Good Magazine // Charting A Greener Future For Mexico’s Aztec Floating Gardens
Two projects aim to save Mexico City’s ancient canals.
We arrive at Yolcan’s Chef Semillas restaurant floating on a shimmering canal rowing a humble trajinera, a flat-bottomed boat with improvised oars typical of Xochimilco’s marshy canals. Crunching into the abundance of Brazilian water lilies, we skitter onto the chinampa, a traditional “floating island” built by pre-Colombian civilizations who terraformed a home on the sprawling system of mountain lakes that would later transform into the Mexico City megalopolis.
Image credit: Xochimilco Kim Cordova
