Mexico City

Xolo dogs are rare and expensive. About $1500. They are not very sociable. And they are said to be so warm that the Aztecs used them as blankets. Oh, the Aztecs also ate them.

Next delegación to visit, Tlalpan, south of Coyoacán, southwest of Xochimilco:

Big area..

We start just south of Ciudad Universitaria, the main campus of UNAM, at the piramid of Cuicuilco.

Cuicuilco was the first important settlement in the area, from 750 BC to 150 AD, when an eruption of nearby Xitle vulcano destroyed the city.
The lava that is so important in UNAM's campus architecture comes from that very same eruption.



The piramid is smack right dab in the city, with a speedway nearby.





(The sculpture you can see in the back was part of the "Route of Friendship" for the 1968 Olympics)



There is also a Site Museum about the Preclassical Culture of Cuicuilco:

Mos of it is a huge mountain, Ajusco.

Next to Cuicuilco, a mall and an ecological park in what used to be a paper factory:





My kids used to teach puppet making to children, there, when my sons were teenagers.

You cross the avenue, and you arrive at Villa Olímpica, the Olympic Village for 1968, now a Unidad Habitacional:

And behind Villa Olímpica the so-called Tlalpan forest (a park for runners with a hill):

A bit farther away is El Colegio de México, a public university specialized in Foreign Relations, Demographics and History:





Gorgeous library.

From El Colegio de México a steep road starts, going to the Ajusco mountain.

In the way, one of the first things you can find is "Six Flags".
Yup! Six Flags Over Texas, Mexico City version.




A view of the city from the big Ferris Wheel:

As the road climbs, different types of neighborhoods appear:





... even the so-called Ajusco Castle, the residence of an actor:

Houses then become scarse, and different, the climate gets colder:





Until they dissapear, and you are at Mount Ajusco:



You go up and up:



... and it gets too cold!



The magnificent Ajusco as seen from the city:

We go down from Ajusco to Cuicuilco, and then move south. We arrive at Restaurant Arroyo, big and traditional for Mexican food.
It used to be the last restaurant before you took the highway to Cuernavaca and Acapulco. Now there's quite a bit of city after it.



The restaurant is so big, it even has a bullring inside.

You keep on moving south and you find the Monument to the Road Worker, a sign that you are about to enter the highway.

A bit of highway, before the toll booth, and there's a deviation to the Heroico Colegio Militar, the nation's military academy.
You are not allowed in, if you're not invited.
It kind of looks like a prehispanic city gone modern.

Since we weren't allow in the Colegio Militar, we turn around and at the Caminero (Road Workers Monument) junction, we turn right -that is, we go east-.
We arrive to the hospital zone of Tlalpan, where many of the most modern public hospitals are set together.

The National Cardiology Institute:



The National Cancerology Institute:



The National Medical Sciences and Nutrition Institute:



The National Psychiatry Institute:



... and so on.

As you might imagine, several middle-class neighborhoods, with lots of doctors, surround these hospitals.

We keep on moving east and arrive to Coapa, a huge middle-class neighborhood, which actually comprises many Colonias.

To be a "coapo" or a "sateluco" is indicative that you're sooo middle-class.

Might also indicate you spend too much of your life looking for a parking place.

Good one!

Actually my sons lived in the Coapa zone for about a decade and parking wasn't THAT bad in their colonia... but it wasn't Villa Coapa proper.

Just south of Coapa, we find the Mexico City campus of ITESM, known as "el Tec de Monterrey", an expensive university, with prestige in the area of business.