The canal was crowded with other flat-bottomed gondolas like ours, most filled with Mexican families, couples on dates, and Caucasian tourists. A flotilla of merchants in smaller canoe-like boats tooled between them all. Their wares were similar to their brethren’s on the docks: jewelry, candied apples, corn, toys, ponchos, flowers. Jesus waved over a floating tortería restaurant and ordered a variety of sandwiches. While we were eating—despite the two tamales I’d consumed earlier, I was still hungry—a boat carrying a Maríachi band in charro outfits sidled up next to ours, serenading us for the next while at what worked out to be a few bucks a song.

Soon we pulled away from the congestion and moved deeper into the ancient network of maze-like canals. The floating gardens Pepper mentioned earlier replaced the historic buildings and markets and general hustle and bustle of Cuemanco. Tall semi-evergreens lined the banks. Many had developed multiple trunks that formed expansive canopies of dark green pendulous foliage. A few were absolutely monstrous, as thick as a living room in diameter, and I suspected they had been planted by the Aztecs hundreds of years before. Complimenting these were coral-red flame trees and purple-blue jacaranda and colorful flowering plants such as bougainvillea, poinsettia, oleander, and hibiscus.

As we glided down one channel after another, I glimpsed old farm-houses, flower nurseries, and other cottage industries. Birds and farm animals grazed on green pastures. Kids swam in the water, men and women toiled in fields, and older folks sat stoically on rocks or logs or other makeshift seats, not doing much of anything. Pita and Elizaveta waved at them. A few waved lazily back.

Pepper, I realized at one point, was saying something to me. I blinked, looked at him. The warm sun and pastoral scenery had lulled me into a hypnotic state.

“What did you say?” I asked him, tilting a beer to my lips.

“Where do you go sometimes, Jack?” Pepper said in his ebullient manner. “I asked you if you can now see why the Spanish dubbed Xochimilco, ‘The Venice of the New World.’”

“It’s nice,” I said.

“You’d never know these canals were a mass grave.”

I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“A mass grave,” he said. “During the revolution, the army dumped the bodies of hundreds of opposition fighters into the canals.”

“You’re kidding?”

He shook his head. “Not long ago many skeletons were discovered all throughout the channels.”

We were floating over dead people? Suddenly the place was not so Eden-like.

I said, “You should mention that in your documentary.”

“I intend to.