Safe Travels

One of the travel decisions we made late last year was that 2026 was probably the right time for us to go down to Mexico in late October and early November to spend a few days in Mexico City experiencing the famous Día de los Muertos (or Day of the Dead) festivities. We'd made recent trips to Singapore for Lunar New Year and Japan for cherry blossom season and Austria to visit Christmas markets so Mexico's Day of the Dead seemed like a logical extension of our recent experiences at world famous seasonal events. 

Plus, it has been about 10 years since we were last in Mexico and that's just probably too long for us to be absent from that country.

We booked early, figuring the city would be packed with people for the celebration, and I think that was the right call, particularly because unbeknownst to us, the Mexican Grand Prix was scheduled for the same exact same time as Día de los Muertos and in 2026 they were both scheduled for a weekend. We got the hotel and then the flight and then started getting excited. So we told people. Friends. Family. Co-workers.

The reaction? Lots of negativity. Or was it fear?

Ballooning near the old city of Teotihuacan. Dangerous? Mmm...not really.

"Is it safe?" 

Mexico City? Like the biggest city in North America? Why would it not be safe? 

"What about the drug cartels?" 

In Mexico City? Really? Why would there be a large scale drug cartel presence all over a city drawing masses of international visitors to two world-famous events in the same weekend? The same city that hosted part of the FIFA World Cup this past summer. 

We heard concerns from one of our co-workers who had just returned from a trip in Cancun (or somewhere around there) about personal safety in Mexico City even though she felt comfortable in Cancun(ish) and even though she had never been to Mexico City. A friend of mine told me "I would never go there" and my own mother (and please be clear, I'm not picking on my mom here) said "I wish you wouldn't go." 

That’s fine. I don’t need you guys to come with me. Heck, I wasn't even asking. But what’s the big fuss? It’s mostly a stereotype, right? All Mexican cities are dangerous? Is it the skeletons on Día de los Muertos that scare people? Surely not. I mean skeletons don't sell drugs or carry guns, right?

Maybe I am benefitting a bit from the fact that I travel a lot to places that are not in the United States or Western Europe (that’s sort of the point of this blog…) but Mexico City is far from the most dangerous place we’ve visited. We thought it would be pretty much non-dangerous.

The Aztec Stone of the Sun, Museo Nacional de Antropologia. Dangerous? Yes, for those sacrificed on it.

So, we are back. We survived Mexico City!

We walked the streets and the parks of Mexico City pretty much every day. We walked in the daylight but we also stayed out late beyond dark five of the six nights we were in the city, including two nights after midnight. And yes, we were in a park after sunset. Scandalous!!!

We attended a parade packed with people in downtown Mexico City and watched a Lucha Libre match in a large arena (also packed with people) in a different part of the city. The crowd at the Lucha Libre match emptied out of the arena all together after the show and filled the sidewalks around the arena after the lights inside the arena went up. How did we manage to escape???

We took two day trips to cemeteries on the outskirts of the city. One at night, but also one during the day where we stayed until after sunset and had to walk about a mile on the side of the road to get back to our bus. That walk to the bus followed a visit to a cemetery so filled with people that it could have very easily have been the most packed into a crowd I've been since I used to hang out in dive bars on weekends in graduate school. Craziness!!!

Cigarettes sold by the single cigarette on the streets of Mexico City. Dangerous? Yeah, definitely.

Do you know how much danger we found or saw or heard about in Mexico City? 

None. That's how much. 

No drug cartels. No shootings. No stabbings. No pickpocketing. No scamming. Not on the streets. Not in the parks. Not in the cemeteries. Not during the day. Not at night. Not with crowds. Not in stores. Nowhere. Nothing. Nada. No crime. No danger. Zero.

Our entire experience in Mexico City was incredible. The culture is so rich and the people are so engaged and welcoming. The food is just awesome for very, very little money whether it's sold on the street and eaten standing up or on plastic stools or in actual buildings with permanent or close to it tables and chairs or stools. And the stuff we put on our agenda (blog posts to follow) was worth spending six nights in the city and had us regretting that we didn't stay longer.

Why do we warn people about heading to places we've never been to? And by "we" here, I really mean other people. There was legitimately a good amount of concern in conversations with co-workers and friends and family about this trip to Mexico. And it wasn't concern from us, the people who were actually going to visit. It was from people who had never been there. Who had read something or heard something or invented some opinion about the place without ever setting foot there.

Why? How? They can't possibly know what it's like in Mexico City because they have never been there and they won't likely ever go. So why tell us it's dangerous?

Mezcal tasting. Dangerous? Depends on how much you drink, I guess. The large glass is water.

Based on our experience this year, Mexico City is likely a top five North American City for me. And maybe top three. I mean it's not New York City and Los Angeles likely nudges it out for second but I think third place is likely Mexico City. Maybe it's the fact that I just arrived home from there talking as I write this paragraph but what's the competition here? Chicago? San Jose, Costa Rica? Rapid City, South Dakota? Santa Fe? I love Santa Fe but it's more of a big town than a city. 

And OK, to be completely forthcoming here about Mexico City, there was one danger we needed to pay attention to when we were walking around the city: the sidewalks.

I'm serious. The sidewalks in that city are a complete hazard. Almost every old tree has cracked and uplifted the concrete with their roots leaving the walking surface uneven at best and with large crevices and broken pieces of concrete representing significant tripping hazards at worst. Check out the picture below. This is not an unusual condition in the center of Mexico City. The cracking is so severe on that piece of sidewalk that it has even cracked a planter in two.

But that's not all with the sidewalks. You can easily find loose gratings and metal hatches and there should be no surprise if you happen to need to step down six inches or so into an intentional or unintentional depressed area in your walking path. Pay attention. Because that need to step down might just be the start of a fall if you are not watching where you are going. We saw some people rolling rollaboard suitcases down a sidewalk in some part of the city and what they were doing with those wheels over the sidewalk didn't make any sense. Just pick it up!

So I guess maybe I'm wrong after all that. Maybe Mexico City is dangerous. Maybe all those people that warned us to be safe while traveling were right. Maybe they were just talking about the sidewalks. Can't wait for the return trip. We won't get tripped up next time.

And just for the record, the only places we have come close to being victims of crime in all the places we have been were Rome, where I almost got pickpocketed, and Paris, where some dude tried to scam us into buying a train ticket for him. Mexico City? Dangerous? Hah! Well, other than the sidewalks.