Xochimilco is more than a tourist attraction: it is a community. Lucky people live in nice houses along the banks of the canals. The waterways serve as streets. Residents use simple scows to move around town.
A few use canoes for transport. Paddling is faster and easier than poling.
Hidden behind the houses, city streets provide access to the rest of Mexico City. But congestion, potholes, topes, and traficantes bent on extortion make canals an alternativo más tranquilo.
Some of the resources city dwellers expect exist along the canals: Restaurants, repair shops, tiendas.
There's city services too. The garbage scow makes its rounds, ringing a bell just like the guys in the trucks.
Here there are no stop signs or traffic lights: Xochimilco seems less regulated, but it's not entirely free of government. Underneath the graffiti, this wordy sign basically says, "No Fishing" in classic bureaucrat-ese.
People work as well as live here. Nurseries and flower growers line the water. They make some sales to passing boaters, but I suspect most of their crops go to wholesalers or retail customers who drive in from the rear.
Some residences are large, beautiful homes. I was more taken by this unpainted wooden shack, looking like something right out of a Lousiana bayou.
As we glided past these houses, I entertained myself with a romantic fantasy of living in one of them. Xochimilco seems a perfect environment for stress-free living. And I've always dreamed about living on water somewhere. I had the same thoughts when I visited Tigre near Buenos Aires two years ago.
Well, maybe some day...
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