Scaling Pyramids

We arrived yesterday in Guanajuato, which is absolutely gorgeous and which we will talk about a lot in the coming weeks, but for now we have old business to attend to.

First of all, I am proud to tell you all that Emily and I have climbed to the 3rd-largest pyramid in the world. Woohoo! The pyramid is the Pirámide del Sol, a beast of a structure located in the ancient Aztec site of Teotihuacan. Clambering to the top took us up 248 steps and a final little scramble to the absolute peak of the thing. It's an impressive pyramid, and alone well worth the visit to Teotihuacan. [For those of you wondering, Number 1 is the great pyramid in Egypt, and Number 2 is actually a pyramid locating near Puebla that we decided not to visit because the guidebook said that it's so overgrown with grass that it's hardly recognizable as a pyramid anymore.]

Teotihuacan does have more to offer than the Pyramid of the Sun, though that may be the site's centerpiece. The ruins also feature some murals that have held up incredibly well, including a colorful painting of a puma that just jumps out at you from the otherwise bare stone walls lining the main path through the center of the city. Another part of the site has a whole series of chambers with well preserved sculptures and paintings. Overall, though the site lacks the jungle mystique of Palenque, which remains our favorite of all the ruins we've seen, Teotihuacan has the best preserved sculptures and paintings, in some parts making it very easy to picture what the place must have looked like way back when.

After returning to Mexico City, we took Friday night pretty easy: we wandered a bit around town before popping into a delicious vegetarian restaurant where we actually had good, old-fashioned latkes (unfortunately sans apple sauce). Then, to make our meal perfect, we stopped in at the mall to a Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream stand and got the best ice cream we've had since we got to Mexico. For some reason, the guy working there would only serve us from one side of his two-sided station, so we were denied Phish Food (my personal favorite), but we made do with some yummy alternatives.

Saturday was our day to explore the historical center of town, so we headed down there to check it out (our hotel was excellently located in the middle of everything, putting most of the best sites in town within walking distance). In the Centro we sort of saw the Zócalo, the main plaza of the city, though it was overcrowded with a book fair that was taking place this month. Across from the Zócalo we entered into the Government Palace, which features several beautiful murals by Diego Rivera on its walls, including a series of incredible murals on Tenochtitlan (the ancient Aztec capital that once rested on the exact site where Mexico City now sits). After seeing the Palace we popped over to the Templo Mayor, the main temple of Tenochitatlan whose ruins sit open right next door to the Palace and the main cathedral. The temple was apparently discovered by accident during construction in Mexico City in the mid-1900's, and it says a lot that there was a lot of hesitation by the higher-ups about what to do with it. Eventually, they decided to leave the thing open to tourism, and now the site features what is left of the once-great building. The most interesting thing may be the chance to see the many layers of construction that went on: over time, the ancient Mexicans kept rebuilding over old temples, to the point that there were 7 layers of construction by the time they were done. Emily sagely noted that modern Mexicans were just carrying on the tradition of layering when the started building over the temple many years ago.

We chose not to spend too much time in the Centro, primarily because it was jam-packed with people and because much of its beauty has been driven away by pollution over the years. Formerly lovely buildings are mostly covered with black from the heavy contamination that has existed in Mexico City over the years. The city has been trying to cut down in recent years, even restricting drivers from driving one day each week (the day rotates depending on your license plate number), but the effects still linger, even as the situation starts to improve. [On an interesting side note, an Australian woman in San Cristóbal de las Casas told me that the population of Mexico City is larger than the population of all of Australia!]

After escaping from downtown, Emily and I headed to a movie (yeah, we've been seeing lots of movies: it's the effect of wanting to escape from the overwhelmingness of some of these cities as well as from the great prices for shows here). We saw Blindness, based on one of my favorite novels, and we highly recommend it. It's an emotional ride, but it's beautiful and does a great job (as did the book) of making you think about some interesting questions.

We'll pick up with Sunday's arrival in Guanajuato in the next post.