Today we made the trek out to the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. It's about nine miles south of where we're staying and the metro goes right to the edge of campus. We finally had something negative happen (Luke's foot could have happened at home); Ike got his wallet pick pocketed while we were on the metro. He lost his ID card for school and about $15.
Once we got to the campus, we found it quite unusual. There are gates and strict controls on who comes on campus. They let us in because we're apparently just some gringo tourists, but it said you have to have a UNAM ID card to enter and there were guards at the gate. Then it was odd because there was fencing everywhere, huge eight foot tall fencing with barbs on the top. Once we got to the main quad area, it was open and not so constrained, but the perimeter of the campus was odd.
Once we got to the campus, we found it quite unusual. There are gates and strict controls on who comes on campus. They let us in because we're apparently just some gringo tourists, but it said you have to have a UNAM ID card to enter and there were guards at the gate. Then it was odd because there was fencing everywhere, huge eight foot tall fencing with barbs on the top. Once we got to the main quad area, it was open and not so constrained, but the perimeter of the campus was odd.
We walked around campus a bit and all complained about the hot weather. Today was the hottest day we've had and it was only 75º. We've all become such big wusses.
After checking out the university, we headed back into the main part of town so Jake could continue his search for the illusive jersey he's looking for. He thought finding a soccer jersey, even though he's looking for a player from Argentina, would be easy in soccer-crazed México, but no luck. We had some dinner and walked around a bit. We had seen a display in the anthropology museum about a jaguar head that was from Tenochtitlan that was subsequently used when a house was constructed in a nearby neighborhood, so Matt was hellbent on finding it. The guide we'd had earlier had told us not to go east of the Zócalo and this was northeast, so he forged ahead (despite my protests). It wasn't horrid and nothing happened (except some crazy, old man spouting something like white people go home) and we found the head. It was rather anti-climactic, but an interesting experience nonetheless.
When we decided to head back "home," we picked the wrong time as the metro was more crowded than we'd ever seen it. We got on the first train, but when we had to switch trains, they had us stopped and corralled in before even getting to the platform. We had walked back to the Zócalo to catch the metro and had walked back all the way from there the first week, so we thought walking again would be better than being crammed into the train. When we exited the station and started walking, however, a very nice man in a Mercedes stopped in the street and said, "Where are you going?!" When we explained, he told us no, no, this is a bad neighborhood, go back to the metro and wait for the train. We thought it was very nice of him to go out of his way to warn us, so we made an about face and got back on the metro. Sort of reminded us of our adventures in Philadelphia, but no one warned us then!