Sunday in Mexico City

Our first day is a Sunday and nothing much is open, so we decide to take the Bus Tour of the city on a double decker bus known as the Turibus. It has no roof on the top floor to allow for excellent sightseeing, costs a little over $10 and lasts three hours, plus you can get off and on as many times as you want. There is a bus stop next to the Angel de la Independencia, Mexico City’s best known monument, on Paseo de la Reforma, it’s most important thoroughfare. The monument is just three blocks from the Hotel so we walk over there at about 10 in the morning.


We are amazed to find the main avenue of the Paseo de la Reforma completely closed to traffic and handed over to cyclists and pedestrians. It’s a fabulous idea and one much appreciated by the locals who pack the street on a sunny Sunday morning. At the foot of the Angel de la Independencia there is a free aerobics class being given by an energetic young man in an extremely tight fitting outfit. He is on a stage with music blaring and a crowd of well over 100 fans following his every move. It reminds me of the compulsory exercise and Tai Chi classes that we saw every morning in China. But here the only compulsion is to be a fan of the instructor. And many are, as they seem to know every routine without waiting for his instructions. The routines are amazingly difficult and involve a great deal of gyrating of the hips which the instructor does with great style, but only a few in the crowd manage with aplomb. The excitement, and fun quotient increases greatly when Hula Hoops are handed out to the entire crowd, and the instructor begins a whole new routine using these large plastic hoops. It looks like something from a camp Broadway show. Fortunately our bus arrives just in time to stop us getting carried away and joining in.

The Akhu Tribe

The next morning we are off again. This time we visit the village of Vansai , home to the Akhu tribe. Here the women all smoke pipes made from bamboo. They have a sort of turban on their head, and they carry their pipes, tobacco and matches in the folds of this turban. Their faces show the effect that tobacco smoke can have on the skin, as many of them have deeply etched wrinkles around the mouth and cheeks, but despite this we meet a woman of 92 with her great granddaughter slung on her back.




Inexplicably, women in all these tribes live to be much older than men. We have met several women in their 80’s as well as this lady in her 90’s, but few men seem to live beyond 60. It is hard to understand why this is, as the women work every bit as hard as the men, and in this village the women smoke constantly while the men do not.
In this village we also meet several men who are at home looking after the children while the women are in the jungle looking for firewood, or tending to the animals.


The Akhu is definitely more advanced than the Enn village but not as well organized as the Akha village. This is a Baptist village that has been guided by a pastor. Not to get involved in any sort of religious conflict, but it has to be said that the Catholic missionary did a much better job with his tribe.