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Published: October 19th 2006
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Pyramid of the Sun
This is the 3rd Largest pyramid in the world It was built around AD100. The Aztec believed that the structure was dedicated to the sun god. Flying over Mexico City filled us with different emotions. We´d heard the stories of kidnappings and the fact that Mexico city has a population around 16 million meant that it is huge! We were bracing ourselves for the worst!
After arrival we made our way to our hostel, right on the central square wih the parlament building and the cathedral by taxi without incident. The city has a busy but relaxed feel to it and actually felt rather fun and not intimidating, although the driving rivals any of the thrills available at Alton Towers.
Our first week in Mexico has been something of a blur - having travelled over 2300 miles in the US in 9 days we were already tired and a little short of sleep but we managed to see quite a bit of the central mexico city region.
After our first night we decided to brave the metro and bus system to make our way to Teotihuacan, a huge arecheological site for the Aztecs. It has 2 main pyramids, the pyramid of the sun and the pyramid of the moon. The Pyramid of the sun is the third largest in the world. The detail of
the carvings and the remaining colouring on the plaster that they used is amazing.
On the return we caught a bus back to the bus station but the bus didnt stop where we were expecting! We got off the bus as soon as we realised and began making our way back to the metro system... we thought. We tested Staceys spanish a lot that afternoon as we were walking through bustling covered markets in who knows where but we received nothing but smiles and help from the locals who seemed to be as surprised at seeing us as we were to find out that we had walked past the metro station about 5 times without seeing it!
Having made it back to our hostel after a long day we decided that we wanted to head out of the bustle of the city towards the caribbean coast for some recovery time. We booked our 19 hour bus journey that day and collapsed to sleep. The following day we walked around the central tourist zone of Mexico city and bought a childrens book for me to read to improve my spanish - its a little better now but not much!
The bus journey to Merida was an epic (for us at least), taking nearly 20 hours although we did get to see some impressive snow capped volcanos on the journey. We were more than glad to peel ourselves off the bus seats and make our way to our hostel in Merida, a sweet colonial city with a population around 700,000. Merida is the hub of the Yucatan peninsular and we spent a couple of days wandering around the centre and buying a hammock for our stays at cheap campsites and in cabañas (wood shacks).
From Merida we headed to Chichen Itza which is the most famous and most restored of the Yucatan Mayan sites. We camped in the gardens of a hotel about 1 km from the ruins and went around them in the afternoon, once most of the tours from Cancun had left and the souvinir sellers were packing up. This made it a really relaxed and atmospheric walk around the site, seeing famous structures like the ball park with the rings high on the side, the observatory which was used to work out when sacrifices were needed to the rain gods and the central "castle" pyramid
which forms a record of the Mayan calender.
It is intriguing seeing all of the sites where human sacrifice was performed, where the decapitated heads were placed and all of the many temples that this culture had. We will let the pictures talk again with a bit more information below each.
From Chichen Itza we moved on to a small town called Valliodid from where we visited a cenote, a limestone cavern to swim in with a small hole at the top to let in light. These are an typical feature of the Yucatan and regularly feature on pictures of the area.
We have now made our way to Tulum, a caribbean beach town, where we are relaxing and soaking up the sun and enjoying a much needed break from the hectic buses.
Next week we are heading to Palenque for another Myan site and also for day of the dead, before making our way into Guatamala. We will let you know how it goes!
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