So my big plans for sleeping till the 7am alarm stopped at 3am when I woke up & couldn't get back to sleep.
I tried for a while & then gave up on sleep & continued updating the blog. Finally, Africa is all caught up! This feels like a huge relief & achievement.
At 6.30am Tom wakes up & we start making breakfast & organise today. We have plans to see the pyramid complex of Teotihuacàn.
We set off after breakfast walking the 15 minutes to the city bus line that will take us to the big Central de Norte Station, where we will travel to the famous archaeologist site.
At 8.34am when we turned right onto the street that the green city bus will leave from. An old man, possibly homeless, walked up to Tom rambling angry spanish & punched him straight in the face.
Luckily, the guy was so old & weak it didn't hurt or make any noise for that matter. I didn't even realise what had even happened. Until a couple of steps after & Tom told me. I'm initially in shock & can't believe it. We haven't been receiving a huge amount of friendliness, but it doesn't feel any more hostile or alienating than China or India. Hopefully this man is just 1 bad egg in a very big city & we don't have any more encounters like this.
Once we arrived at the Central de Norte Station we found gate 8 & the correct bus company to purchase a 2 way ticket to the pyramids.
Once we had tickets in hand we waited in line 7, for about 15 minutes until our bus arrived.
All of these bus's look very comfortable, safe & new. It was perhaps too comfortable & Tom fell asleep nearly instantly, despite having a full nights sleep.
The bus pulled over after about 10 minutes of driving & some police entered the bus. They had a hand held video recorder & filmed all of our faces.
I'm not sure why they do it. It happened again on the bus we caught on the way back. We're assuming it's incase of a hijacking situation. Once outside the city you can really appreciate the coloured buildings. On one particular hill, we could see the coloured houses painted in a coordinated pattern.
We arrived at the gates to the Teotihuacan Pyramids complex just before 10am. Initially it was us trying to avoid the hawkers selling their various souvenirs.
It's always interesting what is sold in each country & at the various tourist attractions. At this particular site, they were selling round stone tablets that represented some sort of ancient calendar, mask's, bright coloured scarves, pendants & a couple of different kinds of whistles.
One was shaped like an ocarina and could be played really well, another one made bird noises & one made a loud rasping noise We guessed was meant to sound like a jaguar growling. The whistle was shaped like a jaguar & based on the worship of jaguar's as seen in the painting's & sculpting at this site, I think it's a good guess. The jaguar noise was by far the most annoying!
The pyramid complex of Teotihuacan is one of Mexico's most visited attractions & is so close to Mexico City. The sun is shining & the air smells fresh & clean, they've had some recent rain & we go about dodging mud puddles as we make our way to the first section.
Basically the pyramid complex is an ancient mesoamerican city and in its prime was the biggest precolumbian city built in the Americas taking up 20 square kilometres. With an estimated population of 150,000 -250,000 people, making it the 6th biggest city of its time, in the ancient world.
It is thought that the city was built in 100BC & continued to grow until 250 AD. No one is really sure who lived here, when it was built or why it was abandoned. Some scholars blame nearby volcanos, some blame plague, internal uprising against the government & some blame the inability for sustainable agriculture to sustain such a large city.
It may have held a civilisation right up until the 8th century, but there is proof the city was ransacked & burned in 550AD.
Archaeologists & historians have been unable to distinctly determine what ethnicity built this ancient complex & inhabited it.
I tried for a while & then gave up on sleep & continued updating the blog. Finally, Africa is all caught up! This feels like a huge relief & achievement.
At 6.30am Tom wakes up & we start making breakfast & organise today. We have plans to see the pyramid complex of Teotihuacàn.
We set off after breakfast walking the 15 minutes to the city bus line that will take us to the big Central de Norte Station, where we will travel to the famous archaeologist site.
At 8.34am when we turned right onto the street that the green city bus will leave from. An old man, possibly homeless, walked up to Tom rambling angry spanish & punched him straight in the face.
Luckily, the guy was so old & weak it didn't hurt or make any noise for that matter. I didn't even realise what had even happened. Until a couple of steps after & Tom told me. I'm initially in shock & can't believe it. We haven't been receiving a huge amount of friendliness, but it doesn't feel any more hostile or alienating than China or India. Hopefully this man is just 1 bad egg in a very big city & we don't have any more encounters like this.
We arrived at the bus stop a few minutes after this & nearly immediately hopped on a green city bus that had the tram antenna sticking out the top. These local city bus's are not in the best condition & look a bit shabby, but we've seen & used worse! On the bus an old dirty looking man missing his 2 front teeth started talking to us in Spanish & walking towards where we are seated. I'm very cautious & a little bit scared after what just happened. After we replied "no espanol" he started talking in English which was surprising & asked us where we are going & where we are from. He seems genuinely happy & excited to see us. When he get's off at his stop, before us, he flashes us another smile & energetically waves at us.
Once we arrived at the Central de Norte Station we found gate 8 & the correct bus company to purchase a 2 way ticket to the pyramids.
