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Published: July 17th 2009
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Can´t believe we´ve only been here a day!
Up very early for the EstTur tour to Teotihuacan, the "Valley of the Gods", home to the the world wonder pyramids of the Moon and Sun. ´George´picks us up from the hostel in a taxi; a lovely chap, he waxes literal about his love for Celtic Culture when he sees us, declaring his affinity for London, the 60s, Led Zeppelin and Bagpipe music.
At the office, luxuriously furnished, we are introduced to our guide, a sweet little man in a natty suit called Fidel (I think Latin = ´truth´, Jas thinks ´Castro´) and the rest of today´s tour group - some Germans, a man from Bolivia, and a Danish woman and her son. Later, after the tour and over some tacos and beers at a gorgeous restaurant favoured by our guide, it is discovered that we all flew Lufthansa, and the Germans turn out to be the Lufthansa flightcrew from the Danes´ plane. It´s a small world.
Our tour includes several stops of interest before we reach the pyramids - I feel like the exerience of finally seeing them is being eked out slowly to increase the excitement. We
first stop at the oldest Fransiscan monastery in Mexico, now a library. "Monastic life is banned in Mexico", says Fidel, smiling. We ask why. "The monks were behaving very badly, five hundred years ago, so we broke with the Catholic church. we are educated and we donñ´t like people telling us what to do!" he exclaims. Fair enough, quite sensible we think. "And", he adds with a wink, "we think the Vatican is just a money-making exercise." Again, probably right there. (Later when we arrive at the basilica de Guadeloupe, he seems pretty pleased to announce, whilst standing by the twnety-foot statue of John Paul II, that the Pope loves Mexico City the best and visited five times. Ah well.)
The monatery stands next to some crazily abandoned tower blocks and the youngest Azteca ruins in Mexico, a good 2500 years younger than those we´ll see later. It´s an interesting combination, and fits well into the frame of a photo. While we are there, some little girls and boys are making their first holy communion. I am amused to see that here the girls wear pink dresses instead of white, in the most ball-gowny of shapes with massive
puffy skirts. I notice that one is absolutely definitely wearing a Disney Cinderella costume.
The next stop is the basilica de guadeloupe, built to commemmorate the visitation of Our Lady to a young indian, thus starting their conversion to Christianity. the story goes that she appeared to him and gifted him a blanketful of roses, which he had to show the authorities. When the roses fell away, the miracle occurred whereby the lady´s image was magically imprinted onto his blanket. This blanket is under glass in a frame in the very modern new church, where masses run every hour to show it off, and a series of ´electric carpets' (moving walkways in Fidel-speak) go from side to side
under the altar for visitor to look, even during mass. The image is reproduced everywhere, and the vision is recreated by models of indians kneeling to Our Lady in the ornamental gardens and waterfalls behind.
Also in this area are five other churches, all to the same event. It´s like a church gathering of a very literal kind, and really quite beautiful and possibly made even moreso by the evidence of subsidence caused by the 6-7 earthquakes a day
(!) that Mexico suffers that causes all of them to lean crazily forward.
Finally we´re on our way to the Valley, driving for forty minutes or so through expansive favelas that expand right up the mountainsides surrounding the valley. As favelas go (because yeah, I´ve seen
so many), it seems quite nice, and some houses really seem quite normal, but I can´t imagine it´s amazingly nice to live in the squalid jumble of homes the overall picture presents.
Arriving in teotihuacan, we´re afforded a brief glimpse of the temple of Quetzacoatl before we´re rushed off to the bus again to skirt the 4km site and visit an authentic obsidian and silver workshop. Our guide here is the amazingly charismatic 'Professor Jesus'. Jasmine loves him. He is a legend. He shows us first of the amazing prperties of the cactus known to us Brits as Aloe Vera - parchment, antiseptic, and wine! We get to drink this 'Pulque'and it´s rather delicious, fruity and sweet and refreshing. then he gives us tequila and shows ius the proper 'non-Hollywood´way to drink it, by sprinkling the salt directly on the lime and squishing it into your teeth, then downing the tequila-lime
mix. It´s ridiculously delicious, especially for someone who doesn´t actually drink tequila.
After railing about the amaxing properties of obsidian or ´black diamond´("Excuse me children for my expression, but, if they didn´t have diamond-tipped drills or machinery like we do, then how the
fuck did they do it, eh¿") he shows us how silver jewelry is made, then entreats us to buy something. We´d love to, but we donñt get paid next week and have hostels to pay for in the meantime, so leave empty-handed.
Finally at the pyramids my breath is well and truly taken away. Fidel takes us through the administrative centre before giving us his ´'final lecture'and showing us how pigments were made; a local brings a pointed stick and a poiece of cactus and, picking the white parasites off the cactus leaf he simply squishes them into his paper to create a vivid red dye that dries instantly to a surprisingly waterproof finish, before creating a similarly potent yellow sye from the cactus itself. The poor man is selling postcards in envelopes marked with this dye and I buy a pack, think it to be the most personally interesting thing I´ve seen
all day.
After a picture with his two favourite lovely ladies ("Friend, take your time taking it, I´m having a lot of fun here" he quipped with one of us on each of his arms), we were free to look at the pyramids. They are built from East to West or North to South to echo the path of the Sun or Moon, and vary in size to represent the sizes of these two bodies. How they worked this out is a complete mystery. All have steps in multiples of 13, as 13 *4 is 52, the amount of weeks in a year and the amount of years in their centenery-equivalent cycle. In fact, every number is of significance here, such as four-petalled flowers in decorations relating to the four seasons and four elements. It´s all mathematical and natural and scientific and beautiful all in one go, as it bloody should be.
As I´d already had a completely useless attack of Vertigo when attempting to navigate the piddly little pyramids nearby, Jasmine decided to go up the enormous Pyramid of the Sun on her own. I perched myself in front of it to draw it and
waved at her as she managed each progressively steeper section. It was quite a feat, although some crazy people had pulled babies in buggies to the top. From the photos she took whilst being incredibly brave up there - she made me feel better by saying it scared even her - the view was incredible. (My view was pretty incredible too, and less likely to induce a heart-attack or hypervantilation. One day my brain will stop making me be suich a coward. I hope. If only my parents hadn´t dropped me so much as a child...*sob*)
I can´t believe we had to leave. The myriad vendors of jackal-callers and ocarinas lent the place such an air of mystery and fascination, but the smell of tacos and salsa drifting on the air made us...hungry. It was nearing three o clock so we trooped off to dinner, leaving the utterly amazing sight behind. I felt like I could have sat in front of that pyramid forever just contemplating it. then, maybe, I would have worked up the courage to climb it...
Last little notes from today: on getting home we dashed to 7-11 to stock up on supplies (unfortunately
only junkfood was available 😉 ) for the 6hour bus journey to Oaxaca tomorrow. On the way we encountered what we thought was a blind man, complete with dark glasses and white stick. "Huge tittles like hers..." we heard him say, definitely indicating the contrary. We couldn´t help but laugh with the shock.
The sky has just cracked with thunder and lightning and the rain is coming down...
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