Smile for the camera, you´re in Mexico City

We´re now in that megalopolis otherwise known as Mexico City. Our first view on the bus was of a landscape of small concrete boxes stretching for miles and then we dipped into a teeming valley of buses, cars, street hawkers and cream and red VW beetle taxis (the old beetles, very cool).

That first impression was misleading, as its nothing like a concrete jungle, at least in the centre of the city where we are staying. Here its wide tree-lined boulevards, beautiful old Spanish colonial architecture, cobble-stoned pedestrianised streets and for the most part clean and orderly. Nothing like the wonderful chaos of Mumbai, or the not so wonderful chaos of Cairo. I love it!
Today we took a stroll to the main square, called the Zocalo (actually its official name is something like ¨Plaza National¨) only about 20 minutes walk from our hotel. Surrounding it is the biggest church in Latin America, beautifully decorated with a Moorish style facade. The highlight though was seeing the famous Diego Riveria mural painted within the Palacio National depicting the 500 year history of Mexico. It took him 20 years to complete, so I reckon he had a pretty sore back after a couple of years!

The most bizarre thing we saw was a room in the Palacio containing the bones (skulls, rib cages etc) of all the Mexican heroes who helped Mexico gain independence from Spain. They were all in these black boxes, the lids raised enough so you could see inside. I was desperate to take a photo but thought it would be disrepectful. (Plus the signs said no photos!)

Getting to Mexico City by bus was an interesting experience of Mexico´s big brother police and armed forces. Before getting on the bus we were both scanned with metal detectors and patted down. Most bizarrely, the security lady then went through the bus with a video camera filming every passenger. I smiled and waved. She smiled back.
This was not all though. En route our bus was stopped and more police got onboard (there are so many varieties over here local, municipal, state, federal). They said something in Spanish which we did not understand, people filed out and when I looked out the window the police were systematically going through all the luggage checked in under the bus, including our own. I saw a rather bemused police officer trying to figure out how to open Larna´s backpack and having a poke through her things. I figured out later that the people who had gotten off had to be on hand with keys to unlock their bags - we have no locks on our bags. Welcome to the big smoke!