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Up until six months ago the longest city walk I’d ever done was a day of shopping in London with my mother and sister. Or maybe it just seemed the longest. Whatever, the experience, and similar expeditions in the subsequent 20 years of trailing shop-happy girlfriends through the paved parts of the globe, gave me a rather jaundiced view of urban hiking.

But I’m also a sucker for the odd-ball endeavor. Like walking the longest continuous city street in the world, in one three-day trek. Mexico City, (or DF – Distrito Federal – as they shorthand it), is arguably the world’s biggest metropolitan conglomeration, with a population of around 25 million. Avenida de los Insurgentes, the world’s longest street, bisects Mexico City, crossing from north to south in a single, dead-straight-but-for-one-slight-dog-leg line, and running through every zona from the poorest to the richest.

It’s actually hard to say how long the avenida is. About 70 kms would seem to be right, for those purists measuring it as the diameter from the northern rim of the periferico, the ring road that lassos the city, to its southern circumference. I’m not a purist and decided to cut the street down to somewhere around 50 kms by starting southwards from the Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe. The basilica is target for pilgrims from all over la patria – the homeland – and so there was a rough logic in me, a Pagan, ‘negative image’ pilgrim, heading off against the tide of incoming faithful.

A three-day urban hike has few similarities to doing an equal distance of wilderness trekking. Mainly because one doesn’t have to carry anything; no food, no rain gear, no tent, no dry socks. In fact, as even non-alarmist Mexican friends were quick to point out, the less I carried the better. DF has a reputation for violent crimes. The in-flight magazines, when I’d flown in to the city, had advertised duty-free stun guns ‘for personal protection’ along with cheap cigarettes and the kind of gift-boxed liters of tequila against which there is no protection. “You’re going to be walking through some of the roughest barrios in the Americas if you follow Insurgentes,” Eduardo, one concerned friend, advised me, “I won’t be surprised if you lose everything at gun-point – your camera, money, tape-recorder, shoes, shirt…maybe you keep your underpants…,” he thought for a moment, and then added, “…and if you have nice underpants, well, maybe not.” He gave one of those thin smiles which are helped in their genial cynicism by being under a card-sharper’s pencil thin moustache.

So I had a dress dilemma straightaway; nice underpants in case I found myself robbed and walking back to the center in them and nothing else, or less nice ones that might actually be left to me in a hold-up situation. For the rest of it I decided to go for the off-duty security guard look. I arranged my camera and other valuables around my body and under a baggy dark blue, multi-pocket waistcoat to look like hidden pistols and duty-free stun guns. I practiced a shrugging and swaggering walk that I hoped was the body slang of a Latino gang member body. This meant that, at the basilica, I was by far the most threatening looking character in evidence. Small children and pilgrims shrank back from my path.

The pilgrims were shuffling into the square not just on foot but, in some cases, on their knees which they had worn to bloody patches by crawling tens of kilometers in penance, belittling my coming walk before I’d even started. I left the square to the sound of the Kiddies Military Band exploring the audio horrors of drum and brass, whilst an Aztec dance group hopped around in a nimbus of jungle feathers and seed pod leg rattles. It all summed up the uneasy Mexican trinity of God, colonialism and indigenous culture. I threaded my way out through stalls hawking rosaries and chewing gum and green, glow-in-the-dark statues of Jesus.

A few streets of strolling, and I was on Insurgentes. I don’t know what I expected, but something actually like a street in scale would have helped me get my bearings better. Counting across its width there was a strip of crowded pavement, then three or four lanes (it can be difficult to tell with Mexican drivers) of north bound traffic, with next a bus park, then a metro line, and expanse of central reservation, and finally, way off in the distance, another indeterminate number of traffic lanes heading south, and some more pavement.

Another problem with Mexico City was its world-beating pollution. Just breathing in DF is, allegedly, the equivalent of smoking forty cigarettes a day – and if you’ve ever tried even a single Mexican ‘Delicado’ fag this is a truly frightening idea. In winter, the combination of altitude, chain-smoking volcanoes, God knows how many poorly maintained cars, and some geography GSE phenomena termed ‘climatic inversion,’ means a saffron-hued cocktail of chemicals fogs and obscures the not-very-distant horizon. Navigating south was going to be Wizard of Oz simple. A case of just ‘follow the Sick Yellow Road.’

But by walking I was joining the community of Mexicans who lived their lives on or close to Insurgentes’ pavements. The outlaw vendors selling everything from chewing gum to comics, and hawking tacos and beer. The beggars. The out of work cowboys come in from the north looking for city jobs. The hustlers. Those commuters too poor to have any form of transport except flip-flop rubber. The bemused Indians who’d come looking for gilded streets and who’d found that only the air was golden…that, in fact, you could pretty much mine what they, and I, were breathing with a pickaxe.

The first hours of walking were dispiriting. The noise, the traffic, the abandoned lots, the run-down buildings, the shoestring car paint shops and panel beaters. And surrounding me the palpable fear that every empty alley, every wasteland, every echoing underpass was where I’d meet the guys with the guns and knives who’d decide if I was going to keep my underpants or not.

