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This is me entering Mexico, my way of saying hi to it. It is really cool with me looking at the lights of the city with some thought, some curiosity and even some doubts at the same time.
So long for the doubts. As soon as I enter the city my overly confident mood comes back and I immediately jump my way onto Tula, heading to see the legendary giant soldiers that protect the spirit of the city.
Yeah after a long trip and hard work finally I am with my new friends looking together towards the same direction. Unfortunately I don't have their patience so I leave them after 15 minutes.
These guys have their butterfly armors on their chests with colorful feather helmets. They are elite and strong warriors.
And they have cute butts too!!!!!
After all this nudity I decide to explore the other pyramid those guys are looking to protect. These guys are the warriors of the toltec civilization which was built prior to aztecs and effected their architecture. These remains are the most complete remains from the toltec civilization.
Another cool view of the overall site with the third pyramid which is used for storage of valuable little jewelry etc.
This is a cool way to park your car isn't it? Never imagined the cactuses could be that cool!!!
Those combi's below are what corresponds to the dolmus's in Turkey. I actually sat near the driver on the way but they don't pass the money the way we do it in Turkey. They loose time on the start waiting for each customer to pay. They have a lot to learn from Turkish =)
Finally giving myself a treat I tried their enchilada with bistec and green salsa sauce. It simply is amazing I am telling you....
This is the sihhiye bazaar in Mexico =) Mexicans have a lot common with Turkish people as you follow up with the next page on my list.....
Soo after a day of hard work our next day arrives, we start our journey from the famous catedral metropolitana. Below are i) me making an ugly appeareance to occlude the beauty of the catedral, ii) The chapel with christs crucification, covered with pure gold. Christs crown was pure gold, it is a nice picture. iii) the huge organ catedral is famous for iv) Christ finding the light v) The church itself vi)Another chapel of huge size made of gold
Once we are done with the church we go to templo mayor, which is the aztec remains in the middle of Mexico city. The funny thing is that they knew that there was remains under the catedral, yet they didn´t think it would be around it, they made an ugly aqueduct from bricks passing right now through the largest pyramid in that area in 1900!!!!
Then we decide that we would like to have a picture together in front of the church. My buddy Mehmet is on the picture with me. What would I do without him!!! I mean it, you should have seen me before and after he came.. Now I am at least not shouting as much like I am a tourist!! Come and rub me... We will be together for the first 10 days of my Mexico trip, and you will hear more about him again when we go to Costa Rica. From there I am heading Ecuador and he is heading Jamaica,, su cilgin Turkler (Crazy Turks)!!! =)
On our way back we make a time travel... We were going to go for the spiritual cleansing, yet I was scared that they would say only way is to sacrifice me on a chac mool. P.S. Those guys in Jaguar costume,, they are real!!! I mean there were Jaguar warriors in Aztecs who actually wore that costume!! And I was complaining about my army outfit =)... And in this mural of Diego Rivera you see one of those jaguar warriors kicking ass of a conquistador pretty badly.. Yeah at the war sometimes you can´t even die with full dignity =)
We end our second day walking 100 blocks in the mexican mercado (our hostel owner was really mad I called it a bazaar =). It is way too cool and way similar to Turkish, some guys were calling people with exact same intonation with "Geeel abla geeell, domatesin kani burdaaa!!!"
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Yes it is our 4th day in Mexico City, and we decided that Mexico city tour would not be complete without actually attending a demonstration with violence and fights. The political situation in Mexico is not extremely stable right now, poor people rebel against uneven distribution of wealth. This causes a lot of local fights between people and cops, ending up in people who are wounded or dead throughout demonstrations. As you see they are pretty violent fighting till the end.
