My guidebook warns the first-time visitor to get out of the capital city immediately upon arrival, to acclimatise elsewhere and only to return when ready. Given that this wasn't an option, we nervously eyed up the gridlock on all roads heading out of the airport and wondered whether we would spend the next week stuck in traffic (there are 25 million people in Mexico City - that's one big traffic jam). Our driver must have been thinking the same as we inexplicably managed to lock bumpers with the taxi ahead of us. With a little help from a passing police car, we unhooked ourselves and steamed off at two or three miles an hour.
Despite all the forewarnings about crime, pollution and its almost unfathomable size, El DF (El "Day Effay", or the Federal District of Mexico) is quite manageable, so long as you treat it as a series of sectors, rather than a whole city. From the old colonial town centre of Zócalo, via the tourist fun park that is the Zona Rosa, to trendier-than-thou Condesa, beautiful Coyoacán and the innumerable other quarters, this is a place to be tasted in bite-size chunks.
Mexico City is on the map at the moment thanks to a new film about Frida Kahlo, who was born in Mexico in 1907, or 1910, depending on whom you believe (she apparently preferred the latter because it linked her to the date of the revolution and the birth of modern Mexico). At six, polio left her with a severely damaged right leg. Then, at 18, a serious bus accident broke her spinal column, collarbone, ribs and pelvis and crushed her foot. A metal rod speared her hip, exiting through her vagina and leaving her unable to bear children. Not for nothing is the main body of her work a series of brutal self portraits.
Frida has long been the darling of leftwing artistes, and the new biopic is sure to widen her group of admirers (which previously included Madonna, no great arbiter of artistic merit, as anyone who has seen a Guy Ritchie film will know). She has become an icon for Mexico in the mould of Che Guevara and shares something of his ugly beauty and a determination to view (and paint) the world exactly as she saw it. The difference is that she was responsible for creating her own image through her self portraits, borne out of years spent trapped in bed recovering from a wince-inducing array of operations and a body that refused to do her bidding. Passing through her house in Coyoacán is akin to following a funeral procession, with the thronging crowds reverently eyeing up her personal affects and the urn in her bedroom which holds her ashes.
As with many female artists, her fame is closely tied to her life story, which makes any assessment of her artwork complicated. Would she be famous were it not for her association with her husband and fellow-artist, Diego Rivera, Trotsky, her heavy drinking and wild sex life? To judge, a visit to the Dolores Olmedo museum is crucial, where you will find some of her most coruscating work, such as "Without Hope", which sees death and the world's evils pouring into her open mouth as she lies, immobile, on her bed. As an American tourist on the now-established Frida Kahlo trail said, "she wasn't in a happy place".
Frida's work is graphic, leaving little to the imagination, but that's not to say it isn't thought provoking. Her paintings are far more radical than her husband's. The two were like chalk and cheese; she a tiny, driven firebrand, he a hugely overweight communist but happy to paint for the society ladies, who he enjoyed teasing with his pseudo-radicalism. And, while Rivera was technically more gifted, Frida was at the time doing something no one else was. But so many modern artists have gone on to use their inner turmoil as the subject of their artwork (hello, Tracey Emin) that Frida's style can seem much less bold in hindsight.
The Dolores Olmedo also contains an impressive collection of Rivera's work, which comes in far wider range of styles and media than Frida's. From hilarious caricatures, portraits and African-style artwork to outrageously sensual nudes and pen and ink, via sculpture and political commentary, Rivera could do it all, even claiming that Picasso stole some of his ideas. But Rivera will be best remembered for his murals, which are found all over the city. Particularly good are those in the Palacio National and the Teatro de los Insurgentes. Mexico City is a riot of colour in all parts, doubly so wherever Rivera turned his hand.
Heading out of the city towards the pyramids of Teotihuacán, you pass "las ciudades perdidas" (lost cities) that have sprouted on the outskirts of Mexico City in the last 30 years (they say 1,000 people migrate to the city every day). These are the only places where you don't see colour - the settlements are grey, concrete, ramshackle and poverty-stricken. Every once in a while, you see a three-storey, colourfully painted house, with sports cars and trucks parked outside. "That'll be the local drug boss," said my friend Ignacio, "he treats the area as his kingdom and likes to remind the people of his power."
Before we reach the pyramids we stop off to find out about Mexico's most famous export, tequila. There is much to be learned on this topic: how tequila is made; how it is drunk; what to do with the salt and lime (rub lime juice on your hand, pour on the salt, lick it off, knock back the tequila, finish off with the rest of the lime). How to stand up after your 10th tequila is the final and perhaps hardest lesson of all. I failed my first three classes, but was allowed, nay encouraged, to retake. If only school had been like this.
