Ciudad de Mexico

Mexico City was a pleasant surprise, and one we would never perhaps have seen were it not for the insistent lobbying of our friend and guide Luis, who loves and truly knows his home town. And what a "town" it is, 20 million souls living at 2,200 metres. While massive slums ring the metropolis and creep up along the mountains, there are many charming old neighborhoods (Juarez, Polanco, Condessa and Roma-- to name a few). Add to this 160 museums, many along the tree lined historic boulevard la Reforma and lovely Chapultepec Park, and you have (for those who can afford it) an urban lifestyle that rivals that of Paris and New York.

What is today central Mexico City was once covered by Lake Texcoco, where in the 14th Century the Aztecs founded a magnificent city of floating causeways, Tenochititlan, after seeing an eagle eating a snake while perched on a cactus growing from a rock (hence the image at the center of the Mexican flag). As with most construction based on prophesy, this may not have been an optimal site. Cortez tragically put an end to all that in 1519, but the intervening centuries have placed upon this historic heart a dense amalgam of pre-columbian, gothic, neoclassical, art deco and modern structures-- all slowly sinking into the muck.

Here are some highlights . . .

The impossibly intricate stonework of Mexico's first Franciscan monastery, which was confiscated by Benito Juarez in 1860, but later returned to Church hands.
The view from underneath a spiral staircase in the national Museum, the exterior of which is pictured below.
The courtyard of the "House of Tiles", the exterior of which is covered with lazuli-blue tiles in the Puebla Style, and which now houses a Sanborns restaurant.
The Palacio de Bellas Artes. The exterior (below) was completed just prior to the revolution of 1910, but completion of the interior had to wait more than 20 years. The cultural landscape of Mexico had been transformed in the interim, and nowhere is this more evident than in passing through the neoclassical front entrance into the art-deco interior, whose walls are covered with massive socialist murals by Siqueiros and Diego Rivera.
The main square of the old city is the 3rd largest in the world (after Tiananmen and Red Square) and is dominated by the Catedral Metropolitana de la Asunción de María, which took 200 years to complete. From the vantage point below, the national palace is situated orthogonally to the right, while the ruins of the Aztec Templo Mayor lie behind the oldest portion of the cathedral, far right.
The cathedral is both the largest and oldest in the Americas, and its vaults and porticos contain an impressive collection of religious art and artifacts, as well as this massive 18th century organ (one of two!) with a finely carved wood facade.

Valle de Bravo and Toluca

I guess the only reason this deserves its own entry is because this little side trip was so strikingly different from anything else we saw during our trip.

Toluca is a fairly typical mid-sized Mexican City, and while it doesn't possess the beauty and cultural significance of nearby Morelia, it does have this fascinating little botanical garden off its main square.
Sometime in the 1970's, Toluca's aging market, built in 1910 to commemorate the revolution, was turned into a garden. In 1990, artist Leopoldo Flores Valdes completed his "Cosmovitral," an instillation of fantastic stained glass around the entire perimeter and also within the garden. A truly imaginative act of preservation.
Valle de Bravo, the base from which we explored the monarchs and xinantecatl, lies along the shore of Lake Avándaro, about 150km southwest of Mexico City. I am sure it has an interesting culture and history, but alas, like most of the other people fleeing Mexico City for a few days of R&R, we never really got past "quaint mountain town". Nice view, and nice memories, so thought I'd throw it in the broth.

Templo Mayor and Teotihuacán

We are no strangers to pre-columbian sites, having seen Machu Pichu, Tikal, Chichen Itza and many others. What stands out at Teotihuacán is the sheer scale of the Pyramid of the Sun and the broad "Avenue of the Dead", which leads over a mile from the Pyramid of the Moon at one end to the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at the other.

Neither Aztec, Toltec or Mayan, the Teotihuacáno culture remains something of an enigma. This massive city, just north of present-day Mexico City, was already the centre of a thriving culture a century before Christ was born, but seems to have succumbed either to famine or invaders by 700 AD. Although the level of craftsmanship does not match some of the magnificent masonry of the Inca, the stonework nonetheless shows nice detail.

The photo below was taken looking southward from atop the Pyramid of the Moon, with the wall at right pointing down the Avenue of the Dead. Those tiny dots clustered atop the Sun Pyramid at left are people (you can click on the picture to enlarge).
The Temple of Quetzalcoatl is surrounded by a walled compound and was mistaken for a "citadel" by the Spaniards. The area most likely served as both an administrative and religious hub, and was also where Teotihuacán's elite lived. Here also is where one finds the most well-preserved detail, as in the temple facade below.
Teotihuacán is one of 27 UNESCO world heritage cultural sites in Mexico. Only China, Spain, France and Germany have more.
From the northern outskirts, let us venture back to the very heart of Mexico City (itself another UNESCO world heritage site), to the Templo Mayor of the Aztecs, which was rebuilt six times, each layer built over the last as the structure grew outward and upward.
Although fragments had been discovered throughout the 20th century, it was not until 1978 that formal excavation began, after workers laying electrical cable ran into the temple walls. Interestingly, this piece of land was long known not to flood after rain storms, and it still holds firm as the surrounding neighborhood tilts and sinks into the old lake bed, as in the picture below.
It was common practice for the Spaniards to tear apart then build churches on indigenous sacred sites, and the Templo Mayor was no exception.
Since it was rediscovered, many beautiful objects have been recovered from the old temple and are now on display at the on-site museum that was built in 1987, and which is still growing its collection to this day.

Monarchs by the Million and Rarefied Air

Piedra Herrada is a protected area just to the east of Valle de Bravo, and one of several sites in the Cordillera Neovolcanica range where the Eastern Monarch population overwinters in the Oyamel forests.
The round-trip to a place as far north as Minnesota can span four generations, so no individual of these millions of butterflies has ever known this place, or will ever see it again. We were very blessed to be the first to arrive on this day, and to be all alone in this magical place as the sunlight roused the butterflies from the trees and into the crisp mountain air, which was then filled with the susurration of countless wings.
The pics above and below are of Xinantecatl (or Nevado de Toluca), about 80k west of Mexico City and towering to 4,680 metres (15,354 ft) at the summit. The photo above shows Sun Lake, which actually attracts scuba divers looking for the "world's highest dive." The smaller Moon Lake is also shown in the video at the bottom of this blog entry. The point we hiked to was at least 14,000 feet in elevation, and having just come from sea level 24 hours earlier, we felt every step.

These videos don't do either site justice, but we've included them anyway.

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The Splake Spolt Era Begins

What the heck does that mean? The provenance of "Splake Spolt" is probably already known to many of our close friends, and also a great conversation starter for new friends. For the past three years, we've been keeping blogs, first in New Zealand, then when when we returned back to Minneapolis (also of the the birds we have seen). Well, we're pulling up stakes again and heading back to NZ at the end of the Summer (well, the end of Winter . . . never mind), and this time likely pulling up stakes for good. So come along, if you wish, and see where the wind takes us.