You'll have to bear with me today as I have quite a few disparate ideas running around in my head and I'm going to try and get them all down.
I'll start with the easy task of recounting what I've been up to since my last post. I visited the legendary ruins of Teotihuacan close to Mexico City (it took me this long to go there because of the time it took me to learn how to pronounce it so that I could buy the bus ticket! ;-P). The amazing thing about Teotihuacan is the sheer size of the ruins and the pyramids. The Piramide del Sol is the 3rd biggest pyramid in the world after Cheops and Cholula and the city ruins cover an area of some 30 square km. Perhaps most fascinating about the site is the mystery surrounding its founding, its inhabitants and its abrupt decline and abandonment. For reasons still unknown some time in the 7th century was abandoned and the civilisation that flourished there disappeared. The site, with its ritual processional way and its two gigantic pyramids remained a place of pilgrimage for the civilisations that followed (like the Aztecs), and it is easy to see why just from the monumental layout of the place. The setting itself leaves something to be desired though, as the modern day town of Teotihuacan is right next to it and dispels some of the magic of the place. It was also the first tourist place that I've visited where the foreigners outnumbered Mexicans (as most foreigners don't bother heading north and stick to southern Mexico).
The next day I headed south-east to Oaxaca (pronounced wahaka) through some of the most gorgeous landscapes that I have ever seen (so gorgeous that I would love to have the time, and Ray Mears survival skills, to just head off into the wilderness for a week or so). Here I visited Monte Alban (White Mountain), so-called because of the whitish colour of the local rocks, an ancient Zapotec city (the oldest city in the Americas). Although not as grand as Teotihuacan it is very well-preserved and therefore retains a charm missing from the former. But probably more exciting for me here in Oaxaca is one of the local delicacies that I have been dying to try for some years now. Here they call them chapulinas, but you would call them grasshoppers. They are a very odd taste sensation indeed; there are 3 different types that you can get: pequenos (small, about 2-3mm long), medios (medium, up to 1cm) and grandes (large, about 2cm) and you can have them with chili or without. The small ones are so small that it's almost like eating some sort of powder (until you look closely that is) and taste like an Iranian dish called ghormeh sabzi (for those of you who don't know it, it's like salty oregano). The other two are more similar and are more lemony in taste, although I prefer the larger ones as they are crunchier (actually I've got a small bag of them in front of me now and am munching away as I'm typing). Tasty!
The other thing I wanted to write is more of a rant, although I hope I don't sound patronising. When I was in the Copper Canyon I couldn't help noticing that there was a fair amount of litter strewn about and it made me rather angry to see that people had so little regard for a place of such beauty (because for me untouched and unspoilt nature is the most beautiful thing in the world, no matter what it is, and anything that people do automatically detracts from it, and so all we can try and do is minimise our impact). Now initially I thought it was just tourists, but then I went to a place where tourists would not go and it was just as bad, and so it had to be the people living locally. The thing is that poor people who live in places of such natural beauty rarely have an incentive to protect it as it doesn't bring them as many material gains as exploitation, and of course they have as much a right to a decent life as anybody else. It's really important that such people are educated and adequately remunerated to preserve their surroundings, otherwise they'll go down the same route as western Europe, where the areas of unspoilt nature are so pitifully small, and we are the worse off for it. This idea was reinforced when I visited Teotihuacan, where the foreign tourists were by and large OK, but a number of Mexicans were clambering over walls and I even saw one guy pissing against one of the ruins, even though there was a toilet not 200m away. Now I don't have any solutions or answers, but it's important that we do something soon before we really kack this place up beyond all repair. And the West ought to be proactive in funding and promoting the clean up, otherwise it just smacks of hypocrisy.
OK, that's about it, apart from a small request. I was wondering whether those of you who read this blog could, every now and again, just let me know what is going on, etc, etc, with a short e-mail, as they are very much appreciated. Now I know that my Dad is going to say that this is karma and poetic justice because I never write to him and he'd be right, but still... Anyway, I'd better stop there and save the rest for another day.
