Yesterday, Francisco and I took the cheap rental car out for a spin around the curvy roads of Mexico City's outskirts. We were bound for Cuernavaca, for no particular reason other than curiosity and the desire to be in motion. Half of the trip, it seemed, was in stop and go traffic headed out of the city on Insurgentes Sur, but when the road finally yielded to the mountain, the lights and speed bumps disappeared and Francisco pushed the Platina's engine for all it was worth (which isn't much). The two lane road wound through barrios of bare concrete block houses, with a view of the city all that they had to commend them...at least from the outside. Small crosses and altars to the Virgen de Guadalupe dotted the road, interspersed among roadside food stalls, and then, the road flattened and a scene worthy of a Van Gogh painting unfolded on the left--small golden haystacks formed into vertical cones-and a man tending sheep trudged up a hill on our right.

Before long, we were in Cuernavaca, headed for the Centro to see what we could see. Our stomachs quickly got the better of us, though. We decided to forego the tiny storefronts where the signs were stained with smoke from meat that rotated on a vertical spit all day, and followed signs that seemed to be sprouting up all over town directing us to a restaurant named Tequila. It's a terrible name, we agreed, but we were hungry and decided that we'd eat there... no matter the offerings of the menu or the price. The signs lead us further from the Centro, up a winding road, and then, into a gated community, where an officious guard stepped out of a booth and inquired about our business before conceding to raise the gate. We were apprehensive--neither of us likes gates and we weren't exactly dressed for a white tablecloth restaurant, but we pressed on, the options behind us both distant and limited. Tequila is located inside this gated community, which is, it seems, a ghost town. Some houses appear to have been abandoned mid-construction. Others are finished but not, apparently, inhabited. Those in the latter category are spectacular in a garish sort of way-- rotundas and cupolas, stained glass windows, and they're all vast.

Before entering the restaurant, Francisco decides to take some pictures in the plaza. There's a new fountain but it doesn't appear to be working. The plaza is next to a church that has been built recently, but which has been made to look colonial. The streets are that strange modern cobble that feels Disneyish. We're trying to get our finger on the pulse of this strange place when a guard approaches and asks us to "register" as visitors at the restaurant. I can't help it- "What is this place?" I ask the guard, feeling that I've stepped into some sort of parallel universe. He's too well-mannered to say it's a rich people's playground, perched on a hill with a tremendous view that affords a panorama of lights, but is distant enough to obscure problems, filth, and the difficulty of the city. "Could we buy a place here?" Francisco asks rhetorically. "Si se puede," the guard says, and I find myself laughing, because the way in which he says the phrase is unclear as to his meaning. "Yes, you can," he might be saying, or "If you could."

It's 7 pm. There are no lights in the houses. There are no people on the streets. There are hardly any cars and there are no customers in the restaurant other than a couple whose daughter is testing out a variety of ring tones at the table next to ours. The food is unremarkable. Our waiter tells us to come back Friday; there's live jazz at 9. Or we could come back any morning for breakfast. The menu's small but good, says Dulce, the other waitress. We pay our bill, get our parking ticket validated, and leave, still trying to understand what we've seen. As we come back down the hill towards Centro Cuernavaca, we get lost, navigating the Platina into the heart of a row of more raw cinder block houses and, as we make a quick left, an impassable street littered with rocks, garbage, and deep potholes. We're not even five minutes from the rarefied air of the gated community. We've left behind our martinis for bars serving up 40s, which adjoin rough looking Internet cafes stocked with old computers and aluminum folding chairs marked with Pepsi's logo being used by kids with no other activities to entertain them. Mangy dogs roam around poking into garbage on these streets with no names, dotted with houses with no numbers, no guards, no gates, no plazas, no fountains, and no churches. "What would we do if we ended up here?" we ask each other, hardly daring to answer. There are no trees. Everything is dusty. Trickles of water run down the street, with no cobbles or sidewalks, sweeping garbage down to the lowest classes. Though we're no strangers to poverty, it's impossible to absorb. "See the real Mexico," billboards around Mexico City urge, with the ad for Cuernavaca splashing appealing and colorful homes and cathedrals before our eyes. But this Mexico is just as real as tidy technicolor. Francisco does a u-turn and we head back for 95, driving in silence past the now dark wheat field.