Nov 21, 2024 – Hot Air Ballooning in CDMX!

¡Hola! We continue our Mexico City adventure! We had a big day ahead of us, and we were not mentally prepared. We had a 4:50am pickup scheduled, and we were struggling to settle down for bed around 11. I offered to “talk about my day” to Sean in attempt to bore him to sleep, and he almost agreed until he realized we’d spent the entire day together. “You can tell me about your shower,” he offered, since that was the only time we’d spent apart. Bahaha.

We finally did manage to sleep, but it was super fitful for some reason. Sean woke up for a while around 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I don’t know what it is about waking up super early that makes it that much harder to sleep at night, but we finally managed to get a few hours of shut-eye before it was rise time.

Unfortunately, we stood out on the street in the cold for 40 minutes before our van finally arrived!! Not cool, dude.

But in the end, it was all worth it. We were rising so early for a hot air balloon ride! Apparently sunrise is one of the best times for hot air ballooning because of the calm, predictable morning air.

The van drove us about an hour, and I was mesmerized by the sparkly blue lights out the window. I figured all of the cities must use fluorescent lights, but then I finally realized the moon was also blue, and it was actually just a blue tint in the windows. Doh!

As the van slowed and began navigating small alleys, Sean started pointing out some strange large mounds out the window. I was about to ask what they were, but then I realized they were half-inflated balloons! We arrived at our area and were given coffee and some Mexican cake/ breakfast pastries while the balloons finished filling.

Soon, we were being ushered to the balloons, but I hadn’t gone to the restroom yet! I ran back to the toilets, and when I got out, the coordinator lady was rushing me along. “Ee-liss-a-bet?!”

“¡Si, si!”

And then she was pointing to a vague balloon in the distance. I ran toward it until I realize Sean was nowhere to be seen! I turned back to her, trying to figure out if we were going to be separated, and she asked, “Your friend??” I made it clear I didn’t know where he was, when he finally came out of the bathroom also. Yeesh! Close call!

We were loaded into a balloon basket (okay, we had to climb in) with one Mexican lady who was sweet and quiet and three Indian-American girls who were dressed to the nines and shivering their booties off in little dresses. I guess they came prepared for the cute photos rather than being prepared for the cold.

We were given brief instructions about “landing positions,” and we were told not to ever jump, and then we were off!

It was all very controlled! I’d spent hours agonizing over which company to book through because the prices, extra activities, and reviews all varied slightly. Some recent reviews for this company mentioned that their pilot was “new” and that their balloon had just shot straight up and come straight down thirty minutes later, but our pilot was great! He clearly new what he was doing, and he took us on a great ride.

Dozens of balloons were rising to the air around us just as dawn was breaking. It was quite a sight to see.

So magical! The big view was the Teotihuacán pyramids, and we flew right over the top!

Space was tight, so we were all cuddled up admiring the view for most of the time. Super romantic! Cannot recommend enough!

Our pilot even knew how to slowly spin the balloon around every once in a while so we could get different views from our various spots in the basket. Very impressive!

After about an hour, we started wondering when we would land. I noticed that all of the balloons around us were rising quickly, which obviously just meant that we were descending! Ha.

We came in fast toward a field, and I was sure we were going to collide with the tops of some nearby trees. (We didn’t.)

As we came down, we were told to find our “landing positions,” and then a group of three guys hopped out of a truck that had followed us to the field. They grabbed the balloon basket, riding it and slowing it, bouncing around a bit, and then they landed us directly into the truck trailer! Very impressive!

We stayed in the basket while the team immediately began deflating and folding up the balloon like a giant air mattress. It was quite the operation!

We finally climbed out as they finished up, and our pilot, Ivan, whipped out a picnic basket with Martinelli’s sparkling cider for us to have a post-flight toast.

He was so cute! I asked his name in Spanish, and when we told him we could speak “poquito Espanol,” he took that as permission to chat away! Bahaha. We caught that he’d learned English in university, but he was more comfortable with us stumbling through Spanish than with him stumbling through English. He’d been a balloon pilot for two years, and he also told us the balloons cost around $100,000!!!

Once the balloon was all wrapped up in a giant bag, the guys loaded it onto the trailer bed, and we loaded up. There were only four free seats in the truck cabin, so Sean and I rode with the crew in the balloon basket in the trailer. It was pretty fun.

As we started pulling away though, one of the boys realized we’d left the picnic basket! He had to run back for it and jump back inside, haha.

