San Cristóbal de las Casas

Well it's been a very wet few days and more to come apparently.  In fact I don't think I've seen such rain since, well since San Cristóbal de las Casas.

It all started off so well.

Lovely hotel. This is the sight that greets you after check in. An old colonial house around a courtyard now converted into a hotel.








Alas it was not to last. It was the tail end of the rainy season and we'd been very luck so far with the weather. The first strange thing we noticed about St Cristobal was the very deep curbs. The pavements were a good 10 inches or more above the roads.



The reason for this soon became clear- the heavens opened and the roads flooded in a downpour of tropical proportions. Within minutes every bit of that depth was needed as the streets became a river....

....fortunately the rain soon eased off and the floods disappeared as quickly as they arrived.

 San Cristóbal is the cultural capital of Chiapas and is very Spanish in it's layout and ambiance. It also has a very nice street market. They are obviously used to the rain. For me it was a chance to try out the waterproof "raincoat" I'd bought for the camera.

Despite the Spanish influence, there is still a lot of the original culture left - this is a common way for the local women to carry things.










There were some surprises though. This church, well out of town and up a long flight of steps had a neon altar piece. Never seen anything like it!

Visiting the Zapotecs again

After the visit to Monte Alban which was the "capital" of the Zapotechs, it was time to visit Mitla which was the chief religious site. Mitla means "place of the dead" was built around 100 B.C. and occupied until 1521 when the Spaniards arrived.

Mitla is best known for the stunning geometric patterns made out of mosaic. I can certainly understand how the weaver we met is inspired to recreate them on his loom.

This room, called the Hall of Columns, leads through a narrow passageway to the interior of the building which was, according to indigenous sources, the residence of the powerful oracle-priest, called “The Great Seer”

 Inside the heart of the complex four rooms lead off. These are richly decorated with complex and beautifully worked mosaics. Such skill was used that they line up perfectly, no fudging at the corners needed.

Inside the residential areas there are remains of paintings along the top of the walls in a complex frieze. Although little remains, what does has been decoded to show that it is an astronomical record of what happened both in the skies and to the population.

Closer view.

The range of patterns in stone were incredible and nowhere else in Mexico has them.

One of the main squares leading up to the Hall of Columns. The walls are believed to have originally been covered in red stucco so some of this has been reinstated to give an impression of just how bright and colourful the complex must have been.

Monte Albán

One thing we discovered about Mexico was that each site seemed even better than the last and this feeling persisted throughout the trip. If we thought Cholula was impressive, Monte Albán outclassed it. Inhabited over a period of 1,500 years by a succession of peoples – Olmecs, Zapotecs and Mixtec it has been extensively excavated.

It started off rather low key; these are the remains of some of the housing of the non elite.  So far interesting but not that impressive.

Many tombs have been discovered here - it was also common practice to bury the deceased under the floor of the houses above. This was taken in pitch dark with the flash and bent double so isn't very straight!

Then we got into the main plaza and some very big constructions indeed.

The monumental centre of Monte Albán is the Main Plaza, which measures approximately 300 metres by 200. A series of platforms housed the main ceremonial, civic and high status housing.

Neatly arranged along the wall we found a series of carved stone monuments in the Olmec style.







 
Originally they were considered to be Danzantes or "dancers" but this is now discredited. These are reproductions with the originals being safely preserved in the on-site museum.

Here's one of them. The latest interpretation is that they are in fact early medical textbooks intended to record and teach. Some of the tablets show the process of birth and even an early cesarean section - whether the mother would have survived the process seems remote.

This was taken looking down on to the plaza from the highest platform. You also get a sense of how high up in the hills the whole site is.

The importance of some of the residents here was underlined by this private altar; normally these would have been in public areas but at Monte Alban there were both.

Looking at the site everything looks very neat and tidy ( there were workman manicuring the grass as we visited) but a few of the platforms have not had the same restoration - this one gives a good idea of what they would have looked like before being cleared and cleaned up.

