Awesome day tonight. I was feeling a lot tired and reserved when I got into the bus full of people. But, we met at the “headquarters” and changed buses. We all had an introduction and we were on our way. I heard the girl next to me say that they talk way faster in Mexico than they do in Argentina. I found out later she was Brazilian. Later, I mentioned to the guide that I thought Mexicans spoke Spanish quickly and he disagreed, but then later said that it’s like US Americans in the South speak slowly, and New Yorkers speak quickly. So, I wanted to say… so are you saying that maybe you do speak quickly? But I didn’t. I just let it go. Anyways, we stopped first at Our Lady of Guadalupe, the most visited (pilgrimaged) church in the world second to the Vatican. The story goes like this: Indian goes to Bishop and says Bishop, our Mother Mary wants us to build a church in x location. Bishop says I don’t believe you, bring back a symbol. Bishop dreams that Indian will bring back flowers as a symbol. Indian picks flowers in the middle of very cold weather at the site where the church will be. This doesn’t make sense because the weather should be much too cold for growing roses. Anyways, Indian goes back to Bishop with roses. Indian unfolds his shirt and there is an amazing portrait (a miracle) of the Blessed Mother. Apparently. This “miracle” is still hanging in the church to this day. It was made out of cactus, and due to the material that cactus is made from, it should have disintegrated a long time ago. A miracle, or so they say. So, we got to see this piece of “art”. I took some pics. My tour guide asked me a couple times what I thought of it, I said I thought it was pretty cool. But personally, I was thinking it really would be quite a miracle if that picture is really what was on the guy’s shirt when he let it down. He told me finally that he thinks the Indians played quite a trick on society. Kinda what I was thinking too. It was time to move on to the highlight.
My head bobbed in the car while the guide explained the history on the way there. Once we got out and moved around though, I was fine. We first stopped and took a look at the cactus plant, watched obsidian being carved into beautiful figurines, and tried some tequila shots. Good way to start a big tour.
The pyramids, which we finally got to see in person, were awe-inspiring. Up at the top of the ridiculous amount of stairs which I did climb by the way, barely (I didn’t realize I was that out of shape), people looked like little ants looking up at the top. This is a society that scientists know very little about. They have no idea who lived here, nor do they know why they abandoned it; what is believed to have been THE largest city in the world way back in one of those time periods. I had some nice conversations with some great people, and by lunchtime we were all great buddies. The 2 margaritas that knocked me on my ass helped that out to. We really had fun, and I had a great Mexican dish full of lots of meat in a bowl, served with tortillas that you can choose to use or not. I did, and used quite a few of them. I was terribly drunk after the 2 margaritas though. So drunk that after coming home, taking a 4 hour nap I woke up and physically got sick, on 2 separate occasions. Not only that, I had THE worst pulsating headache I had felt in a long long time. Not a good way to end the night!
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