Hiking Mexico City’s Iztaccíhuatl Volcano

Unless you’re looking out an airplane window, you might not notice that Mexico City is surrounded by mountains, including the second and third highest in the country. But when you escape the dense neighborhoods of this mega-metropolis, you can see the steep slopes and sometimes snow-capped peaks off in the distance.

At least ten national parks lie within driving distance of the city, meaning ziplines, ATM rentals, horses, old ruined convents, waterfalls, caves, and hiking trails crossing expanses of pine forest. You might even see animals like white-tailed deer, weasels, the tiny teporingo rabbit, long-tailed wood partridges, horned lizards, tarantulas, and rattlesnakes.

The two biggest mountains near Mexico City are actually volcanos, one active and the other long dormant. Active Popocatépetl has a classic cone with a wisp of smoke coming from the crater, while Iztaccíhuatl has a rocky, jagged peak that gives few clues to its volcanic origins.

These two pre-Hispanic names are quite a mouthful, so they’re usually abbreviated as Popo and Izta (pronounced EES-ta). Popo is off-limits to hiking because of regular activity; significant eruptions happened most recently in 2000 and 2005, and it ejects long columns of smoke nearly every day. So the spot for hiking is on Izta, an arduous, high-altitude hike that’s only for the experienced.

Looking to hike Izta volcano on a tour from Mexico City? Check out this Iztaccihuatl volcano hiking small group tour.

To hike in Izta-Popo National Park on a full-day, private tour from Puebla, check out this full-day hike in Izta-Popo National Park.

The volcanos were revered as gods by the native Mexica, along with neighboring peak Tlaloc, named after the rain god once believed to reside in the mountain. The ruins of an ancient shrine are on the summit of Mount Tlaloc, where sacrifices of children occurred for the sake of summoning the indispensable water from the sky. 

In the Nahuatl language, Popocatépetl means “mountain that steams,” as it’s been active for as long as it’s had the name. Iztaccíhuatl means “white woman” because, like many mountains in the world, people have identified the features of a reclining body in its crags and cliffs. Its many peaks are named after the white woman’s body parts, including her feet, knees, belly button, chest, and head.

Created in 1935, Iztaccíhuatl-Popocatépetl Zoquiapan National Park comprises the two volcanos and the broad saddle between them, which runs along the border of the State of Mexico, which surrounds Mexico City on three sides, and the state of Puebla to the east.

This was our destination for a Saturday of hiking. My wife and I left at five-thirty in the cold morning to begin the drive from Toluca, a mid-sized city on the opposite side of Mexico City from the national park. 

Mexico City normally has some of the worst traffic in the world, but driving in the sparse early-morning weekend traffic was easy. The sun rose, beaming orange and yellow through car-exhaust haze, as we changed from multilane highways to inner-city avenues and back again, following directions to the village of Amecameca at the foot of the mountain slopes. 

Leaving the highway, we drove past tamal sellers on their yellow tricycle carts, pickup trucks overflowing with pineapples and prickly pears for sale, and stray dogs sleeping in the street, who woke and scurried away always at the last second. Convoluted onramps and unmarked intersections led to a narrow two-lane road on a steady incline lined with squat concrete buildings in various degrees of disrepair. The town’s density subsided, the uphill became steeper, and suddenly we were flanked by open fields of mud and grass, with towering thick-trunked fir and cedar trees all around.

This was the road to the national park, its black asphalt alternately gleaming from morning dew or covered in fallen pine needles. Hand-painted signs hung from trees, advertising private nature parks for ziplines and horseback riding, rustic taco restaurants, and stands for pulque, a pungent white alcoholic drink homebrewed from the heart of the enormous maguey, the largest agave in Mexico. Many magueys grew on the high banks of the road, their broad leaves ending in sharp points, with every tenth or so plant sprouting an asparagus-like seed pod twice as tall as a human on tiptoes.

Sharp turns and big potholes made for slow driving, but thanks to nearly no traffic, we pulled into the parking lot at the entrance to Izta-Popo National Park at exactly eight o’clock. 

We parked in front of the national park office, a steep-roofed stone and concrete building with weather-beaten steps leading to the entrance. Towering behind was the black, angry cone of Popo. A thin cord of smoke rose from its wide crater.

A tall rectangular monument stood between the road and the office. It held a large bronze plaque showing Spanish conquistadors in their armor and pointy curving helmets. The one in the middle sat upon a horse—Hernan Cortes, the notorious conqueror of Mexico.

The white sign before the plaque read “Paso de Cortes”—Cortes’s Pass, named for his journey over it in 1519 after leaving Cholula, the important pre-Hispanic city on the other side of the mountains from Mexico City, where he and his men had slaughtered between 5,000 and 6,000 people. Aided and encouraged by their new allies the Tlaxcalans, and wanting to set an example for other native groups, Cortes and his relatively small band of Spaniards gathered the city’s wealthy residents in a field before the central pyramid, and with crossbows and swords murdered as many as they could. Then they turned to the mountains, to make the final push toward the irresistible riches of Tenochtitlan, the island city of temples and markets that’s now the central part of Mexico City.

Legend has it that some of his men climbed Popo to collect sulfur for gunpowder for their canons and muskets. Then they descended into the Valley of Mexico, and the rest is history—the defeat of the Aztecs and the earliest beginnings of New Spain, later reduced to Mexico.

I imagined that little had changed in the 500 years following that fateful journey, at least not on the pass itself. The country, however, had changed practically beyond recognition, and in large measure because of Cortes’s crossing from one world into another, first from the Old World to the New, and later on the march toward death and destruction in Tenochtitlan, after leaving death and destruction behind in Cholula.

Today, pre-Hispanic Mexico may manifest as an excavated pyramid, a village with a Nahuatl name, a meal of tortillas and crickets, or even as the white alcoholic beverage pulque. But beneath these superficialities, ancient customs and beliefs persist, if remarkably transformed. Catholic saints replaced gods of nature, the Virgin of Guadalupe replaced the goddess Tonantzin, and Spanish replaced Nahuatl and hundreds of other native languages.

Now, I walked in Gore-Tex hiking boots where conquistadors once walked in boots of steel, and before them, centuries of indigenous wanderers in their huaraches, broad sandals originally woven from agave fibers, now made from leather or plastic.

Only five other vehicles were there, all pickup trucks, and one with a group of hikers standing nearby who appeared to be leaving. It was a relief—we chose to leave early not only to beat traffic and maximize our time hiking, but also to avoid crowds. The volcano nearest to Toluca, where we often hiked, typically had a long line of cars crawling toward its high-altitude parking areas, especially on weekends and after fresh snow draped its broad crater in white. I’d assumed today would be worse—it was much closer to Mexico City and its millions of potential hikers.

“No, it’s not so bad as there,” said the guard inside the park building. He was a stout man with jet-black hair and a bushy mustache, wearing a faded olive-green uniform with fraying hems and missing patches.

“Why?” I asked.

“Izta’s too difficult. It’s too high, and steep. People know it’s not easy.” 

“Yes,” I said. “I read online that you need a guide.”

“One of us can take you up if you want. Or we can find someone.”

“But it’s not necessary?”

His response was a shrug.

I said, “In the Nevado de Toluca, you can drive right up to the edge of the crater, and then walk over the top and to the lakes inside the crater. There’re always many people.”

“Have you been there?”

“Yes, many times. I live in Toluca, you know.”

If you want to reach the summit of the Nevado de Toluca volcano with experienced professionals, check out this guided hike.

“Oh, I see.” He’d evidently taken me for a tourist, surely because of my appalling Spanish pronunciation. “So you go there often?”

“Very often. This is our first time here, though.”

He glanced at my hiking boots. “You want to climb Izta then?”

“Maybe not all the way to the top, but yes, we’d like to hike the trail.”

“You chose a good day. It hasn’t rained for weeks. There’s no snow up there, only the glacier.”

“You climb it?”

“Not as often as Popo.”

“Really?”

“But you can’t go up Popo. It’s closed, and dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Poison gases, the chance of an eruption. You won’t have to worry about that on Izta. Just follow the trail, up up up.”

“Sounds great. How do we get there?”

“Drive past the gate and then keep driving straight to La Joya. That’s the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain.”

“Ok.”

“Register on this form first. The fee is 57 pesos.”

“There are two of us,” I said. I filled out the form, just simple information about who I was, where I was from, and where I’d be hiking today, and paid the fee for two people.

“Enjoy it,” he said. “And come back here before you leave, so we know you’re still alive.”

I laughed. “I will.”

