My arrival in Mexico City wasn’t exactly smooth. The immigration officer looked at me with irritation while stamping my passport. Another woman in uniform pulled me aside just as I was pushing my baggage trolley towards the exit and asked to see my baggage tags. My husband, meanwhile, moved unencumbered towards the ‘Nothing to Declare’ sign. The airport hummed with chaos. Maneuvering through the confusion, just as I wheeled the trolley towards customs, yet another officer doing random checks sent me to the baggage scanner. At this point I lost my patience and wondered if coming to Mexico was such a good idea after all.
Our long drive to the hotel swept past scenes of tangled wires overhead, weathered low-rise buildings, and hawkers weaving through traffic signals, just like in India. Everyday workhorses –Volkswagens, Chevrolets, Nissans, and MGs — crawled along the road into the city. But the landscape changed as we entered the tree-lined Avenue of Reforma, and by the time we stepped into our luxurious hotel, it felt like we'd arrived in a different world altogether.
At the hotel restaurant, tables with crisp linens held salt-baked sea bass plated like art while waitstaff glided around. In Mexico City (also known as CDMX), luxury and struggle share the same sidewalk as its past and present. Nowhere is it more evident than on the road to Teotihuacan on the outskirts of the city. A modern highway takes you to these ancient pyramids. Hills dotted with a cluster of tiny white homes packed together like tiny lego pieces rise in the distance on your way there. An eerily quiet archaeological site today, Teotihuacan’s was once a thriving metropolis that predates the Aztecs and the Mayans. It is evident from the ruins that this was a meticulously laid out city once. While it continues to be an enigma to archaeologists because its inhabitants left no written records, time hasn’t entirely stripped it of its grandeur.
These grand pyramids (three in all), unlike the Egyptian ones, are not burial sites but temples built to mimic the sacred geography of the area – more specifically, the mountains. In fact, the city’s layout isn’t so much urban planning as it is a metaphysical landscape aligning with celestial movements. Human sacrifice, especially of children who were meant to become guardian angels once on the other side, was part of their offerings to the gods and the underworld wasn’t a reference to organised crime but a highly desired address in the afterlife.
Interestingly, recent excavations beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent have uncovered a tunnel filled with liquid mercury, thought to represent the underworld river leading to the coveted afterlife. We found our own underworld catering to our existing life seconds away from the pyramids, deep inside a vast volcanic cave. La Gruta, an upscale restaurant that is at least a century old, was lit up with candles and seemed more like the meeting ground for a secret cult than a restaurant serving pre-Hispanic cuisine. The menu offered local favourites that include ant larvae and caterpillars among other appetizing dishes made with corn, avocados, fish and assorted meats. The Spanish introduced a complex dish called mole poblano, a velvety sauce laced with chocolate and spices, and today it is ubiquitous across restaurant menus. Our guide informed us that when Queen Elizabeth II visited Mexico, she graced La Gruta with her presence as did Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in their time.
The legend of Frida Kahlo is everywhere, much like the Calavera (skull) it has become a totem of their culture. Her face stares back at you from wall art along the motorways, bags, t-shirts, cushion covers and every other surface where it’s possible to paint. Among the cognoscenti however, it is Diego Rivera who is spoken of with both pride and reverence. His monumental mural Dream of a Sunday Afternoon at Museo Mural Diego Rivera is a work to behold. Painted in 1947, the 15m long mural encapsulates four centuries of Mexican history and is satirical commentary on Mexican society featuring prominent people from the time, including Kahlo and the artist himself with La Catrina, a skeletal figure in a boa, representing society elite right in the centre.
Oddly, there are only a handful of works of Frida Kahlo’s at Casa Azul, the Frida Kahlo museum —the very house where she grew up, lived with Diego and breathed her last. The home however, tells a compelling story through her personal possessions: her bed, her paintbrushes, the shoe made specially for her polio leg and her brace among other items. Walking through its rooms it is easy to be moved and pained by her struggles — the accident, miscarriages and the heartache from being in love with Diego. Her painting , a still life with watermelons with her last words, Viva La Vida (long live life), painted across it barely a week before her death, felt almost like a final act of defiance, an insistence on life even as it slipped away.
The cobalt blue house is located in this tony neighbourhood of Coyoacán where Spanish conquerors established their headquarters, and where artists later flourished. It is also where I had the best street food in Mexico. My feast included tacos stuffed with refried beans and topped with nopales (cactus meat), esquites (cups of smoky, buttery corn laced with lime, chili, and mayo) and tlacoyos ) thick, oval-shaped masa cakes crisped on a griddle and drizzled with a fiery salsa verde.) But the standout dish for me was a slow-cooked chicken with a runny broth of tomatoes and chipotle, piled onto warm tortillas and rice.
