Going underground

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This morning we are taking a bus to Cholula which is on the outskirts of Puebla to see a unique pyramid as it has underground tunnels which we can walk through.

It’s about a 15 minute walk to the place where we believe the buses leave. It’s still reasonably cool and, as luck would have it, we spot a minibus marked Cholula before we reach the location. It stops to let us on. It is 7 pesos each and the journey should take under an hour (30 minutes by car, but the bus is bound to take all the back routes). We hop inside and find that there are bench seats all around the edges with a little standing room in the middle, a bit like a dive boat. There is no sign of any chickens, but chicken bus it is nevertheless. At least we have seats!

The journey is much as we would have expected with passengers hopping on and off throughout the journey. A guy has just got on carrying a fruit juice drink in a plastic cup. I have purchased many of these since we arrived in Mexico and I can vouch for the fact that the cups are extremely thin and flimsy...Ian and I exchange meaningful glances which silently say...I wonder how long it will be before he catapults that drink over everyone? Amazingly, he manages to negotiate the bus, clambering over a woman with a cute little baby, and hurl himself into the corner seat...narrowly missing the woman and baby with his rucksack which swings round after him.

Another interesting phenomenon of collectivo riding is the seat shuffling which goes on as passengers disembark. Each time, people move over to give themselves more bench room, but it does seem a completely pointless exercise as new passengers immediately replace them and so they then have to shuffle back again!

We arrive in Cholula and the driver helpfully shouts out ‘pyramides’ so we know where to get off. In fact it’s a fifteen minute walk from where we have been dumped as the bus is not actually going to the pyramid. It’s a reasonably pleasant walk on shaded streets so it doesn’t matter, but it’s a good job we have google maps otherwise we would be clueless.

We arrive at the Tepanapa Pyramid and see the tourist train sitting right next to the entrance. We could have caught this but it was more than ten times the price and timings would have been fixed. We prefer to travel on a more flexible basis.

The pyramid is actually the widest one in Mexico, but is not well known or visited, largely because it is unrecognisable as a man-made feature. The site is on a flood plain between several volcanoes meaning that, apart from being highly fertile, the ground is very flat. The original pyramid from around 1AD was fairly low.

Like the Templo Mayor in Mexico City, additional layers were added over the next 600+ years, adding to its height and width. Some time between 900-1300AD the pyramid fell into disuse, possibly due to other civilisations gaining ascendency. By 1519 when the Spanish arrived, the pyramid was totally overgrown with much of the initial two layers of the structure being below ground.

Rather than excavate the pyramid out of the hill, the archaeologists have tunnelled into the hill to reveal parts of the structure as you walk through. Another area outside of the main pyramid has been opened as an archeological park.

We first ascend a very steep pathway which takes us up to the Santuario de Nuestra Senora de la Remedios church on the top of the hill. Finished in the early 17th century, the building dominates the flat countryside below, as intended by the Spanish conquerors, and gives fantastic views in all directions including the volcanoes of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl.

We descend another path to the archeological park, and finally find the tunnel entrance - a narrow archway cut into the hillside, two metres high by less than one metre wide. The tunnel takes us through several ‘layers’ of pyramid, with some side tunnels showing the steps that would have ascended the sides, or water gullies from higher levels.

After exiting the tunnel, we walk around the park examining the excavated elements - fortunately the signage contains English translations. We end the walk at a fully excavated corner of the pyramid, which gives us a clue as to the size of the original structure. We also see an altar on which children were sacrificed. It was done in the belief that the children would ask the gods for water...not a great time to be a kid!

As we leave the park, we spot a bus labelled ‘Puebla’ and decide to jump on it. It’s a full size bus with proper seats so we reckon this will be a slightly more comfortable ride back to town. Well, it would be if there was enough room to get your legs in between the seats anyway! :-)

Since the bus drops us quite a few blocks away from our hotel, we decide to go straight on to our next port of call, the railway museum. It is located quite close to the drop off point. It’s not the best time of day to be visiting an open air museum, but the chances are that we won’t have the energy to come back again!

We stop for lunch at a fast food place with a few tables inside. It’s roast chicken, which arrives with chips, rice and tacos. We are just about to tuck in when a beggar approaches us pleadingly. We give him a couple of tacos and a chicken leg. He takes it and disappears in a flash...probably before the restaurant owners can tell him to clear off! We also enjoy large glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice.

Now to the museum. It’s still baking hot but there is a limited amount of shade. The locomotives and rolling stock are drawn up on, what is now, an orphaned shunting yard. While there is evidence of restoration work on some of the exhibits, others could do with some TLC as well. That said, the entrance fee was only 15 pesos (60p), so they are probably struggling with funds!

The majority of exhibits date from after the Revolution of 1910, with most of the locomotives being manufactured in the USA or Europe. The rolling stock is interesting in that they have early examples of passenger, sleeping, mail and ‘security‘ carriages. They also have an early version of the Chihuahua-Pacific express...the one that we should have, but did not did not travel on in the Copper Canyon!

This evening we just want a light snack so we go to the fast food joint (not that anything is particularly fast here), for ham and eggs. Returning to the hotel, I help myself to a couple of the freebie boiled sweets in reception. I think they are one of their local specialities - a boiled sweet with a dark coloured lump in the middle. Ian is trying to persuade me that it’s an insect! Fortunately it turns out to be nothing more sinister than a sultana. :-)

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