Except that’s not quite the way it was. Everybody I talked to was friendly, if somewhat incredulous that a gringo was hiking across town. Tattooed hoodlums on a street corner explained how to get round the vehicle underpass that suddenly sucked the road and traffic down into the ground. A charming family, in Don Gregorio’s lock-up restaurant, fed me on tacos and beer, and bickered amongst themselves over how long Insurgentes actually was. A cop, (who, his pump-action shot-gun aside, was dressed rather like me), puzzled over my map before stabbing his finger on the bend of the dogleg and placing me outside the public hospital at La Raza. Everyone was helpful. Though all thought that the greatest help they could give me was to teach me how to hail a taxi and get to Hell off Insurgentes and go wherever it was I was going. The long distance urban walk idea made no sense to anybody.

But hiking Insurgentes became wonderful. It was like hill walking in the slow change of scenery, in the subtle differences in landscape, in the mechanics of putting one foot in front of another, and in the sense of reaching somewhere. Not in this case a summit, but just the more commercial areas, towards the center.

The Mexicans have inherited their shopping infrastructure from the Aztecs. The latter were the Swiss of Central America’s indigenous peoples, with the same sense of urban neatness, and, thus, their markets were laid out according to produce for sale. Potatoes here, feather head dresses there, obsidian sacrificial knives yonder. The modern Mexicans have kept it that way though on an infinitely larger scale. So, you get streets of nothing but plumbing hardware suppliers (yawn), then a couple of blocks of off-licenses (useful), then a flutter of lingerie boutiques (my pace slowed). I passed stalls selling police kit, (and only just resisted the temptation to add a side-baton to my costume), tens of barrows offering cut flowers, ramshackle markets flogging old cowboy gear and painted furniture. There was a circus with a tiger cub tied to the street railing next to a small boy working an accordion like a noisy chest expander. There were innumerable signs offering tarot reading and black magic spells and love potions.

This easy commerce is the advantage of urban walking over its outdoors equivalent. No squatting down in a knifing wind behind a boulder to eat soggy sandwiches – in the city you just walk into a restaurant. And no fighting gale-blown maps to navigate by; when I wanted to check the whereabouts of the Opera bar where Pancho Villa - one of the revolutionary insurgents after whom the street is named - rode in on his horse and shot a hole in the ceiling to speed up service, I merely dropped into a cyber-café and checked a tourist website. And actual camping? At the end of the first day, nearly half way down the avenida’s length, in the trendy Zona Rosa, I just took the metro the few blocks back to my mid-town hotel for a shower, tortillas and tequila, and a night in a Mexican karaoke bar.

Day two, starting from where I had left off the night before, cast me as one of the city’s down and outs, merely because I was strolling the rich part of town on foot. For fifteen kilometers I advertised my fecklessness and obvious poverty by choosing to walk this corridor of outrageously outré architecture and a United Nations of themed restaurants rather than gliding down it in an air-conditioned car. The shops and every ATM machine had armed guards. And the way that fingers fluttered over the safety catches of machine-guns as I closed on the boys in blue told me all I needed to know about how I looked.

But even here the street was as wide as the Amazon, with swirling currents of traffic pulsing through in swirling tributaries. Keen to show some solidarity with the Mexicans who were actually sharing their pavement with me I offered my arm to a diminutive Yucatan Indian granny who was keen to cross the road to the central reservation where she could base herself for a few hours of begging. I found myself in the nightmare situation of shuffling at her agonizingly slow pace across the lines of traffic that raced towards us with all the verve of atoms in a particle accelerator. On the traffic island, her grandchildren, dressed as clowns and pantomime cats, took the rare occasions when the traffic slowed down for the red lights, as cue to run out amongst the cars and rapidly form human pyramids whilst granny solicited small change pesos. I found myself stranded on the central reservation with another game of chicken to endure to get back to the pavement.

I regained my composure in a small park, a bird song soothed, jungley dell, just off the street. Practicing under a tree there was trio of musicians, one of the innumerable groups of mariachi troubadours who hang out on Insurgentes. Their business plan is based on the, surprisingly regular, off-chance that some guy suddenly wants to hire a bunch of trumpets and guitars to serenade his girlfriend. There were also two large, unshaven men who trailed me through the trees until I hit the street again. Ambar, the waitress at the taco bar where I had a late lunch talked me through the menu; “No! No! Don’t take the salsa rojo – only Mexicans can eat this, es muy picante. Take the green – el verde, es mas suave.” She listened to my account of my walk so far. Her considered opinion was that I had come as close to losing my underpants in the park as at any time in the two days of walking. “Nobody goes into the park after midday,” she told me. “In the morning there are guards for the children playing, but not in the afternoon. I don’t know why they didn’t rob you – you had suerte, luck.”

