The big day out

In the Plaza de Garibaldi, at night hundreds of mariachis gather. The are in full costume and they all have mariarchi vans. A mariachi band usually has 8/10 members and they meet the tourist steroetype to a T. The idea is that they are for hire. For about $7, they will sing any song you order. We ordered ''Sing and Don't Cry". If you really like them, you negotiate a price and take them back to your place for a party (that is what the mariachi van is for). Not a single one of them speaks a word of English, so the negotiations just for one song were hilarious. We danced and laughed, clapped and had a great time. Then, we noticed that everyone else who paid for songs was most sombre. This did not gel with our experience of Mexicans to date, we have found people very funny and friendly. One woman patron had her arms firmly folded across her chest and she looked deadly serious. Eventually, she and another woman with her started crying. This is when I turned my brain on, and remembered that the name of the song I ordered, and that the point of a lot of the music is to move people to tears with tales of epic, personal tragedy. We felt pretty stupid for singing and dancing, but how were we to know. We managed to talk a big Dutch guy and Aussie girl into coming with us. This was useful because the area is a little dodgy and it was good to have both Charles and the guy with us.

Today was the Xochimilco flower market and a ride down the canal to the islands in the middle of Mexico city. It is another world. We got there early and it was very peaceful. On small boats came shops of the following varieties, a marimba band, a soda hawker, a jewellry hawker, a bar b qued corn seller, and a more. It is a floating market with so many colors, it is almost an offence to the eye.

Next was the Frida Karlo Musuem. It was beatiuful, but when I saw the painting of her amputated foot I cried. Her decorated back braces, crutches, the bed with the mirror and her unfinished painting, still on the easel are all on display.

Lunch was at a terrific market at Cocoyan (the place of the coyote). Mexico has 25 million people and we ran into people who we knew! Lunch was delicious, but I am finding is hard to remember all the names of the food. I had a great hot soup with chicken, pork, lime chilli, herbs, radish and something else.

We then went to Trotsky's house and again with the tears. The photos were so moving, his grave is at this place and the rabbit hutches are still in situ. We saw the bedroom, the kitchen, the study, the bullet holes, the guard towers and all the documents. One woman on the tour knew a great deal of the history and taled to Charles and all the others. I was a bit beyond speech, especially when it came to the bit where they explained what Stalin did to Trotsky's entire extended family.

I needed some relief after this, so when we got back to the hostel we went off to the Plaza San Domingo (where the Spanish inquisition was conducted) and bought a bag of fried crickets with lime. Delicious when fried.