Aztec Ruins Trip...Says It's Not His Fault

Don’t worry, I’m not talking about Moctezuma again, I promise. This post is only about our recent trip to see some more Aztec ruins. This time it was a mysterious temple on top of a mountain in the small village of Tepoztlan. But first I have to recap the rest of the weekend.

For the past month or so that I’ve been here I have been trying to find die. By now it should be obvious why. Normally, this isn’t a problem for me because I either carry one with me or know exactly where I can get one at any given time. However, in the midst of my all-night pack-session before my early morning flight, when I spent about seven hours prepping myPod and about 20 minutes packing, remembering to bring die just slipped my mind. This does not mean that die is not important to me or that I don’t need die. I have a history of forgetting things that are important or necessary. For example, going into my last semester of college I forgot to bring pillows. Those of you who mock me and think this is funny should be so kind to remember that I DIDN’T forget my pillows seven times in a row. Don’t be so negative. Also, you could load a moving truck halfway full (or halfway empty for all you downers) with all the things I’ve forgotten in my life. They range from leaving my Cal Ripken baseball glove at the field to forgetting to bring my little sister home from school. Guess which one I still get shit for. The point is I still love die even though I forgot her.

That is why on Friday afternoon Bryant’s Myth and I went to our thirteenth, fourteenth, and bizteenth stores in search of die. I don’t know why Mexicans hate die, but I’m trying to use my work connections to put more die in their plans for the future. To give you an example of just how taxing and how strange the search has been, last weekend I bought a board game called “Big Biz” that had a picture of two dice on the box thinking that it was fate, only to go home and open it up to find the two tiniest dice I’ve ever seen. That’s more ironic than writing a song about irony that mislabels ironic events. Anyway, on Friday I ended up buying a $20 game of rummy just so I could have a normal, beautiful die to play with. So Friday night I finally got to play beer guy on Mexican soil and then we went to a bar to watch our new friends La Floridita play a concert. We also met a rapper named Emsí Burron, who, I’ll be honest, has a certifiable, club-banging jamb on his hands. I know that nowadays it seems like everyone wanna rhyme, and there are a lot of imitators out there, but he had the whole bar singing his song, including me, because I practiced in the car on the way over.

This weekend we split up the two days because Bryant always wants to do boring stuff and I always want to do incredibly fun and amazing stuff so it seemed like the fair thing to do. He had Saturday (except for one event I chose, try to guess) and I took Sunday. So Saturday morning, after I spent over an hour trying to “buy” tickets to the Virgin FreeFest in September and eventually getting them (WHEW), we metroed into the neighborhood of Coyoacán. Coyoacán is the trendy, artistic neighborhood where Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky lived. We went to the Frida Kahlo museum and immediately spit in their faces by asking how to get to Leon Trotsky’s house. We moseyed around his house/museum, saw where he lived and died, and just generally took our time. We weren’t exactly Russian to get out of there.

This is where Trotsky worked and Mariela the cleaning lady works.

Once we saw everything there was to see we wandered around the streets looking for chocolate and churros, eventually found some, and sat inside, sheltered from the rain. After that delicious snack we took the metro into the center of the city to the National Museum of Art.

Blah, blah, blah, art, art, art. From there we went to a pulquería to try a traditional Mexican drink I’ve wanted to try, pulque. Pulque is a thick, white drink made from the fermented sap of the maguey (agave) plant. It looks, feels, and tastes like someone chugged a bunch of sour milk, haucked up a bunch of loogies, and spit them in a glass. And it smells worse. As you gulp down a gob of the liquid, it remains connected to the rest, so as you bring the glass down and the pulque levels out you can feel some slide out of your throat and back into the glass. But before you say “I’m about to pulque,” you should know that it’s really not that bad, kind of healthy, and is pretty popular with the indie crowd. Saturday night actually ended up being kind of disappointing once we got home because all of our friends flaked out and Lucy, my Mexican girlfriend, never called me back. We were originally going to have a going away party for our friend David, who is leaving for Singapore, but then that turned into going clubbing, and then that turned into people staying in, which turned into Bryant and I playing beer guy by ourselves, slowly realizing that our night was not going to progress beyond that. Not that that’s a problem, because I love beer guy and we needed to rest up for my day, but it would’ve been nice to say a proper goodbye to David, especially since he is a Mexican guy who likes fun. (the band).

Before I begin talking about the glory of my day, you all should know that I do enjoy going to things like Leon Trotsky’s house and art museums, but more than anything I enjoy the work of my favorite artist, Mother Nature. Which is why on Sunday I dragged Bryant out of bed and onto a bus to Tepoztlán, a small town about an hour south of the city. We got off the bus and walked about a kilometer (that’s 20% of a 5k) into town. Tepoztlán has a really cool small-town feel and the street we walked was lined with tiny shops, restaurants, $4 massage and steam houses, and all sorts of mystical stuff. At the end of the main road is the trail that leads up to the town’s main attraction, el Tepozteco. El Tepozteco is an Aztec temple on top of a mountain that was built to honor the god Tepoztecatl, who just so happens to be the god of pulque. We made the not-so-easy climb up the steep rock trail to the temple, where we sat on top of it and ate sandwiches as our legs hung over the edge, the sun shined down on our faces, and we enjoyed the beautiful views of the mountains and the town down below, just as I had planned. After lunch we pranced around the area around the temple and chased the monkey/lemur-type things that we hanging around looking for food before heading back down the trail. On our way down we stopped at a stream and decided to get off the trail and follow the stream to a waterfall, where I had to be talked down from climbing up the waterfall to sit on a ledge about 30 feet up. There was a trail near the waterfall and obviously we decided to take it. I’m SO glad we did. We kept climbing and climbing and we eventually found ourselves above the temple, looking down on the peasants below. It seemed like every time the trees opened up the view was even more beautiful and even more panoramic. It wasn’t long before I started hearing that familiar PS22 voice urging me higher and higher and higher. It was such a great climb. We had to do stuff like squeeze through a narrow rock opening to get to a tiny cavern that we used a root to get out of and keep going (and we used to rappel on the way down) and free-climbed a 30 foot rock wall. We spent about six hours on the mountain and were so high up. The views were just amazing.


Look how much higher I went than Bryant.

After making our way down we speed-walked back through the town (unfortunately I didn’t have time for a massage) to make it back to catch the last bus. I must again stress how cool the town was, especially as in the twilight hours as everyone was finishing up dinner. A couple of guys sitting outside a restaurant even called out, “Americanos! Bienvenidos!” and gave us a thumbs up as we walked past. Local kids were all running about, looking like they were about to get a massive game of Manhunt going, and I just knew that some kid was about to sneak his first kiss down by the creek with his next-door neighbor of ten years, Graciela, whom he just realized, that after years of playing in the streets together, was blossoming into a beautiful young woman. I just knew it. The town oozed a distinct summer night feel that really hit me hard in the memory box…and I loved it. It was a beautiful end to a beautiful weekend, and certainly one I won’t forget.

Besitos,

Jim

P.S. Those boys down at the Google have been working hard at gadgets to make this blog better and I’ve decided to start incorporating them. At the bottom you’ll notice a Picasa photostream of my latest pictures and a link to an album that holds all the pictures I’ve taken so far in Mexico City. So check them out and see just how vain Bryant and I really are. Just another reason those Google Boys are going sttrrraaiiight to the top.