Fine dining seems as integral to Mexico city as is its street food and we managed to experience two of its seven Michelin star restaurants during our stay – Pujol and Rosetta. While our Italian meal at Rosetta was certainly remarkable and its service excellent, Pujol with its traditional Mexican food with a twist, turned out to be an exceptional experience on all accounts even though one of the ingredients in a delectable corn starter was powdered red ants, a common local seasoning. We’d been asked to spare three hours for their seven course tasting experience and that is exactly how long it took for us to get through their food, the entire experience felt deliberate and unhurried, like a slow waltz on a cold evening.
Tequilas at Handshake Speakeasy and cocktails served from a Fairy Drinks (a fairytale-inspired) menu at Fifty Mils, both award winning bars, went down fast too. It was hard to resist cocktails that were named after Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin and Red Riding Hood. My gin and red wine based cocktail was called Beauty & the Beast and it arrived in a rose shaped stem glass covered with a jar of cold smoke — both delicious and dramatic. The local bazaars of the city are filled with handicrafts like wicker baskets, stuffed dolls and calacas (skeletons) doing everyday things.
Lorena Velazquez, our guide and archaeologist who has dug out skulls from Aztec sites herself, tells us the ubiquitous skeleton is a constant reminder that death is a part of life and like flowers that die leaving behind seeds that will sprout a new life, people who pass on leave many gifts for their families. Wherever you go, you’re likely to spot a quirky skeleton, be it in your hotel lobby (Four Seasons had a beaded skull), a store at Coyocan selling artisanal coffee (a skeleton guards the coffee), at Soho House, possibly one of the most spectacular Soho properties I’ve ever visited, in the form of a painting of two skeletons romancing.
Like any other city with a long and layered history, Mexico City reveals itself in different ways – through art, architecture, cuisine and traditions. A walking tour across Downtown Mexico City – a mosaic of political and historical milestones of the country – introduces you to a whole different city. This isn’t surprising if you consider their history. First there were the Aztecs, then came the Spanish forces led by Hernan Cortes, then Mexico experienced an interlude of independence followed by a French invasion followed by President Porforio Diaz’s dictatorship which led to the Mexican revolution against his government. Typical of colonists, Cortes razed Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital and built over it.
Protesting is a way of life in CDMX (nobody gets arrested) and the old city’s main square Zocalo where most buildings have been repurposed as government offices, is the chosen site for expressing dissent. Elegant and historic, this part of the city resembles the medieval settlements of Spain, but some of its structures bear a strong French influence too. Ornate balconies of elegant wrought iron detailing and Beaux-Arts facades stand alongside churches from the colonial period and baroque palaces. This is partly because Alexander sent a Hapsburg to conquer Mexico and rule it as its emperor in the 1800s. The building that deserves exposition though is the Palacio de Belles Artes, the most iconic landmark of the country that combines two contrasting architectural styles, because the Mexican revolution interrupted its construction and by the time they got back to it, aesthetic sensibilities of the world had changed. It has a classical European exterior and then from inside, it is suddenly art deco but with Mexican design elements — a perfect visual representation of the country’s transition from a European influence to a uniquely Mexican identity. Used as a centre of arts it has monumental murals from the most prominent artists of the country — Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros and a curtain made of stained glass (Tiffany & Co) inside the theatre, which weighs 24 tonnes. This staggering beauty however, is also gradually sinking because of the weight of Carrera marble and the slightly more important fact that the city is built over lake Texcoco and was once full of waterways and canals.
The Spanish conquerors had the brainwave to drain out the lake for some reason and so it is that you dig deep anywhere in the city and you’ll hit water or shifting grounds.
On our last evening in CDMX, we took a stroll across Colonia Roma, possibly the most seductive neighbourhood in the city, with its art deco, art nuevo, and modernist architecture. Cool cafes spilling onto the sidewalks, townhouses repurposed as stylish boutique hotels, avant-garde art galleries and chic restaurants located inside restored homes — it reminded me of the Marais in Paris.
But all of this seduction by Mexico unravelled at the airport, a bureaucratic maze that felt like a relic from another era. And so, as we finally boarded our flight, the lingering impression Mexico City left on me was of the slow, grinding frustration of leaving it, grand murals, seductive streets and all.
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