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All the same the worst ever day in Mexico (mainly because of the Guatamalan forest fires) made it bad indeed. A classic rattletrap drive in a stripped down green VW; time for the first post-flight cigarette; one for the driver too as we
rocket, tilting like a bobsleigh, down the narrow expressway from the airport, the whole little cab a joyful turmoil of wind, cigarette ash, sparks, snatches of conversation. The sky is red and through this hazy rubescence rear up smog-shrouded silhouettes of buildings, odd, surely wrong profiles? pyramidal, triangular, bulbous; indeed not unlike my dreams. We jerk to a stop outside the hotel Plaza Florentina, a big honest, brutal slab of a hotel.

The next day I walk massively around the city, beginning up the Paseo Reforma, shocked to see a toddler dressed up in the most sadly perfunctory little parrot outfit, dangling beak, little claws hoisted onto the shoulders of his brother (about 7) to beg from cars stationery at the traffic lights, pathos the more so because there were hardly any cars on this Sunday morning at eight o clock.

Does no-one shout out at you here in this city? Here am I walking through the most crowded markets of the city . I might just as well have Rich Gringo written on my back. And not one voice raised to importune me in four days; no, just one and it was the wheedling whine of the US street hustler: "Hey man, where ya goin man? You wanna buy etc." But this was the lone voice of a returned wetback.

In the Zocalo another puzzler; the authenticity of folklore, of the folclorico.
"Aztec" dancers. Or rather a reconstruction, as far as I could tell, of what Aztec music, dancing, ritual might have been like. The fact is it was absolutely thrilling; incense, dancing, feathered headdresses, drums, all glittering in the sun. If it wasn't the real thing it is what the real thing ought to have been like. Participation ranged from the expert to the amateur, costume from the full Quetzacoatl to jeans and trainers; and (most significant) there didn't seem to be any tourists there. I have often thought that the authenticity of any folkloric event was in inverse proportion to the number of cameras present at the event. Here, to my astonishment, there was not one to be seen. Whatever, (for why this obsession with authenticity anyway? And why am I here obsessing about it?) the experience was moving and disturbing; there was a gut wrenching response to these drums such as I have never experienced since hearing massed bateria in the Sambodromo at carnival in Rio; a sound that makes you feel almost sick with emotion.

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