5. Mexico - Mexico City

covering 23 January - 27 January 2020

waiting for two margaritas in the bar of the Torrreamericana - and I don't mean pizzas

Older readers will remember the fuss about the 1968 Olympics being at altitude in Mexico City and at just over 7,000 feet it turns out to be the highest altitude we’ve been since we got to Mexico.  Fortunately we ain’t running or jumping anywhere.  We were a bit hesitant about spending any time here because there wasn’t much that appealed to us and we expected the city to be heavily polluted.  The metropolitan area of Greater Mexico City has a population of over 21 million and the city sits in the slowly sinking caldera of a (fortunately) extinct volcano.  I once saw a TV programme about the world’s worst jobs and one was here.  As the city is in a subsiding caldera, the sewage has to be pumped up and over the surrounding hills to clear the city.  The pumps block regularly and they’re cleared by someone going down into the sewage in a wetsuit and clearing the pumps by hand.  Not so much a career as just going through the motions.

 

who took that wedding dress diet
just a leetle too far ?

As it turned out the city didn’t seem particularly polluted and certainly in the centre and some smarter areas we visited, there was lots of street cleaning going on.  The authorities have introduced a system of weekday vehicle restrictions based on the last digit of the number plate.  When this was introduced some years ago in Lagos, people just bought a second but different number plate for their cars.   However, keeping an eye on the number plates in Mexico City it does seem to be working.

There were two things we wanted to see here, one was Teotihuacan, thirty miles or so outside the city and the other was the Templo Mayor, right in the centre of town next to the cathedral.  We had a very pleasant hotel no more than two hundred yards from the huge central square so the location was perfect for us.

Teotihuacan is a very impressive set of archaeological remains of the Teotihuacan civilisation.  At one time the city covered more than 8 square miles and it has been estimated that at its height had a population of more than 125,000.  What remains is a mere fragment but oh what a fragment.  The most prominent items here are the two great pyramids, the Pyramid of the Moon and the even larger Pyramid of the Sun.  

the Pyramid of the Sun

climbing the Pyramid of the Sun,
it is very steep

They stand several hundred yards apart, the Moon Pyramid at one end of the 1.25 mile long Avenue of the Dead and the Sun Pyramid to one side of the avenue about one third of the way along.  The Pyramid of the Sun is the third largest pyramid in the world, each side being nearly 700 feet long at the base and although diminished in height it still stands about 220 feet high.  It was completed around AD 150 and built from, according to Lonely Planet “three million tonnes of stone, without the use of metal tools, pack animals or the wheel.”  The Teotihuacan civilisation collapsed around AD 800 and what is left 1200 years later is truly spectacular.  To put this date into perspective, in England this was a little before King Alfred was failing his audition for Celebrity Bake-Off by burning those cakes.

the Pyramid of the Moon from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun

About a mile or so from the centre of Mexico City stands the Torre Latinoamericana, at one time the tallest American building outside the USA.  There’s an admission charge for the viewing platform, a restaurant and a bar all on the highest floors.  If you’re visiting the bar rather than the viewing platform there’s no charge so naturally that’s where we headed.  There was a big queue for tickets so we just got straight in a lift which took us partway up to where there was another big queue waiting for the lift going to the upper floors.  Each lift had an operator and someone letting people in and for some reason we were ushered into a lift ahead of the queue.  We got to the almost empty bar and were shown to a table right on a corner next to the windows with a stunning view towards the setting sun.  The ring of hills which is the edge of the caldera could easily be seen encircling the city.  A great sunset, a couple of normally priced cocktails and off we toddled.  Great end to the day.

not Popacatapetl going up again, sunset from the Torre Latinoamericana

two photos of 'Aztec' dancers entertaining the crowds

and two more photos of the nattily dressed sunday afternoon
dancers from the main square, the Zocalo

I mentioned in my Mexico blog 2 that there were very few Aztec structures to see.  This is mainly because the centre of their world was around a swampy set of lakes that is now underneath Mexico City.  The remains of the centre of their city of Tenochtitlan (also known as Templo Mayor) lie next to the cathedral and was the centre of the Aztec civilisation.  Amazingly quite a bit still exists, although it was only when electricity workers found an eight ton stone disc carving that it was decided to demolish some colonial buildings and excavate the site.  This was as late as 1978.  

that eight ton stone carving.  the dismembered goddess Coyolxauhqui

a wall of stone skulls

The cathedral is built on top of some of the Templo Mayor but the base of the pyramid and various other structures have been excavated and there is an absolutely wonderful museum on site.  Major finds are still being made.  What made this one of the most fascinating places was the ability to see how the pyramids were built.  It was the same construction method that we saw in Peru, even though it’s unlikely the two areas had any contact with each other.  An initial pyramid would be enlarged by having another built over the top of it, perhaps when a king or important priest died.  In practice this means that just like those Russian dolls that fit inside each other, what looks like a big pyramid is an outer one with four or five other pyramids inside.  At Templo Mayor it’s possible to see the inner pyramid base walls, then a gap which would have been infilled with stone and then the sloping wall of the next outer pyramid and so on.  It may not sound that fascinating to you but it was to see it.

the bases of a number of inner, earlier pyramids

the image of the goddess Tlaltecuhtli, discovered on the site in 2006

We found out that the Aztec language is still spoken although it’s called Urepicha, not Aztec or Aztecan as you might think.  Like many of the meso-american civilisations the Aztecs were notorious for human sacrifices, hearts cut out with obsidian knives and so on.  On the re-dedication of Tenochtitlan’s Templo Mayor in 1487, 20,000 human sacrifices were made.  So when I saw the Aztec Bank I just couldn’t help wondering what they did to any customers who ran up an unauthorised overdraft.  It would certainly encourage people to look more carefully at their budgeting strategies.