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Who turned off the sun?

By Jeremy Schwartz | Friday, September 22, 2006, 04:01 PM

When my wife and I moved to Mexico City in May, we had no idea we were actually moving to Seattle.

OK, so that may be an exaggeration, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a rainier place than Mexico City in the summer. At times it feels as if we are trapped in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” (It rained for five straight years in the village of Macondo.)

We have learned to take an umbrella with us almost everywhere, and it can go days without an appearance from the sun; a hard crust of clouds keeps temperatures in the 50s and 60s.

Friends and family back in the States have a hard time absorbing this information. Well, it’s summer and it’s Mexico, they reason, so it must be sweltering! Visiting friends and relatives have packed suitcases full of T-shirts and been crestfallen when we tell them they need sweaters and raincoats.

We’ve been caught in dozens of torrential downpours, none worse than a hellish hailstorm that trapped us as we tried to make our way to a party in the Condesa neighborhood. The hail was so bad that it beat the leaves from the trees, clogging the drains. The results were lakes where the streets used to be and clumps of freezing hail floating like mini-icebergs.

Our taxi got stuck in the mess but not after an hour in traffic with the meter going. It took all our cash to pay the fare and the power was out throughout the neighborhood so we couldn’t go to an ATM.

We got out of the taxi and tried to walk it, but we weren’t about to cross icy, waist-deep water. Meanwhile, motorists were abandoning their cars in the road, wandering the flooded streets in a daze, like urban refugees. What finally saved us was a bus-card in my wallet, the kind you charge up with money. We got home, shivering, at 2 a.m.: no party, no food and no drinks.

Not that I’m complaining, especially when I saw the record temperatures in Austin this summer. Raw, chilly mornings and flooded streets still beat 100 degrees at rush hour.

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Comments

By rsemprun

September 22, 2006 7:35 PM | Link to this

well, you’re not JUST exaggerating, and the literary reference is wonderful, but please… i’ve spent the last 12 months almost, entirely, over there, back and forth between austin for business. certainly, the last couple of months have been a bit rainy, but for the most part, it’s not all that bad. condessa is a great neighborhood. and what were you doing taking public transportation when you’re with a family member? are you nuts? we stay at the camino real on mariano escobedo, and it suits me just fine (have never had travel through waist-deep water struggling to get to a bus!) and we have a driver. just a necessity in mexico city during these tumultuous times in that wonderful city.

By travisrp

September 25, 2006 10:58 AM | Link to this

I just got back from a few days in Mexico City and couldn’t agree more about the weather. After spending a few weeks in Puerto Escondido, it was a big adjustment when my fiancee and I visited some friends in Mexico City. Our beach clothes were no match for the the city’s cool and rainy weather in September.

By lukas

September 25, 2006 12:16 PM | Link to this

I was in Mexico City during July,It was cold for being summer for us coming from San Antonio. We got to visit the Popo volcano, it was really cold.