Road to Mitla

Mitla is a village site with highly decorated buildings. We travelled first to see an enormous Tula Tree

and stopped to admire and taste quesquillados made with pumpkin flowers and cheese, rather good

a further stop was made at a producer of Mescal which is the Mexican spirit with a worm in it! Basically distilled cactus juice and I can say it gets much better with age having tasted four!

We had a local police escort for the last part of our journey through the streets of the village. All the sites are surrounded by stalls selling a mixture of hats, clothes and artifacts and so we are getting quite good at the 'non gracias'.

The site is not large but has some tombs which we could visit, they are quite small inside and require quite a bit of bending not good for the knees, but this is me emerging

the carving and decoration is quite distinctive

and they also have some friezes still in place that can just be made out the faintly red bits!

Oaxaca and Monte Alban

Oaxaca is pronounced Wahaca which you Londoners may know as a Mexican Street food restaurant chain. The food is good and one of the specialities is chocolate chilli sauce which I have tried with both chicken and beef, enjoying it on both occasions, it's name is mole, pronounced molay which is perhaps unfortunate but the sweet spicy mix works well.

It is the easier option than the grasshoppers, although I did also try those first in an omelet dish and then by themselves, crunchy!

Another pleasant city with the inevitable cathedral, Mary chapel and monastery with beautiful cloisters

We visited the site of Monte Alban, a smaller scale settlement and believed not to be of a religious nature but more of a political centre, fewer temples but a very pleasing set up with a good breeze at the top of the hill.

Many items found there are housed in the museum in the town housed in an old Dominican Monastery.

Outside there was an art installation of lots of rather weird characters, probably some sort of silent protest.

This is the start of the malaria area so attempting not to get bitten! Weather warming up nicely so I am taking my tablets, spraying with deet and hoping for the best!

Journey to Oaxaca

We started at 8am so caught this sunrise from the rooftop restaurant of the hotel

A reminder of how poor some of the people are is shown by the homes of some of them

under the arches of the motorway and

this young girl selling at the side of the road

We passed then at some distance the two volcanoes outside Mexico, the smoking one

and the other larger showing over the cloud level.

Stopping at Puebla for lunch. A very pleasant city with a fine Cathedral, some good stained glass and painting

along with finely decorated panels and arches

and interesting modern sculptures outside.

A visit to a franciscan monastery with the obigatory Mary chapel followed. Extremely over decorated with lots of gold leaf in evidence

and a rather simpler side chapel

although the pulpit was quite pleasing.

It has a pretty artist quarter

and market where I bought a hand painted plate for not a lot!

A devil was patrolling the cross roads with his whip as some festival was going on

There were yet more volcanoes on view before we reached Oaxaca

We stopped to view a very large cactus plant

yes, that is me in front of it!

The scenery in the shadows was quite spectacular

And caught a good sunset before arriving late in Oaxaca.

Mexico Extra

As I walked around there were some lovely places like this statue of the eagle and serpent again, surrounded by Jacaranda

This is the opera house, through the bus window!

and a strange bench behind the cathedral and outside a lovely restaurant

You might have to play a bit with your computer to see clearly.

We also had a visit to a touristy sort of place where first of all they explained about the uses of the cactus plant which range from producing drinks of various alcoholic intensities, arrow heads, sewing needles and thread and effectively paper which is the outside skin of each leaf.

They also tried to sell us some fancy hand carved masks, copies of the ones found in Teotichuan, but they were very expensive as using proper semi-precious stones to decorate.

Teotihuacan

Visited this vast site some 35 kilometres from the city via the plaza of 3 cultures, showing aztec,

colonial, Franciscan monastery

and modern architecture. It was also the site of student rioters being killed in 1968.

On the way out of the city we were passed by this van, street food  I think it's called!

In the car park of the site we clubbed together to see the men do the following one of them playing a pipe!

 They spin round 13 times which is to do with the Aztex calendar and as their are 4 of them it makes 52 which is not their weeks but the number of years in a century but I suspect something has got lost in translation.


Teotihuacan is an extraordinary area and it is difficult to understand how the whole place was originally conceived. There are 13 temples in all and I did climb the hightest one but the following few pictures hardly do it justice

 

I climbed this one which is the biggest and the pictures show me at the bottom and the top

The picture above shows just how steep some of it was, my toes just showing at the bottom looking down a flight of stairs.

Leaving the site for a late lunch we then headed for the shrine of St Mary at Guadaloupe which is apparently the most revered place in catholic Mexico as it houses a piece of cloth with a depiction of the virgin herself given to the Bishop in the area at the time so that he would build her a church. Personally it looks like a painting to me but...... 

 What was more interesting was that the buildings are sinking in different directions and walking round the old church is somewhat disorientating.

A new modern church very similar in layout to Liverpool Catholic Cathedral holds the piece of cloth and was built when the current Pope came to beatify the chap who collected flowers (on my birthday) as a sign to the Bishop that his visions were real.

So I know where to come to celebrate my birthday with a real fiesta!