Mexico City

Mexico

November 2006
3 days

Mexcio (The Ancient Civilisations Trip)
7th to 21st November 2006.

We visited 5 towns in Mexico during the two week organised excursion with GAP. Thus we are sending out this country as one big update (if the technology works!)

As always the Pics are also available at http://www.spicyapple.co.uk/worldtour2006/

Mexico City
7th to 10th November 2006

Finally venturing out of North America we fly from LA to Mexico via Dallas with only a nail-biting half hour to switch planes. Dallas is a huge airport and it takes a monorail to get us to our plane on time.

As our plane came in over the largest city in the world it seemed to stretch on forever and with a population of over 25 million, once we landed we felt the squeeze, with streets completely lined with vendors and traffic everywhere but getting nowhere.

If you ever wonder where all the VW beetles in the world go to die, then let us enlighten you... They are all here! ALL of them. It like being stuck in a Herbie movie, they drive you bananas!

So with our hands firmly on our wallets we explored the local vicinity and having not had a hair cut for a month I bought some clippers. Sarah did a good job on my barnet and as a bonus I still had both my ears.

The next day we met up with our GAP Adventures group. 12 of us all who all signed up for the Mexico Ancient Civilisations Tour! Our group was made up of 5 from the UK, 4 Canadians, 2 Aussies and a Kiwi resulting in a good mix of ages, sexes and backgrounds. Our tour guide Leah was from the US but spoke fluent Spanish and made the whole two weeks a doddle for us by organising everything.

As a group, and feeling safer hunting in a pack, we tried out the Mexico version of the underground. We headed for the Museum of Anthropology to get informed about all the ruins we´d see later on the tour. It was a hard day and a lot of reading but we saw some amazing artifacts here.

Packed with knowledge the very next morning we got a minibus to the Teotihuacan ruins to climb the two huge pyramids. This was not that easy as the steps up the sides of these relics where so tall. Human Sacrifices were held at the top of these structures and the steps were made intentionally tall so that people climbing them had to look down and not up at the ceremonies. The view from the top made you soon forget the effort involved in getting there.

The same day we were giving a demonstration by an elderly local man as to how they use the cactus plant not only as a source of alcohol but also to make clothing with a rather rough texture. Mixed with other materials such as cotton the garment could be softer. We drank the free Tequila (SY - almond was the best!) and left having bought nothing.. poor old fella.

That afternoon we took the two hour bus ride to to Puebla...