Welcome back ladies and gentlemen, to the telling of my most recent adventures.
Teotihuacán. If you had trouble reading that word, you’re not alone. I had the hardest time saying it when I first heard about this place. In fact, it was an uber driver that first mentioned Teotihuacán to me… We had to stop the conversation just so he could break it down and teach me how to say it. I don’t know, maybe it’s not that hard and it’s just me. There are a lot of Nahuatl words that I can’t say…
ANYWAY what is this place? Teotihuacán was a mesoamerican city in el Estado de Mexico. It has now become somewhat of an archaeological site that has been preserved and is now open to visitors. The big attraction to this place? The pyramids. This place has HUGE pyramids and I don’t think I’ve ever seen legitimate pyramids in person so I was pumped. As a historical site, it’s also pretty astonishing. A lot has been learned about the lives of the people that lived there, their cultural climate, and the influence that they had on other societies in Mexico.
Entrance into the site is free on Sundays for Mexican citizens AND those who can prove Mexican residency, so guess who got in for free on a Sunday?! I was lowkey worried that flashing copies of our temporary residency card wasn’t going to work. As soon as they saw us they hit us with the “Tickets please” (in English) but we showed them the cards and all was good!
We left pretty early in the morning (bus left at 7) and apparently the bus tickets that we bought were for a tour of sorts. Which isn’t a bad thing, I mean it actually turned out really well. The ride was about 2 hours, so we got to Teotihuacán around 9:00 am. At first, they took us to a small place to learn about the Maguey plant. I’ve mentioned this plant before because it’s the source of many popular Mexican alcoholic drinks.
A guide took a small part of the leaf and showed us all of the different ways that this plant was/is used. For clothing, painting, and drinks. It’s actually really impressive. If I remember correctly, she told us that Pulque was the first alcoholic drink to be discovered from the Maguey (or Agave) plant. I mentioned that I tried Pulque my first day here and it was okay. Now I’ve grown to really not like the stuff. It’s just so… slimey. And I can’t get past the consistency of it. Especially now I know that it’s made by someone sucking the nectar out of the heart of the plant… yep my time with pulque has come to an abrupt end haha.
Naturally, they gave us all a little bit of Pulque to try. I will say that it was a lot better than the Pulque I tried in downtown Puebla. It was less slimey and went down a lot easier. After the Pulque, we all got shots of tequila (also made from the agave plant). And after tequila, Mezcal. Now, all in all by the time we were done trying all these drinks it was 9:15 am and we had taken 5 shots. Wild. Mezcal is definitely growing on me like I said it would in my first post. The tour guide was teaching us sayings before each drink…
“For every bad thing, there’s mezcal. And for every good thing as well.” It was quite the experience haha. But afterwards we were able to go into their gift shop and I almost ALMOST bought a blanket made from strands of the agave plant with an Aztec calendar on it. It was beautiful and even got to the point where the lady was lowering the price for me, but I chose not to. Good decision. I still have 8 more months in this country to buy cool stuff, and if we’re being honest, I have enough blankets… for now.
Bueno. After this it was on to the pyramids! The first pyramid that we got to see is called El pirámide de la Serpiente Emplumada (The Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent). It was in this pyramid, I believe, that they found a lot of human remains from people that had been sacrificed. It was one of the smallest pyramids on the site but it had heads of serpents carved into the front which, I thought, was pretty cool.
After this one we had to walk down La Calzada de Los Muertos (the avenue of the dead) a bit to get to the museum. The museum was okay. It had a lot of really cool artifacts that were collected at the site, as well as artifacts that represent that time period in general. But I much preferred being outdoors and actually being on the pyramids.
There are two main pyramids at Teotihuacán: El Pirámide del Sol (pyramid of the sun) and El Pirámide de La Luna (pyramid of the moon). First up was lo del Sol. We walk up to this thing and there was a literal LINE of people waiting to climb the pyramid. It’s funny because I read a blog post the night before telling people NOT to go on Sundays because that’s when it’s free for Mexicans, hence why it was packed. But I didn’t mind… get in for free and wait in line for 15 mins or pay 70 pesos? Easy decision.
After the pyramid of the sun, we headed over to the moon. There were a lot of mini temple structures leading up to the pyramid of the moon, so we took advantage and got a few pics.
Just our luck though, as soon as we get to the top of the pyramid of the moon it starts raining, pretty hard. And guess who didn’t bring her rain jacket?! Essentially we ran down the pyramid (going down these steps in a hurried manner, with tons of people around you, while it’s raining and the stones are getting slippery is NOT a fun/safe experience. I do not advise it) all the way to the bus that was going to take us to dinner!
The bus took us to a nearby restaurant that had a buffet. You know after a full day of hiking pyramids we were ravenous, so the food was very well received.
After food I was exhausted. Practically fell asleep in the restaurant. Needless to say, I slept very very well that night (I tried to sleep on the bus but they were playing a movie VERY loudly which made things difficult). All in all, a amazing trip with amazing people!
¡Qué viva la aventura! 