only a bit of a cough and heavily medicated, and today the residual medications have me a bit groggy, so we will be hanging here for another day because I cannot drive in this state. Kathy has caught it as well, unfortunately, so she is a day or so behind me. Hopefully it will not linger.

Kathy is heading back to the states to get some medications we cannot get here and to pick up a couple of things. We looked for flights out of Oaxaca or Acapulco but nothing was reasonable, so we are headed back towards Mexico City, as she can get a straight flight in and out. I checked on her visa and I think she has to stamp out and then get another when coming back. We will deal with that online. We are not asking for extended time, only re-entry. We will see how that goes. I think this will allow us to stop by the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary on the way there. Plus, while waiting for Kathy, I can head north a bit into some of the mountains. I will have to check out what is up there.

I did finally get the rearview camera installed. I bought the Wolfbox mirror last spring and intended to get it installed and have been carrying it around since. I had to drill a hole in the rear of Howie and route the wire, but it is working; not ideally though. I need a disconnect from the truck to the camper as right now I have to disconnect the jack and pull it out of the truck before offloading Howie. I have an adapter, but I don’t have a solder gun with me, so I will wait on that. I have two things to do on Howie the week Kathy is out; change the two fuel filters and try to find a source for tires.

Here is a map of our travels to Patzcuaro.

We contacted the owner of the campground who had sold us a ride to CDMX and asked if he wanted us to get an Uber or for him to pick us up. He said he would be there between 9 and 10. He arrived about 10:30 due to traffic and we spent the next 2.5 hours in the car driving the 32 miles back to the campground. It took longer to get back than it did to get there (1 hour). Traffic in CDMX can be bad.

Howie was sitting pretty, but a bit dusty, and had been parked with good solar. I had forgotten to shut off the Starlink and I thought it would kill the battery after a week, but it worked like a champ. I could monitor the system remotely and it dropped to about 85% every day to keep the fridge cold and the Starlink on and then recharged by noon each day. I had to run in to Autozone, which turned out to be about a 4 mile walk due to incorrect references on the map.

I did manage to get an oil filter wrench and a spare filter, which I changed after I got back to the campground. I had been changing oil every 10K on this truck, usually with the dealer’s free oil change, but I had to change it in Montana at 70K and again in Baja at 79k. I could not get the filter off until now, so I will change it again at 85K with a new filter.

We packed up on the 17th to head to Patzcuaro to say hello and hang out with Graeme from A2A Expedition. I decided to take the toll roads since non-tolls was 7-8 hours of driving. We managed this trip in about 6 with a lunch stop in the middle. I think the tolls were about $50 along the way. Expensive on top of the fuel costs here. It’s good we have slowed the roll on this side. The first leg to Canada and Alaska we did 20K miles in 4 months. So far we have done 5K in 2.5 months, which is a lot easier on the travel budget.

The truck has been doing its DPF Regen thing again the past two weeks and I got an engine light yesterday. I am sure it is the code for “too many regens”, but I don’t have my code reader to be sure. I suspect it is this because it came on right at the time it did a regen on the way here. My overall goal with this truck is to leave it un-deleted until I have to delete it. It should run fine as designed, but I have read all sorts of things. If I do delete it, it will be nice to get better mileage. I am currently averaging about 12mpg, and would love to get it to 16-20 after removing all of the emissions. I am hoping for the best with this thing.

We pulled into camp at about 4:30 and set up for the next several days. Graeme came over and we got to meet the famous Chewy. We chatted for a while and compared notes. He has lots of experience and knows tons of people from his journeys. Blessed to be doing this. Life is Incredible.

We had explored the museum two days ago and I wanted to go back to see the rest. Kathy decided to stay back at the AirBnB to get the laundry done, get some personal things taken care of, and rest for the day. I headed out about 9 after getting the pups walked in the park and caught the bus and headed North. Funny thing about busses, unlike subways, they are dependent on surface activities. I made it all the way to the Hamburgo station to exit, walked across the street to get the #7 bus…. and there was a marathon or 5K going on. I found a rerouted bus stop, got on, and was dumped off one stop later as that was where Line 7 was ending today. LOL. I walked the mile or so to the museum.