Once we had tickets in hand we waited in line 7, for about 15 minutes until our bus arrived.
All of these bus's look very comfortable, safe & new. It was perhaps too comfortable & Tom fell asleep nearly instantly, despite having a full nights sleep.
The bus pulled over after about 10 minutes of driving & some police entered the bus. They had a hand held video recorder & filmed all of our faces.
I'm not sure why they do it. It happened again on the bus we caught on the way back. We're assuming it's incase of a hijacking situation. Once outside the city you can really appreciate the coloured buildings. On one particular hill, we could see the coloured houses painted in a coordinated pattern.
We arrived at the gates to the Teotihuacan Pyramids complex just before 10am. Initially it was us trying to avoid the hawkers selling their various souvenirs.
It's always interesting what is sold in each country & at the various tourist attractions. At this particular site, they were selling round stone tablets that represented some sort of ancient calendar, mask's, bright coloured scarves, pendants & a couple of different kinds of whistles.
One was shaped like an ocarina and could be played really well, another one made bird noises & one made a loud rasping noise We guessed was meant to sound like a jaguar growling. The whistle was shaped like a jaguar & based on the worship of jaguar's as seen in the painting's & sculpting at this site, I think it's a good guess. The jaguar noise was by far the most annoying!
The pyramid complex of Teotihuacan is one of Mexico's most visited attractions & is so close to Mexico City. The sun is shining & the air smells fresh & clean, they've had some recent rain & we go about dodging mud puddles as we make our way to the first section.
Basically the pyramid complex is an ancient mesoamerican city and in its prime was the biggest precolumbian city built in the Americas taking up 20 square kilometres. With an estimated population of 150,000 -250,000 people, making it the 6th biggest city of its time, in the ancient world.
It is thought that the city was built in 100BC & continued to grow until 250 AD. No one is really sure who lived here, when it was built or why it was abandoned. Some scholars blame nearby volcanos, some blame plague, internal uprising against the government & some blame the inability for sustainable agriculture to sustain such a large city.
It may have held a civilisation right up until the 8th century, but there is proof the city was ransacked & burned in 550AD.
Archaeologists & historians have been unable to distinctly determine what ethnicity built this ancient complex & inhabited it.
It's a real shame to still not be able to give credit to this amazing civilisation who were so advanced in so many ways. The word Teotihuacan is used when talking about this specific complex & the whole civilisation who lived here.
Some possible candidates for the credit of Teotihuacan are the Nahua, Otomi or Totonac ethnic groups. Instead of debating which one of these it was, Some scholars believe they have proof of a multi ethnic civilisation who lived here & this was the state's capital. Some scholars believe it was the centre of a multi ethnic state & proof of this is in the sites at Veracruz & in the Maya regions who share similarities with the Teotihuacan. Even the Aztecs claim a relationship to these ruins & civilisation's, 1000 years later, modifying certain aspects of the culture found in these ruins & making it their own. It's crazy to think that Teotihuacan was already in ruins by the time the Aztecs found it.
The acute devastation of Teotihuacan is thought to be common for Mesoamerican cities & states from the classic & epi classic period. It seems many Mayan civilisations had the same fate in the following years, which coined a term called the 'classic Maya collapse'.
I was frothing over this ancient site & somewhat smug about the fact that the ancient world still holds many secrets from the modern world. I really wish there was a way, somehow, to go back in time & be a fly on the wall to observe this city in its prime. To see the people who lived here, watch their daily lives & learn about the gods they worshipped.
All great & ancient civilisations have a complex & strong belief in various gods, which I find very fascinating.
A lot of the complex is open for tourists to walk through, up & on, which is surprising. Though it does look like there has been modern interference with concrete, which will help preserve the ruins while thousands of tourist feet walk on them. The 2 big pyramids are known as the Sun & the Moon Pyramid, there is a Temple of the Feathered Serpent, The Palace of Jaguars & another notable feature is the Avenue of the Dead.
There are very defined squares where you can imagine daily life went on with houses & market stalls. There was different compounds for the lower class, middle class & then of course the areas for the more privlidged, priests & royalty. Their was platforms where temples sat & alters would have been, where human sacrifices took place. Around these ceremonial platforms there is large ampithetre style platforms to seat the thousands who would of watched. There is residential housing, large scale sewage systems, running water & irrigation for the agriculture that sustained the people.
This ancient civilisation were not primitive. They were amazingly advanced!
We spent quite a few hours walking around, taking photos, reading the scraps of English we could find & stopping for snack time which was the fruit & crackers we packed.
It became a very hot day & before long the water had all been drunk & the skin on our shoulders resembled ripe tomatoes.
We briefly went to the museum which contained some statues, pottery & murals from Teotihuacan, before catching the bus back into town. Unfortunately the museum had no english, so we gained a minimal amount of an education. It was still worth it, just to see the vivid colours of the murals & to imagine what the city would have looked like with all its art, vibrancy & life.
