By Kate Stockrahm
There are few experiences more humbling than visiting a place where you cannot speak the language well, if at all.
We’re here in Mexico City (CDMX), which is larger than New York City in both land area and population to many a foreigner’s surprise, for a friend’s belated 40th birthday celebration.
We’re visiting during a less-toursity time of year as it’s the height of the city’s rainy season, which certainly has its perks (fewer crowds, cheaper tickets) as well as its downfalls (more on this aspect, shortly).
The birthday boy in question is staying with family in an area about an hour’s drive north from our place in the Coyoacán neighborhood of the city, so we’ve had to make do with the little Spanish shared among our plucky bunch before meeting up with him each day for activities and defacto translation support.
Of course this has resulted in a few awkward moments – such as when no one knew the waiter was asking if we wanted to add a tip (called “propina,” by the way) to our bill – alongside some incredibly kind encounters, like the time an older gentleman on the plaza walked one of us all the way to the restaurant when it was clear she didn’t understand his verbal directions.
We’ve also ordered the wrong item roughly 100 times – but hey, I highly recommend a banana matcha frappé if you’re curious; chuckled at my formality in a couple casual social settings (though I appreciate that Duolingo has led me to speak Spanish in overly-polite terms rather than not); and generally managed to get by, even grow a bit more assured, in our broken communications over the course of the trip.
But no matter how confident we’d become, nothing could prepare us for last night’s Uber ride in Mexico City traffic during a torrential rain – aka one of those “downfalls” I mentioned earlier about visiting during the rainy season.
Now, the deluge itself wasn’t the issue. In fact, we’d finally broken down and purchased some over-priced paraguas (umbrellas) before the skies opened wide yesterday night, so we waited relatively comfortably as Francisco pulled up in his dark gray Chevrolet Aveo to take us back to Coyoacán after our delicious dinner in La Condesa.
Having left our friend to navigate back north to his family, the three of us remaining, soggy travelers piled in as Francisco smiled, said hola, and clocked our lack of fluent Spanish before even tapping “start trip” on the phone mounted to the center console.
It was about two blocks later that we realized the Aveo was manual – trying to temperature control for the forever-clouded windshield was proving incredibly tricky for Francisco with no free hands – and that we’d be getting on the highway in near-blinding storm conditions.
I mention the highway as a concern not because elsewhere in CDMX is necessarily that much better for my American driving sensibilities – there are very few stop signs, and it seems folks decide how they will manage intersections based on vibes and guesswork – but because it cannot be overstated that even in perfect weather most highway drivers in the city could be described as “aggressive,” or, in my most honest assessment, “clearly unafraid of death.”
So, Francisco’s way of managing the three of us terrified, impossible-to-communicate-with-and-thereby-reassure foreigners was simply to get this trip over with as fast as possible.
This meant turning off the radio for better focus (my fiancé often jokes about cutting the music so we can “see” better when we’re navigating new streets), some very big splashes, a smattering of quick honks to let other cars know we wouldn’t be stopping, and A LOT of weaving around other vehicles with their hazards flashing.
My friend texted from her full-view front seat position: “What in the Mario Kart?” And we tried to giggle despite our white-knuckle grips on the seats, handles, and, sometimes, each other.
And Francisco? God bless him, he got us home without any of us saying more than 10 words.
Despite the language barrier, it was clear that even he, a seasoned CDMX driver, had been slightly freaked out at the conditions we’d just navigated as the rain lightened up toward the end of our journey. (One of those 10 words I’d definitely heard him mutter was “peligroso” – or dangerous – when we got to a flooded, sharp curve to cut back toward our neighborhood from the highway.)
So, as Francisco dropped us off with a polite “¿aquí está bien?” we all said yes and muchas, muchas gracias – in unison and perhaps too quickly to hide the relief behind our stilted Spanish.
And then, because none of us could help it – or maybe because we all needed to – we laughed.
We all laughed and shook hands, us and Francisco, because so human an experience as cheating death together needs no common tongue. Then we hopped out of the Aveo, its finicky windshield finally de-fogged, and walked through the rain to our apartment complex’s gate, our new umbrellas still closed in our hands.
Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in East Village Magazine’s August 2026 print edition.
