Today we took a tour to four different sites. Our first stop was the archaeological site Tlatelolco. The area is known as the square of three cultures. The first culture represented by the remains of an Aztec pyramid. The other culture is the 16th century church dedicated to St. James. The third culture is some remains of more recent colonial structures. In 1968, there was a military massacre committed against the students of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) that currently surrounds the square.

Our next stop was the Shrine of Guadalupe, a Catholic pilgrimage site. There are two Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The original was completed in 1709. The modern basilica was completed in 1976 and has a capacity of 10,000 people. Basilica de Guadalupe serves as the country’s national shrine and houses the famous cloak containing the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I’m not going to go into detail as to the original event. Enough to say that a peasant wound up getting the image of Mary on his cloak.

I’m going to post some pictures taken from the bus on our drive to the next site. They give you a some idea of how people live. The first picture is of the Mexican cable car. The first part of this project was inaugurated on October 4, 2016. The line is 4.8 kilometres (3.0 mi) long and runs between San Andrés de la Cañada and Vía Morelos (in Ecatepec), through five intermediate stations. It reduces traveling times between those points to 17 minutes, down from the hour-long commutes between the same points using ground transportation. The Mexicable operates 184 cars, each with a capacity 10 passengers. The predicted capacity is 3,000 passengers per hour for each line and 29,000 passengers per day, with a fare of 9 pesos as of July 2020.

Our third stop was tequila tasting and lunch. We got to taste four or five different varieties of tequila and mezcal. We also learned about what the indigenous people could do with cactus plants to make paper and other items such as needle and thread. We saw a demonstration of natural dyes. I also bought a really nice woven blanket for the gal that is watching my house.

Our last stop was the ruins at Teotihuacán. The Teotihuacan culture predates the Aztecs. Teotihuacan is a vast Mexican archaeological complex northeast of Mexico City. Running down the middle of the site, which was once a flourishing pre-Columbian city, is the Avenue of the Dead. It links the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, the Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of the Sun, the latter two with panoramic views from their summits. The Avenue of the Dead was actually a river. The names of the pyramids are not based on any understanding of what they were at the time they were built. Actually, inside the pyramid of the moon, they found a sculpture of the goddess of water, Chalchiuhtlicue. The sculpture is in the museum in Mexico City, and I posted a picture of it in my previous post. I started at the pyramid of the moon, and walked down the Avenue of the Dead to the pyramid of the sun. It was a beautiful day, with a gorgeous sky. I enjoyed just sitting and watching people and clouds go by.

It was a long exhausting day so for dinner we just stopped at a little cafe.