Mexico City

This is my eighth day in Mexico City and what a fantastic city it is. When I arrived on last Monday evening I was expecting to spend just a few nights and then move on. But it seems easy to be seduced by this truly huge city.

On Tuesday my first real day in the city (having arrived the night before) the hostel I was staying at was providing a free walking tour. It ended up at the fantastic Museo Nacional de Antropologia which is Mexico's biggest museum by quite some distance and charts the history of the country and it's people from the first to step foot on the continent via the bering straight to modern day indigenous groups.

On Wednesday I went out to Teotihuacan which is about an hours bus journey outside of Mexico City. This was the first pre-Columbian pyramid structure I had ever seen so naturally I was blown away by it. The Pyramid of the Sun, the biggest of the three pyramids is amazing and great fun to climb, the steps at points are so steep you may as well be on all fours.

Thursday was spend exploring the city a bit more, the Frida Kahlo museum is great, but mostly because the house is so lovely.

Xochimilco in the suburbs of the city was on the agenda for Friday. It's hard to explain but Xochimilco is basically as serious of canals with punt boats to rent (along with punter). The day I went happened to coincide with some kind of beauty contest which was a serious of girls being paraded on very extravagant boats. There were so many boats on the canal at times through that you could barely see the water. Watching the punters trying to overtake each other with little space for maneuver was great fun.

Then Friday evening I went of to see a wrestling match which disappointed slightly. Suspending your disbelief is import obviously but some of it was ridiculous. All to often a big guy wearing only pants and a mask on would slap another big guy wearing only pants and a mask. And when I say slap and I mean a big back handed slap to the chest. This would carry on for a while each wrestler taking turns at slapping each other until they decided that it was time to spectacularly jump out of the ring onto each other.

Saturday was spent hanging out in the city visiting a few more things including the Torre Latinoamericana building which up until 10 years ago was the tallest in Latin America and now seems completely unused apart from the lookout. The top was a great place to get some pictures of the city and also see the massive amounts of pollution emitted which you can't really see from the ground.

I then travelled out to the town of Taxco on Sunday. About 2 hours on the bus but defiantly worth it. It's a gorgeous little town made prosperous from silver mining, which it seems is on offer in every other shop. The town is perched on a steep hillside so walking around the town you are constantly either climbing up or down and it really adds to the uniqueness of the place.

So today I'm off to Oaxaca a 6 hour bus journey and will update you on my findings.