Venturing outside of our hotel in Calle Luis Moya, the first thing that struck me about Mexico City was how cold it was. It was night and winter time but I somehow supposed its proximity to the Equinox meant the climate would generally be fairly tropical✼. Certainly, the attire of the Mexiqueños I saw on the street indicated that the locals themselves clearly felt the cold – puffer jackets, coats, scarfs, beanies and (always) long trousers were the fashion de jour.

The universal adoption of long trousers by the locals puzzled me a bit, it seems that Mexicans, even the youth, don’t tend to wear long pants – it isn’t the done thing culturally in the country apparently even in the stifling temperatures of summer. This immediately marked me out for all to spot as 100 per cent gringo tourist…I wore shorts most of the time, a Hungarian military style cap and either an Hawaiian shirt or a T-shirt. A hasty examination of the contents of my luggage revealed that I was well short on warm clothing, I had only brought one pair of long trousers (and these were lightweight Italian-designed jeans) and one warm pullover. On reflection I had the distinct feeling that my normal reductionist approach to packing was going to catch me out on this trip.

When I got out and about for my first exploratory saunter around the central part of Mexico City, I quickly became familiar with a characteristic of the city’s urban terrain, footpaths were consistently uneven, there were often large holes where concrete had broken up and been left unrepaired so long that people tended to use them as impromptu garbage bins! Walking on darkly-lit streets after nightfall proved hazardous…a couple of times I nearly came crashing to earth (actually concrete) when walking from a step onto thin air, not expecting the long, unseen (and unseeable) drop below to the ground. An added potential pitfall for pedestrians was the unevenness of steps, descending a series of small steps to suddenly find a large one meant you had to keep your wits about you at all times. Even on what you assumed was level ground you had to be wary, the pathway had a tendency to undulate all over alarmingly – this was probably the result of two related factors: the fairly regular seismic activity that CDMX was prone to✥, and the fact that the city, built as it was on a large lake, was slowly but inexorably sinking!

Crossing the road at intersections with significant car traffic proved challenging. The safest and wisest approach was to follow the locals, but you still had to be decisive whenever you set out to cross, Mexican motorists were uncompromising in their lack of restraint in using their horns at the slightest suggestion that pedestrians were taking liberties with the lights.

Being close to the old historical centre of the city my perambulations soon took me via the long pedestrian plaza of Francisco I Madero to the Zócalo. The Zócalo is very much the city’s hub. Easily spotted from the start of Madero by its steepling Christmas tree, the Zócalo is CDMX’s main square with a somewhat incongruous ice-skating rink on its perimeter. On one side is a line of grand government buildings including the National Palace, to the other is Mexico City’s main Cathedral. Just one block away from the Zócalo (= plinth) is the unearthed foundations of the Templo Mayor, In pre-Spanish times this was the principal ceremonial centre of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. In recent history the square has been the favourite venue for political protests (eg, 1968 university students opposed to police oppression, Zapatistas, etc).

Given the limited time we’d be in the capital we reckoned that signing on for a series of city tours was the best way to get to the heart of what Mexico City was about. The first day tour (of food and markets) was one offered by Urban Adventures. The food quest took us to the big central markets Mercado Abelardo L Rodríguez where we, wisely having skipped breakfast at the hotel, sampled the authentic diet of the masses. We started with different flavoured corn tortillas (vanilla maize tortillas a bit strange and challenging to the palate!) and later some delicious mixed tamales for lunch. The markets revealed a comida smorgasbord of idiosyncratically Mexican foodstuffs – from an exotic mix of spices and peppers to white corn to edible cactus leaves.

The massive, sprawling Rodríguez markets also does a sideline (very large sideline in fact!) in flowers and it was here that I discovered that the ubiquitous poinsettia plant (Euphoria pulcherrima, a Christmas favourite with its striking red and green foliage) though indigenous to Mexico was named after a Gringo from North of the Border! (1820s US minister to Mexico and botanist Joel R Poinsett).

Although I didn’t really appreciate it when I signed up for the trip to Mexico, a chance to taste real Mex-food rather than the bastardised and vastly inferior Tex-Mex substitute offered up in the West, was one of the best reasons to visit Mexico. Only then and there on the ground in Mexico can you evaluate its national cuisine properly and confirm among other things that the old Billy Connolly joke, thought funny and clever, is stereotypical and essentially wrong₪.

An interesting side excursion took us across town on a rickety old public bus crowded with locals. Like I had noticed in parts of Peru four years earlier, formal bus stops per sé didn’t exist, the people here also just somehow knew, from precedent and habit I guess, where to wait…the bus would duly stop at regular points on the journey to load and unload passengers. What I wasn’t expecting on the bus was the various hawkers who would get on the bus, travel a few stops without paying the conductor, and launch into a full-blown sales spiel for various products. One such Mexican “Joe the Gadget Man” who caught our eye (couldn’t but be aware of him!) was this chubby, perspiring guy who prowled up and down the aisle loudly proclaiming with speed-gun rapidity the virtues of some kind of ‘medicinal’ marijuana (in small green-topped tins labelled ‘Mariguanol’). Having made two, three quick sales within a short distance (to my great surprise) he promptly dismounted the bus to await the next ride. Our guide Pancho told us that many Mexicans believe in the healing powers of ‘grass’ for muscular ailments and the like.

When we too alighted the bus, Pancho took us to a couple of other shops which showed that the Mexiqueños’ love affair with food extended well beyond the merely savoury. These popular patisserie shops are often known locally as Dulcerías (essentially candy stores), where sweet-toothed Mexicans can buy all manner of sickly-sweet indulgences in pastels (cakes), tartas (tarts) and postres (deserts). Dulces de leche (caramel-tasting milk candies) and rompope (an eggnog concoction dipped in rum) are two of the Mexican comestibles much in demand. One famous shop (Ideal Pasteleria) we visited specialised in huge celebration cakes – signs on the tall and lavishly decorated cakes for birthdays and such occasions included the weight of the cake in kilos! This is practical information indeed allowing prospective purchasers to work out what size cake was needed to match the anticipated number of guests at the upcoming party/celebration! And of course, as our travels were to enlighten us, no decent restaurante in Mexico would fail to include at the very least pan dulce (sweet bread) or more likely an elaborate array of pastels on its menu!

PostScript: Whither Chocolaté in Mexico?
For a country whose indigenous people gave the world the cocoa bean and therefore chocolate, Mexicans surprisingly tend not to eat slabs of chocolate as the rest of the world do…their cocoa preference is decidedly for chocolate caliente (hot chocolate drinks). Even confectionary sold in the sweets aisle labelled as chocolate is usually wafer biscuits with icing rather than the real thing.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
✼ had I done my prep homework a bit better, the significance of Mexico City’s location atop a standard elevation of 2,250 metres, should have provided me with a few salient clues in this direction
✥ uncomfortable as this news was at the time, one day after I had paid for the Mexico trip, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake tore up part of the city
₪ “the thing about Mexican food is that its all the same, they just fold it differently!”