(Map of the day.)
We headed by bus to the town of Amecameca (known as Ameca), which was to be our jump-point to visit two volcanoes: Iztaccihhatl and Popocatepetl (known simply as Izta and Popo). We were dropped by the bus at the town's bus station, and our tour book offered us very little in the way of directions from there. We found the town's Zocalo, and from there the volcano's tourism office. It was closed.
We had been depending on this office for guidance on how to actually get to/up the volcanoes. A helpful guard let us know that to get to the summit, we needed to go arriba, which means, helpfully, 'up'. We threw caution (and money) to the wind and hailed a cab. He said he'd take us up for $300Mxn (which is about $30Cdn). We talked him down to $200. We felt a little bad about this after it turned out to be a 45 minute ride up the mountain's twisting, unmarked roads. The way up the hill was steep; there were no hiking trails that we could see, but there were plenty of food stands. We asked the driver to return for us at 5, it being 11:30.
The park entrance was a dusty parking lot with a pavilion, Spanish signs, and nothing else. We were in a flat-ish large field, bordered by volcanoes/mountains. The elevation change on the way up was such that my ears were clogged:
We started off on one of the wheel-chair friendly paths, hoping to get away fro the swarms of families and loud children. We cut off of that trail, and followed a dirt road that wound its way around the hill. We weren't actually climbing either volcano; they were both too far away.
We ended up reading in the tall grass just off of the road:
Andrew tries his hand at filmmaking:
We explored the rest of the park, but quickly discovered that there wasn't anymore park to explore. Inadvertently, we had seen it all. Keep in mind that parts of Popo are a World Heritage Site. We wandered around, killing time waiting for the cab, which was late. The driver of a colectivo offered to take us down in his empty van for $45Mxn each. We hopped on, and felt bad when about ten minutes later we passed our taxi as he made his way up the mountain...
Back in town, we found out that the restaurant we had planned on going to was far out of town. We asked around for a recommendation (this is harder than it sounds, trust me), as there weren't any restaurants in the visible vicinity. Our new place was 4 kilometres away, so we hopped onto another colectivo, which tried to pull away without Andrew.
The restaurant, the El Castillo de los Venados, was part of a hotel and spa.
It should have been the nicest in town. We were instead stared down when we walked in. They insisted on giving us an English that only had a handful of choices (compared to the full Spanish menu) and all staff really seemed put out that we were there. The food sucked too. It was hands-down our worst meal yet.
We managed to get back to the bus terminal, and enjoyed a bus ride back to Mexico City that was crowded, standing room only (for a 2 hour ride), and humid -- > the smell was not dissimilar to that of a post-game locker room with an extra dash of BO thrown in for good.
Aside from our relaxing time reading atop the mountain, the day was rife with obstacles and strife. In spite the flowery description on Wikipedia, we never saw anything other than 'seedy' and 'rundown.' We hate Amecameca.
(Map of the day.)
Seeing as it was Christmas Day, we slept in, and then headed to the Convent del Carmen, to see their mummified corpses. But, because it was Christmas, the museum portion of the convent was closed.On the long trek back to the subway station, we cut through a large (and groomed) park. In the middle, was a large edifice. We decided to check it out, so the trip to this end of the city wouldn't be a total loss. It was tall and narrow, with one set of stairs leading up to a dark, open doorway. Two large, carved figures flanked the door.
Inside was a circular marble room; there was a round opening in the middle of the room. Looking down, there was what seemed like a glass-bottomed pond. The interior was so gloomy, that trying to take any pictures was pointless. Opposite to the door was a statue of a general with its right hand missing. A small man with white cowboy boots seemed to work there, and he was very excited to see us. He gesticulated and indicated in Spanish that we should head down the dark marble staircase.There was nothing in the bottom level except the empty pond-thing and a case set into the wall which contained the statue's right arm. Bear in mind, there weren't even plaques or signs indicating what any of this meant.We headed back up, and now the little man wanted us to go up a tiny, dark, off-limits-to-the-public looking spiral staircase. He lit a candle for us, and gave us his box of matches (in case the candle went out). Candle in hand, we slowly made our ascent. The stairs were extremely steep and narrow, and with the exception of the candle, completely dark. After what seemed like forever (and remember we had no idea what awaited us), we emerged onto the roof of the monument. The view was amazing, but we were still unsure why the man sent us up. A view of the city from our private perch:
The entire episode was really bizarre. Leaving the park, we headed to the area that would be hosting the evening's Lucha Libre match. Scalpers pounced on us as we approached to wicket, trying to convince us to buy ringside seats. We opted for the legal choice and made our way for our next destination: Chapultepec Park.
We wanted to see the Castillo de Chapultepec and its gardens in addition to the Museo Nacional de Antropologia. Given the start time for the wrestling match, we opted to skip the castle, and hit the museum, as it houses the famous 12-ton Aztec Sun Stone. Unfortunately, this enormous park had simply the worst, most confusing signage I have ever encountered in my life. We would have more luck if they were all in Mandarin and Arabic. Also, further proof of Mexico's forethought in terms of planning, there is not one, but 2 freeways running through the middle of the park. This does not inspire easy exploration of the park. A final factor that was working against us: it was Christmas Day, so everyone and their dog was at the park (including stall after stall of junk).
