Oops, I discovered this blog a bit
late, but it might still be interesting to read for people.
In the last two weeks we have been
looking at several old d cultures and the highlight of the current
culture in Mexico, lucha libre fights. Staring at the lucha libre
fights, those are the fights of big muscled people wearing masks in a
boxing ring. Usually you have the goods fighting against the bads.
Everybody in the audience picks a favorite each fight and then they
start. Almost everything is allowed so people jump on each other and
it looks like they are slamming each other hard. It is all fake
though. The first fights you see that clearly, but the last fight are
the most experienced fighters and they do the most spectacular
stunts. Taking pictures was unfortunately not allowed. It is nice to
be part of the audience, because part of the Mexicans are really
fanatic, scream a lot and even bring instruments (like a Dutch
dweilorkest, but then better adapted to this situation).
Unfortunately we were put in the tourist corner were the noise was
less pronounced. You can buy lucha libre masks anywhere and a lot of
kids went home with a doll or mask. Mexicans are great lovers of
buying useless stuff. When we visited Teotihuacán we saw one family
with fake obsidian dolks, bow and arrows, annoying flutes which roar
and small statues. I think the Mexican tourists buy more than the
other tourists.
It is unknown who built Teotihuacán in
800 AD, but the Aztecs were so impressed by the city 500 years later
that they took over part og the gods and the building style and told
themselves they were descendants of these people. The complex is well
renovated (although they discovered later that one of the biggest
temples had a platform too many). The main temples are the temple of
the Sun and the Moon. The first temple is a breathtaking climb up,
but you get rewarded with stunning views of the surroundings and a
breeze. All the platforms of the many temples (over 40) have been
rebuilt, but only one complex has been restored, including murals. We
only had a guide book as background information because the guides
are the most reliable. One question of a tourist was: Why are the
stairs uneven? The answer of the guide was that during the building
of the city they not take any measurements because they didn't know
how to do that. That seems a bit unlikely with 40 platforms in
perfect rectangles or squares. Maybe the stairs have been a bit
corroded after 1200 years of use? Anyway, after this answer we
decided to do all the exploring of the temples on our own.
Fortunately we had visited the
anthropology museum the day before. This is a huge museum, of which
we only saw 1/4 in a whole day with the beginning of life in the
Americas, Teotihuacán, the Toltecs and the Aztecs. It is a good
museum with a lot of information, displays and rebuilding life size
or small size of temple complexes and if you want you can spend 3
days in here. We already had to skip the Mayas. It was good to
understand which culture arose in which time and who met who.
In Yucatan we spend two weeks diving
and visiting some Maya ruins in between. The ruins were nice but not
spectacular, compared to Tikal in Guatemala and Copán in Honduras.
The most famous old ruins of Yucatan, Chichen Itza and Mayapan were
too far away but the museum partially made up for this. Tulum and
Cobá on the Yucatan peninsula are old Maya ruins. Tulum is a
'recent' city, with its decline just before the Spaniards arrived and
is different than other ruins because it was build on the coast and
probably even had a lighthouse. Cobá is from the same time as the
city of Tikal in Guatemala, with its highlight around 1000 AD. Not
much is known of the city however and a big part of the temples are
still under a layer of trees. We climbed a 42 m high temple and all
the hidden temples were still visible in the forest from our
viewpoint. We explored the city on a bicycle (smart guys, to rent
these out) in the early morning. By the time we were finished, the
tour groups came in. Sometimes it helps to get up at 6 AM and catch
the first bus, which we learned after visiting Tulum at 12 in the
morning when it was so hot that we sometimes needed to stand in the
shade to cool down a bit.
We will definitely come back to Mexico,
not Only to visit Auke en Yolí, but also to see more of the country
and the history.
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