Tlalpan is one of these once independent towns in the outskirts of Mexico City that have long been swallowed up by the ever-growing metropolis. Like San Angel or Coyoacán, it finds itself in the middle of the city.

However, they all preserved their small town character, with small houses, tiny cobble stone streets, and little shops and cafés.

Tlalpan is probably the least known of these, the reason why I went there is that the paternal family of my friend Renato, who arrived from San Francisco last night, is from Tlalpan.

So we headed out on a journey to find some traces. He had been there years ago to look up birth records of his ancestors, but that time Renato had rented a car.

We, however, tried to get there by public transport. It turned out to be quite a journey.

The guide books and wikitravel only give vague indications as how to get there, and complicated ones: take the metro till the end station, take a train to X, then ride a bus… or so, not indicting any numbers or stops.

Unfortunately Google maps is very imprecise too. It only shows the whole administrative district, not the centre of town, and if you google for the market place, the results get even more confusing.

We decided to hop on the metro to the University, and then walk through the campus to take a bus that would get us in the right direction.

Little did we think how massive the university campus would be, but with 280.000 students, it has the size of a city by its own.

From there we took the red MetroBus, a fast track bus line that runs on Mexico City’s north-south axis Avenida Insurgentes.

Only to get lost there, too, and people who we asked could not really help out, giving directions that were opposite to our Google maps instructions…

We considered taking a taxi, even if every guide book warns you to hail a cab on the streets, or gives a number of indicators to check that it is really an official one and you don’t end up ripped off, robbed, or – no kidding – kidnapped!

In the end, we did just this, a taxi that drove us. We hadn’t checked the license plate and his registration, and I started to feel a bit helpless as he drove into the wrong direction and into tiny small streets… and right into the center of Tlalpan, where we wanted to be.

 

Turns out: Google maps has a totally screwed info, and whatever they indicate as Tlalpan is not the historic center, but miles from it… We could have walked it easily and conveniently from several of the bus stops, if only we had known…

Lesson learned: don’t always trust all-knowing and all-mighty Google maps.

Finally there, we spent a nice afternoon walking through the Mercado and sampling some food, getting coffee, and a haircut, in Renato’s case.

We strolled through the cemetery in search for Renato’s ancestors graves (not seriously, the cemetery was way too big and chaotic to find anything without a serious map) and visited the church where his great-grandparents were baptized.

Settled already around 1000 BC, the area has seen a moving history, that includes a powerful city state that built a most unusual circular pyramid, but was then destroyed by volcanic eruptions.

Later, the rich volcanic soil made the area interesting for agriculture, and was dominated by the Aztec capital. The local indios were some of the first Hernán Cortés met on his way to then all-mighty Tenochtitlán.

Today, it is a cute town with colorful houses, bars, restaurants and tiny cobble-tone streets. It’s definitely worth a trip.

And it’s easy to get there: just hop on the red MetroBus, line 1, and go to Ayuntamiento, walk along the Avenida Insurgentes until it makes a turn, continue straight on Calle Moneda till you are right in the heart of Tlalpan. Easy.