We spent about 45 minutes trying to find their famous nationally recognized tourist-draw of a museum. When we finally found it, I was not impressed:
Because we were low on time, we bee-lined straight for the Sun Stone. This is the stone that is the Aztec calender that people reference when they say the world ends in 2012. Upon my close, unprofessional inspection, I found no indication that the end of times is neigh:
All the other artifacts were culled from the temple sites we had already visited, except that they were in better condition (apparently the museum sweeps in and gets to take all the better pieces). With that, we headed back to the wrestling arena.
After both of us were patted down thoroughly (I'll let you come to your own conclusions), we were escorted to our seats. Vendors milled around, hawking the standard beer, pop, popcorn, candy, hats, etc. The wrestling matches themselves were pretty solid. They contained fewer strength-based moves and had more holds, but didn't have as much acrobatic work as I had anticipated. Most of the wrestlers wore Lucha Libre masks. Every one of the 7 or so matches (with the exception of one) was tag-team. One match was women; and they really fought. Some of their stage names: Lady Apache and La Nazi. Another match had a midget fighting on a tag-team. The headlining match had an obese man ("Porky"); not a single person could get out from under him when he was laying down on them.
Each match was awarded as best out of three bouts. Each bout was announced by a scantily-clad girl with a sign --> pure boxing style. The crowd wasn't nearly as rowdy as I had thought it would be, but overall, not a bad way to spend Christmas.
(Map of the day.)We had an early start for the pyramid site of Cacaxtla, which is near the small city of Puebla. We headed for the East bus station (as opposed to the North one, which we had been using so far), and got first-class tickets for the 2 hour ride. Free drinks and snacks, and the bus was even clean. Bonus!
We arrived at CAPU, which is Puebla's bus terminal, and tried to find what bus line would take us the rest of the way to Cacaxtla. No luck; each bus company kept directing us to another counter. Finally, someone managed to convey to us that we should take a micro-bus, which were stations at a seedy hotel across the freeway. We boarded a rickety minibus whose driver indicated to us that he could get us were we wanted to go.
(These minibuses are a major means of transportation for the public. At intersections, or even as they drive, the driver's partner is leaning out the door, yelling out to pedestrians the direction in which we're headed. If the bus is going your way, hop on, and tell the driver your end-point. From that, he'll charge you an appropriate amount of money -- it's very cheap. If they don't have enough change for you, you give your large bill, and then have to sit and wait while they take more fares, hoping that enough change will collect before you disembark. Also: every one of these buses has religious iconography on the dashboard, windshield, ceiling, seat-backs, etc.)
The ride turned out to be an hour of lurching through streets, which gradually turned into remote countryside. Eventually, the driver stopped at the bottom of a steep hill, in a little town, and pointed up the hill for us. There was no pyramid in site (and needless to say, no signage). We began the hike up, and eventually saw the pyramids about 2 miles away, across a road-less valley. The road we were on did not in any way lead to them. It was already about noon; much time had been lost in CAPU and on the minibus (whose top speed seemed to be about 40 km/h).
Andrew was in favor of trekking cross-country to the site; instead we stopped a passing colectivo van (similar in function to the micro-bus, except it's a van), which took us back down the hill. We then took the next bus that the van driver indicated to us, but after 5 minutes we saw we were driving away from the pyramids. We got off this bus, flagged down another bus, which dropped us at the same start point again. Andrew hailed a fifth van, which finally got us to the gates of the site.The pyramids were about 600m from the gates, but it was all worth the effort. The site has one enormous pyramid (which was in the midst of excavation), the remains of another pyramid, and a distant third pyramid, located about 30 minutes away (we didn't get to this one, as the time was now 3pm, and we were worried about getting back to Puebla. The sun sets at about 5:30, and we didn't want to be flagging down rides in the dark in the remote country).
There were only a handful of other visitors, but there were three different ticket check-points, with armed guards...Who wouldn't want to give us a ride:
A set of wooden steps took us to the top of the pyramid, which they figure was inhabited from 400-1000AD. There were the remains of foundations everywhere, and very little had been restored (which was nice after Teotihuacan):
Walkways took us all over, and there was a section of wall that was latticed:
Impressive stonework:
Many murals had also survived the ages, which is amazing because they were dated to be about 700 years old:
These two murals were side-by-side, behind protective glass. On the left picture, note the carved stone to the right of the painting:
The unvisited pyramid. I guess there's always next time (ha!):
We left the site, hailed a bus, and had a quick, uneventful ride back to CAPU. We hitched a ride to the city's Zocalo, and as we approached the city centre, the buildings became more colonial, and beautiful. As it was Christmas Eve, most of the stores and tourist sites around town were closed. We headed on foot towards the Cathedral of San Francisco -- the site of an actual canonized saint, San Francisco. Not only was the man a saint, but his body is incorruptible.