By now my wife had strapped on her boots and was hopping up and down in the clear thin air, rubbing her hands together. We got back in the car and drove across the mountain saddle, through a vast rolling expanse of tall yellow grass broken up by bunchy Hartweg’s pine and the Christmas-tree shape of Oyamel fir trees. The two peaks occasionally came into view high on either side, Popo behind and Izta in front, one a smooth cone and one a broad rocky crown. 

A steep descent down a bumpy section of the dirt road took us to the La Joya parking lot, which had more than 10 cars already parked there. A cluster of tents was set up behind a row of crumbling cinderblock structures, where people sat at long tables eating breakfast. Ladies in winter coats and hats stood by charcoal fires cooking quesadillas and gorditas (an oval mass of corn meal with beans, meat, or vegetables inside) on flat grills called comals, and served coffee or atole (a hot rice drink) in Styrofoam cups.

We paused at the trailhead at the end of the parking lot to check a large map. A little beyond the parking lot was a small clearing on the side of a slope with benches and picnic tables. There was no wind to rustle the grass or tree branches, and above was a deep blue sky with only a few wisps of cloud.

From here the trail was quite steep and continued on the slope below a ridge. Boulders the size of coffee tables filled the trail, with thick, waist-high bushes and underbrush of a deep green all around. When in the shade, the trail was full of black puddles of frozen mud. A closer look revealed countless tiny beetles crawling in the black dirt between the puddles, each no larger than the head of a pin, and of a red so striking that they seemed to glow with a light of their own. 

Small mice darted under the rocks, upon which finger-length grey lizards lay in the sun. A few times we spotted larger, fuzzier forms than mice, which we hoped was the small, short-eared teporingo rabbit, elusive and rumored to have gone extinct, or at least vanished from all but the highest volcanic regions of central Mexico, far away from the threat of poachers and packs of stray dogs.

From here we could see the Nevado de Toluca volcano to the west, the one I’d discussed with the guard earlier, across Mexico City and the less dramatic mountain range on the other side of the Valley of Mexico. Its broad crater was unmistakable, shining white in the sunlight.

The trail and the ridge met at a point below a much larger slope of scree at the base of the bulk of the mountain. We sat for a break, watching lizards hunt flies in patches of tall grass poking from between smooth weather-rounded stones.

The huge cone of Popo had disappeared behind the ridge during this first leg of the hike. Now that we were atop the ridge, it was back in view. The sun’s glare made it black as Mordor, but a more careful look showed alternating lines of green and grey-black ridges spreading downward from the crater. 

Suddenly there was an eruption, silent but with a massive expulsion of grey smoke. It expanded away from the crater, its rolling motion resembling waves on a beach. It didn’t take long for this smoke to become a long horizontal line in the sky far above the regular clouds.

Several more eruptions occurred as we continued hiking, above the treeline now. Besides occasional tufts of grass, the only vegetation was a dry, colorless flower scattered among the grass and scree, the Rosa de Nieve—Snow Rose—which only grows on the slopes of the volcanos surrounding Mexico City.

The trail was pure rocks and gravel and went straight up, no switchbacks, at a more than 45-degree angle. There were many more hikers now, sometimes families wearing street clothes, and sometimes small groups wearing unnecessary gear like helmets and full rainsuits. I could only imagine how hot they must have been. Now that late morning was coming on, the air was still chilly, but the uphill hiking had made me strip down to my quick-dry t-shirt, although I still wore wool gloves and a winter hat.

We paused to drink some water. A man wearing rain gear with the hood up, a headlamp with the light turned on, a helmet, and chaps over his boots stopped to tell us, “You shouldn’t drink water.” 

“What?” I asked, noticing the large ice axe hanging from his enormous backpack. After weeks of sunny weather there was no ice to climb, of course, only a relatively flat glacier far above.

“It’s bad because of the elevation. You should be drinking suero,” he replied, referring to a saline solution found in pharmacies that Mexicans drink when they are sick or hung over. Then he turned and resumed hiking.

Ok, I thought, a drink like that, or even Gatorade, would surely absorb more quickly, but water is bad? It was frustrating to hear, especially in a country with one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world. I’ve met countless Mexicans, in fact, who say they never drink water at all. Mexicans call it “natural water,” to distinguish it from the sugar water flavored with ground-up fruit, also called “water,” that people drink every day with lunch.