The lines were a bit longer, being a Sunday. but they moved fast. The lines only took me 15 minutes. I had a nice chat with a lady and a gentleman who were switching back and forth from English to German. Apparently she works in the US for a Deutsch firm and was down in CDMX with their counterparts for an onsite, get to know the team, function. Cool job. I spoke a bit of German to them, but surprisingly understood quite a lot of what the were saying. I wish my Spanish was close to this.

I got in to the museum right around 10 AM and spent about 4 more hours learning about the Aztecs and the Mayans and the trade and movement in all of those people. It was really interesting in that the last part of the museum discussed northern Mexico, southern Arizona and New Mexico and the Anasazi’s. One of the things that I got to thinking is that 10 to 20 thousand years ago peope crossed the land bridge and settled the Americas. People of Europe/Africa/Asia were all developing similarly in the plentiful areas on the planet. It is two evolutionary paths and societal development until around 1500 when the east met the west. I wonder what studies have been made to compare the development. I might have to look into that.

I left the museum and walked through the park, which was packed on the Sunday. Tons of vendors, people waiting in line for paddle boats, sitting under trees, etc. I stopped for a bit to eat and then walked to the subway to get back home.

Anyway, here is a link to the photos

We decided to rest up a bit today and just head over to a market to explore the Coyoacán Mercado experience. We took an Uber for $6USD and as we exited on the Saturday, there was an art market set up in the adjacent park. We wandered through colorful paintings, creative string art, 3D sculptures, and general creativity before heading in to the market.

The Mexican mercado is basically a very large building encompassing a city block that has hundreds of vendors selling everything you can think of, including food. We found a Starbucks city mug for half the price of what we’d have paid at the coffee shop and Kathy found a shot glass she’ll use for painting as well as a nice packet of small tipped brushes for her painting. We ate at a Mexican/Asian fusion place called Hibachi Lova on stool seats at a counter about 8 feet long. It was delicious.

We ended up walking back to the AirBnB, which took about an hour. We stopped at this big store called Liverpool, which turned out to be a high-end department store similar to what Dillards or Macy’s once were in the US. We found some official Mexico Football shirts and decided to come back to get one.

We got back to the pups and I took them for a long walk and then we took a siesta nap. It was Valentine’s day and we walked to the Italian restaurant on the corner, had a nice meal and enjoyed the local musician and singer that were posted at the restaurant for the night. The gentleman played soprano and alto saxophone and the lady sang a variety of songs, including Shania Twain’s I feel like a woman.

The puppies got another long walk in the local park before bed. It was a Saturday night and there was a movie playing in the park for the locals. The previous week and the following week they have live music playing in the park, but unfortunately we missed that this time around.

We headed out on Friday the 13th to visit the museum of Anthropology and began the day on the metro bus. The plan was to take line 1 to a junction and then take Line 7 to the museum. Apparently there was a traffic, or bus problem, or something, and it dumped us off several stops before the end. Everyone got off the bus and we cut across the city where we saw a fountain of Fuente de Cibeles, a greek goddess, which is a replica of a fountain in Madrid. We continued on the tree-lined streets filled with cafe’s and street vendors and came across an old aqueduct that I am sure is a fountain during the summer months.

Kathy spotted a familiar logo of the company I worked for on one of the high rises so we took some time to take a few photos, walk to the building, and pose for some selfies to send back to the folks back home. The texts to the team was fun and I realize I miss working with those good people.

Since we were only a few blocks from the museum, we continued on and diverted through the park to walk amongst the trees. As we approached the museum we saw some more of the Aztec rope dancers taking a break between their performances. The museum line outside was about 50 meters long and moved quickly where we found another line 3x as long. Kathy wandered off to the gift shop and restrooms and I waited in line to purchase tickets, which only took about 30 minutes. And then we got to enter…

The Museo Nacional de Antropología is considered to be one of the world’s best museum in anthropology and for the entrance price of $12 USD, it is a real value. It is set up as a giant U-shaped building with exhibits covering recent discoveries in Mexico City, the history of human evolution and migration, detailed descriptions of the peoples in the last 10,000 years in the Americas, and additional religious and cultural displays of festivals and traditions. The first exhibit on the left was the recent dig (1977) of a room found in Mexico City called Tlillancalco, the place of the black house. In a nutshell, they were building in an area and came across some artifacts that expanded to a full-fledged dig. Here is the link for pictures and a description if you are interested.

