The Trajinera Scam

Fairly relaxed third day in Mexico City. On the agenda: taking a Trajinera (elaborately decorated boat) down canals first used by the Aztecs. Our destination (sort of) was something called “Island of the Dolls”. It’s a bizarre area off a canal where a man started placing old and mutilated dolls everywhere to appease the spirit of a girl who drowned in the canal where he lived. Eventually locals joined the insanity and it added up to a really bizarre collection of dolls hanging everywhere from trees and such. Anyway, if you wanna see some good pics of that place, you can look it up in the Google because we didn’t get them. We managed to find a launching point for the canals, but our best guess is it didn’t access the island, and the last person willing to tell us that was the man selling us the boat ride. Only after we get going does the story change from taking us to Island of the Dolls to that place being too far away and we’re going to a “replica”. Hah! In any event, the boat ride still managed to be an interesting and slightly fun (albeit mega-touristy) little trip and made for a fairly relaxing day.

Island of the Dolls “replicas” …meh

There does seem to be a tremendous supply/demand mismatch between brightly painted boats and the number of tourists ready to be carted around in them.