I'll start with the easy task of recounting what I've been up to since my last post. I visited the legendary ruins of Teotihuacan close to Mexico City (it took me this long to go there because of the time it took me to learn how to pronounce it so that I could buy the bus ticket! ;-P). The amazing thing about Teotihuacan is the sheer size of the ruins and the pyramids. The Piramide del Sol is the 3rd biggest pyramid in the world after Cheops and Cholula and the city ruins cover an area of some 30 square km. Perhaps most fascinating about the site is the mystery surrounding its founding, its inhabitants and its abrupt decline and abandonment. For reasons still unknown some time in the 7th century was abandoned and the civilisation that flourished there disappeared. The site, with its ritual processional way and its two gigantic pyramids remained a place of pilgrimage for the civilisations that followed (like the Aztecs), and it is easy to see why just from the monumental layout of the place. The setting itself leaves something to be desired though, as the modern day town of Teotihuacan is right next to it and dispels some of the magic of the place. It was also the first tourist place that I've visited where the foreigners outnumbered Mexicans (as most foreigners don't bother heading north and stick to southern Mexico).
The next day I headed south-east to Oaxaca (pronounced wahaka) through some of the most gorgeous landscapes that I have ever seen (so gorgeous that I would love to have the time, and Ray Mears survival skills, to just head off into the wilderness for a week or so). Here I visited Monte Alban (White Mountain), so-called because of the whitish colour of the local rocks, an ancient Zapotec city (the oldest city in the Americas). Although not as grand as Teotihuacan it is very well-preserved and therefore retains a charm missing from the former. But probably more exciting for me here in Oaxaca is one of the local delicacies that I have been dying to try for some years now. Here they call them chapulinas, but you would call them grasshoppers. They are a very odd taste sensation indeed; there are 3 different types that you can get: pequenos (small, about 2-3mm long), medios (medium, up to 1cm) and grandes (large, about 2cm) and you can have them with chili or without. The small ones are so small that it's almost like eating some sort of powder (until you look closely that is) and taste like an Iranian dish called ghormeh sabzi (for those of you who don't know it, it's like salty oregano). The other two are more similar and are more lemony in taste, although I prefer the larger ones as they are crunchier (actually I've got a small bag of them in front of me now and am munching away as I'm typing). Tasty!
The other thing I wanted to write is more of a rant, although I hope I don't sound patronising. When I was in the Copper Canyon I couldn't help noticing that there was a fair amount of litter strewn about and it made me rather angry to see that people had so little regard for a place of such beauty (because for me untouched and unspoilt nature is the most beautiful thing in the world, no matter what it is, and anything that people do automatically detracts from it, and so all we can try and do is minimise our impact). Now initially I thought it was just tourists, but then I went to a place where tourists would not go and it was just as bad, and so it had to be the people living locally. The thing is that poor people who live in places of such natural beauty rarely have an incentive to protect it as it doesn't bring them as many material gains as exploitation, and of course they have as much a right to a decent life as anybody else. It's really important that such people are educated and adequately remunerated to preserve their surroundings, otherwise they'll go down the same route as western Europe, where the areas of unspoilt nature are so pitifully small, and we are the worse off for it. This idea was reinforced when I visited Teotihuacan, where the foreign tourists were by and large OK, but a number of Mexicans were clambering over walls and I even saw one guy pissing against one of the ruins, even though there was a toilet not 200m away. Now I don't have any solutions or answers, but it's important that we do something soon before we really kack this place up beyond all repair. And the West ought to be proactive in funding and promoting the clean up, otherwise it just smacks of hypocrisy.
OK, that's about it, apart from a small request. I was wondering whether those of you who read this blog could, every now and again, just let me know what is going on, etc, etc, with a short e-mail, as they are very much appreciated. Now I know that my Dad is going to say that this is karma and poetic justice because I never write to him and he'd be right, but still... Anyway, I'd better stop there and save the rest for another day.
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