Mexico: Directions and Public Transportation

They say that country folk use directions such as, "Head east for one mile, then turn north onto the highway and you will reach your destination on the west side of the road after a half mile." City slickers, on the other hand, use landmarks when giving directions. For example, "Go three blocks that way, turn left at the gas station, and continue down that street until you see a big tree outside a bright teal apartment building."

I've found that using the second, city form of giving and following directions has a better success rate than the country form, and even then it sits at about 75%. I think the margin of error expands a bit when you're working with a city of 20 million people. In Mexico City if a Starbucks Coffee shop, an Oxxo gas station, or an Argentine Restaurant are used as landmarks to help you reach your destination...good luck. It seems to me that this city has at least a million of each of these establishments, one located on every street corner. I have yet to successfully count the number of Starbucks on my route to work, but I am guessing that there are at least 20.

Getting lost in Mexico City is quite easy. One minute you think you're on a bus taking you to where you want to go, and the next minute the bus approaches the next station and the driver announces that everybody needs to get off and take a different bus so that the current bus can go through its daily maintenance routine. Simple logic tells a person to just get on the next bus that comes and follow the line as it continues. However, that doesn't work so well when the next bus comes and it follows a different route than you had expected. And you realize this after you have boarded and discover there is really no simple way to get back to where you had planned.

Every day is an adventure.