Mexico City is Somehow Underrated and Awesome

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I’ll cut to the chase: Mexico (City) is one of my favourite places in the world to live. It has it all: good food, spectacular weather, easy-going people, a welcoming atmosphere, good public transport, reasonable prices, multiculturalism, tech amenities like contactless payment and fuss-free delivery, parks, cleanliness, relative safety, and just the right amount of chaos to make me feel like it is — and therefore I am — alive.

I’m not saying it’s the best place in the world (or even in Mexico). There are places — even in the same country — with better food or more nature, for example. Certainly, Mexico City has its drawbacks. It has smog, relatively high prices for the country, not great tap water, safety issues (theft/robbery), and frequent earthquakes (that are sometimes disastrous).

But it’s the combination of things that makes Mexico (City) awesome for living. Or as they might say in this country, México es chingón (a really versatile word that means awesome, badass, etc.). We’ve gotten pretty good at speed-dating countries and cities. We can usually tell within a day whether we’re going to like it. And then we spend the rest of the next month or few months confirming our suspicions.

We didn’t do much travel in 2024 as we decided to establish a base in Melbourne, Australia (here’s a post I wrote about the joys of living in Melbourne, on my personal blog) and had to do a bunch of stuff to get the house in liveable condition. But we are back on the road again (maybe with more time in Oz) and one of the first places we came to is Mexico City, informally referred to in writing as CDMX (Ciudad de Mexico) and known to locals as simply “Mexico”.

We were spot on with Mexico City, and our time since then just reinforced our positive first impression.

Mexico City, view from Basilica de Guadalupe
Mexico City, Basilica de Guadalupe. Depositphotos

It’s a little weird to be saying “Mexico is awesome” because it might seem obvious. Americans reading this will have been to Mexico a bunch of times. They (you) might have just crossed the border into a beach town, gone on a raid of Baja on a motorbike, or hit up one of the resorts. Mexico, like its northern neighbour, has a vast array of wonderful things to offer.

But Mexico City is its own thing. Why Mexico City? Why not Oaxaca, Guadalajara, or Puerto Vallarte? Why not indeed. Nothing wrong with those places; quite the contrary, they’re also wonderful (I hear). I just happen to like big cities because they have a little bit of everything and have a bit of that entrepreneurial energy I need to keep going with my various projects and not totally chill out.

Because everyone and their uncle has been to Mexico (it seems), I didn’t really know what to expect. I have monolingual friends who love Mexico for the food, culture, and lifestyle, and I thought: I’m not really like those guys. Will I like it? I have party friends who like it, and I thought: I haven’t ever partied. Will I like it as much? And so on.

What I really wanted was a review of what it’s like to live in Mexico City day to day as a normal person. Going to local eateries, hitting the gyms, buying stuff from markets and cafes. This is the core of what I like to do and why we started Discover Discomfort, so this is my review of living in Mexico City doing everyday, normal stuff.

The Basics of Mexico City — Money, Transport, Weather, and Language

Let’s start with the basics. Mexico City is a big, bustling city, and has a lot of the features you’d expect of many major metropolises.

Money isn’t an issue as you can pay with contactless card everywhere but at streetside vendors, like the old lady I bought bananas from yesterday. (By the way, bananas are plátanos here, just like in your textbook, and unlike places like Argentina where they’re bananas. More on Mexican Spanish below.)

There’s public transport and it’s cheap — the metro reminded me of New York or Paris’s metros in that it’s big, bustling, not clean but not dirty, and has people selling random things in it like snacks (yes!), flowers (ok), and pens (?). You can get the metro card from vending machines, and each ride is around 5 pesos (around 20c USD). Often, taking the metro is faster than taking an Uber/Didi out of congested areas.

On the weather — we came in January. It was really a decision of circumstance (it was in the area), but we also checked and saw that January is typically warm without being too hot, and dry.

It turns out that this is the case for most of the year. Mexico is one of those wonderful places where it’s never too hot and never too cold. There are some months in which it rains more. That’s it.

It’s because Mexico City is technically in the tropics, but has an elevation of over 2000 metres (over 7000 feet), which makes the weather much drier and milder than lower elevation tropics.

If you do travel to Mexico in the months between ~May and October, the word is that it actually usually only rains in the late afternoon, and it’s a welcome relief from the rising temperature and humidity that precipitates the storm (more here from a more seasoned Mexico expert). This means you can visit Mexico (anywhere in the country) any time of the year!

