ARRIVING IN MEXICO CITY

The bus ride into Mexico D.F is spectacular, One minute there is countryside, the odd pueblo and a couple of dormant volcanoes. Then the road goes over the brow of a hill into a panorama of buildings in every direction as far as the smog will let the eyes see.

With twenty-one million people living in and around Mexico´s capital city, real estate is clearly at a premium, as is evidenced by my hotel room bathroom. Two blocks from the central Zocalo, my Hotel Niza toilet has clearly been designed with space consciousness in mind. Its not possible to fully open the bathroom door to get to the sink behind it, and I have to sit on the toilet at right angles to the cistern, with both feet in the shower.

However even with the uncomfortable bathroom visits and only one channel on the 1970´s television in my room, its difficult to complain too much when the Hotel Niza is costing me 180 pesos - 10 quid - a night, for a central location a stones throw away from the 15pence a ride metro system that makes it easy for me to get around the city.

It does however leave me asking myself why Londoners pay around GBP 3.00 for a single journey on an underground system that carries around 4 million passengers each day, when Mexico D.F'ers pay only GBP 0.15 to travel on a metro network that carries over 5 million people.

I wonder if the Mexico City metro runs on SAP.