Ever since I visited Greece and Thessaloniki ancient cities fascinate me. Cities are settled for a number of reasons, and those reasons generally transcend time; seaports, convergences of rivers or roads on trade routes, etc. And cities are build upon themselves when the ruins of one are paved over for the regeneration of new. In this case, Mexico city is an ancient city, now named Cuidad de Mexico, but was conquered by the Spanish in 1521 when it was known as Tenochtitlan that was founded in 1325 by the Aztecs in what was a swampy area in Lake Texcoco, which at the time was a sparsely populated area of villages controlled by the Tepanec people of Azcapotzalco to the west and the Colhuacán to the South. The Mexica (later known as Aztecs) were looking for a home and based on a prophecy of an Eagle landing on a cactus and this place was where they saw it. An island in an inland salten sea settled by a people looking for a homeland. This sounds a bit familiar. Well, you can research yourself with the links, but they basically created raised areas in the swamp to settle and raise crops and ultimately built Tenochtitlan that the Spanish conquered in 1521.

We wandered through the first couple of sections that covered Human Evolution and migrations of people where we know now there were two major migrations 20,000 years ago and 10,000 years ago where people crossed the Bearing land mass and worked their way down to what is now Mexico, Central America, and South America where they flourished in the ideal climate. We wandered through more a more recent display that showed the differences of the regions of Mexico, Central America, and South America and how humans built their houses, tamed the land, and traded throughout the region up to the present day. It was simply overwhelming, beautiful, inspiring, fun, educational, and exhausting. We had not eaten since breakfast and it was going on 3:45 so we decided to head out and get something to eat. And then we found the museum restaurant.

The restaurant is called Sala Gastronómica, and has a menu for each of the 5 regions of Mexico. We had some freshly made guacamole and some grilled shrimp tacos from the Baja region. Yum. We practices some of our terrible spanish with the waiters and then packed up to head home. The museum closed at 5 anyway and we had left the pups at 10 and we still had a bus ride home. We decided to come back because we had only seen 30% of the museum.

The bus ride back was crowded as it was rush hour. We made it from metro 7 to metro 1 and the thing was just too crowded so we ended up walking back to the AirBnB, which took us about 45 minutes. Overall, a fantastic day in CDMX.

Here is a link to the photos we took today.

We walked to the local bus stop and caught the bus to the University area. Roman, our guide from the day before had told us a lot about Juan O’Gordan and his art and architecture and mentioned the library at the university. We decided to go take a look as it is the largest mural of its type in the world. The bus was crowded and interesting as it was a street bus, not a modern subway or bus line, and it was crowded. But by the time we got to the last stop, at the university, we were the only two left.

The first thing we saw was the Olympic stadium, which was used in the 1968 olympics. It has a 3D mural of one of Diego Rivera’s creations on the front of it, and we did our best to get a good look.

We walked to the pedestian area, which took us under the main avenues into the university. This place reminded me of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. It is build very plainly in a series of cascading fields surrounded by elevated industrial buildings, similar to the designs Juan O’Gordon used. We found the library, as it was one of the tallest and the mural is impressive. It covers all four sides, each with a central theme: South, history of Spanish and Mexico; West, University emblem and different disciplines; North the regions prehistoric past; and East, the contemporary world. Here is some more information.

We walked around the University for about an hour and enjoyed seeing the young students enjoying college life. We even saw a small market near the library where you could buy popcorn, drinks, trinkets, books, and even green leafy study materials; which we thought were illegal in Mexico, but were openly displayed and sold. Interesting.

