Mexico City – The Big Smoke

I have dreaded arriving in Mexico City, from the day we left the UK almost a year ago, in a way in which a Capital city after the provinces seem unbearably noisy, smoggy, dirty, large, impenetrable, and exhausting. I remember that from living here 42 years ago. We occasionally used to see  the two volcanoes Popcateptl and Iztlaccihuatl, in the far distance, now people just tell you about them. The city was often covered in a yellowed haze of smog. But we simply can’t avoid the big DF. So grin and bear it Fiona. 

Susan Divine Finny, old old friend of my mums and our family, has lent us her flat, while she is in the States, a place we can call home during our weeks’ stay here. Where we can enjoy pyjamas breakfasts without being confined by the stuffiness of a city hotel. Its in a great location between El Revolucion and Insurgents, Close to Coyoacan where we visit Frida Kahlo’s blue house, in this now trendy cobbled, funky area where we can hop on and off Buses and metros to most locations. We end up having a great week here, and the air is surprisingly cleaner than I imagined and whilst it does take a long time to get around, we manage to see most things, we had hoped.

 

Perhaps it is a mistake to revisit places we loved as kids, so an outing to Xochimilco, was always going to be a bit risky, now surrounded by much more cement  than I remembered, The waters now Not so clean and clear as portrayed in a photo of  Frida Kahlo leaning over board running her hand through its transparent waters and vegetation less rural.  The punts are now super sized and the canals of water less wide( or maybe I am just bigger now). We crashed our way along the waters through the canals, like dodgems, with thousands of other Sunday leisure seekers, banging into punts along the way. The fresh flowers decorating the boats have been replaced by brightly coloured paints .The Mariachis, with their big hats serenading the punters the marimbas sounding out their tunes on boats along side and the punters singing along infectiously to any rythmn that comes their way.The tortilla vendors squeezed out, but still managing to pass  tacos down the line from one boat to the next. But It does still have that crazy fun, mad, sense about it and the children who know nothing else love it.

Back to our old house in Lomas Hipodromo, now very glammed up. Two maids and a house man open the door and are curious about my request to see the house, They are understandably reticent to let me in, but when I show them the photos of the seventies house we lived in for 8 years, and our family photos, they agree, providing it’s just me, to show me around the house. the rest of the family stay outside on the grassy verge that I once to use to play house on. I promise to be discreet. The house is exactly the same, the tree in the garden now dead planted in the middle of the grass, where I smoked my first cigarette, behind a blanket tarpaulin, so it wouldn’t be visible from the house, the path where Marcus used to row his imaginary boat. And where I used to crawl through a hole in the hedge to play with Adriana in the house behind, now a tall 20 ft high terracotta painted wall.But the stairs where we had a portrait of the kids, following a tyre blow accident on the way back from Tolucca still exactly the same. They take a photo of me for memory sake at the same spot. 

A revisit to the one museum which has always had more impact on me than any other. The Anthropological Museum, with its immense fountain in the courtyard. We are all suitably impressed. And it seems fitting that we are greeted, in the first room we enter, by a life size figure of Lucy, and copies of her remaining bones, originally found in Ethiopia. She is purported to be the oldest human bones ever discovered on earth. I hadn’t imagined that she would look so ape like. Her original remains were found in Ethiopia, and are still in Addis where we first started our journey 51 weeks ago. 

The top floor of this museum is dedicated to all the indigenous people of Mexico. The floor is a fantastic sight of colour and creativity. The culture here is so fantasaical, so deeply entwined with its mixture of paganism  and Catholicism, so colourful, so rich, so old. Each province has its life size exhibition of models of houses and peoples, and boats, uniquely embroidered costumes and rituals and festivals. A Visual delight. This is a Current Mexico, not a Mexico of old, but still alive, some of which we have seen in San Cristobal and Oaxaca. I have that overwhelming feeling  that in the three short months that we have been here we have only seen a tiny dot on this immense landscape, so much more hidden away.

And Finally Lunch at the Loma Linda an old favourite of our family, a Sunday Lunch Argentine grill place, a birthday treat place, in fact the ONLY place we ever ate out   Now swanked up and business like, and possibly the most expensive meal on our trip, though it was totally worth it. To savour the empanadas  and chimmichurri, tasting exactly like  I remember and have tried to recreate, the grilled steak brought to the table on hot grills and eaten off wooden chopping boards with serrated knives. A jug of homemade lemonade for the kids and sangria for the adults, though this time it’s the other way around. Pudding was a run around the corner to buy an ice cream cone., now a smart block of flats.