We flew to Mexico City and it was amazing flying in over the huge city. It just kept going and going. Mexico City has a larger population than the whole of Australia and the pollution was terrible! We were ready for the supposedly dangerous airport but it was really good.
We decided to catch a taxi all the way to our next destination, a small town called San Martin. As we drove throgh Mexico City's endless suburbs we saw long queues of cars beside the roads. Our taxi driver told us that there was a fuel shortage. People were queueing for many hours to fill up. It had something to do with the change of government here recently. Many people had turned their engines off and were pushing their cars when the line moved forward, to conserve fuel.
There were even queues to fill up small containers.
We found our simple accommodation which was run by the loveliest people. It was in a small town which had no restaurants as such so we went looking for street food. We had to rug up though as it was quite cold! We found these amazing corn on the cobs which are coated with mayo, cheese, salt and chilli sauce. They were yummy!
We then had tacos at street stands. It was the best meal we'd had for a while! The town seemed to have just had some sort of fiesta as there were streamers over the roads.
We weren't at San Martin to eat tacos though. We were there to visit Teotihuacan, the famous pyramid city complex. Again, we got there at 8am to beat the crowds. There was hardly anyone else there!
We started by climbing the Temple of the Sun, the main pyramid. For most of the time, we were the only people on it. One disadvantage of arriving early though is that the sun is behind the temple, so these photos aren't great, but it was worth it to avoid sharing it with hundreds of others.
The Temple of the Sun is massive! It's so hard to understand how this could have been built without machines so long ago.
It was a steep climb to the top.
At the steepest section, it was easier to climb on all fours. See that orange mesh in the background? That's so tourists can queue to go up the steep section single file. Imagine how many people must come here!
Selfies on top of the pyramid.
The next largest pyramid is the Temple of the Moon.
The Temple of the Moon stands at the end of a 2km road called the Avenue of the Dead. The road is lined with what were mansions and palaces. There are only the bases there now. In the city's heyday, almost every building surface was painted. The Temple of the Sun was red and the Temple of the Moon was blue. It must have been absolutely astonishing in its time.
Twelve smaller temples sit in front of the Temple of the Moon.
Inside one of the palaces they found carvings and painted walls.
Walking beside the Avenue of the Dead.
We had arranged for a man from our accommodation to pick us up at a certain time but we found that we had allowed nowhere near enough time to explore the whole complex. There was so much more to see than there had been at any other temple complex we've visited so far. Courtney and I whizzed around the museum where we saw carvings and ceramics that had been found at the site.
There were a number of skeletons found in the temples when they were excavated. They appear to have been sacrificed. Whether the sacrifices were voluntary or not is unclear.
We realised that we had miscalculated how difficult it was to get to the places we wanted to go to. We were going to three places a few hours from Mexico City in three different directions. It turns out that that meant we had to go in and out of different bus stations. To get to our next destination we had to catch a bus back to Mexico City, a subway from the northern terminal to the western terminal, then a bus to another town then a taxi to our village. The last thing we wanted to be doing was carting all our bags on the subway so, with a lot of help from Marta, our lovely hotel lady, we secured the services of a friend of hers who drove us directly to the western bus terminal.
Most of the buildings in the suburbs of Mexico City looked pretty bad. They were largely made from plain Bessa bricks (concrete bricks) and were quite ugly. At one stage though, the hills were crowded with houses that had been painted in bright colours. It was a big improvement!
We then caught a 'directo' bus for about two hours, which was fast and comfortable and showed movies in Spanish. We then caught a taxi to our village.
The village we had arrived at is called Macheros, which means 'the stables'. There are about 350 people and 100 horses here. But we weren't here to see the horses - we had come to see the butterflies!
Every year, millions of Monarch butterflies migrate from parts of the USA and Canada to a particular group of trees in the forest near this village. Yep - they fly all that way. And what's even more astonishing is that it's not the same generation that return each year. It takes about 4 generations to fly from Mexico, to the USA and Canada and back. So it is the grandchildren or great-grandchildren that return to the site that their ancestors were born at. The butterflies that return to that site have never been there before. How amazing is that?
Macheros is high in the mountains and it was quite cold. To top it off, John and Connor got rotten colds. Our accommmodation was great though. Luckily we booked an extra day here so we had a day off to get better.
Courtney and I made the most of the free day and went for a walk with a local guide. He was a really lovely guy. He only spoke Spanish though so Courtney did a lot of the translating. Courtney has picked up Spanish well in South America!
The walk through the local forest was so beautiful.
There were a couple of gorgeous viewpoints along the way.
That afternoon, Courtney did a cooking class with Rosa, the local lady who runs the only restaurant in the village. She's also the mum of our hotel owner and many of her ten kids work in the restaurant. All the cooking for the restaurant is done on a simple wood fire. Courtney made a vegan version of the local stuffed capsicums. We all ate them for tea. They were delicious!
The next day was butterfly day! To get to the butterflies, we had to ride horses. John and I haven't ridden properly for about 20 years and Cara really has never ridden. Courtney is allergic to horses but luckily there is an option to walk. It's a steep slog though!
The word 'horses' is a bit of a misnomer. These pint-sized ponies were a bit scrawny but tough. The system here is that you line up and get whichever horse is next. Cara got a little one!
She had a ball though. Afer all, horses are in her genes!
Most people couldn't ride and got lead by their owners so Cara was right at home. She realised though that she was a heavy person on a small horse so she later swapped with someone else. Both horses were good for her.
I got a midget stallion. No matter how hard I tried to tell the horse's owner, he wouldn't just leave me to ride it. He walked right behind me, hurrying the horse up all the time. Admittedly, I had the slowest horse of all.
I haven't had a view from the back of a horse for a long time!
John scored the best horse of the lot. He was a beautiful grey who was a free mover. On the way back though, the owner wouldn't let him ride alone. We don't know why. The language barrier made things a bt tricky.
Going up, John had the freedom to ride unassisted.
The ponies were tough and scrambled up the steep and sometimes rocky paths. After about an hour we arrived at our destination. We walked the last few hundred metres to where the butterflies literally hung out.
Look closely at this branch. See all those brown bits? They're all butterflies!
The branches sag with the weight of so many butterflies. Considering that butterflies weigh about one gram each, the number of them here must be astonishing!
The ground was littered with what appeared to be dead butterflies but it turns out that they don't move much until the sun warms them up.
They cluster together for warmth (it was quite cold).
Once they start to warm up a bit they flutter their wings madly.
It was easy to pick the slow ones up and sometimes they just flew onto us!
The sun went behind the clouds again and the activity died down. About half an hour later we had another 5-minute burst then there wasn't much more. Apparently it's extraordinary on a really sunny day when they all start to fly but at least we got to see as much as we did. It was a truly wonderful experience.
I'll leave you with one last photo of a cute local girl that John was playing sword fights with.
Heather
No comments:
Post a Comment