We quickly passed the man as he slowly panted up the trail, looking miserable under his hot, heavy gear. From there, the trail followed several sharp ridges on a steady rise into the high alpine area. The next saddle was at the ankles of the white woman, with the sheer cliffs of her feet behind. 

Now that we’d reached the white woman’s body, we had views to the east. Beyond a broad flat expanse containing the cities of Cholula and Puebla were clear views of Mexico’s two other famous volcanos. The first was La Malinche, named after Cortes’s native interpreter and mistress. Today, she is also a symbol of betrayal, and indeed the word malinchista is used to describe people more interested in the ideas and fashions of the outside world, especially the U.S. or Europe, than those of Mexico. The volcano itself is another long but non-technical hike, which my wife I had done a month earlier.

Iztaccihuatl isn’t the only volcano worth hiking near Puebla and Mexico City. Check out this tour for hiking the huge volcano La Malinche.

The second volcano, its massive cone a distant triangle on the horizon, was the largest mountain in Mexico and the third highest in North America: the Pico de Orizaba, also known by its Nahautl name Citlaltépetl, which means “Star Mountain”. From this angle, La Malinche and Citlaltépetl appeared as if in a row, and in fact from the nearby peak Mount Tlaloc, every year in early February the two volcanos form a perfect line with the rising sun.

After this was a final section of sandy trail, followed by a rocky section going nearly straight up, which required scrambling over cliffs and boulders. It wasn’t too exposed, however, and there were plenty of hand and footholds. 

The trail, marked by cairns and spray-painted circles on the rock, led to a broad rounded peak. From the top, the highest parts of Izta were finally in view, the imposing peaks towering high above. It was clear that the hours of hard scrambling we’d just accomplished were nothing compared to what was ahead. But first, there was a steep descent to a narrow ridge, where an aluminum shelter like a tall greenhouse sat encircled by tents. This was Shelter 19 (Refugio 19), also known as the Shelter of the Group of 100, the last chance for survival for anyone caught on the mountain during one of its frequent violent storms.

About 20 hikers stood around, drinking coffee or even beer. They’d started the previous day, or perhaps the night before. Many people join organized groups for the hike up Izta, which often leave late at night in order to arrive at the top in the morning or early afternoon. Like other hikers we’d passed, many wore helmets, but they didn’t carry ropes. I suspected that the helmets were more about making the clients feel like they were doing something important than about fulfilling a necessary safety requirement.

It was a jagged, uneven landscape all around the shelter. Every remotely flat space was occupied by a tent. Beyond was a nearly vertical climb of loose gravel, by far the most difficult part of the day. We ascended by shoving our boots and fingers into the earth and pulling ourselves upward, quite difficult now that we were above 4,700 meters (15,420 feet). The air was thin and we breathed in short, strenuous bursts.

By now the trail was nearly empty of hikers. One man passed us quickly, dressed in shorts and tennis shoes like he was out for run, with no backpack. When we eventually got above the gravel and reentered broken cliffs and tall boulders, we saw him standing by a tall metal cross, a memorial to 11 students from Guadalajara who’d died near here in 1968 after getting caught in a bad storm. 

He asked how far we were planning to go. “All the way to the top?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” I answered.

“Good idea. It’s already afternoon, and the top’s still far away.”

“And you?”

“I’ll go as far as I can. But look at the sky. It’ll probably rain soon.”

He was right. Heavy clouds were moving in rapidly, nearly covering Popo off in the distance. The long line of smoke from the morning’s eruptions had fully mixed in with the clouds, now little more than a black blur among all the white.

“Also,” he continued, “notice that no one has come down for a while. It’s just us up here.”

“Well,” I said, “We’ll get to the top of this part, and from there decide.”

“Yeah! That’s the attitude! You can do it!” With this he started climbing rapidly, hoisting himself over boulders and sprinting through the gaps between them. 

His bursts of sprinting couldn’t have lasted long, though, because for the next hour it was a pure scramble up the slope of broken cliffs. Now we were much more exposed, and I avoided looking behind and down into profound chasm below us. It made me dizzy, and I felt that if I leaned too far back, I would tumble into oblivion.

The cliffs became a narrow rocky trail up a slope, and soon we came to a peak. This was the first knee, which at 5,034 meters (16,515 feet) above sea level is the least high of the six major peaks that form the crown of Izta. There was a destroyed mass of metal there, which we later learned was the ruins of the Luis Mendez Hut, a former shelter that had been devastated in a particularly powerful storm. 

