There is nothing small or dainty about a club sandwich at Cancun Airport. We had bought one each as belated breakfasts and had struggled to finish them. The waiter asked with a big grin if we wanted anything else and affected surprise when we declined. He wandered off, probably looking for other customers who had rashly ordered the same. We wandered outside to stand in the morning sunshine and saw the Australian couple we first met in Mahahual, and then in Tulum. They had spent the last few days in a little fishing village on the west coast of the Yucatan peninsular. We swapped stories of boat journeys, buses and hotels to pass the time.

Before the security checks I remembered I still had my penknife in my bag. The choices were throw it away or attempt to get it through security. I took a chance and Herself, I and the knife passed quietly through all the checks and onto our plane for Mexico City.
The City was a culture-shock after the Yucatan. A taxi took us through the traffic jams and fumes to a hotel near the centre of town, where we eventually got a room with a half-decent net connection and a mini-bar. This was another world. High rise buildings, lifts, traffic jams, traffic lights, riot police. There was a demonstration about pensions and another about political corruption, both had been ongoing for weeks, but all we saw were groups of riot police loitering with intent. We took a walk through this strange landscape and found what looked like an ancient wall with a waterfall cascading off it in the middle of a busy road junction.

The next morning the bellboy told us where to catch a microbus to the Frida Kahlo museum. It cost 3 pesos, a taxi would have cost about 150 pesos. We jumped off before the terminus, a mistake that would cause us lots of confusion and walking later in the day. We wandered through the wide tree-lined streets of this obviously affluent area of town admiring the security features of the homes. The Kahlo museum, The Blue House, was well worth the walk and the headphones providing an explanation of each room ( yes, we had our passports this time ) added to our appreciation of her life and home. From here we set off to the Leon Trotsky house, stopping to photo a house with a room on the roof built from stained-glass. From the Trotsky House we walked back to the large park and sat on a bench watching the black, red and grey squirrels cavorting amongst the trees and the wooden statues before wandering out into the streets again. stained glass penthouse
We had walked out of the park on the wrong side and it was a small hike to get back to the street where we had jumped off the bus. What we thought was the Museum of Popular Culture turned out to be some kind of town hall, complete with the usual armed guards. They told us the museum was around a couple of corners but we still didn’t find it. A third set of instructions and then we gave up and decided to catch a bus back to the hotel. After jumping off the first bus we turned the corner and met a Mexican who persuaded us to take the metro train. A good way later, all uphill, and we found the metro station. All tickets were 2 pesos and it all seemed similar to the Underground except few of the trains were crowded even thought this was the busy time of day . We exited the metro straight into a busy street market and then crossed the Avenue of the Reformas, the police directing traffic with very energetic and exaggerated arm movements.
Back at the hotel we had dinner eleven stories up with an electrical storm over the city as a background.