Chapultepec CastleWe went to see a castle in Mexico City called Chapultepec Castle. Its construction was started in 1765. It changed hands several times before being completed. At one point they tried to sell it for 1/5 what had been spent on it already, but there were no buyers. Eventually it was purchased by Mexico city in 1806. It was abandoned for about 11 years around 1810 and in 1833 was made into a military college.

In 1847 six teenager cadets died defending it the castle from U.S. forces during the Mexican American War. They had been ordered to leave, but stayed anyway. Local legend says that the last cadet died jumping from the top of the castle wrapped in the Mexican flag in order to keep the U.S. from capturing it.

Mural of Cadet JumpingThe cadets are honored with statues and paintings on the castle grounds and throughout Mexico City. There is a large painting of a boy falling through the air with the Mexican flag. In the background you can see a U.S. flag being carried in the attack.Flag Flying on Castle

In 1864 Maximilian, the Mexican Emperor, setup residence in the Castle. During his stay the castle was greatly expanded. After the overthrow of Maximilian it was turned into an observatory for a brief time and then back into a military school as well as the presidential palace. In 1939, a law was passed that turned into a national museum.Castle GardensCastle

In Mexico City the smog in here isn't as bad as I thought it might be. I understand that during the really cool times of the year, it is worse because there isn't enough heat to move the air up and carry the smog with it.

Mexico City and the surrounding areas is one of the most populated places in the world. It has a population of over 19 million. This beats New York with a population around 18 million. Tokyo and Sheol are the only two cities with a larger population than Mexico City. There are about 10,000 people living in every square mile. By way of comparison, Los Angles has about 1,000 people living in every square mile.

Mexico City is built in a valley surrounded by mountains. The mountains create something of a "bowl" effect trapping in all the smog. Several years ago the city's mayor, Manuel Camacho, announced a plan to install giant fans to blow the smog out of the city. They were going to create large incinerators that would heat the air in the most polluted parts of the city and raise the air off the ground so the fans could blow it away.

There were also some ideas that involved cutting large holes in the nearby mountains to let fresh air in. I don't know what happened with any of these ideas. Currently older vehicles that run less efficiently are only allowed to drive every other day based on their license plate number.

We are in a chartered bus traveling to Mexico City today. We left at about 11pm yesterday and drove through the night. The bus is nice, but it still isn’t a great place to try to sleep. They show movies, but best I can tell they were obtained by setting up a camcorder in a theater and recording the movie.

The group we are traveling with is from the church in Durango. They are going down to a conference. We are going to checkout Mexico City and watch our friend’s little girl during the conference.

In Mexico, Mexico City is refered to as just Mexico. This caused me a minor bit of confusion when people kept saying they were going to go to Mexico.

We’ve been told that the taxis aren’t safe to take alone in Mexico City—at least for us gringos. Evidently they have a few abductions each day from taxi cab drivers. It sounds like kidnapping people from the US and holding them for ransom happens occasionally and it is worth being careful.