The view was spectacular. Below us, visible during the brief moments the clouds separated, were the twisting ridges and crags we’d hiked over, with the green expanse of the mountain saddle below and the enormous mass of Popo beyond. On the opposite side was a crater, where streaks of light brown, yellow, and pink led to a small circle at the bottom. The next mountain peaks were in sight farther above, tall and rocky, reached by long narrow ridges. I could see my breath, and when I removed my gloves my fingertips were already white. 

The highest peak, found at the end of the trail, is the chest (or breast) at an elevation of 5,230 meters (17,160 feet). The next two closest to us, the second knee and then Mount Venus, appeared to be at least half an hour away. Beyond Mount Venus was a glacier, and then there were several other peaks to cross before the trail reached the chest. We realized that reaching it today was out of the question, as it would probably be dark by the time we could finish the hike down to La Joya. 

The trail runner was nowhere in sight, but we did see a group of hikers slowly returning along the ridge from Mount Venus. We watched them as we ate our sandwiches, and decided that we probably had enough time to go there and back, to take a look at the glacier.

The trail leaving the first knee to reach the ridge followed an extremely steep section covered in shadow. Snow lined the trail, which was otherwise coated in slippery mud. About halfway down, as we gingerly lowered ourselves through this mud, I caught a glimpse of the impossibly steep, rocky funnel below. One wrong move, one slip, and we would slide down that funnel like Boba Fett in Return of the Jedi.

This meant that, combined with the exhaustion of a whole day hiking and the light-headedness brought on by the high altitude, we were both badly shaken when we made it to the relative safety of the ridge. Standing there watching the group move so slowly ahead, we decided that we’d gone far enough. After catching our breath and allowing our hearts to stop racing, we turned around and, after quickly re-summiting the first knee, began a long descent.

It was about 2 PM when we passed Shelter 19, where there were now twice as many people standing around. Tents were being erected in unlikely places, like high on the ridge above or at uncomfortable angles among the rocks. And as we continued descending, we saw even more hikers on the trail, most with big backpacks that probably contained tents and sleeping bags. It was Saturday, after all, and because there had been so little rain lately, many others must have figured, like we had, that the mountain was free of snow. 

But where would they sleep? The area around the shelter was full, and there were no other flat spaces in sight. There were a few farther below, but by then they’d probably be occupied by other hikers.

Much later we encountered a group of at least 30 people, right above the spot where the man had told us not to drink water. They all wore the same blue jacket and yellow helmet, spoke and laughed noisily, and played loud music from cell phones or little portable speakers hanging from their backpacks. I thought of the several couples we’d passed, earnest and prepared-looking people who weren’t wearing unnecessary helmets, and who probably had a healthy respect for the mountain and a desire to appreciate it without a large group of partiers arriving at sundown with nowhere to set up their tents.

We hiked down the trail far enough to get out of earshot, and took our final break. The thick clouds, which had kept Popo out of view for hours, had not yet reached us. But now, as we sat on a steep incline next to a cliff, large columns of cloud moved in from both directions in swirling slow-motion, like two hands wrapping their fingers together. Once they were fully mixed, the mass of white turned in our direction and enveloped us in a cool, eerie mist.

We resumed descending as still more hikers made their slow way up the trail. Once the La Joya parking lot was in view, we took one last look at the wall of clouds behind. As if on cue, the wall parted in half, and we had the same view of Izta as we had in the morning when the sky was perfectly clear. Only now it all made sense to us. We pointed out our route along the cliffs and ridges and identified our ultimate destination at the first knee.

Near the end of the trail, we stepped onto a wooden footbridge over a dry gully. My wife jumped and grabbed hold of my arm. A rattlesnake twisted in the center of the bridge, its rattle raised but not yet shaking. We stepped back slowly, and it slithered over the edge. Holding my hand tightly, my wife sprinted across the bridge, dragging me behind.

From there we reached the car and drove back to the park entrance with the windows down. Despite the trail-runner’s prediction, it still hadn’t rained. It was just after 4 PM with only a few hours of daylight left.

