Saturday 5 July 2003
At last, we succeed to reach the giant pyramids. The drive to Teotihuacan was longer than expected. We went by subway to the North Terminal and then by bus for an hour or so. This time the trip actually brought us out of this vast city, through the worn down and poor suburbs and green fields. Lovely.
Today was hot, misty and humid. The overclouded sky kept the hot sun away, which was not so bad, considering the hard climbing we were facing. When arrived, traders that sold souvenirs of silver, obsidian as well as hats and carved figures welcomed us.
The guidance at Teotihuacan was limited, but at least written in both Spanish and English. The place is incredible big. The two pyramids, “Temple of the Sun” and “Temple of the Moon” are huge. One can climb both of them and we decided to go for the Sun temple, as that is the biggest. The Moon temple is smaller and surrounded by 12 small pyramids as the number 13 had great importance to the Aztec calendar. For the best panorama photos go for the Moon temple.
After climbing the temple, we went to the nearby museum, which is great. Here, we saw the original snakehead and the fable figure, which we saw copied on Anthropology Museum. The snake symbolizes fertility and the fable figure the movement of the sun. The museum also had giant pots, alabast figures, masks with matching moulds and preserved graves on display.
The trip back home took considerable longer than expected. When driving in the worn down greyhound bus, the rain start falling heavily and we were facing lightning and thunder big time. Fortunately, we managed to see the pyramids in good weather and as we approached Mexico City, we realized that the city had suffered from the rain. Some of the suburbs were literally flooded.
Some places we saw cars that were tipped over in ditches and almost covered by water. The traffic was crowded and we were stuck in a queue for 20 minutes this Saturday evening. Fortunately, the bus stopped at the subway station where we got off just to face another queue at the subway. That queue actually grew so quickly that we merely managed to reach the end of it before it grew away from us. A police officer managed to control all the people and everything went well. We were at the hotel at 8pm.
We chose to get a light dinner in the neighboring restaurant as we already had some at the pyramids, where we met Danish tourists twice. Danes seems to be traveling all the time. Here in the city centre, they skip the siesta and closes the restaurants at 9pm of security reasons. We did not see many guests and was not able to buy any beer, wine or liquor because of the forthcoming elections. It seems like the government have had some bad experiences on previous elections.