Teotihuacan
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2007
1
4
7
Trip End
Sep 21, 2007
Where I stayed
Mexico City, Mexico
Monday, September 10, 2007
We immediately went to look for a hotel that was nearby. We found this midrange hotel called Hotel Brasilia and it did what we needed it to do. It was somewhere to drop our bags and take a shower. Afterwards, we went back to the busstation to catch our ride to Teotihuacan. I ended up sleeping most of the way to Teotihuacan, but it's only a 40 minute busride. At our arrival we were greeted with a souvenir salesman trying to sel us stuff before we even got into the park. it's not a very god scheme because I haven't figured out what I want to remember from this place. So buying a souvenir before you get to the monument is not a great idea Plus they were selling some heavy stuff and I wasn't about to lug that stuff all around this national park. The admission to the national park was a few bucks, $4.50. We got a tourguide for a few hours who spoke pretty good english. We thought it would be a good idea because we would get more out of the experience if you understand and see the monument. We entered the park with Miguel and proceeded to the entry.
What Miguel wanted us to understand mostly, that Teotihuacan was not only a place of worship or religious place, but it was a city. It was a city like any other with markets, political areas, streets, storm drain system, and massive pyramids. It was awesome! There was soo much to see here. The respect and awe of this place reminds me of the feeling when i entered Ankor Wat in Siem Riep, Cambodia. However, the scale is much smaller than Ankor Wat, which is still the most amazing place i've ever been to.
Our first stop in Teotihuacan was Quetzalcoatl Temple. here we were able to see how the first ruling class built versus the second. The first class saw the snake as a scared animal. The second class saw the jaguar as a sacred animal. Sadly after the second ruling class took over, they ended up covering up with stone what the first class had built centuries before. Through excavations, archeologists were able to uncover the history of the past. I was very impressed with the craftmenship. What was impressive to me, was that they were buiding this monument in 200 AD to 600 AD. It was a time 500 years prior to the existence of the Incas, Aztecs, or Mayans. wow!!!
Our next main stop was the Pyramid of the sun. It was crazy huge!!! The scale is hard to say in words. I'll give you an idea of how big this pyramid is:
1. Took 20 years to build
2. Took 20,000 people to built it.
3. 1,000,000 cubic meters of stone
4. 227 Steps to the top
Amazing! Before Miguel left, he also told me to be very careful on the way up to the top because he didn't want to have any human sacrifices today. haaha!! He also told us to make 4 wishes touching the piece of metal at the top of the pyramid before leaving today. I did do that, so i hope they come true. As we progressed to the top of the pyramid we stoped at each of the 3 levels and walked around it. The views all the way around this pyramid is spectacular. We finally made it to the top 227 steps later, and just chilled at the top for 20 minutes. We could see the entire site from here including the stretch of the Calzada De Los Muertos, or Avenue of the Dead. This is a mythical name because like i said, this was a city and that avenue was not only used for religious purposes, it was the main axis of the city. The view from the Pyramid of the Moon was also beautiful and I believe had a better view than from the Pyramid of the Sun. You be the judge, compare the two views. Yes they are different, but I think the Pyramid of the Moon had a much grander and impressive view for a camera.
After buying our souvenir T-shirts we returned to the city to check out the city center at Zocalo. Here we saw yet another ancient civilization called Tenochtitlan. There wasn't too much left for Mexico City was built over it It used to be a city on water similar to Venice. It would have been jaw dropping to see Tenochtitlan in it's original state.
After exploring Zocalo (National Palace, Catedral., Templo Mayor (Tenochtitlan), and Plaza De La Constitucion), we headed toward Plaza Garibaldi which is the place where Vincente Fernandez was discovered. Here you'll find tons of Mariachi bands hoping to be the next great talent. We just checked it out for a few minutes and headed towards the Palacio de Bellas Artes. We didn't know if anything was going on, but found out a folklore dance show was on that night. There was even tickets for only 8 bucks. We decided to go and were very happy we did. The performances were great, we saw folk dances from all over mexico including aztecas, jalisco, and many others. The colors of the dancers were also impresssive each one very different for each dance. After that we decided to return to our hotel and call it a night.