As we left a grove of trees and entered an open space, the sound of banda music filled the air, the popular Mexican style of trumpets, clarinets, tuba, frantic snare drums, and wailing vocals. A banda group, up here? It must be an outdoor party, a family who’d caravanned up the highway in their overfilled cars to drink beer and eat from Tupperware containers under an expansive clear blue sky. But the sky was no longer blue, and suddenly rain began to fall in sheets. I hoped that wherever they were, they were under a tent.

The music grew louder as we continued driving forward. Huge raindrops splattered on the windshield. Suddenly the source of the music came into sight—the open window of a beat-up white sedan parked in the middle of a two-track road branching off from the road we were on. Two men in t-shirts sat on the bumper drinking from tall cans, seemingly oblivious to the rain. They returned my wave by raising their cans in a long-distance “cheers” gesture.

By the time we got back to Cortes’s Pass, the rain had stopped, but had evidently come down hard there, since the parking lot was covered in shining puddles.

This time my wife came into the building with me. After admiring the big scale model of the mountains in the center of the high-ceilinged room, we went to the guard offices. I introduced her to the guard, who asked how the hike was. “Beautiful,” we said.

“Did you make it far?”

“Up to the first knee.”

“That’s good. Most people turn around long before that.”

“Actually, we saw a lot of hikers, people with tents and camping gear. There’s no way there’s enough space for them all.”

The man shrugged, and said, “What can we do?”

“Anyway, we really enjoyed the hike.”

“I told you,” he replied. “I’ve been coming here since I was a little kid. Still love it.”

“Where are you from?” my wife asked.

“Amecameca, down the road.”

“We passed it on the way here,” she said.

“My father and all my uncles work here at the park. My grandfather did too.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I think I’ve spent every day of my life up here.”

“So, you said you’ve climbed Popo?” I asked.

“Every morning.”

“Every morning?”

“Every morning. We check the equipment up there, make sure the volcano won’t erupt.”

“And if it erupts?”

He replied with a long whistle, and said, “It would be bad.”

“So, listen,” I began, “would you take us up there?”

“You? Up Popo? No way, it’s too dangerous.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“It’s been closed for years, as long as I can remember. Nobody can go up.”

“Except for you guys.”

“Well, yes, except for us.”

We chatted for a little longer while my wife looked around the visitor center, at the stuffed animals and photographs on the walls and again at the scale model of the park. He asked where I was from, and told me about the time he’d spent in Pennsylvania working construction, about how cold it was but the money was good. I told him I understood, that long ago I’d worked in Wisconsin as a roofer, summer and winter. Yes, he’d done some roofing too, and the summers are hot in Pennsylvania. It’s nice and cool in Amecameca, never hot. Then we talked about roofs, comparing the flat concrete roofs of Mexico with the tall pitched roofs of the U.S., and how working on both was a pain. Much nicer here in the park.

“Well, thank you, and we have to be going now,” I said eventually. I pointed in the direction of a wide dirt road that left the parking lot from the opposite side of the road to Mexico City. “Is that the road to Cholula?”

“Yes, that’s it, to Cholula and Puebla.”

“Ok, thanks. Have you been to Cuexcomate?”

“To what?”

I spoke slowly, careful to correctly enunciate each syllable as I’d practiced: kwek-so-MAH-teh. Then I added, “It’s near Puebla. Supposedly it’s the smallest volcano in the world. We want to visit it.”

After hiking the Izta volcano, if you want to explore the nearby cities of Cholula and Puebla, check out this private tour.

“Never heard of it. I’ve got all the volcanos I could ever want right here.”

I laughed. “I suppose you do.”

“Hey, listen,” he said, moving in closer and speaking softly. “I’ll take you up there.”

“Up where?”

“Up Popo. Do you have WhatsApp?”

“I do.” We exchanged numbers. 

“Send me a message when you want to go.”

“Sure, thanks.”

“Three people, no more. And get here early, earlier than you did today.”

“Ok.”

“And remember, it’s dangerous. Very dangerous.”

“I understand.”

“Write me. We can do it.”

“I will. Of course, when we come, we’ll give you a nice tip.”

He smiled broadly. “I know you will.”

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Hollie Cook in Mexico City

Do you like good music? Reggae, specifically? Do you live in Mexico City? Then may I suggest seeing Hollie Cook this Thursday, May 10.

She’s also playing on Friday night (May 11), but the show’s sold out. The venue is Foro Indierocks, a club in the Roma neighborhood of downtown Mexico City. The opening band for both nights is Mexican reggae group Malamar.