Cholula with Grasshoppers for lunch

I wasn't sorry to leave Mexico City. The traffic was beyond belief.

 The teachers were on strike and the main square was closed off so we were unable to see the Palace or the Museum of Fine Arts. and I really don't see myself going again. Mexico - yes definitely but I can happily pass on the capital.

So it was on to Cholula and the largest pyramid in the world ( by volume at least). It was a reasonably long drive but the scenery was amazing.

 This is  Iztaccíhuatl   - or the White Woman.as the four peaks form the impression of a sleeping woman. Not that much snow on it at this time of the year.

The legend goes that she was a princess who fell in love with one of her father's warriors, Popocatépetl.  The emperor sent Popocatépetl to war in Oaxaca   promising him her as his wife when he returned.  Reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, Iztaccíhuatl was told he had been killed in battle and died of grief.  Popocatépetl returns safely to find her dead. He carries her body to a place near Tenochtitlan where the gods covered them in snow and transformed them both into mountains.

In his anger and grief Popocatépetl became a volcano spewing out fire on the earth .







So on to Cholula itself.

The site is approached through a tunnel dug through the pyramid itself. Not old at all but made by the archaeologists so they could see what was inside ( not a lot. It's a solid fill). It's a nice way though to leave the town behind and go back in time.

The temple-pyramid complex was built in four stages, starting from the 3rd century BCE  through the 9th century CE, and was dedicated to Quetzalcoatl. It has a base of 1,480 by 1,480 ft  and a height of 217 ft). This gives it a volume larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza although it is not as high.

The invading Spaniards sought to re-purpose the pry amid and the church on top is dedicated to  "Our Lady of Remedies"

One of the altars. These were normally outside the temple so that the people could participate. Only nobility and priests were allowed in the temple buildings on top of the giant pyramids. 

Unlike the Egyptians who built a new edifice for each pharaoh , the common practice amongst the meso-americans was to simply build over the existing pyramid to make to broader and taller. This would be repeated many times and has meant that a lot of the older archaeology has been preserved.

This is some of the earlier building now uncovered.








and the grasshoppers?

 A local delicacy. Here being sold by a street vendor on the site. These were seasoned with chili. Yes I did try one but I had to close my eyes to do it. Crunchy on the outside but rather soft and squishy in the middle. An acquired taste I think.

Hola!!

Something a bit different  now - come with me on a trip round some of Central America's ancient sites.

This was a complete eye opener for me - Mexico and the Mexican people were very different from what I'd been expecting and I am looking forward very much to a return visit one day. It's long been an ambition to visit the old Mayan civilisation so where better to start than somewhere that is not Mayan at all.

Not even Aztec but claimed by the Totonac people, Teotihuacan ('the place where the Gods were created') is some 30 miles from Mexico City. It has been heavily reconstructed, particularly the royal palaces and the Temple of Quetzalcoatl but the pyramids are most impressive.

It was still early in the season so not very busy although visiting it late morning meant that it was very hot indeed. This was our first site so we were not quite sure what to expect.

The Temple of the Moon. This is the smaller of the two great structures but climbing it gave us a good idea that the next two weeks were going to be fairly physically demanding if we were planning on climbing many of these structures.



The steps are very steep and not very deep and my legs were complaining long before we reached the top.

The view though down the Avenue of the Dead towards the Temple of the Sun ( large structure on the right) was well worth the effort.







Originally it was believed that the smaller structures were tombs but it now believed that they were ceremonial buildings or temples.

Some of the artwork is still extremely well preserved including this wall painting of a Jaguar, sacred to many of the Central American peoples. The primary deity here is believed to be The Great Goddess and unique to this city.

The view from the top of the Temple of the Sun, looking down on to the Temple of the Moon.






This is a massive structure with  a 350 m² platform at the top, measuring  225 x 222 metres at the base, and at 75 meters high, has a total volume of 1 million m³!

And in another direction.