Good morning. Buenos dias!
Damas y caballeros
Ladies and gentlemen we are in Mexico City.
We are in the heart of it. We are in the Zocálo,
the symbolic center of the entire country
and the place where the city was founded.
Basically ,over the next couple days, we are going
to do Mexico City in depth.
We're going to go from the roots of the city,
the Aztec roots of the city, through its
artistic wealth of history of muralism
and street art, all the way up to
the youngest generation of chilangos
that are making this city one of the coolest in the world.
Stay tuned. Vagabrothers do Mexico City.
Vamanos.
One of the coolest things about Mexico City
is how it's just got this legendary founding story.
This was all founded by the Aztecs.
The Aztecs were here around the 1300s.
They came here because their god told them
to travel from the north of Mexico until they found
an eagle sitting on top of a nopal cactus
with a snake in its mouth.
One of the reasons why we have chosen to come
right here is that you can see the
indigenous heritage, the old Aztec temples
as well as the Spanish conquistadors
who came 200 years later.
We're going to learn a little bit more about how
this dual heritage makes Mexico City what it is today,
starting at the Templo Mayor.
Dudes, Dudettes, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I love Latin American pre-colonial cultures.
They are the coolest.
Such different, incredible worlds.
So artistic, creative, scientific,
and almost completely wiped away
by the arrival of the Spanish.
There're seven layers of civilizations
that were built here by the Aztecs before
the Spanish arrived.
And that was all done within 200 years, from founding
the city to meeting the Spanish for the
first time in the 1500s.
And the crazy thing is that after the Spanish
came, they literally destroyed all traces of
the Aztec civilization.
They used the stones to build the new cathedral,
and the whole place was buried underground
until they rediscovered this whole temple in the 1970s.
These ruins are now back and exposed and
part of the celebration of the history of the cities.
But I think we're going to take it even further back.
We shall see where we go.
Hola. Bienvenidos a Xochimilco
Yes. We're in the far, far south of the city,
and we came here because before this
was a city of thirty million people,
it was a big lake with a system of canals
and little islands where they used to grow
all sorts of food.
Nowadays Xochimilco is kind of a little party spot.
People come here; they hop on these "trajineras"
flat-bottomed boats.
They're polled around, like in Venice.
But we're going to do it differently.
We're going to take an alternative route
and find some cool stuff back there.
This is definitely cool, guys.
I love the colors.
There's a lot of wildlife, lot of birds.
Ranchera music, micheladas
Pretty cool. See where we go.
Now we're just cruising at a
lovely one to two miles per hour.
Over on the left-hand side,
you'll see a "chinampa"
¡Chinampa! man-made islands
where they've just kind of reclaimed
some of the soil and made it into farmland.
We're not that far geographically from the city,
but it feels like we're miles and miles away.
This place almost disappeared in the 1800s.
They diverted a lot of water away from these canals,
and it almost dried up.
They made an effort to save this area
as a nature reserve and cultural reserve,
as well, because this way of life is
thousands of years old.
Literally, this has to be one of the chillest
lunches of all time:
quesadilla with blue corn tortillas;
inside you have pumpkin flowers with mushrooms.
The food comes from right here.
We're going to eat this, and then we're going
to hop off and visit one of the farms
that's producing this food.
Peaceful boat ride concluded.
We are now on the chinampa
Xochimilco means field of flowers,
and as you can see right here,
there's a beautiful flower farm.
We're going to go meet the farmers behind it.
We've just found out about the "chapín" technique
They go into the canals; they dig out the mud;
they plant seeds into these little..kind of like..
cubes of mud.
I killed a mosquito.
Once they start sprouting,
they'll break the cube into little plants
and these are just individual plants.
This one is a tomato.
It probably ends up as a salsa on somebody's taco.
So, if you guys are fans of
the Netflix show, Chef's Table,
you might have seen the new season
in which Enrique Olvera
who is the chef behind Pujol
one of the best restaurants in the city.
He's all about creating the connection
with this sort of food, these small producers.
That interest in locally grown food in a traditional way,
that's really allowing this sort of production to survive
on such a small scale.
And it's just a cool thing to observe.
I'm freaking out.
You know why? Because we are in
El Bosque de Chapultepec.
The first sentence I think I learned in Spanish
after "¿Donde esta la biblioteca?" is
"donde esta El Bosque de Chapultepec"?
We learned about it in textbooks for a reason:
it's a big deal. That just happened.
It actually was cool.
I really enjoy saying "Chapultepec."
Try it. I guarantee you'll smile.:)
Do you know any knowledge on this place, or what?
Alright, here's the breakdown.
Chapultepec: Aztec for hill of the grasshoppers.
This was built for the Spanish viceroys,
but it actually is famous for being the only
occupied royal residence in the Americas.
Napoleon the third who was a French king...
he put in a power guy named Maximillian the first,
and Mexico was briefly ruled as a monarchy.
If you're American, you might recognize the words
"the halls of Montezuma" from the U.S.Marines'
anthem, their hymn, and that refers to here,
which was the final battle of the Mexican American war.
The U.S. Marines stormed the place.
A couple of teenage soldiers defended it.
They died and became martyrs
known as the "Niños Heroes"
or the Children Heros.
Goddam.......You're just a f**king genius, aren't you?
No dude. I just like reading Wikipedia.
It's five o'clock which means this place is about to close
and it's time for cocktails. Vamanos
Nice. I stopped to feed a squirrel,
and Mark is gone.
Lovely. Now I'm lost in the bloody park.
Thanks, squirrel.
We're back in the center of town.
We're going to a place right here called Xaman
with an X. I wanna xaman with you.
Down here they make cocktails using
pre-Columbian ingredients.
That means before the arrival of
Columbus to the New World from Europe 1492.
Everything that happened before 1492
is pre- Columbian.
So let's go get a pre-Columbian cocktail.
Pre-party pre-Columbian style.
I like it. Let's go.
They've got a whole selection of cocktails:
classics and also some that are seasonal.
So we are going to pick two of their all stars.
We're doing the Chamuco and El Crudandero, por favor.
I have no idea what either of those is.
But if it's a cocktail, it sounds good.
What do we have here?
Crickets. Crickets.
Muy rico.
We just got to this restaurant Limosneros.
This place is supposedly really good.
It looks super cool.
First up "Cocopaches"
These are Puebla beetles.
They're big; they're crunchy; they have wings
and way too many legs, but they're on top
of ricotta cheese-type thing
and they're supposedly delicious.
So here we go...big bite.
What is that?
These are ant eggs with black beans
and smoked cinnamon.
How many insects are in that?
The United Nations says that insects
are going to be one of the best protein sources
for the world. They're ecological. They're tasty.
They're not bad on the environment,
and they are on my tongue right now.
Damas, Caballeros, Ladies, Gents,
Amazing day. First day in Mexico City.
Incredible. Essentially what we're trying to show
here today was just the richness of the culture,
not that it is stuck in the past,
but that it's very much a world city
with a heritage as deep and as long as any
place in the world. Very deep. Very long.
The point being that tomorrow we're going
to continue this exploration.
Tomorrow we're delving into...deeper....
creative art. Diego Rivera
street art, Frida Kalho
all this cool stuff
So make sure you stay tuned for that.
If you guys enjoyed this video,
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Vagabuddies, you're the best. Love you guys.
We're out. Peace. Paz. Amor