She’s on tour in support of her new album Vessel of Love, which features not only her expressive voice but also a tight reggae band. The following show is on May 12 at the Akamba Festival in the town of Tequila.

(paid link)

David Byrne live, 2018: an American Utopia in Mexico

David Byrne played Mexico City on Tuesday, April 4. It’s still early in the tour and he’ll head back to the U.S. after a few more dates in Mexico. Trust me, go see David Byrne, even if you only have a vague appreciation for Talking Heads. I don’t review every concert I attend, not even all the great ones. But this was more than a concert, it was a show.

The box-like stage was totally empty—no amps, cables, or drums kits. It was bordered by hanging strings of light that looked like sparkling curtains, which the players passed through as they left and reentered the stage.

The 12 musicians and singers—I’ll call them “players” because they were more than musicians and singers, but cogs in a cohesive musical machine—were in constant motion, carrying their instruments as they walked, ran, and danced around the stage. They had bare feet and wore matching grey suits. At times the lights made the suits change color, from a silvery blue to a light brown.

A full half were drummers, so it didn’t matter that their bare feet were unavailable for the music, since all the drums you’d find on a typical drum kit were divided among the six of them. Between songs they disappeared behind the curtain of glowing strings and reemerged with different drums, often the ones in the drumline of a marching band. They carried big bass drums, single snares, bongos, talking drums, smaller hand drums like djembes, thin sideways drums that looked like the Irish bodhrán, shakers, and the array of toms used by marching bands.

With so many drummers, every song was a masterclass in rhythm. As they moved around the stage, usually in formation, you could watch specific drummers and hear exactly what they were playing and how it fit into the larger sound, even if it were something as simple as a shaker.

Three of the remaining six were singers, Byrne and two more, one male and the other female. At times they played a small drum or shaker, but were mostly free to dance. Byrne played guitar a few times but spent most of the show without an instrument. When he did play guitar, it was usually for a solo. I learned that the weird sound after the chorus in “Blind” is actually Byrne doing a high bend on the guitar.

The other three players were a guitarist, bassist, and keyboardist with the keyboard hung from his neck. With these three taking care of everything besides percussion, the music had an almost stripped-down feel, despite all the drums. Six Talking Heads songs were from their big-band funk era, with three each from Remain in Light and Speaking In Tongues. Therefore these three musicians handled parts originally played by up to six people: two keyboardists, sometimes two bassists, and two or three guitarists.

The musicians were at once virtuosic and tasteful. Elements of Talking Heads songs were sometimes faithfully rendered, like the unmistakable keyboard solo in “Naive Melody (This Must Be the Place),” and sometimes given a fresh interpretation, like the incredible guitar solo during “The Great Curve,” which as the last song of the first encore seemed the climax of the show. But even though the guitarist was obviously exceptional, she usually only played sparse rhythm parts, saving the big solos for certain moments.

Byrne introduced the bassist as Bobby Wooten—is he a member of the Wooten clan that includes Flecktones Victor Wooten and Future Man? He was the glue, the solid connection between the two melody instruments and the frantic polyrhythmic chorus of drums.

About half of the show were Talking Heads songs, and the other half were a mix of songs from Byrne’s new album American Utopia and a few outliers from his solo career. The Heads songs included big hits, of course, but also many songs the casual radio listener might not know, like “I Zimbra,” “Slippery People,” and “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On),” both well-suited to the peculiarities of this band.

Perhaps the catchiest song from American Utopia is “Every Day is a Miracle.” With its bright and expansive chorus, it could have appeared on a later Talking Heads album like True Stories, although its dissimilar music clearly represents a different age and attitude. It got the crowd swaying as much as any of the old classics.

Other American Utopia songs have a more divergent style, such as the grinding electro chorus in “We Dance Like This.” But the lyrics are pure Byrne, with topics ranging from declarations of uninhibited weirdness to abstract social commentary.

I have a much better appreciation for these American Utopia songs after having seen them performed live. Each seemed to tell a story, both lyrically and through the choreography, similar to how the motions of ballet dancers tell wordless stories on the stage.

This was also true for his other solo material. In “I Should Watch TV,” Byrne sang to himself in front of a mirror. In “Dancing Together,” one bongo-playing drummer ran loose in front of the rest of group, which followed at a distance, seeming to chase and chastise him.