Once in the city, we got off at the Central de Norte bus station, then we crossed underneath the road & stood where Google maps told us there was a bus stop.
We kept trying to wave down one of the green bus's with the antenna, which were looking full of passengers & they kept going past. This kept happening for about 30 minutes, while other different coloured bus's were stopping to let people on & off, we assumed the bus we wanted to be on was too full. Finally a local, who was a taxi driver, saw what we were trying to do & gestured down the road & we understood his Spanish to mean that the bus won't stop here.
We walked 500metres down the road & successfully boarded the next one. Finding a seat, let alone a place to stand wasn't successful. These bus's were FULL!
We were like sardines crammed into this bus & we had a 40 minute journey back into town.
Finally we arrived back at the stop near our hostel & hopped off the bus. There was some sort of celebration/festival & people were everywhere in the city. With this morning's assault still fresh on our minds we headed straight to the hostel. What a relief to see those plain white walls, floor & ceiling!
We were quite tired after our big day & all the walking we did up & down the pyramids & alters.
While I showered Tom ordered 2 pizzas. What arrived was 2 massive family sized pizza with really thick dough.
I was stuffed after 2 slices & sleep didn't need much more encouraging after all those carbs.
- Alli
Some possible candidates for the credit of Teotihuacan are the Nahua, Otomi or Totonac ethnic groups. Instead of debating which one of these it was, Some scholars believe they have proof of a multi ethnic civilisation who lived here & this was the state's capital. Some scholars believe it was the centre of a multi ethnic state & proof of this is in the sites at Veracruz & in the Maya regions who share similarities with the Teotihuacan. Even the Aztecs claim a relationship to these ruins & civilisation's, 1000 years later, modifying certain aspects of the culture found in these ruins & making it their own. It's crazy to think that Teotihuacan was already in ruins by the time the Aztecs found it.
The acute devastation of Teotihuacan is thought to be common for Mesoamerican cities & states from the classic & epi classic period. It seems many Mayan civilisations had the same fate in the following years, which coined a term called the 'classic Maya collapse'.
I was frothing over this ancient site & somewhat smug about the fact that the ancient world still holds many secrets from the modern world. I really wish there was a way, somehow, to go back in time & be a fly on the wall to observe this city in its prime. To see the people who lived here, watch their daily lives & learn about the gods they worshipped.
All great & ancient civilisations have a complex & strong belief in various gods, which I find very fascinating.
A lot of the complex is open for tourists to walk through, up & on, which is surprising. Though it does look like there has been modern interference with concrete, which will help preserve the ruins while thousands of tourist feet walk on them. The 2 big pyramids are known as the Sun & the Moon Pyramid, there is a Temple of the Feathered Serpent, The Palace of Jaguars & another notable feature is the Avenue of the Dead.
There are very defined squares where you can imagine daily life went on with houses & market stalls. There was different compounds for the lower class, middle class & then of course the areas for the more privlidged, priests & royalty. Their was platforms where temples sat & alters would have been, where human sacrifices took place. Around these ceremonial platforms there is large ampithetre style platforms to seat the thousands who would of watched. There is residential housing, large scale sewage systems, running water & irrigation for the agriculture that sustained the people.
This ancient civilisation were not primitive. They were amazingly advanced!
We spent quite a few hours walking around, taking photos, reading the scraps of English we could find & stopping for snack time which was the fruit & crackers we packed.
It became a very hot day & before long the water had all been drunk & the skin on our shoulders resembled ripe tomatoes.
We briefly went to the museum which contained some statues, pottery & murals from Teotihuacan, before catching the bus back into town. Unfortunately the museum had no english, so we gained a minimal amount of an education. It was still worth it, just to see the vivid colours of the murals & to imagine what the city would have looked like with all its art, vibrancy & life.
Once in the city, we got off at the Central de Norte bus station, then we crossed underneath the road & stood where Google maps told us there was a bus stop.
We kept trying to wave down one of the green bus's with the antenna, which were looking full of passengers & they kept going past. This kept happening for about 30 minutes, while other different coloured bus's were stopping to let people on & off, we assumed the bus we wanted to be on was too full. Finally a local, who was a taxi driver, saw what we were trying to do & gestured down the road & we understood his Spanish to mean that the bus won't stop here.
We walked 500metres down the road & successfully boarded the next one. Finding a seat, let alone a place to stand wasn't successful. These bus's were FULL!
We were like sardines crammed into this bus & we had a 40 minute journey back into town.
Finally we arrived back at the stop near our hostel & hopped off the bus. There was some sort of celebration/festival & people were everywhere in the city. With this morning's assault still fresh on our minds we headed straight to the hostel. What a relief to see those plain white walls, floor & ceiling!
We were quite tired after our big day & all the walking we did up & down the pyramids & alters.
While I showered Tom ordered 2 pizzas. What arrived was 2 massive family sized pizza with really thick dough.
I was stuffed after 2 slices & sleep didn't need much more encouraging after all those carbs.
- Alli
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