The rest of the morning was pretty silly. We sat for like 45 minutes at their office so they could sell us photos (we bought just one), and we had to wait for the rest of our group that was on a different balloon.

Then they brought us to a breakfast buffet. The food was pretty good, but I think something in it messed with Sean’s tummy for the next few days. Meh.

Then we had a silly stop at a gift shop, but we were given some cool history lessons of local plants and materials. The agave plants were very cool. They were used for medicine, fiber for clothes, and the spikes could even be used for needles! We were also shown some obsidian crafts, which could be used to view the sun like eclipse glasses.

And then we had a liquor tasting! Multiple types of liquor including local pulque and mezcal. (We were told to smell, drink, and then exhale like a dragon.) The guide was very cute and kept saying, “Okay, family, friends,” before every sentence.

We spent way too long waiting at the gift shop for the girls in our group. I have no idea what they were doing for thirty minutes since the shop was not big, but I was pretty exhausted by the time they decided to show their faces! Gah. I’m pretty sure they’re the reason our van was late to pick us up in the morning.

Our final stop of the day was the Teotihuacán pyramids! I was super excited for this, and we had a very sweet guide, Juan, take us around and explain the history of the place.

The larger pyramid is called the Sun Pyramid, aptly lit by the sun above, and the smaller pyramid is the Moon Pyramid.

Interestingly, the name for the Teotihuacán area and people was given by the Aztecs, who discovered this complex deserted hundreds of years after it was built. It means “the place of the gods.” The names for the pyramids were also given by the Aztecs. Originally, the pyramids were actually built for the god of rain and his wife, and we don’t know what the people called themselves, as there is no written history by them.

The pyramids have been tunneled through multiple times in archaeological digs, but they are all just solid clay bricks. Nothing inside! Much later, tunnels were discovered underneath the pyramids, though.

These little stones mark areas that have been restored in the past hundred years or so. I thought the pattern was so pretty.

The area was kind of chaotic because there were so many vendors selling various whistles and Jaguar-sound noise makers. It was so loud, and Juan kept making jokes that the jaguar noise sounded like his mother-in-law.

There were just a couple of paintings, but all of the pyramids and the whole complex of merchant buildings and homes used to be painted in red. Must have been so beautiful!

Most of the artwork, sculptures, and temples were all destroyed by internal warring thousands of years ago, but one temple has been rebuilt/ replicated in recent years as an example of what might have been here before.

Juan also told us about some ancient practices and diets. The people here worshipped the local jaguars, and would use volcanic basalt rocks to shape their teeth and bejewel them with stones.

He also told us the ancient people had 10 different dog breeds. One breed was for hunting, one was bred for eating. But when he told us about the famous Chihuahua breed, he said, “They did not eat Chihuahuas, because it’s not enough for two tacos!”

They ate more than 1000 species of insects and over 260 species of corn. Pretty crazy considering how few species of various crops we eat these days.

At the end of our tour, which I thoroughly enjoyed, Juan said, “If you enjoyed yourself, recommend us to your friends. If you did not enjoy yourself, recommend us to your enemies!” Sean gave him a fat tip.

Our van ride home was torturous. It was only about an hour to the edge of the city, but the trek through the city to drop everyone off (we were last) took another hour and a half. I really wish we’d gotten off at the first stop and Ubered ourselves home to avoid all that traffic and extra time in the car. Sean was not feeling too hot by the end of it. Poor guy!

I, too, was tired on our way home, as evidenced by a very unflattering photo Sean procured of me asleep with my mouth hanging open.

When we got home, we collapsed for a while and caught up with people back home, and then I took myself out on a mission to get a manicure.

It was a massive fail! I probably stopped by five different places, and every spot was full. Very disappointing.

I took myself for a walk as a consolation prize, and then I ate an acai bowl on a park bench as it started to lightly rain.

Sean met me for dinner, where we (okay, I) ordered way too much food. I just didn’t expect the portions to be so big! We got one mushroom taco, some kind of cheesey burrito type thing, and a raw tuna tostada with a mezcal cocktail. It was all pretty yummy (except the mushroom taco), but we couldn’t finish it all!

We slept real good that night, exhausted as we were, though we both were being badly behaved about reading instead of just sleeping right away.

In the morning, we set off in search of a chocolate croissant for Sean, and we ended up just sitting down at the same cafe we’d visited our first morning. It was just so yummy!

Sean got his chocolate croissant and a latte, and I got a flat white and toast mixtos (one sweet and one savory).