We walked to the bus and headed back to the AirBnB, stopping for dinner at a sushi place across from the park that I have been walking the pups. They play 80’s-2000’s videos on screens at your table. Almost a Karaoke theme, without the singing. Peaceful and easy day in CDMX. Beautiful 75 degree weather.

Here is a link to the photos from today and a map of our travels.

Kathy has been waiting for this day for quite some time. We scheduled a guided tour of the Frida Kahlo museum and this was one of the items on her bucket list. She has long admired Frida as an artist and is interested in her tenacity and her story of a painful life. I had tried to get tickets, but the thing sells out and I was grateful to get a tour that included Diego Rivera and Frida’s studio house, Casa Azul, and Casa Roja through another tour group.

We met our awesome tour guide, Roman, at 10:30 at the studio house in the San Angel region of CDMX. The house stands in contrast to the other properties in the area in that it was the first functional constructivist building in Latin America. These buildings are build with an industrial purpose-driven design and remove ornamentation that is typical with traditional architecture. The buildings are plain, but extremely functional, and apparently were the scandal of the neighborhood. The scale model below is my version of a drone shot.

The houses were done in two parts, first with the architect purchasing two tennis courts from the adjacent hotel, and the red house in the foreground was designed and build by Juan O’Gordon. The design uses simple columns to support the house with the ground floor primarily for living space, kitchen, with a large open shaded patio. The second floor contained a bathroom and several bedrooms and a large area with floor to ceiling windows. The roof was tiled and sloped to allow for water collection to the cisterns below the house. You can read it all in the link above.

The second house build was Diego’s studio, and he loved working there. It was purposefully built for him and his second floor studio is a fantastic working space that lets tons of light in, but never direct sunlight. His studio was adorned with artifacts he loved as well as his paints, etc. He was very traditional and used natural pigments for his paints, which came from plants and minerals from far and wide.

Frida’s house was small, and very functional, with a tiny kitchen and a small living and work space. Their home was connected by a walkway on the third floor, which interestingly Friday had to climb a precarious staircase from her 2nd floor living space to the third floor roof. (You can see that in the model on the blue house with a thin railing). For someone with such handicaps, that must have been a chore. She only lived in the house for 5 years and much preferred Casa Azul.

We spent about 2 hours touring the property. I am always impressed with architecture and the ways to use space. Of course the area is set up as a museum now, so the gardens have been cleared and the area is maintained as an open space for visitors. After a bit of research I found some older pictures of the properties before they were restored and made into the museums of today. If you are interested, here is the link.

Roman ordered a Uber and we headed to a cafe for a quick bite to eat and some water. Then we walked to the next museum, Casa Azul. The history of this house in the Coyoácan (coyotes) was the place of birth and death of Frida. The house was built in 1904, she was born in 1907, and over time her father, who was a distinguished photographer in the region, mortgaged and lost the house only for Diego to purchase it as a wedding gift and put it in Frida’s name. It was expanded over the years with a final extension build and designed by Juan O’Gordon for Frida. I can go on an on about how beautiful the studio and gardens were, but we really enjoyed the tour and the visit. Here is a picture of just one little area in the garden.

We spent a couple of hours in Casa Azul and then headed through Coyoácan to Casa Roja, which we did not really know anything about. Apparently when her father essentially lost Casa Azul, Friday purchased Casa Roja for her parents and sister and had it redone. She lived in that home for a bit of time during her life. Casa Roja is a very interesting space in that it has the colonial courtyard and the rooms are connected internally through doors, not hallways, and each open to the communal patio. It has been changed to accommodate the museum (patio walkway walled in), but is an interesting building. It actually has a basement as well, which is common in Coyoácan due to the volcanic rock in the area. I love the colonial hacienda style home with the indoor-outdoor designed living space. I created something like it in Coolidge with the back yard; at least as close as I could with the track home/HOA styles we have in the US.

It was a long, beautiful day, and Roman was the perfect guide. He provided such great background, including people and history of the mid 20th century that gave context to what we were seeing. A beautiful day.

Here are some additional photos from the day, and a map of our travels.