Mexico City walkabout

Mexico city 14oct 08

A classic hostel day. Kicked off by meeting new friend andree for brekkie. She'd just bumped into a previous hostel buddy the couchsurfing andy from Halifax. This chap was meant to be in india but had dry cleaned his passport and erased his visa so was stuck in the multimegalopolis that is mehico city.

Now to walk around it you'd think it was just a regular city. Its the details that get you. The slanty cathedral built on Aztec ruins, the slanty everything else also built on 2000 years if classic civilisation. What brings a wry smile is that after all that time they've come to this version of civilisation.

The periodic smell of sewerage, the dust from street excavations, the themed streets: fabricland, d.i.y.ville, pharmacyplateau, christmascity etc. The street hawkers selling a few crusty tacos from a polystyrene plate, the woman with bic blades, the kid with a palette of pritt-stick, the man holding two irons ("very good brand"). It's a city of small scale enterprise where you'll never find what you're looking for.

The scale of the chaos was most vivid from the 47th floor of the toure latinomerica. That's where you count at least five distinct skyscraper zones rising from the calming smog. It's where you see the whistleblowing traffic cop almost get knocked over four times in a minute. Its where you get a perspective on just how big this city is. It's very big, by the way.

We got a group of about 10 young hostellers together to go to the mexican wrestling (gimp masks and all) that night. Sadly after walking down the kind of streets you´re not meant to walk down at night we discovered that the usually reliable Lonely Planet (aka the LP or the Bible) had lied about the venue. We saw very nice, closed, venue and legged it back to the hostel bar for salsa lessons and beers with the lit up centro historico behind us. All´s well that ends well...