With the help of the gift shop girl, we found the body. It was kept in a glass and silver coffin behind the church's alter (there wasn't a mass going on, so we could approach freely). The body was dressed in monk's robes. Francisco was accepted into the Catholic order at age 75 after devoting his life to the church, and died in 1600 at the age of 98. They discovered shortly after his death that his body had become waxy, and remained flexible. Letters were written to the Pope, and after investigations (and whatever other hoops existed back then), he was canonized.
The body did indeed look waxy. There were no bones or decay, except for on his feet, which just looked fibrous. The man himself:
For supper, we headed back to the crowded Zocalo, and ate at an Italian place called Vittorio's. Our Christmas Eve meal was spent enjoying the mild air, soft lights, bustling people, and live guitar while we sat at a sidewalk table. The funny thing, is apparently this place held the world record for largest pizza back in the late 1970's.
We caught our bus back to Mexico City, but were dismayed to see that the subway was no longer selling tickets (although they were open for another hour). At the encouragement of two seedy looking guys, we jumped the turnstiles, and bolted for our train...
After a the long day of Tula and Trotsky, we headed back to the hotel to change and find somewhere relaxing for supper. We read in my tour guide book about a Middle-Eastern restaurant past the Zocalo, so we planned our subway route and took off. The station spit us out at a busy station, we discreetly got our bearings off of our map, and set off through the late-night crowd.
The restaurant was five blocks away. However, after walking a great distance, we realized that something was not right; we were surrounded by hookers. We had never seen so many in one place before. Street cops were everywhere, and queues of men were standing outside of doorways. I think we were the only white people...
Needless to say, we retraced our steps as quickly and nonchalantly as possible back to the subway. We don't know how we ended up where we did, as we were following our map...
We made a new route, and tried again to find the restaurant. This time, we were wandering up and down deserted, garbage-strewn streets with little light. Small groups of men huddled outside of doorways, watching us...
We finally found the restaurant, and it was closed.
We threw in the towel, had a quick bite at a cafe, bought beer and chips at a convenience store, and called it a night.
(Map of the day.)We hopped on an early bus to the town of Tula, about 75 minutes away. From the small bus station, we took a cab to the pyramid site just outside of town, and arranged for the driver to come back in a few hours to pick us up (we didn't want to be caught in this remote location without a means to return to town -- although this did happen many times later on...).
The site was pretty empty, although the vendors were setting up their booths along the pathways; our travel guide indicated that this site is generally overlooked, as more tourists go to Teotihuacan. The main attraction of this site is found on the top of the restored main pyramid: 20-foot tall carved stone figures. These statues are remarkably detailed for their age, and slightly spooky:
A large contrast between this site and Teotihuacan is that Tula's pyramids are mostly un-restored; before we saw these, we didn't realize how much restoration had been done at Teotihuacan.
We're on top of the un-restored pyramid, with the statue-pyramid in the background:
Also, Tula has a ball court:
Most of the ball game is speculative, but what they suppose is that a hard ball is passed between team members, using their hips and shoulders to hit it. The idea is to somehow pass the ball through a carved stone ring in order to score. Apparently the outcome of a game would predict rain/good crops/etc. Not much else is known for sure. Each site that had a ball court claimed that the other sites would sacrifice the winning (or losing) team; no site ever admitted that human sacrifice occurred on their grounds. My thoughts: all these temple-dwellers seemed to be pretty bloodthirsty...Tula also had some very detailed carved stone. It's remarkable to realize that these carvings have weathered over a thousand years.
We left Tula in haste, as we wanted to get to our next destination before it closed for the day: the Leon Trotsky Museum. Of course, when you're in a hurry, nothing works out; the return bus trip took over two hours because of nausea-inducing traffic, and the subways to get the museum were crowded. We pretty much ran from the subway station to the museum.
On the way, we had the delight of trotting alongside a fenced park; a stream ran parallel to the sidewalk. The stream was brimming and choked with garbage. The stench of sewage was overwhelming. The discoloured water with all of its detritus and waste looked like something out of a National Geographic war story. Sorry to disappoint, but we didn't snap any pictures of this.
We arrived at the Leon Trotsky museum, which is housed in his former residence, in which he was assassinated. The reason why Trotsky had come to Mexico City (aside from being exiled from the USSR) was because during the 1930's Mexico flirted with the idea of communism and welcomed the man. In short time Trotsky became close friends with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. In fact, he lived with the famed artists for a time before differences caused him to move out into his final home. Everything in the house remains as it was on the night of the assassination -- books, papers, even toiletries are in place. The closet still contains clothes and shoes. Walking through his study and office, it was bizarre to think that Trotsky, a man so involved with seminal events in the 20th century, had lived and breathed in these rooms.
Apparently he was an avid gardener:
The kitchen of a communist:
There had been an earlier attempt on his life; note the bullet hole above the bed:
The study in which he was fatally stabbed; if I recall, he was sitting in the chair with the beige woven back:
The final resting place of Trotsky's ashes:
