Wow that was a long flight; 11.5 hours! I was surprisingly OK, but Josh suffered a bit as he was squashed in the tiny economy seats and only got up once.

Welcome to Mexico! Mexico City is massive, it is like a huge flat smog filled tortilla with a mere 22 million people. Quite staggering for us to comprehend.
We were a little nervous as we had heard so many bad things about Mexico being dangerous, kidnappings, shootings, muggings. The list goes on. Don’t go out at night, don’t go to this neighbourhood, don’t go on the metro. It took us a day or two to get over this and realise yes be sensible, but it isn’t that bad at all and the people are really friendly. We did meet two people from our hostel that got mugged on the metro and one got beaten up but all three didn’t really take precautions. The biggest issue for us was language. You really need to know Spanish, even a little to get by. This was probably the first country that we had encountered that we really struggled with language, but you pick it up after awhile and it can be quite interesting when you are ordering street food!

We weren’t quite sure what to expect, but I can say now that Mexico City is fantastic. I have never seen so many museums and art galleries. We barely scratched the surface. Art is clearly very important to the Mexicans as you turn a corner and there is a sculpture or street art blinking at you. The other thing we noticed was the plethora of police literally everywhere. I couldn’t decide if this made me feel safe or question why did there need to be so many of them.

We took a taxi with blaring eighties music (we only heard eighties music everywhere) to our hostel located near downtown and crashed out.

The next day was a recovery day while having a look around a tiny part of the city to get our bearings. We went to the famous Zocalo which is a massive square (57,600 m2) in the heart of the historic area. Prior to the colonial period, it was the main ceremonial centre in the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. The square had an enormous Christmas tree, roller blading rink and tobogganing. It is clearly the place where locals go with their families or couples go canoodling. The square is bordered by the Cathedral, the National Palace with the Templo Mayor tucked into a corner.

We checked out Templo Mayor which was one of the main temples of the Aztecs in their capital city of Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. Construction of the first temple began sometime after 1325, and it was rebuilt six times. The temple was destroyed by the Spanish in 1521 to make way for the new cathedral. We learnt later that Mexico City used to be a lake, Lake Texcoco and that the Aztecs built their city on an island located in the lake. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, efforts to control flooding by the Spanish led to most of the lake being drained. The entire lake basin is now almost completely occupied by Mexico City.

It was a little underwhelming but interesting. We then watched the Aztec dancers nearby do their thing which was pretty cool. We had our fist Mexican food which was great, proper guacamole and enchiladas washed down with Corona.

It was also New Year’s Eve and we met some lovely people from the hostel, Cynthia from Argentina, a couple from Melbourne, Aylah and Lachy, Corey from Nashville and Miguel from Bogota. Then after some beers and tequila shots we headed to The Plaza De La Reforma which is one of the squares that was holding live bands and fireworks. Needless to say, I can’t quite remember all the night but judging by my hangover the next day it was a good night.

The next few days consisted of visiting various sights and tacos, beers and tequila at night. Life at the hostel.

We went to the Frida Khalo Museum. It was interesting to get an idea more about her life as the museum consisted of her family home (Blue House), and had memorabilia including some of her clothes; even her ashes and some art, along with her on and off and on again husband, Diego Rivera’s art and keepsakes. It was worth convincing Josh to go on the metro to it (which was fine).

We had our first issue with Sim cards, as our supposedly unlimited plan suddenly stopped working so with our very limited Spanish we had to sort this out which was a mission and expensive but a must with the bad WIFI at the hostel.

Some street tacos were consumed, five for 35 pesos which is about NZD2. So, we have been making tacos all wrong! They should be soft and small, generally with meat on top such as shaved marinated barbequed pork with onion and coriander plus of course chilli sauce and lime juice – delicious. A couple of nights we had them at a crazy fair which was packed with locals and as the boys noticed, typical, had a few hookers.

That night we decided to go to the iconic Lucre Libre which is Mexican wrestling, the pre-cursor to WWF. We took the hostel tour which started with consuming copious amounts of tequila (mid-range hacienda which was actually really good) and donning our masks and then walking to Arena Mexico to watch this crazy event. It was of course all put on, but the bouts which gradually got better were fun to watch with acrobatic moves and a lot of slapping. It included women wrestlers, little people, scantily clad women dancers and wrestlers egging the crowd on.

One day we went to the National Museum of Anthropology which was stunning, possibly the best museum we have seen. We had information overload after the first floor, but it was fascinating to gain an understanding of the culture of Mexico especially as we were going to Teotihuacan the next day. We also checked out the Museum of Modern Art as I wanted to see some more of Frida Kahlo’s work, which unfortunately, only contained a couple of pieces. They also had two very avant garde exhibitions on which were a little eye brow raising.
We took an uber (50km out of Mexico City) to Teotihuacan. Along the way Mexico City just kept going and we finally saw the multi coloured bright houses we had been expecting.

Teotihuacan is a city which is thought to have been established around 100 BC, with major monuments continuously under construction until about 250 AD. It was originally built prior to the Aztecs by the Mexicanas. It has since been built over top five times, as seems to be a reoccurring theme in the area. We climbed the tallest pyramid first, The Pyramid of the Sun followed by the Pyramid of the Moon which had wonderful views down the Avenue of the Dead. We had been warned the stairs were steep in places and quite high. I guess after Asia they didn’t seem so bad to us.

After wandering around a bit as it is quite an impressive sight but not quite as magical as the Pyramids of Giza.

We had been told about a restaurant we must go to, so we searched out La Gruta which is located in a massive cave. Quite an experience, although we declined eating the crickets but had some really nice Mescal cocktails.

We attempted to visit the National Palace but as they require photo ID (no we did not carry our passports around) we had to leave it to the following day. Instead we went to the Palace of Fine Arts which is a magnificent French designed building and I was blown away to see some iconic paintings from Van Gogh, Renoir and Gauguin, plus some massive murals of Diego Rivera.

Yet another museum, The Chocolate Museum which was a little disappointing as it was all in Spanish.

That evening, as the original hostel crew had left to continue their travels we met up with Corey and went to a Mexican restaurant which had some great food and blow your head off mescal. We followed this by a couple of drinks after a hilarious uber ride all of a metre away. Long story, suffice to say we had not calculated our distance correctly and the poor uber driver could not understand why we literally wanted him to take us around the block. It made for a few laughs anyway.

Our last day in Mexcico City was spent finally seeing the National Palace which housed a number of murals of Diego’s followed by a lazy lunch in the huge Almada Park and a restful afternoon and then dinner with Corey and a guy from the hostel. We had dinner at La Imperial which oddly was in a mall. Go figure. Followed by of course a margarita.

We had an earlyish start the next day and navigated the chaos of the airport to get an Aeroméxico flight to Oaxaca.