Finally Moving on to Chile
We finally did it. The entire goal of this trip was to go to South America, with a quick stop in Central America and Mexico on the way. That was pretty naïve: there is just too much to see and do in that part of the world. So, five months later, we celebrated finally getting to our goal as we stepped on a plane out of Mexico City: we were going to sip wine in Chile.
Lucha Libre: Mexican Wrestling!
One of Mexico's funniest (and yet oddly fascinating) quirks is the professional “wrestling”, or Lucha Libre. This sport, which originally derived from the American fake wrestling dramas, quickly developed into a fad, and from a fad into a national pass-time. In this inexplicable mix of soap opera, action movie and acrobatics, Mexico's best wrestlers don brightly colored masks and uniforms to face off twice a week in one of Mexico City's two coliseums and in living rooms across Latin America.
Xochimilco Canals
One of those things that we did not do on our honeymoon in Venice was take a ride in a gondola. At 80EUR for 40 minutes, it was just too rich for our newly-wed blood. However, Venice is not the only city with canals, and the Xochimilco canals in Mexico City were calling...
Torre Latinoamericana
Mexico City owes some of its fame not only to being one of the world's biggest megalopolis, but also one of the most polluted. It was so badly lost in the smog in the 1990s that it pioneered measures such as prohibiting cars to circulate one day of the week. The situation is supposed to be better now than it was then, but still you can't walk around the DF for a week without feeling your eyes run and your throat itch a bit. And pictures of Mexico and the surroundings do have a smokey feel to them. Yet there is at least one positive to this situation: mind-blowing sunsets!
The National Museum of Anthropology, Part 2
As we mentioned, yesterday, the Anthropology Museum of Mexico City is full of wonderful and inspiring Aztec artifacts, but it would be quite an omission not to mention the rest of the exhibits. In fact, the museum is a vast, four winged building built around a long, rectangular courtyard. The Aztecs occupy an entire wing by themselves, in a place of honor opposite the wing with the entrance.
The National Museum of Anthropology, Part 1
Temples and pyramids, ball games and sacrifices, calendars and plumed headdresses, feathered serpents and skeleton heads,... exotic as they may sound, all these attributes actually formed a fairly normal part of my childhood. Well, Nik and I aren't exactly the only survivors of seven children sacrificed to the great Quetzalcoatl, because we knew how to hit the rubber ball better than anybody else... but we did grow up surrounded by cool drawings of the Aztec world. So when Matt and I visited the great Anthropolgy Museum of Mexico, we headed straight for the Aztec section, and made sure we took enough pictures to bring new inspiration (or at least bring back memories) to the artist.
The Mexico City Modern Art Museum
Taking yet another break from old stones, we made our way one morning to the museum of modern art. Our hopes of seeing works by Mexico's most famous artists were once again defeated, but we had a good time browsing through pretty entertaining exhibits and clearing our minds of pre-hispanic stuff.
The Ruins of Teotihuacan
No visit to Mexico would be complete without a visit to the ancient city of Teotihuacan. The most famous of Mexican ruins, featuring in movies such as Frida and even surpassing Chichen Itza's renown, Teotihuacan was one of the earliest and most important cities in Mesoamerica. Founded at the time of Monte Alban and many of the earliest Mayan metropolises such as El Mirador, Teotihuacan was one of the most powerful Mesoamerican cities ever.
The Ruins of Tlatelolco
Just north of Mexico city's historic center lies a neighborhood called Tlatelolco. While just a neighborhood today, the barrio boasts one of the richest histories in the valley. Much of this history is still visible today in a surprisingly interesting and enjoyable setting.
The Frida Kahlo Museum
Though we have described Mexico City primarily as loud, polluted, dirty and ugly, we should probably be fair and mention that the city did have some exonerating circumstances; it was a giant construction area. We couldn't quite figure out weather the whole downtown was being refurbished because of the upcoming Bicentenary festivities, or weather the streets and buildings were just sinking into the soil so badly that they had to undergo constant revamping... Either way, we found that a lot of the places we tried to go were closed; from the museum of contemporary art (not too too much to Matt's dismay) to official building hosting Riviera murals.