People speak — wait for it — Spanish in Mexico City. I don’t know how well everyone speaks English, but I get the impression that even if your Spanish is “intermediate” (say you studied it in high school but never practised much) you’ll end up using it a lot.

The caveat is that if you hang out in Roma/Condesa, the hipster, gentrified, and expensive parts of Mexico City, you’ll be spoken to in English, see English-language menus, and generally feel like you’re in any other trendy part of a metropolitan city like Barcelona or Berlin. Those areas seem to have some nice things, but they’re not really my jam.

Finally, sim cards… because so many foreigners visit Mexico for short periods, they often just roam. I didn’t want to pay $50+ a month for slow roaming data, so I bought an AT&T card in a corner store for 100 pesos (~$5) that came with 1.5GB of data. Then I recharged it for 200 pesos ($10) and got another 8GB of data loaded on top. This gave me essentially unlimited LTE data.

I don’t know what the internet connection in our Airbnb (a somewhat noisy apartment in an old brick building, nothing fancy) was, but it was faster than I have had in most places!

What’s Mexico City Called?

This is a surprisingly difficult question! There’s little consensus other than “Ciudad de México”.

In writing, in English, we often see it as written “Mexico City” or “CDMX”. CDMX is an abbreviation of “Ciudad de México”.

In spoken Spanish, people sometimes refer to Mexico City just as “México”, i.e. “Voy a México”. If you’re in Mexico, then it’s implied you’re going to the city. This might be an age thing, referring to the city’s former name of “México, Distrito Federal”.

At other times, people might pronounce one of the acronyms for the city, like “DF” or “de-efe” (distrito federal), even though that’s no longer valid, or just “CDMX” or “ce-de-eme-equis” (or “ce-de-mex”), though either way of saying that is a little unwieldy.

An important point is that people don’t say “la” ciudad de Mexico. They might say “Voy a ciudad de México”, but never “Voy a la ciudad de México”.

One important note is that someone who lives in Mexico City is colloquially known a “Chilango/a” (or a “capitalino/a” if you don’t like that term). I thought this was some kind of snack at first (can you blame me? There are so many snacks! And I’ve also had chilli-spiced mangos so whatever).

Originally, chilango/a was a pejorative term, a way of putting down capital city residents who otherwise might have a sense of self-importance. But people have taken ownership of it now. Some of them might even refer to Mexico City as Chilangolandia.

Nobody Cares, and Everyone Has Time

Like many big, western cities, Mexico City is one of those places where you can see people of all walks of life. Doesn’t matter your ethnic background, how you dress, or what your various lifestyle preferences are — there’s a community for you in Mexico City. Nobody really stands out, and everyone fits in, particularly in the central areas.

I think we have a certain ability to appreciate this as a couple of Middle Eastern and Asian backgrounds. We kind of stand out in most smaller towns, anywhere in the world. But in Mexico, we blend in. There are Asians here, and many Asians kind of look central American, anyway. And surprisingly, there’s middle eastern influence in Mexico.

One of the most interesting fun facts I learned about Mexico was the influence of Lebanese culture. There was a huge wave of Lebanese migration in the early 1900s, and they had significant economic impact. Tacos Al Pastor, which is made using meat cooked on a vertical rotating spit, was a Lebanese innovation, even if they have a load of Mexican influence like cilantro, lime, and pineapple. Tacos Arabes look like a shawerma in a pita pocket.

There are a few famous Lebanese-descent Mexicans, too. The famous magnate Carlos Slim, once the richest man in the world (in the early 2010s), is a Mexican-born person of pure Lebanese background. Salma Hayek is of mixed Lebanese descent. And generally, looking a bit Arab, as I do, is entirely normal.

But one thing that’s nice about Mexico City is that despite being a huge metropolis, it seems laid back. It has a little bit of what I know as a Californian vibe – people are chill and patient. When we go to random shops and ask them about things, like “What’s good to eat here?” or “What’s the difference between x, y, and z”, they just explain it to us, and wait for us to make a decision. I’m not sure exactly how to explain this, but basically, we never feel treated like weird foreigners wasting their time — we’re just people asking questions.

