Teotihuacan, December 20

Temple of the Moon

I got the subway, early, to the bus station. There was a tired, droopy middle-aged woman with a Disney princess backpack sitting nearby. I got on the right bus, and set off early to get to Teotihuacan with my picnic lunch of delicious fragrant guayabas. The ride went through the residential and exurbs of Mexico city giving way to scraffy countryside surrounded by worn volcanoes and dry fields spotted with opuntias. We also passed fields of cultivated opuntias in rows, grown for nopales and dried shocks of corn: it is the dry season and has not rained for some months. I was sitting next to a man who was a professional guide and a self-made shaman who knew quite a lot about the ruins at Teotihuacan, but also I think, a lot of woo. He said, and I expect he did, speak Nahuatl, the ancient language; he said they still speak it in remote mountain villages. He spoke intelligently of the history and structure of the place, of migrations of populations, and anything else I brought up, but also spoke of spiritual herbs and carried an obsidian blade he had found to ward off negative energy. He held retreats for wealthy Californians.He seemed to have an ambivalent attitude about white Americans-- and why not?  A week or so later, I saw a man in a crowded market who waved and tried to talk to me, who I took for a tout. The man seemed angry and frustrated and I wondered if it was this man-- unlikely, though. But he didn't seem to be carrying anything, selling anything.
     Soon we pulled into the parking lot and walked through a museum and ran a gauntlet of souvenir shops to the avenue of the dead.

This place reminds me of the Forbidden City in that it is a huge gathering of administrative and religious buildings, the seat of empire, built around a corridor form; this one is two kilometers long and in Beijing is one; and of course the Forbidden City is not as old. Teotihuacan is not so restored and the interior spaces are mostly inaccessible.I think it was not so intricate and finely wrought in the first place, but certainly the structures are more massive. There were some visible interior murals but they were quite faded; the pigments were all botanical. This place is surrounded by  ancient volcanoes and grassland dotted with opuntia and a few varieties of trees. It is easy to see how the people thought it was a holy place. Oddly, it was not destroyed or built over by the Spaniards. The state has declared it an archaeological preserve so no towns are immediately nearby. 

At the top of the Temple of the M

There were many locals selling souvenirs along the avenue, the best of which were clay whistles which made either puma or eagle noises. I think they were really like kazoos, but the sound the pumas made when demonstrated were quite unearthly. Most of the other tourists were Mexicans, whole families, but few organize tour groups. There were some Chinese (from Duke), Germans, and a French woman with whom I shared my lunch.
     I decided to climb one of the pyramids, which was some 70 meters high, 267 steps. It sounds not so impressive, but standing in front of it, it looms large. After a couple of flights of stairs, I was out of breath, but relieved to see that even 20 year olds were puffing: the stairs are steep, around 9 inches; irregular; and it is at a high altitude,

something you don't notice just walking around. And it is absolutely shade free. After gazing at the surrounding volanoes for a few minutes, it was time to go down; and this was daunting.Suddenly it looked very steep. irregular and slippery. I was not the only one feeling this way! But I am here, so I must have gotten down. Traveling around the perimeter of the site rather than down the center of the avenue on the way back was a better choice. The landscape was beautiful and new to me. The opuntia were the size of small trees, and there were very graceful weeping trees with racemes of red berries. Tithonia and various smaller wildflowers snugging around the bases of trees. I wonder what it looks like in the spring rains.
It was getting hot by the time I was ready to leave, so I joined some others drinking unfamiliar sodas, waiting for the bus back.