The toast was so yummy, but the bread was VERY toasty and super hard to cut through! So we sat for quite a while. Sean was impressed that I had a successful Spanish interaction when the waitress asked if I wanted salsa. I’m learning!

On our way out, we stopped at “Take a Deep Bread” for some extra croissants to-go.

We also found this super cool shop where everything was hand-embroidered by Mexican artisans. I was so shocked Sean didn’t get anything! But it gave me ideas for possible future presents…

We caught a taxi so that we could finally explore the historical center of the city. We’d just been too cozy in the Condesa area up until this point!

We were dropped off at Palacio de Bellas Artes, a giant museum and theater building. I’d really wanted to see a ballet here, and they were even performing my favorite, Swan Lake! But tickets were sold out. Meeeehhhh…

We settled for a wander of the art museum inside, and I was thrilled and surprised to find how much I liked almost everything inside. The vast majority of the artwork was made by just three artists, and the variety of their work was astounding.

The building itself was also very pretty!

Most of a floor was art by Adam Glass:

And the murals were so colorful!

We were tired enough after our brief tour of the museum to search “why do I get so tired at museums.” Turns out museum fatigue is a real thing! Some mix between standing for long periods and over-stimulation from all the art and reading.

Unfortunately, this was our one day of rain for the trip, so once we exited the Palacio, we hid under cover of an outdoor book market, where we bought these ridiculous and adorable tiny books.

We got some street snacks to curb our hunger – elote (corn topped with mayo and some kind of crumbled cheese – yummy and hardy!), and some kind of little sweet bread cake thing.

We explored the streets, finding little tucked-away sculpture parks, churches to explore, and some claw machine stores.

I bought one of these silly capybara stuffed animals with a turtle backpack after failing to claw it twice. It was definitely a rip-off, but oh well.

We made it to the palace square, where they were cleaning up from a visit by the president for Revolution Day. That would have been a sight!

There were some ruins right behind the square.

And then we entered a free historical museum, mostly to get out of the rain and find a bathroom. Some very cool things here, but nothing on Mexico! Strange!

After a while, Sean asked if they were closing, and it turned out they’d closed a few minutes before. When were they going to tell us??

We made our way back to our Airbnb, where we rested again, and I ordered some more tacos from Señor Taco for dinner.

We honestly probably could have gone straight to bed at that point, but Sean had bought us tickets to Kiasmos, an Icelandic electronica band that was playing at a venue a short walk from our stay.

We barely rallied to get ourselves to the venue. We got a cerveza and a rum-and-coke for courage, and for once, I remembered to bring my concert earplugs that keep the sound the same but just lower the volume by about 10 decibels.

Once we were in the crowd, Sean immediately said, “I feel so tall,” but I could tell it was in a guilty way!

“Like, taller than normal?” I asked.

We actually looked it up, and turns out the average height in Mexico is 2 inches shorter for girls and 3 inches shorter for guys compared to the US! I wonder if Sean would feel short if we saw a concert in Denmark.

The concert was very fun, and I had a half-view of the guy on the left for most of it. Right when the show started, these two bigger dudes came and stood right in front of us. I was cracking up, though, because the one in front of Sean had to be the most energetic person in the entire venue. Everybody else was coolly nodding along to the beat and staying relatively contained, but this guy kept going, “YyooooOOOOHHHH!!!” and he was stomping side to side and pumping his fist. He was having such a good time.

There was an employee, a bigger dude, who snaked his way through the crowd the entire show with a pallet overhead filled with open cups of beer, shouting, “Cerveza! Cerveza, cerveza!” And then a smaller dude was following behind taking cash. Such a stressful gig! I tried and failed to snap a picture when the pallet was balancing directly over Sean’s head for a minute there.

There was also a point when suddenly, a giant oval-shaped void opened up directly to my left. It was like fifty people had just vanished into thin air. The rest of us paused and then began tentatively inching our way closer to the stage to fill the space, but also perhaps fearing we’d be sucked into the void as well.

Finally, someone turned their phone flashlight on to figure out what exactly had caused all those people to flee, and it became apparent someone had puked. Pretty amazing, the swiftness with which everyone got the heck away from them! Bahahaha. There was a very loose, much smaller void that remained in the immediate vicinity of the, uhm, incident zone.

Luckily the concert ended before 11, and we had a fun walk back with some stops for photos.

And in the morning, I woke up early and blogged for a while on the rooftop. The cleaning lady was clearly happy when I finally left, because I went to take a photo off the roofline, and when I turned around, she had shoved my couch into a corner so she could mop.