“Do you want to go to this Saturday?”  We are standing in Ora’s kitchen talking about plants and where to get them.  I really just want to get some pots to transplant the little plants I picked up before summer that are now bursting out of their starter pots.  I love the vibrantly painted pottery here and thought they will be useful to us now, and double as souvenirs when it’s time to go.  Ora knows of a great plant market near a place called Xochimilco (So-chee-mill-co) about an hour outside Mexico City.  As if often the case,  we’ve agreed to go and really have no idea what to expect!  Ora says she’ll pack a picnic, we’ll bring drinks and dessert, of course we’ll bring the dogs(!), and all pile into our van. So picture this: 4 adults, 3 kids, 4 dogs of various sizes, one of which has a bad cold!!  No kidding!  Poor Chatta (that’s Spanish for ‘squished’) is the cutest little-old-lady Pug and she had a bad cough.  She was taking medicine and was on the mend, but would still have these unbelievably worrisome-sounding coughing fits…imagine the noise of all the dogs “talking” and getting to know one another, the kids squished into the back with their big wimpy dog who doesn’t like her new “friends” and doesn’t care that she has not been  lap-dog sized for a long time (as she clambours up onto Mansell’s lap to “hide”) and a very sick sounding Pug pooch hacking up a lung…Ora is trying to add a stool in between the seats for Juan, her helper, to sit on, as it seems there is no extra room for him, but I insist that every person must have an actual seat and a belt… the dogs can be on the floor… honestly it’s all a little surreal…we get the coolers packed up and into the back… it’s Saturday midday by the time we are organized to leave and we still have to stop in El Olivo for Carnitas – Ora raves about this spot for the best Carnitas and it was one of the first “best kept secrets” she shared very soon after we met her, “in case you have an emergency and need to get some good meat in a hurry!”  🙂  For the record, I’m sure I’ll be serving Carnitas to anyone who visits – they really are fantastic!!  Juan hops out and picks up the meat and tortillas (Juan has to have tortillas at each meal… he eats about 8 at each meal…) for our picnic, and we’re off on another crazy adventure!

Xochimilco is very “touristy” and the atmosphere is very loud and fun.  You rent a boat by the hour and it comes with a “guide” who pushes you along a lazy, very polluted “river” which is actually leftover from an extensive lake and canal system that historically connected the ancient settlements of the Valley of Mexico. It has been named a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Of course the water wasn’t always this way, but over time “severe environmental degradation” has taken a toll and we were warned to keep our hands out and to make sure the dogs didn’t drink from it.

Ora says the best time to go is on the weekend when it’s busiest because it’s the most fun, and we could see what she meant.  Our boat was bumping into other boats, there were vendors hopping onto one boat to try to sell their wares and carrying on to other boats, there were mariachi bands and marimba bands and even one reggae band selling their performances by the song – 100 pesos per song (that’s quite dear at around $10 cdn per tune!! )

The musicians were hopping from boat to boat with their instruments, dressed in their fancy matching costumes.   Some of the bigger groups of musicians were floating down the river in their own boats and once hailed would pull up alongside a boat and play.

Note the Canada Flag on this boat!!  The kids spotted it and were quite excited, made quite a fuss, which explains why the people on this boat were all looking our way when I snapped this shot!!

Some boats were packed to the gills, club music blaring, tables filled with “dancing juice” and absolutely no food, and the more pickled people were hopping from boat to boat… We had a “collision” with one such boat (see shiny, happy people posing for a pic above, who spied the Canadian flags on the boys’ hats and were very excited to be seeing “Canadians” – was quite the reaction, like we were an exotic specimen at the zoo!) and they were daring each other to take a walk down our boat and then stopped to fuss over and pet the dogs… it was a chaotic and loud and colourful and crazy scene!  I was terrified someone would fall in! (and indeed, Ora told us that just a short while ago there were some very intoxicated University students who fell in and drowned… so tragic).

One boat got wedged up beside us in a bottleneck in the river and they had hired the mariachi to play “Happy Birthday” for their daughter, so we all sang and clapped for her – they had a small group of family on the boat, but by the end of the song, there were three or four boats all clapping for her.  She was just beaming.

All along the river there are greenhouses and garden centres with the most amazing flowering plants for sale – even carnivorous ones!

Vendors of all kinds float by selling plants, candy, steaming corn on a stick (‘elotes’ – it’s on the bucket list to try – apparently it is delicious!), drinks of all kinds, flowers and floral headbands.  Ora was very sweet to give Caleigh a pretty pink headband that matched her shirt and me flowers… she said you have to have this on your first visit to Xolchimilco!

The boats themselves are quite the thing to observe.  Juan was telling us that traditionally they were covered in fresh flowers, but now are painted with bright colours and each is named in a nod to a sweetheart or a special person or place.  Down the centre of each boat is a table that runs the full length of the boat with many chairs around it.

So glad Ora and Juan took us the first time we visited as they were very seasoned and knew what to do to make it a very pleasant time – because you are slowly floating down this canal for a few hours, taking in the scenery, it is a good idea to have food and drink and furry pals and great company to help pass the time!

 

Our next stop after our three hour float down the river was to the plant market.  This was quite the experience, especially for Rosie… There are many stray dogs wherever you go and the market was no exception, and one dog in particular took a shine to Rosie… we were all paranoid to get too near this dog, as we know rabies in stray dogs to be of concern here… we are shouting at it, throwing rocks near it, but it just keeps coming back…poor Rosie didn’t know what was happening… when we all started shouting and making a scene, it finally took off… we need not have worried about that “scene”, we were already quite the spectacle, the 7 of us and our 4 dogs entering the market… certainly not hoping to operate under any radar that day!    Was worth the stop despite the heat and the fact that we were all pretty much done – a sensory-overload kind of day!

Business was a little slow at this point in the day…  🙂

We found pots!!  All very beautiful designs, but (surprise!) I loved the sunflowers best..