Chapultepec Forest is Mexico City’s version of Central Park in New York, a giant urban park filled with trails and museums and such, Chapultepec is gigantic though, I think something like 3000sq acres in the middle of the city.

The last time I was here I only had an hour or so to explore and didn’t really get to see much other than a couple of the art galleries. This time I had about two and a half hours to explore, until sunset.

I walked around the park for a while, it’s absolutely gorgeous, I think to properly explore it would take a couple full days but…..

The park is split in two by a gigantic three level highway where the pedestrian walkway actually cuts between levels of the highway.

As I was crossing the walkway a lovely old black lab ran up to me, super friendly, I hung with him for a minute until a woman approached, looking very serious. She addressed me in pretty animated Spanish and after I explained that I can’t speak Spanish switched to perfect English.

She explained that it’s her dog and he’s friendly and that she needed help and asked if I could walk with her, for whatever reasons it was clear right away this was not a scam and she was being genuine. I said sure and we started walking along the overpass.

She said a man would be waiting for her at the bottom on the other side, that he had been there every day for a week and that he follows her while masturbating openly…. yup.

We stopped in the middle of the overpass and called 911, the dispatcher told us they would send park police immediately so we waited on the overpass and talked about dogs until we saw flashing lights approaching.

We continued onto the other side to meet the police and as we started descending the stairs a man popped out from underneath…. uh, doing his thing. She was not scared or anything like that at any point, just super fucking pissed off.

She started yelling at him and I started chasing him, I know, not smart, the approaching police saw him as well and were driving towards him, before I could get to him he junped on a motorbike and took off.

The police were aware of the guy and had apparently been trying to catch him for a while, once the woman was safe and talking with them I made my way to the subway station and headed back home. I leave Mexico City in the morning so I guess this will be my last “adventure” before I go.

Pretty much any time I am out walking around I eventually hear this young girl’s voice in the distance, haunting and slightly ominous. I tried to catch the source for at least a week and finally tracked it down to an ancient steel megaphone bolted to the top of an old truck, slowly cruising up and down each street, the recording of the girl’s pleas repeating over and over. This:

I wondered all sorts of dark thoughts about the possible source, was the truck driver a father, playing a recording of a lost daughter, searching for her each night? Women’s rights are a big issue here recently, perhaps the young girl is pleading for some sort of societal change in the treatment of women?

Or, maybe, just maybe, it’s from a junk metal collector who got tired of repeating his refrain, calling for old appliances and metal, until his throat was closing up, and instead got his 10 year old daughter to record his plea.

Sometimes I assume things are much darker than they turn out to be.

The recording is 20 years old, the girl is 30 now and this mystery recording has spread not only to hundreds of scrap metal collectors in Mexico City but to the rest of the country and down through South America as well.

I will absolutely be listening for her when I head south next month.

And yes, there’s a techno remix.

I’m running out of mystery fruit, this might be the last one.

NOSE – You know that thing where you put potatoes in fruit salad? This smells like that.

TASTE – Pear, it’s a pear, in taste and texture. A very mild pear. It’s not great, very mild and has all these tiny rock hard seeds.

DOES IT GO WITH TAJIN – Actually yeah.

IS IT GOOD – Sorta?

No idea when this one is ripe but the outside is stating to mold so…..

No smell so far, the skin is super odd feeling, slicy slicy time!

Yeap, it’s another kind of passionfruit, I had no idea.

NOSE – Passionfruity.

TASTE – Whoa, waaaaay too tart. Was I supposed to leave it until the mold was everywhere first?

DOES IT GO WITH TAJIN – Oh, shut up.

IS IT GOOD – I dunno, it’s a level of tart approaching a lemon, other flavours are nice but I wouldn’t eat again.

My coffee shop gives out slips of poetry with your caffeine. Usually they lose something when I run them through Google Translate but today’s poem retains some magic.

it is in us
where it happens
the meeting
and it's useless
prepare or wait

This one looks like the very first fruit I tried, the Mamey, but much smaller, it was being sold in a different box so I’m assuming it’s a different fruit.

NOSE – Hmmm, kinda nothing, a bit fruity sorta.

TASTE – No. I may have made a mistake. I’m thinking, hoping, this is not ripe. All I’m getting is a mouthful of tannin. Not edible. The skin was pretty soft when I cut it, softer than you would let a cantaloupe go but yeah, I’m guessing not ripe.