Day 3 13.07.15
Today was a very packed day. We started off with a lovely Mexican breakfast in an old idyllic building.
It had a lovely courtyard in which mainly locals sat to enjoy their breakfast. Breakfast for us was exotic juices (Cactus and orange juice), eggs Mexican style (eggs with chilli, tomatoes, onions and for me some sausages). It was just the perfect start to the morning.
The waitresses were walking around, in which we thought probably very uncomfortable uniforms to work in, but they were lovely to look at. Their skirts could have been made out of paper machée but we weren’t 100% sure.
After breakfast we hopped onto a private bus – yes that fancy :) - and drove to the first site of the day only on the outside of Mexico City.
This site is quite a historic place. It is an Aztec site where supposedly all intellectuals and wise men of the indigenous people would come to gather, making it a spiritual temple and supposedly a gathering site for not only the Aztec but also other cultures to meet and discuss urgent matters. In order to display their superiority the Spanish built a cathedral on top of their spiritual site when they overthrew the indigenous civilisations. To make their point they even tore down some of the temples sites and used the stone to build up the new cathedral which is why the cathedral is made of this dark stones. Inside there are beautiful blue glass windows, which leave you with an eerie feeling. Another interesting fact about this site is that on the plaza in front of the cathedral a mass murder took place. Just before the Mexican Olympics a group of Mexican students gathered here to protest about the living situation in Mexico and to try and boycott the Olympic games and cause them to not take place. Apparently the Mexican government was not happy about that and decided they needed to stop the uprising revolution so while the students were gathering and protesting snipers shot down about 1000 people to eradicate the revolution before it could spread to other cities. We are talking about the year 1968 here, so it is impressive that none of us knew about this tragedy. The plaza was thoroughly cleaned and the bodies were taken away by truck and no one new where to.
We then drove on to the basilica of Santa Maria de Guadalupe. This is a building that will interest any architect. The basilica is slowly sinking lower and lower, but only on one side. As you can see in the picture the lamps hanging from the ceiling are actually on an angle. (No, that is not due to my photographic skills but more so due to the rest of the building standing at a considerable angle.) The basilica is home of an important artefact for the Catholics, a proof that the Virgin Mary visited this place, a cloth onto which the image of the Virgin Mary is “painted”.
Painted is really the wrong word as scientists have examined the piece and could not determine with what this picture was painted. No paint, no coal, no smoke, obviously something that was around several years ago but no longer is today. Millions of people pilger to this place and so a new basilica had to be built right next to it to cater to these many people.
We then drove on to a true highlight - the ruins of Teotihuacan. Spread out over a vast piece of land, these pyramids stick out like nothing else. Surrounding these pyramids are several smaller buildings and ruins that were supposedly places where public speeches were held and general gatherings could take place. We climbed both the moon and the sun pyramid. The moon pyramid being the smaller one of the two surprisingly had the steeper steps and took a lot more effort to climb. The view was incredible though. Our group, made up of many tough cookies decided to also climb the sun pyramid. What a good idea. The climb was strenuous, but the reward so much better. We took several pictures on the spiritual point of the pyramid, where supposedly there is the most spiritual universe power coming down from the universe to recharge your batteries.
Yeah I know. But hey, from up there, there is a wonderful view and everything just seems so so small.
We jumped on to our private bus and headed over to the town of Puebla were we got to experience a real treat! A real lucha libre in a real arena with real fighters with masked and way to short and tight speedos and too much oil. We had a blast. Who cares if you don’t know who to cheer for and that you get to know several swear words – “Puton” / “Pussy” for example.
We definitely went with the cheering crowd and had an amazing time. Even though the first fights were quite funny to watch, as you could see that all the fighting was fake, but it was a good preparation for the last fights of the night, as these were so quick that you could not tell that the punches and falls weren’t real and weren’t extremely painful. We saw the championship of Puebla and saw the best fighter take home the Lucha Libre belt. (Although some say that the Japanese guy definitely should have won!)
Just a small note to the Mexican food: Before the fight we got to enjoy Tacos Arabes which are normal tacos with pork meat, loads and loads of cheese and a great spice mix. Yum!
