sacrificial ducks

hola

today me and sarah bullock went to a place south of mexico city called xochimilco which has a huge canal system and lots of floating gardens and plants. we didn´t see the floating gardens, but we did go on a boat on the canals for 2 hours which was nice as it´s still really hot here during the days. lots of other boats tootling along, and other little boats selling stuff to the tourists on the boats, like beers and corn and mexican handicrafts like rugs. there were also floating mariachi bands playing to some boats. all quite surreal actually but fun.

yesterday we wandered around various different areas booking accommodation for when we come back to mexico city after our trip to the north tomorrow. we found a cool hostel in zona rosa which is the pink zone, ie the gay zone. lots of really good places to eat and drink and generally have fun around there, which will be cool as we have been quite middle aged and not done much drinking and/or dancing so far in 2009. then we wandered to an area called la condesa where we saw a house that was owned by a previous president of mexico, but is now empty and apparently might be haunted. there was a small elephant in the garden but i don`t think it was a ghost elephant as it turned out ok when i photographed it.

at one point we wandered into a vaguely strange area called san rafael to check out a hotel called hotel oxford, which was recommended in lonely planet if you like run down and drab kitschy type places. it was like the hotel out of the shining. while we were standing in the reception some strange mexican boys dressed in blue lycra or as reindeers came over to talk to us. they were doing some mobile phone promotion stuff. we took a photo of them as they looked quite silly, but then we got the hell out of the area as we decided it was potentially dodgy, plus sarah said one of them smelled of tuna. we ended up in a little fair ground near a monument to the revolution which was also kind of strange. so that was yesterday. also of note i finished my book and have started my next one which is black swan green by david mitchell. sarah finished her book too which was by james frey. our room in our hostel which we have had to ourselves so far has now been invaded by 2 germans and someone from somewhere in the east. the german couple were being all couply when i was trying to have a siesta which i found slightly rude so i mentioned the war. not really but i did leave the room quite loudly.

saturday we went on a day trip to teotihuacan, which is an amazing ruin in the north, 50km away. en route we stopped at plaza de las tres culturas which was interesting for many reasons, being mainly:
it´s an old aztec site, but also has one of the first spanish colonial churches built in mexico, which is built of the stones from the aztec buildings which the spaniards destroyed
the aztecs used to sacrifice 2 people per day, 1 at sunrise and 1 at sunset, mainly their enemies, so it was useful to stay friends with the aztecs generally
they used to use chocolate seeds to buy things, a slave cost 20 chocolate seeds. i´m going to buy one
the name mexico comes from co-xi-me (mexico backwards), which means place of the belly button of the moon
the mexican flag picture is of an eagle eating a snake, which was based on a hallucinogenic peyote trip somebody had that was something to do with when you see an eagle eating a snake, that place will be the centre of the aztec world, and that was mexico city
the aztecs used to eat ice cream as a special treat by having runners that ran the 26km to the nearest volcano to get ice, and then relay raced it back to mexico city and sold it
in 1968 the government introduced taxes to pay for the olympic games that year. people started protesting in the square in la plaza de las tres culturas, and soon began protesting about other things in general. one day, the army, on goverment orders, went into the surrounding apartment blocks and shot all the protestors in the square, all 500 of them. the next day they swept all the mess up and life carried on as usual, as did the taxes, and the olympic games.

then we went to see the iglesia de la virgen de guadalupe, a bit further north. this is an amazing church and is full of people all the time. you go on a little travelator past the mexican catholic version of the turin shroud. this was apparently the rug which juan diego wrapped himself in when he witnessed la virgen for the first time, along with some roses which was proof that it had happened as it was winter and there shouldn´t have been roses. la virgen is more important than jesus in mexican catholicism because when they first saw images of jesus they couldn´t understand why they would worship a human who was in pain and suffering, as this wasn´t something their gods would do. but the image of the virgin of guadalupe has a sun behind it and she looks like she´s standing on the moon, she has darker skin, plus she is pregnant which reminds them of one of their gods too, so it made a lot more sense to them. we took lots of photos of the church as it is really interesting architecture, and quite art nouveau. there are no pillars in inside it. i also discovered that afternoon that sarah really doesn´t like photos of flowers where the flower at the front is focussed and the ones behind it are blurry, nor the other way round where the background is focussed and the foreground blurry. i told her she would come to appreciate these types of photos as she grew up a bit.

we then stopped at an artesiania workshop thing. a man showed us how many cool things you can do with an agave cactus, which is what you make tequila from. you can pull bits of its leaves off it and use them as paper. also you can make a needle and thread from it and do sewing which could be useful for me as i now have holes in my last remaining pair of trousers. i tried to buy some jeans but mexican clothes are different sizes, ie they are smaller and a bit rounder. we also drank some tequila and looked at some obsidian at the workshop, and i did some dancing when the band were playing. sarah videoed this, and i will try to put it on the blog at some point.

then we finally arrived at teotihuacan. this is a really huge site, about which nobody seems to know anything. it wasn´t built by the aztecs, but they lived there for a while. i suppose it was built by the teotihuacans, but nothing of who they were remains, so it´s all a mystery. it´s very impressive, there is a huge pyramid of the moon and of the sun at either end of the avenida de los muertos. we climbed up both pyramids which was quite steep and exhausting, so we sunbathed on top of the pyramid of the moon to recover.

that night we had 3 beers in the hostel rooftop bar. somebody tried to get us to go on the nightclub tour organised by the hostel. we decided we´d rather eat our own vomit than hang out with hostel freaks on the hostel party bus.

tomorrow we are leaving for queretaro in the north west, then san miguel de allende, then guanajuato, then back to mexico city to meed rod.
that´s all for now.