San Juan Teotihuacán, State of Mexico, Mexico
Heading out of the city now we were going to spend the afternoon at the Teotihuacan ancient Aztec site. Driving out of the city were colourful homes across the landscape.
There are in fact illegal homes sprawling for miles across the hills and ridden with crime and drug lords. There colours were a recent addition as electricity and city services are slowly being added.
We made a stop at a touristy restaurant outside of the ancient site. First a local explained the qualities of a local plant. Fibres from within the plant leaves are used to make fabrics.
They they had free tequila shots for everyone. There were five different tequilas. As I dont drink I only had a small taste of the sweet one which was syrupy with almonds.
There were also flat obsidian stones which ancients used to look at the sun. It was surprising to look thru a black stone and the sun looked like the moon thru the black stone.
We spent some time in the gift shop which was rushed before heading over to the restaurant.
There wasnt much on the buffet option if you didnt want to eat meat. I had a tortilla soup and mostly spaghetti. Local musicians played and we had some touristy Aztec drumming and dancing.
Our tour of the site began with some murals and paintings. It was good to have come with a tour as regular tourists might not know and just head to the pyramids.
The colours were quite strong and were originals that had not been restored. Now we had freetime to explore.
The smaller of the two pyramids is the Pyramid of the Moon. You can climb the steps partially up. I'm not good with heights and had an experience at one of the pyramids in Yucatan so wasn't going to go up.
The weather was actually quite chilly and windy despite the sunny appearance. At a long 90 degree angle is the larger Pyramid of the Sun, the two do not directly face each other.
This one I certainly was not going to even try climbing. In other pyramid sites people have had heart attacks or fallen down so they had to ban climbing. It was nonetheless an impressive sight and one wonders at life in it's heyday.
Returning we made our way back thru the coloured favellas spread across the hills.
We made our way back to the city by 7pm and saw the main boulevard all lit up.
The bus let off at Chinatown across from the Bellas Artes where we began. There were Chinese dragon dances.
I went thru Chinatown which was crowded, smelly, but felt very much at home after all my time in Asia.
Making my way back round I found a long pedestrian street I didnt know about. It reminded me of Lisbon with its tiled floor.
This was not the Mexico City I had long avoided for fear of crime and robbers and was very European and touristic.
2025-05-23