I stopped taking a daily blog entry of each of my days in Mexico as I wanted to be free to enjoy at leisure my time over the Christmas and New Year period, but as a few things have happened I want to write them down before I forget, so this entry is a mish mash of days events thrown togeter in no particular chronological order. Also I am doing this from a friends computer so I have no photos to add here yet, but when I get back to my laptop I will try to slip a few in.
I spent a few days in Cuernavaca, a sleepy little Mexican town which my friend K´s family is building their own house from the ground up over a numbe of years. It is a nice open planned house which will probably end up being having three levels as well as parking space for about three cars.
The house in Cuernavaca has a great view of the surrounding countryside which I am told is lush and green with an intensity I cannot imagine in the spring, after the rains come and it all florishes to life.
The area also has a number of large spiders, snakes ( non poisonous ), mosquitos and scorpions, which I had the fortune to see first hand scuttle across the bathroom floor during the night. They are not as deadly as the media points out, Ks father has been bitten twice in his life by them and survived, and they keep anti sickness pills which counteract the poison in the house at all times so that there is no real emergency to even rush the bite victim to the hospital.
K also took me to a ancient aztec spa called a Temescal, which is like a ceremonial steam bathroom where you chant, sweat, drink tea and beat yourself and each other with leaves til you are ready to leave through a tiny exit but not before being reborn and washed free from your sins and past life. It was an amazing experience and one that K assured me would be in few if any tour books about Mexico, it being more spiritual than touristy and thus would be a great addition to my blog.
Sitting in a covered clay walled room you wear as little as you feel confortable in, drink herbal tea while a head magicman, kind of like a shaman but without any fancy clother or jewellry, sits and conducts the session. The heat slowly builds thanks to a wall furnace and lots of water, til you are sweating from every pour and even lying flat on the ground offers little protection from the humid climate inside the hut, and you tea is necessary to replenish your body liquids as you pray and thank the four winds and elements for the life you have been given.
At the end you are drenched by cold water, which in the humid condition feels ice cold, and many people scream, cry or laugh as the water is poured over their head. My turn made me laugh as despite watching it happen to the others and saying when I wanted it, I was still in mid breath when the waters came and the sudden rush of cold water over my face just made me almost choke and laugh at the same time.
K loves the experience and if she had the time and money is something that she would do on a daily or weekly basis, but its location means that its a little too far to visit and so it has become sort of a once a month spiritual treat for her, rejuvinating and clensing her mind and body
As a group we also visited the cinema to watch the new movie Australia, which was great and had excellent acting, special effects, a believable script and wonderful music and it had up all about to cry a few times before the final curtain came down.
When it was time to leave Cuernavaca I said goodbye to her family and thanked them for a wonderful time, their hospitality was very kind and generous and as they refused any money for food or lodgings the whole time I was there I really felt that despite the language obstacle with her parents that I got on well with the whole family.
Whoever said that Mexicans are not friendly or hospitable either had terribly bad luck or have probably never taken the time to try and understand or befriend them as certainly I have felt more welcome and at home here than in any other country since leaving the UK.
From here I took a two hour bus, only 155 pesos, to meet up with her sister who lives in the small town of Cholula near Puebla, which not many people know of but historians should as Cholula has a long history with influence from the original settlers, the Olmecs, the Toltecs, the Aztecs and finally the Spanish and indeed houses the worlds largest base pyramid in the world.
( For reference, the Great Pyramid of Giza was actually taller as it was built with very steep sides, whereas the Pyramid of Cholula was larger as it had a much larger base area however the sides were sloped much shallower thus it was not as heigh, and also built like all the American pyramids, its construction was small managable sized bricks of rock and stone. )
The reason why more people do not know of it, I believe, is that even before the Spanish destroyed much of the surrounding temples the pyramid itself had long since become covered over and hidden from site, only in the 1930s was it properly recognised and restoration started process started.
Currently only one side is partly uncovered, as indeed a great Spanish Church has been built over the top of it, as the grasy hill hid its former glory, and also an insane asylum is also built at its base in the 1910s before the pyramid was rediscovered.
Covering 25 acres, the pyramid had a final height of 181 feet, each side being 1300 feet wide, and so far archaeologists have unearthed over 5 miles of tunnels in the complex.
Ks sister has a great little house that is located so close to the pyramid that you can see the church at the top from the end of her road, and so we will be going there soon.
Her and her boyfriend, also took me into the town of Cholula and the place may be small but it was full of character, with a local drink that is sweet and potent, a central plaza as pretty and neat as any I have seen and am impressive flea market held during the weekeds where you can find everything from rubber spiders to movie posters of the early 1930s, original star wars figures to cast solid metal irons and those tiny peddal cars that children used to use in the early part of last century.
It was great to see the mix of artwork and handicrafts of every kind imaginable and I was impressed with the stylish belts made of can ringpulls and the handbags made from sweet wrappers, all of which if you did not look closely you could have been fooled into thinking was high end retail goods.
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