Our tequila teacher, José Luiz, initially didn't want to join us in our bout of daytime drinking. It was his second wedding anniversary and he wanted to save himself for his wife. "Once I start, I can't stop," he said, and we soon learned the truth of this. Within seconds of watching us drink our first shots, he had worked his way through a third of the bottle. "Más tequila, más tequila," he cried. And more we drank.
The only downside was that we now had to climb the pyramids. The larger of the two, the Pyramid of the Sun, is 70m high. It was the middle of the day. We were more than a little drunk. I was not convinced this was a wise plan.
The settlement at Teotihuacán lies 50km north-east of Mexico City. Built between 200BC and 1AD, the pyramids lack the spectacular setting of some of Mexico's other pre-Hispanic monuments, but are stunning nonetheless. Though little evidence remains of the people who built them, they clearly formed an ordered and civilised community. The city was eventually abandoned, possibly as a result of an attack from a northern tribe, and when the Aztecs came across it some 700 years later, they were amazed by its expanse and scale; thus it earned the name of the "Place Where Men Became Gods". Their awe is understandable.
In the film, Frida and her one-time lover, Trotsky, climb the smaller Pyramid of the Moon. She was a cripple, he an old man. The tequilas made me feel like a mixture of the two, but the climb was worth it. From the top, you can see the layout of the entire site and the achievement (theirs, not yours in getting to the top) is staggering, especially when you learn that the geometrically arranged pyramids are perfectly aligned with the sun. Graham Greene said of the site: "The mathematical sense seems to have run riot - everything is symmetrical... Heresy here was not an aberration of human feeling... but a mathematical error." 2.5m tonnes of stone and earth were brought to the site for its construction and, in those days, the wheel was yet to be invented. It therefore comes as something of a disappointment to discover that the Pyramid of the Sun was in fact reconstructed in 1908.
Should one go to a bullfight? This question posed itself the following day and the short answer is no. But whoever had any fun listening to their conscience? So we bought tickets for the shady side of the Plaza Mexico, the largest bullring in the world. The noise as you enter the stadium tunnels is overwhelming and, despite a relatively small crowd, beats any English football match. A sign read: "Anyone who does a bad thing in the tunnel will be thrown out." What could this bad thing be, I wondered, and when they say "thrown out", do they mean onto the streets, or the horns of a bull? It was only when I saw the state of the men's toilets that the peso dropped. And, despite my churning stomach, I had no intention of doing that.
The fights were grotesque mismatches, the bulls standing little chance of success against a barrage of men armed with spikes, horse riders with lances, and a prancing matador in pink tights. As one particularly lithe matador passed a bull for the umpteenth time, it hit me - I had been here before. Flashback to 1986, and I'm laid up on the sofa with a cold, watching Herbie Goes Bananas. I forget why, but the mercurial Beetle somehow ends up in a bullfight in the Plaza Mexico and dazzles the crowd with his swift turns, spins and passes. In the end, Herbie is feted with a heartfelt "Olé!" from his loving public and the bull survives unharmed. That is not how it is in real life. There is an awful lot more blood, the bulls never live and cars can't really stand up on their back wheels - that's just plain silly.
If you do nothing else in Mexico City, make sure you spend a Sunday afternoon on the canals of Xochimilco, which, despite having the look and feel of a tourist theme park, remain hugely popular with Mexicans. Rent a "trajinera" (punt), buy some beers (particularly good is the Victoria) and watch the world go by. If your idea of punting is based on toffs quoting poetry and quaffing champagne in Oxford and Cambridge, you'll be in for a shock. Here, you're guided through a bizarre aquatic traffic jam (even on the river you can't escape congestion). Riverboats of Mariachi singers float alongside, students carouse drunkenly, families enjoy their Sunday lunches, young lovers imagine they're the only people in the world, oblivious to the noise, and dogs swim around, hoping for a scrap of meat to be thrown in their direction. The boatmen are remarkably deft - one touch of the oar and you're off in a different direction seconds before what looked like being a major accident with three other overloaded punts. Nevertheless, we chose not to hire the most brightly decorated of the punts on offer. It was, rather ominously, called the Titanic.
And save one evening for a Cuban bar in Condesa called La Bodeguita del Medio. If there is a finer place in the world, I'd like to know about it. Every available space, from the walls to the chairs, is covered in graffiti, the walls are a shrine to Latin American superstars (my favourite being a photo of Gabriel Garcia Marquez looking ever so slightly the worse for wear) and the mojitos are as good as it gets.
So, forget the film (it's a dull love story) and head straight to Mexico City, where 25 million stories happen every single day.
Getting there
· Paul Hamilos stayed at the Habita hotel.
· Iberia (0845 601 2854) offers return flights to Mexico City (via Madrid) from £585.
· For more information on Mexico, contact the Mexico Tourist Board, 00 800 28 77 66 55 or email turismo_mexico_prensa@es.bm.com.
