There is no doubt about it: Street Art is incredibly common in Mexico. Mexico City alone has more murals than what I could post in CCC's Street Art Contest every single week. For this reason, I'm not even going to submit this post in their challenge. (Though it will be added to my ongoing blog series Mexican Murals.) Instead of focusing on one single image, I'd like to post a whole bunch of them, which are only visible from one certain vantage point.
New Perspectives Offered by the Cablebus
The ever expanding public transport network of Mexico City is hitting certain limits. Streets are clogged with traffic to begin with, and many of them have been designed so inefficiently, that it would take a complete makeover to fix them. Digging underground tunnels for new Metro lines costs a ton of money and time, and elevated train lines have become grossly unpopular since the collapse of Metro 12 last year. By exclusion we reach an alternative that is not only cost effective, but has a certain esthetic quality: Cable gondolas above the city!
Reminiscent of larger type ski lifts, these cable cars take passengers above the rooftops of the city. The noise level is low, the view spectacular, and even in the most crowded situations you wouldn't have more than ten passengers in a gondola, so the crowdedness at least remains on the familiar level. Of course I have yet to experience this mode of transport during a weekday rush hour! Because I should stress that the Cablebus is primarily not a tourist attraction, but a form of public transportation. As such, the tickets are sold for 7 pesos (compared to the 5 pesos for the underground Metro, and 6 pesos for the surface level Metrobus).
Above the Roofs of the Barrio
There are currently two Cablebus lines in the city, the first one is a 9 km long line in the North, connecting Indios Verdes with Cuautepec stations. The second line, the one we went on, is located in the South-East of the city, between Constitución de 1917 and Santa Marta. With its 10.5 kilometers it is the longest cable car line in the world, helping 50,000 passengers a day reach their destinations. The neighborhoods it passes over are also far from affluent. On the contrary, Iztapalapa is a very working class area of the Federal District, and Santa Marta is right on the edge of Nezahualcóyotl (or Cd. Neza in urban slang) one of the many sattellite cities in the State of Mexico with a reputation for being... not the best place.
This combination of poorer neighborhoods and vast roofs, suddenly made visible by the Cablebus, has turned out to be an incredibly fertile area for amazing street art. Many of the buildings in the area have already been painted in bright colors, probably due to initiatives of civil organizations, and the sponsorship of paint companies. But if you can paint walls in bright pink and green, you may as well create cool art! And as a result, fantastic images have sprung up all along the lines of the Cablebus, on the roofs of schools, market halls, or just people's homes.
Once we were on our way in our gondola, we got out the cameras and started snapping pics like crazy. There is soooo much to look at, way more than what you could possibly photograph! The roofs, the walls, the streets, the general view reaching all the way to the city center. And yes, the murals. Since this is the dry season, many of them are covered by a layer of dust. Also, the constant motion of the gondola, and the scratched / dirty windows caused a bit of a challenge to take good pictures. But then again, it is also hard to take bad photos of impressive images, which kinda makes up for it.
Safe, Secure, and Accessible
Reaching the Cablebus took us some time, riding the Metro to the opposite end of the city, but once we were there, there was none of the shady reputation of that area to be felt. The infrastructure seemed to be working well, and numerous security staff made sure that we were safe from crime. Since one of us was also in a wheelchair, they made sure to provide extra assistance in getting in and out of the gondola. There were also ramps and elevators, and all in all the facility seemed to be decently accessible.
There are six stops between the two terminals, and going all the way one has to switch at one in the middle, all of which is pretty hassle free. Best of all, once the journey is completed, and you feel like doing it all over again, you can just get back in a gondola going the other way, and enjoy it all for a second time. The fare is the same, just like for all other metro lines. All of this is reason enough to keep recommending the Cablebus to future visitors, and in fact keep going back there myself.