There are parts of the city that are packed with people, like the subway. But aside from that, Mexico City’s suburban areas seem remarkably uncrowded. We almost never have to line up things or even wait very long for food.

This isn’t to be taken for granted. We’ve lived in dozens of major cities in the world for months at a time. In many of them, we have to try to “blend in” to try to pass as normal. But in Mexico, it just seems low pressure. Nobody cares that we’re not from the city or even the country.

A Bit About Mexican Spanish (And Other Languages)

I was apprehensive about speaking Spanish in Mexico, even though it’s one of my most comfortable languages — I learned it some 25 years ago and have since had many friends in purely Spanish-speaking scenarios. I’ve done a lot of stuff just in Spanish, including daily life, hobbies like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (here’s my vocabulary), and even work as a consultant.

I had heard that Mexican Spanish was slangy and had a different accent, but boy, was I wrong. I’ve found Mexican Spanish to be some of the easiest Spanish I’ve ever heard. Sure, people say güey or wey a lot and there are some words that are different, but in general, Spanish spoken in Mexico City is usually slow, well-articulated, and easy to understand.

In fact, Mexican Spanish seems like textbook Spanish. This is unsurprising as I suppose Americans produce books most relevant to their southern neighbours. So I hear in everyday life people saying just classic Spanish things like “Adiós, amigo!” or “Buenos días señora!” and so on. Every time someone says something that’s straight out of Duolingo, an angel gets its wings.

Of course, Mexican Spanish generally falls into the umbrella of Latin American spanish as distinct from European Spanish, and shares the same general features:

  • Nobody says vosotros/as — people say ustedes to for the informal 2nd person (and relevant conjugations) instead
  • The ‘c’ after a vowel and ‘z’ are pronounced like ‘s’ in Latin America, rather than the ‘th’ of Europe
  • Nobody says coger for “to take” as it generally means “to f***” in most parts of Latin America (with a few exceptions); use tomar instead

Some interesting things I’ve noticed while here and not trying too hard to accomodate myself to Mexican Spanish include

  • Some random word differences. Here, “to pull” isn’t tirar, it’s jalar. A “cheek” isn’t a mejilla, it’s a cachete. And a sandwich is a torta, which elsewhere, is a cake.
  • There are some phrasings that are just very Mexico, like saying no más instead of solo. Or Mande? instead of Como? when you don’t understand something.
  • There’s awkwardness around tu and usted, partly because we’re of a certain age where we’re neither young nor old. I personally love using usted; it makes me feel old-timey. But this was avoided with the voseo of Argentina, and I miss that.

Aside from that, honestly, the main challenge of Mexican Spanish for me isn’t linguistic but just cultural, and it’s understanding what all the different words for foods mean. I went out to buy bread and thought a bakery named Panqué would sell bread, but they just sold muffins (so, obviously, I bought some). On the same mission, I wanted a donut from another bakery but didn’t know whether to call it a una rosquilla or un donut. Turns out some people call it una dona. Stuff like that.

I don’t think there’s anything to be intimidated by speaking Spanish in Mexico. If you have a bit, use it, and most people will be grateful

Another thing I didn’t know, as an ignorant Australian from the other side of the world (look, we learn about Asian stuff, it’s more relevant to us!), is that Mexico has tons of active languages other than Spanish. I never studied Latin American history and so just assumed that Christopher Colombus wreaked havoc on local culture and basically eliminated it. That might be true in a general sense — there aren’t any Aztecs or Mayans wandering around anymore — but still, there are minority languages spoken in Mexico with as many as millions of speakers.

While many are at risk, it’s relatively easy to come across people who speak Nahuatl, at least (well, that’s the one I’ve encountered). Then there’s a long list of languages spoken by diminishing numbers of people (see here for more).

Food in Mexico

One thing I was really looking forward to in Mexico was figuring out Mexican food. I’ve lived in and visited California a bunch of times, so I’m familiar with tacos and a few other things like tamales, and I know that Californians do a good job. But I also knew I was scratching the surface.

I was right. There’s a lot to know even just eating quotidian Mexican food.

