Hola my little furry monkeys,
It has been a while since I’ve posted, or at least it feels like a while. Snuffy and I have been quite busy travelling across Mexico and seeing stuff. Yeah, stuff. We like stuff. I took Snuffy around Mexico City, did the tour bus thing again (but this time with sunscreen! Turns out Andrew is far more intelligent than me [and yes dad, I know that you are nodding your head and saying, ‘well we knew that already’. Shutup.]) and he has sunscreen. Hurrah for not being burnt. Ooh, and hurrah for being much much browner than he is. It will never happen again, so I’m really enjoying him having pasty pasty white gringo skin. MORE than me. Yes, I hear cries of it’s not possible, but I tell you ladies and gents, it is and I am LOVING it.
But I digress. The next day we went out to Teotihuacan, ruins of an ancient pre-hispanic city. At its peak they estimate it was home to 200,000 people, but they don’t know who! It was built around 150AD (or at least finished by) and was the empire of the pre-hispanic community. The Aztecs found it after the city collapsed and essentially worshipped it, believing that all the gods had sacrificed themselves here to get the sun moving in the beginning of the ‘fifth world’, where the Aztecs flourished.
It was absolutely amazing moving throughout this once large and prosperous city, now an elegant vestige of its former glory. A plethora of temples (or at least their bases) line squares and a main street named ‘Calzada de los Muertos’, meaning Avenue of the Dead (the Aztecs mistakenly thought that the temples were tombs), which stretches for four kilometres. Most temples have been somewhat restored at the front, with clear steps that you can ascend and look out across the cities, but their behinds are sadly (or beautifully, depending on how you look at it) dilapidated slopes of worn rock and pebbles.
The first stop was the Ciudela, a square surrounded by 13 temples (one for each month of their calendar), and housing the Templo de Quetzalcoati (Temple of the Plumed Serpent), lined with stone carvings of the benevolent deity Quezacoatl, a serpent with its head ringed by feathers.
Next on the list was the Piramide del Sol (Pyramid of the Sun) which is the third largest pyramid in the world, trailing only Cheops (Egypt) [though its base is as broad as Cheops] and surprisingly, another pyramid in Mexico (Cholula, near Puebla). It is 210 feet high and has 242 steps to climb (which I thoroughly enjoyed!). The view from the top of del Sol was absolutely incredible. Looking down at the rest of the ancient city, its remnants of temples and across to the left, the Piramide de la Luna (Pyramid of the Moon) standing tall in the distance. The actual natural scenery wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but had a Mexican dignity to its dry weather plants including the odd cactus here and there. Below there were many people crawling around, slowly ascending the pyramids, strolling down the calzada, buying from or attempting to avoid the avid and very pushy native hawkers, selling carvings, trinkets, clothing, hell, even really annoying bird sounding whistles. Think evil bird of prey sound. Andrew insists that it wasn’t a bird sound, just a horrible screech designed to annoy the crap out of him. Of course it is darling.
We descended down the Piramide del Sol and strolled across to de la Luna. Nowhere near as big, but still damn tall and held breathtaking views from the summit. I sat up on top looking across at the city for a while, until Andrew got bored and we had to leave. Stupid boys and their getting bored easily. We had a look in the Palacio del Quetzalpapalotl (Palace of the butterflies), which housed beautiful stone carvings in the walls, once painted glorious colours of which only muted shades remain. Some carvings had black stone (obsidian perhaps?) wedged into them, generally servings as eyes. Unfortunately for Snuffy the Palacio de los Jaguares was closed, as he was keen to explore its underground passages and tombs. Pout McPouty Pants.
We jumped back onto the bus to head back to Mexico City, and an hour later we were back. We had to pack up everything that night, because we were taking a 6.5 hour bus ride to Oaxaca, and wanted to catch on the 9:30am bus. Stupid early mornings.
Teotihuacan photos
