When we woke up this morning it was already 9:00am. For sleeping in a tent with open windows that is actually quite an achievement. So fully charged for the day we tried to leave our campground only to find another car parked in the middle of the exit road. As the bushes on the right were blocking Marijke from getting out, Patrick went to look for the owner.
Whilst Marijke was waiting she noticed an avocado tree right in front. Hopefully ours will look the same in a few years 🙂 (which reminds me … Els, you need to take it in before it starts freezing at night…). In Mexico they probably don’t have that problem although it is getting more chilly in here too. We only reached maximum 30°C the last couple of days.
Once we got out, we went for the first big tourist attraction … our very first Meso-American site visit in a city called Tzintzuntzan. If you see this name on the map, you just can’t ignore it. The name simply begs for further exploration. 🙂
There were hardly any explanation boards but there were people available to provide you all the historic information you wanted (in Spanish of course but our knowledge must have improved as we could perfectly understand the guy). This is also how we got informed that we were walking over dead people, literally. You could actually see the skull fractures on the ground. Apparently the rain cleans more and more ground revealing new bodies within the cemetery. We weren’t sure wether to be amazed, appalled or annoyed that this historic evidence was not more protected. So we went for the ‘ow’ reaction and took a picture. 🙂
He also explained that there was a palace on the site for the leader of the army and that he used to take the leader of the defeated army back home to have him offered to the god of war. He was also allowed to have 5 wives which were all living in the same house. The picture below used to be their in-house patio.
Tzintzuntzan is also known for one of the few sites where they found symbols carved in stones. We’re not sure what they mean but the left one is ‘ladder’ and the right one could be ‘water’ or ‘grain’.
Next to the palace you could see big walls rising. These are actually the sides of the temples (or Yacatas as they are called). There were 5 located right next to each other.
From the top of the hill you also had a beautiful view on the nearby lake. We didn’t go there but we did have lunch in a local ‘Cucina Economica’ where we ordered ‘chilli negro’ and ‘bistecca en salsa’ which both delivered a plate with rice, beans and meat as well as a basket with green (suspicious?) tortillas. It didn’t look as fancy as yesterday but it definitely tasted as great!
Ready for the rest of the day, we continued our journey towards the next site, Teotihuacan. All started well until we wanted to avoid Mexico City city centre. The moment that we decided to take a parallel route, traffic signs went completely missing and our GPS went crazy which resulted in driving 80km back north. 😦 At least we had a pretty view out of the window.
After some stressful moments and incredible driving manoeuvres (especially from others), we managed to find our campground.
Tomorrow we will visit the oldest site. More amazing pictures to come for sure!
That’s the way – aha aha – I like it!
When you take me by the hand
Tell me I’m your loving man
Keep Calm and Drive South 