Besides these more thematic motions, the choreography was a mostly a mix of marching band, flat-footed ballet, and organized chaos. The arrangement of the players sometimes recalled Talking Heads essentials like the concert film Stop Making Sense or Byrne’s jerky dancing in the music video for “Once in a Lifetime.”

During “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” they began in two lines that alternately advanced and retreated, all while drenched in red lights. During “Burning Down the House,” they formed a large + that spun around the stage, to later break into other formations. And in many songs, the two backup singers danced with each other in an exaggerated tango.

The venue was perfect—the large and ornate Teatro Metropolitán, a classic theatre in the heart of downtown Mexico City, one block away from the central Alameda park. The street outside was lined with vendors selling bootleg t-shirts, posters, and coffee mugs, in contrast to the tall columns, gold trim, and plush carpets of the interior.

Immediately after openers Mexican Institute of Sound left the stage, the crew rushed out and took away their gear, leaving the stage bare. Four workers with long dust mops came out and swept the floor clean. Then they brought out a square table and placed it in the exact center of the stage.

A three-sided rack of what looked like a lighting rig was lowered down to just above the stage, hanging at its far edges in a kind of open square. It was about now that I noticed the lack of house music. It was strange to have silence between bands—but it wasn’t silent, of course, with people all around talking, looking for their seats, and buying snacks and milkshakes from vendor girls wearing suits and squeezing through the crowded aisles. No beer, though—for that you had to go downstairs to the bar and get in line.

But wait—it wasn’t actually silent underneath all the voices and shuffling feet. Some sound was coming out of the speakers, a kind of soft white noise, a faint electronic humming just faint enough to be nonchalant and nearly unnoticeable. But as the minutes passed, it soon changed from a steady hum to almost like crickets. There was no ignoring it now.

The crowd kept talking while the sound grew louder. A crew member brought out a chair and put it behind the table. The stage went dark and a spotlight shone on the table and chair. The house lights stayed on, however, so no one seemed to notice. But they must have noticed the sound, which continued to evolve, first into another constant white noise, then to something like rain. But not real rain—like the crickets it had an electronic, created quality. Eventually it became chirping birds, loud and insistent, but intriguing like the rest. Suddenly the house lights went out. The show had begun.

The rack of hanging strings of light quickly rose above the stage. David Byrne walked alone though the brilliant cords and sat at the table. He picked up a big white object—a human brain, which he alternately cradled and swung about, pondering it and singing to it during “Here,” the atmospheric first song with lyrics about neurons, aliens, and hallucinations.

The musicians emerged for the second song, got into formation, and the show went on, a spectacle of sound and rhythm, drums and voices, synchronized motions and warm lights.

The show had two encores, both noteworthy. The first began with a song called “Dancing Together,” which Byrne introduced by saying he wrote it for Imelda Marcos, calling her something like a “high society lady.” This was followed by the rapid groove of “The Great Curve,” probably the musical highlight of the night. After this, the players didn’t only bow to the applauding crowd, but also to each other.

The band left the darkened stage and returned shortly for a second encore. They carried no other instruments besides drums. Byrne spoke again, saying that they’d play a song written by a friend with lyrics adapted to Mexico. (Setlist.com tells me it was “Hell You Talmbout” by Janelle Monáe.)

The chant-like song was in Spanish, beginning with repetitions of “Cuarenta y tres” (43), referring to the 43 students who disappeared from the small town Ayotzinapa in 2014, a still-unresolved crime widely believed to have been committed or at least approved by the government.

The chant then became “Diga su nombre, diga su nombre!” (Say his name, say his name!), and individual singers responded by calling out names, obviously those of the missing 43 students.

This was the only overtly political message of the night. In the context of his American Utopia, he reminded the crowd of their very real Mexican dystopia.

In the same way that this show was more than a concert, David Byrne is more than a musician, but an activist, writer, and interesting character in many respects. As a lifelong cyclist, I greatly appreciate his promotion of urban cycling all around the world. Anyone interested in music would love his book How Music Works. And, of course, Talking Heads are legendary, one of my god bands—if you aren’t familiar with their music, get on YouTube and watch Stop Making Sense right now. Fanatic Heads worshipers like me are bound to enjoy American Utopia, a worthy addition to his legacy, especially if you can catch it live.

Thanks Mr. Byrne, and come back to Mexico soon!