We are in the megacity of Mexico City: twenty million people and growing every day. This was the heart of the Aztec empire overthrown by the Spanish conquistadors. It is busy and noisy but not as crowded and smoggy as we had expected.
Giant murals by radical Mexican artists are displayed in public buildings and there are superb museums. Yesterday we visited the Temple Museum with Aztec statues, jewellery and artifacts for blood letting and human sacrifice, which they practiced widely. The local newspaper ran an article yesterday about the skeleton of a sacrificed Aztec child found in recent excavations nearby. The blood theme continues today, in the multitude of Catholic churches around the city where the Christ figure is portrayed with a bloody crown of thorns and red spots dripping from his nailed hands and feet.
In the quieter southern suburbs we visited the beautiful family house of radical artist Frida Kahlo, full of her paintings, her traditional clothes, her easels and the kitchen crockery. Nearby is the Trotsky museum which links to both Frida and her muralist husband Diego Rivera as they took in Trotsky when he was given asylum in Mexico in 1937. The Trotsky museum is full of pictures of his life in both Russia and Mexico and includes the small house where he and his wife lived for the last year of his life and where he was killed with the famous ice pick. You can touch the bullet holes in the wall from the previous attempt on his life.
We had a great day trip to the north of Mexico City to the pre-Aztec stepped pyramids of the sun and the moon - marvellous views from the top after a steep climb. (Hello to Violetta and her friend, who we met at the top, and who are studying to be doctors in Cuba).
We are now well up on Mexican food and the 101 ways of eating tortillas. In Mexico City they are often served in mole- a kind of Mexican gravy - a thick brown sauce made with chillies, avocadoes and chocolate. Every restaurant has its secret recipe. Mexico, of course, gave chocolate to the world.
