Mexico City, without a doubt one of the craziest places in the world... Makes any other city look tame in comparison. There are people everywhere, crazy markets, spontaneous dancing, protesting and capioera. The first day was hectic, but now we have recovered from jet lag we have begun a punishing schedule of walking. I'm on my second pair of shoes. We have no clothes, due to stupid combined incompetence of Iberia and BA. So two days of no bags has led us to feel like smelly, road worn travellers already.

Mexican's seem to be very political, all the murials are about overcoming suppression and they are very patriotic, mexican flags are everywhere. Where 1 will do, there is 9. We seem to come across lots of protests with Spanish chanting. I also almost got squished by riot police whilst tying my shoe lace!

The people are friendly and ask us where we are from. The children sneak looks or stare at us as we are so completely different from everyone else, being pasty and light haired. Out of the hostel we have only seen 1 tourist with light hair, all the others are Spanish toursits. Everyone is also very good natured about our Spanglish but at least they try and talk to us without speaking English. We need the practice! The buildings are fantastic and ornate and the parks beautiful. However Chapuletepec Park is like a giant maze, where every road leads to the zoo! We were lost for hours! Photos will follow...

The following day we went to see Toluca vs Club America in the smelly ugly place of Toluca. Our guides were two mexican brothers of the Velez-Suburbie clan, who were bitter footballing rivals. One supporting club america (the good one) and the other a terrible diablos fan. Lots of beer and even a pizza was consumed in the stands! mexicans know how to watch footy. By the end we were very merry from the 5 beers that Santiago was kind enough to supply us with. Sadly the result went the way of the gay devils and the valiant club america lost 1-3 despite the better fans. Later we met the rest of the family, all of whom were extremely nice and we have to give a special mention to the Grandma who gave us a lovely home meal. We joked with them about our list of things to see from Lourdes (our very own Lourdes-in-a-pocket) and they added lots more! Later Santiago showed us round their neighbourhood Coyocan in their huge beast of a "car" and took us to the best place to eat.

On Monday, we visited the ruins at Teotihucan on a tour, we tried cactus (Napoli?), mezcal, tequila and pulque (3 spirits) to "give us strength to climb the pyramids" as our guide said :-S Apparently they are very healthy...

Unfortunately on Tuesday we both came down with food poisoning. We tried to take a day trip somewhere and on the way back I (Gem) started feeling very dizzy and had to get off many times for air because I thought I might be sick. We made it home and decided that it was time to leave Mexico City and head to Oaxaca to recuperate.