Lakes and more lakes

Mexico City is built on Lake Texcoco.  

"The Mexicas believed that their god would show them where to build a great city by providing a sign, an eagle eating a snake while perched atop a cactus. When the Mexicas (who would later be known as the Aztecs) saw the vision come true on an island in Lake Texcoco, they decided to build a city there." http://www.history.com/topics/distrito-federal

The Aztecs gradually increased the size of the island until the city Tenochtitlan below resulted.

The Spanish built over this Aztec city  until today Mexico City is huge with the lake gradually being filled in. The only sign of this past in the centre of the city are some sinking and leaning buildings e.g. the main Cathedral. The two volcanoes in the distance are the two highest. The highest lake in North America where I swam was on the fourth highest volcano. It is not in this picture but is one of the four volcanoes surrounding the Valley of Mexico in which Mexico City sits. Just imagine these mountains circuiting the lake two thousand years ago.

The two pictures above and below are from a mural reproduced  in the  Mexico City National Museum of Anthropology - a larger and a smaller lake. The mural relates to the cultural group who inhabited the area around the fourth highest volcano where I swam. I am researching more about this mural. I was told however that lakes and mountains were sacred places for these cultures.

Mexico City - the ubiquitous skull and great architecture

Mexico City is wall to wall people - more that the population of Australia live in this one city - waiting to cross where the central mall  intersects with a four lane one way road through the heart of the city.

The architect Luis Barragan designed these triangular towers each one a different width and height (two partially hidden), right in the middle of another huge freeway that runs across the west of the city

How´s this for a creative funeral services bill board?

Finally get to see an Aztec in full dress in the central city square  - seed pods round the legs shake and rattle when they dance. This is what we have tried to imagine in every faint ruin fresco!

Adios Mexico!!! - a complex vibrant country with adventure waiting the willing!

An LA post script to be added.......

Nevado de Toluca: The Return!

The extinct volcano looms in the far distance.

I DID IT! hiking over the crater and swimming in both Laguna de el Sol and Laguna de la Luna [above - which I discovered is actually slightly higher and therefore the highest lake in North America]

I'll do another post soon with videos and photos of the actual swims!

Oaxaca State of Mind

Oaxaca is a city of colour and creativity. This was a wedding parade we saw on the central mall.

So many amazing art galleries around the city. This is from artist Mexican Benjamin Torres's exhibition at MACO gallery. Can you see what the wheel is made of?


Crutches

This jade decorated skull was found in the ruins of Monte Alban [Below] an entire ancient city built high atop the mountains above Oaxaca by the Zapotecs.

Chiapas!

Next our travels in Mexico took us to Chiapas state and the ruins of Palenque

Situated halfway up a mountain and surrounded by rainforest the Palenque ruins were some of the best we've seen.

The Mayans built their residential homes in the rainforest around beautiful waterfalls like this.

The relics found in the ruins include amazing pottery like this censer used to burn offerings to the Mayan gods.

Next we moved on to San Cristobal De Las Casas, a beautiful town with a large Indigenous population  and a centre for left wing activists

Much of the Indigenous population is found in surrounding communites like Chamula [above].

Women in the central plaza of Chamula.

The women and girls in the village of Zinicantan make and wear vibrant richly embroided garments from day to day.

Cenotes - Paradise underground!!!!!

Barney swimming in Cenote Il Kil right near Chichen Itza, these underground watering holes are a nice retreat from the 40 degree heat.

Cenote Sac Ac Tun [white cave] 17km north of Tulum is the most amazing we've experienced and is highly recommended by the locals in the know.

It turned out to be an underground river. We snorkelled 500m with our guide Jorge through underground caves filled with stalactites, stalagmites and seemingly bottomless underwater caverns popular with scuba divers around the world. The group of cenotes is called the pet cemetery because fossils of dinosaurs have been found deep in the underwater caverns.

The last few days - Ruins, ruins, ruins and paradise

We haven't been online for the last few days so here's our catch up....

We visited Templo Mayor [above], an excavated aztec pyramid right in the middle of Mexico City (Districto Federal as the locals call it) only discovered in 1978 prior to that a bookstore was above it! This is a serpent decoration at the foot of the pyramid.

Next we went on to Merida, Yucatan and the ruins of Uxmal - this is the governor's palace, the highest building for the highest in rank od the society and a great example of Puuc style architecture.

The details and brickwork on the buildings at Uxmal were amazing and very well preserved. The Margherita's at the nearby restaurant were just as good!!

Merida's anthropological museum, originally a mansion of one of the town's elite built just before the Mexican revolution in 1911.

Izamal, outside of Merida, is a city of entirely yellow buildings, this is entrance to the Convento de San Antonio de Padua, built in the 1500s over a Mayan temple. You can actually see Mayan carvings on some of the stones in the pavement.

The CHICHEN ITZA! These are the most popular ruins in Mexico [although we thought Uxmal was better preserved] this is the main temple El Castillo [with Barney trying earnestly to steal it's thunder]

This is the Gran Juego de Palota where captives played a brutal ball game kind of a cross between soccer and basketball where the goal was to get the ball through the tiny little hoop up there on the wall - the losing team was sacrificed or decapitated.

The ruins of Tulum are set amongst tropical beachside paradise overlooking the Caribbean sea. These ruins are now ruled by these guys....

Literally hundreds of Iguana's lounge over the rocks of the stone temples and fortifications.