A few things I’ve gotten to enjoy are

  • Pozole — a thick stew
  • Mole — A thick chile sauce served usually on chicken
  • Chilaquiles
  • Sopes (always with an s on the end, it’s not a plural)
  • Tortas (sandwiches) de various things, including a torta de tamal (a bit heavy, but interesting)
  • Aguas frescas — especially horchata or jamaica
  • Elotes / Esquites — things made with corn
  • Churros con chocolate (not Mexican, but hey, they have it here so it’s good!
  • Barbacoa de borrego (lamb)
  • Flan, though this is made in many places
  • Tres leches cake (something I first had in Turkey as trileçe, but learned was from Mexico)

The thing about CDMX is that it isn’t really known for street food. For everyday street food, if you’re on a culinary expedition, the word is that you should head south to Oaxaca or out east to Yucatán. Or a few other places, I don’t know.

That said, everyday food in Mexico City is great for a noob like me. Within a five-minute walk of our Airbnb, there were maybe 10 restaurants with 1,000+ Google reviews. Some of them 10,000+!

Mexico City is known for its fine dining and high-end culinary experiences. You have to book months in advance and be prepared to spend a 1-2K pesos on a meal. But it’s worth it (next time — we didn’t book ahead this time).

One challenge I found while staying in Mexico was eating enough vegetables. Beans and corn only go so far in my flexible definition. So I can’t eat out every day. In fact, I can only stomach tacos about once a week (maybe twice, if they’re very different kinds of tacos). So I’d just head down to local markets and buy vegetables and steam them at home. That seems to balance things out…

Downers

Not everything is great in Mexico City. There are a few things I don’t really like about it — here they are.

Pollution. Mexico City has air quality that’s roughly like that of LA — not good, though not as bad as the worst cities in Asia. On top of that it’s dry and a bit dusty. The result of this is that I’ve had a dry throat the whole time I’ve been here, and have to blow my nose often.

Traffic. The infrastructure here isn’t great. Driving around (when we take Ubers or Didis) often means around 30 minutes to go less than 10 km. Crossing the road takes cojones because cars don’t really stop for pedestrian crossings — they just swerve around you. So you’re playing chicken with a couple of tons of metal.

Safety. It’s a complex topic. Generally, I feel safe in Mexico City, but there are some important caveats. Actually, let me devote a section to this.

Safety — Is Mexico City Safe?

Generally, if you want to visit Mexico City, I’d say it’s as safe as any major global city — Paris, London, or New York. Not a bastion of safety, but a place where many people live and get by.

But like any of those major cities, you have to be street smart. Don’t walk around in dimly lit unfamiliar neighbourhoods. Don’t walk by the side of a busy road with your phone in your hand in case someone rides by on a scooter and grabs it. Mind your pockets and bags on the metro system. That kind of thing.

I think the media, particularly American political media, likes to portray Mexico as a den of thieves and murderers. Of course, Mexico City a big city, and there is theft and armed robbery, particularly if you flaunt wealth and/or go to the wrong places at the wrong times.

But generally, I’ve felt safer in Mexico City than in most major cities of the world, including the US, of course, parts of whose cities feel apocalyptic (tents everywhere, weird people, human faeces on the sidewalk), Europe, elsewhere in Latin America (Buenos Aires gets a bit dodgy, as does Bogotá), Europe (Paris gets sketchy, bits of Berlin are weird, etc.), and even Melbourne, whose downtown (“CBD”) area can be a little overrun by low-lives.

People don’t even stare at us in CDMX. This is all just a general impression (because I personally haven’t been robbed–or murdered–anywhere I’ve lived), but when you’ve lived in as many places as I have, a general feeling counts for a lot.

There’s an important caveat to this and that’s that Mexico (the country), on the whole, can be quite dangerous. There are regions where the cartels run wild and basically own the city. If you see an armoured truck, or random people with firearms, don’t stop and stare (and for god’s sake don’t take photos) — just keep going on with your day.

There’s also an issue of corruption in police. That takes different forms in different places. But in Mexico (more outside Mexico City, but it also happens in the city) police may stop you and impose arbitrary spot fines. The advice I was given was to not carry too much cash, and to negotiate down if you have to. Police tend to target individuals who are vulnerable and outside where cameras can see them. So, again, be smart.

Wrap Up

For me, the acid test of whether a like a city is to ask myself “Would I live here?” And yes, I would. Mexico City is awesome.

I’m sure there are better places to visit in Mexico for a day or two or even a week, particularly if your mission is culinary or cultural. But for me, if I were to live in a place, I’d rank Mexico City as one of my favourites in the world.

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