The Templo Mayor, dedicated to Philippe (who just missed it)
The first old pile of stones that we went to see in Mexico City was the centrally located ruin of the Templo Mayor, which was the highest religious structure (both figuratively and literally) of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. Tenochtitlan was, of course, located on a lake in the central Mexican valley and, at the time of the arrival of the Spanish in 1521 had a population between 175,000 and 200,000. After conquering the city in 1521, the Conquistadors quickly set about destroying the Aztec identity and remaking the city in a European image. They filled in the canals that criss-crossed the island to make streets, tore down the temples and palaces, reusing the material to build European style citadels, palaces and churches. In just a few years, the greatest city in Mesoamerica had become indistinguishable from any European city.
Welcome to Mexico City
Monstrously huge, endlessly dirty, deafeningly loud, incredibly polluted and terribly ugly... this is the place where we wanted to end our tour of Mexico. Our time in Mexico City was, nevertheless, a quite enchanting experience with plenty of museums, concerts, and old piles of stone to compensate for the inherent ugliness of the Districto Federal.
Cacaxtla and Xochitecatl
That old pile of stones that we absolutely did not want to miss between Puebla and Mexico city was actually two distinct piles, one called Cacaxtla and the other Xochitecatl (things are getting harder to pronounce, no?). What could be so interesting about these sights to make us sacrifice an entire day in Mexico City to see them, you ask? Read on to find out.
Puebla
This is the story of Puebla, or how what was meant to be a one-night-stand between Oaxaca and Mexico became a longer, well-photographed affair, complete with romantic dinners and open-air concerts...
Centro Cultural de Santo Domingo
We were not quite tired of old pottery after the Precolumbian Art Museum, so we made our way over to the Centro Cultural de Santo Domingo (aka, the Regional Museum of Oaxaca), located in the 16th century Dominican Monastery that once dominated the northern part of the city. The museum featured oodles of carvings and pottery from the major civilizations that had inhabited Oaxaca at some time, focusing on the Zapotecs and the Mixtecs (Don't worry Philippe, the Mixtecs are kind of like the Aztecs).
Hierve el Agua
After exploring the ruins of Mitla, we had a good lunch of fish at a local comedor (to get a great meal, always look for a relatively skinny lady doing the cooking), and then shared a pickup with a couple of Mexican tourists to go take a dip in the pool at the mountain town of Hierve el Agua.
The Ruins of Mitla
Just southeast of Oaxaca lies a modern Zapotec town of Mitla. Mitla is interesting (to us at least) because it has been inhabited without interruption since at 100 CE and probably longer. During its early years, Mitla was a dependency of the Zapotec powerhouse at Monte Alban, and appears to have served a mostly ceremonial function within this society. When Monte Alban ceased to function in around the 7th century, Mitla expanded greatly, taking control of the long valley in which it sits.
El Arbol de Tule : the world’s stoutest tree
We took a break from the old piles of stone to take a look at an old tree: El Arbol de Tule. This tree is the world's largest by a certain definition of large: it has the stoutest trunk in the world (all other superlatives, such as tallest, heaviest or greatest volume belong to California redwoods). The trunk is quite impressive indeed: at 14 meters across, it kind of blows your mind. Oh, and the tree is somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 years old. It has direct offspring growing in the immediate vicinity that are themselves over a millennium in age.
The Ruins of Yagul
Just a short ride outside of Oaxaca by public bus, the ruins of the Zapotec city of Yagul sit atop a small volcanic plateau about a mile north of the road in one of the prettiest desert locations imaginable. Yagul was a small city state occupied from around 500 BCE until the Spanish arrived in 1521, at which time it was inhabited by around 5,000 people. It reached its apex in the Postclassic period after Monte Alban had declined, and most of the visible remains date from this time.
Oaxaca’s Precolumbian Art Museum
While in Oaxaca, we realized that though we had seen “quite a few” Pre-Hispanic sites in the last few weeks, we had been missing out on sculpture, pottery, tools, incense burners, and the various artifacts that were taken away from the sites by archeologists or looters and ended up in museums. So we made our way to the Rufino Tamayo Museum, and feasted our eyes on a truly amazing collection of Pre-Hispanic art from all over Mexico. The variety of styles you come across is really impressive, and some objects are just absolutely awesome...