The rich part of town is where you get the regular sightseeing given the Mexican flair for metropolitan art. Diego Riviera mosaics decorate the Teatro de Insurgentes and the Estadio Olympico, and you walk right past them if you’re hiking down Insurgentes. Juan O’Gorman decorated the four huge faces of the University City’s central tower, and you get to puzzle over ‘the future arranged around a giant atom’ from your pedestrian vantage point. Whilst, only a few streets from Insurgentes, is where Trotsky tended his rabbits, polemicised about Communism and then had the accident with the climbing axe. D H Lawrence wandered around these parts, too, though he actually stayed in the Hotel Montecarlo, in the center where I had ‘camped’ the night before. I camped in the Montecarlo again that night.

There’s no point in trying to make something out of nothing. The final day’s walk was a no-man’s-land, a void, and a slog. It was pointless on all counts save to reach the end of Insurgentes. Embarrassingly I had convinced a Californian private investigator I’d met in a mariachi bar the previous evening to join me for its anticipated delights. I though her PI skills might come in useful if someone did manage to steal my boxers. She figured it as an eccentric way of seeing off-the-beaten-track DF. She was right. Taking up where I had stopped the night before, we found ourselves back on the hard shoulder of a highway, (though it was still Insurgentes), trudging along in the fumes and smog. I was finding it hard enough to convince myself of this final stage’s charms, let alone jolly enough to buoy Kirsten’s mood greatly.

There were few buildings but rather kilometers of thickly treed scrubland of the kind that features in ‘body found in bag by motorway’ stories. Once we took a brief detour down a track into the quasi-jungle in the hope of finding a more enjoyable route, but then found ourselves being trailed by wolfish looking men on motorbikes. Having got my underpants this far I was reluctant to lose them on the final leg, and we headed back to the fumes of the speeding traffic.

We were both glad when we crossed under the periferico, and the trip was over. We climbed to the top of the circular pyramid, (‘circamid’ perhaps?), at Cuicuilco, abandoned since the volcano of Xitle vomited hot lava around it some eighteen hundred years ago. From its apex Kirsten and I could look back over city, the haze softening its concrete and glass harshness, and its oceanic roar of sound muted. Children played in the grass. Lovers walked hand in hand over the slopes. Fresh air blew in from the country. I suddenly, very clearly, saw why we go walking in the hills, meadows and forests of the country, and saw equally clearly, why taxis were invented. We caught one of the latter back into the city.

FACT BOX
Travel in Mexico City: The DF metro is a wonder – covering pretty much the whole city, cheaply and efficiently, and for a matter of pennies. Often crowded, though, and not the best for late night trips. Taxi’s in DF come with a reputation for lawlessness. Locals recommend not hailing cabs on the street, but getting a hotel, bar or restaurant to call one for you. Mini-buses ply every route in DF – they have destination boards, but it’s easier to ask locals which one to take; they usually drop and pick-up passengers at intersections. And of course, there is walking. Late at night or in poor barrios is not a good idea, especially if carrying valuables – but in the center is fine apart from the distances.

Walking Insurgentes: You’d be crazy to do it all, but the bulk of Insurgentes Sur, southwards from the sunken plaza marked by Insurgentes metro station on the edge of the Zona Rosa, down as far as the edge of the University City, is rewarding. You pass much of the city’s most spectacular architecture, and landmarks, get to see how the other half lives and shops, and still get an authentic feel for the many stratas of society that make up DF’s population. Side trips off Insurgentes would definitely include the area of Coyoacán, with Cortés’ house, a lively market shared out between Indian and Hippy craftspeople aiming their wares at the tourists. Nearby is the Museo Frida Kahlo, and not far away Trotsky’s house, now a museum, and a fascinating experience. Further down on Insurgentes you reach the University city – somewhat slowed up by student strikes of late. To reach the pyramids at Cuicuilco grab a mini-bus marked Tlalpan. If you’re down this far, it’s well worth adding in a trip to the Aztec water gardens at Xochimilco, where you can rent an acid-house coloured punt, and be poled along canals to the sound of floating bands, with water borne vendors at hand to supply tacos, beers or fruits.

Security in DF: The Mexicans take a pride in talking up their country – negatively as well as positively. But the armed guards and police next to anything of value or wherever people get together, rather underlines that not everything is light and peace. The big ‘no no’s’ are the common sense ones. Not wandering streets anywhere late at night, nor the poorer areas at any time, concealing valuables, and leaving spare cash or documents somewhere safe, (though whether that includes your hotel desk’s safe could be a matter of speculation). Specific ‘don’ts’ include not hailing taxis in the streets – there have been many authenticated abductions and robberies – but calling from a bar or hotel to an approved taxi company and checking the driver’s ID before getting in. As always, appropriate behaviour and confident body-language heads off most trouble before it gets serious. Mexico’s police come with a bit of a reputation, and it’s true that the chance of a little back-hander rarely passes them by (one patrol car I asked directions from late at night, offered to drive me to where I was going for the price of a beer. For two beers they offered to put on the siren). Equally in DF the cops tend to look after tourists, but avoiding them on the whole is the discretionary part of valour. Speaking, at least basic, Spanish is useful.

Guide books and maps: Mexico; The Rough Guide is good for comfortable, safe accommodation and interesting restaurants (most of the former and latter are in the Zócolo area in the center). Large scale maps of the city are available in book stores, and mark most major streets and metro stations.

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