But remember we are in a touristic utopic world... Soon after all this fight they realize that there is nothing better than peace and love, so they give up hand to hand making a hippy circle in different levels !!!!! =))
( I hope obviously you got that the previous violence and fights were joke. It was just for a police academy kids performance in honorary of a national vacation on sunday =P ) (Thr main target for that joke was my ma!! =) )
Now the ones below are the yurdum manzaralari "my homeland views" from Mexico... First one is mexicans doing yoga on the street under the rain with some salsa music on the background!! The next one is mexican doner, and the third one is their celebration of the rebel of Zapatista for the land reform helping the farmers. The picture on the side is worth much more for me, it is taken from the park near Palacio des Bellas Artes. On this park in a central gazebo there were a bunch of music groups changing and playing music. The one that was playing when we went there was from venezuela. The amazing part is, the group is playing salsa, it is raining heavily, there are like around 300 people around the gazebo dancing salsa crazily in a meditated state with each other.. Their pants are mud up to their knee level, and they are still dancing, it is just for the joy of the dance itself alone, they even dance guy to guy, proving that they are definitely not there to dance for hitting girls. It is absolutely pure passion of salsa just for the sake of it. Simply amazing.
But it also killed my perceptions about the famous mexican machismo, seeing also a lot of gay mexicans in the country. I guess liberalism and freedom of thought are pushing hard over the long hard pushed traditions in mexico. This means we are down one serious opponent for being the most macho civilization in the world =)
Now we come to the beautiful palace of fine arts building. It is a gorgeous building both from outside and inside, and I simply just loved the building so you get 3 pictures of it.. It is used for fine arts performances. It also has a very elite set of murals inside, including the most famous Diego Rivera mural "Man, controller of the universe". This painting is an amazing painting with an equal amount of speculations in its history. Originally Rivera made this painting for Rockefeller Center´s entry in New York City. The painting contains man in the middle controlling different aspects of science in a four leaf of a flower, with astronomy, biology and atom. On the left side there is capitalism with police attacking demonstrations and on the right side there is Lenin and Trotsky happily helping the crowd. The portrait of Lenin there forced Rockefellers to demolish the painting and give Rivera the full price and firing him. But rivera was not going to give up. He came back to Mexico city and made the exact same painting again, this time to be exhibited forever with even a higher publicity because of all those events. I can say that this painting is one of the wonders of the world which symbolizes soo much in the destructive ambitions of men and the historical war between communism and capitalism..
After all this hard work, we decided to drink with Mehmet, and bought the cheapest beer and tequila of mexico =). In this picture you can see our tequila, glasses, and lime, and also my 1.18 liter beer bottle guaranteeing my fairy tale sleep =)
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After a crazy night decided that we were too wasted to spend time safely in Mexico City, so we decided to head down to Teotihuacan, pyramides in locals way. Teotihuacan is the biggest city in Mexico that has preserved its nature. Its secret is that it hasn't been discovered by the conquistadors and so it was not plundered. It has passed through several natural disasters yet it was not destroyed. Temple of the sun in this city is the second largest pyramid after the one in Egypt. To sum up, words are too short for explaining the importance of the city in Meso American history. City is designed as the center of the universe, it has temple of moon and temple of the sun and various different temples dedicated to gods like thunder god, serpent god, etc. The most important street is the avenue of the dead, which ends up in Temple of moon and is the main street used in rituals etc. The city reached size of 100.000 in its times of glory.
After summarized explanations the pictures are below. i) Me and Mehmet posing with Pyramid del Sol (sun).
The stuff we are wearing is some aztec clothing we found for 10$ on the site as it was way too windy and cold out there. We were the only ones wearing it the arabic style in the place, and because of that I guess we took too much attention... Actually the girl in the fourth picture wanted to come and take a picture with us!!! ii) I try to carry Mehmet too on the way to Pyramid Sol=) iii) I change my mind and decide to carry girls instead of him..=) iv) Then an evil woman comes and separates the fellowship of teotihuacan!!!
After that much pain I decide life is meaningless and try to throw myself out from the pyramid sol!!!!!=)
Then Mehmet saves me and we end up thinking the world will never be same again Looking to the horizon of uncertain future with pyramid of moon in the background. =)
As we move back to Mexico city, moon pyramid looks at us with a wise pose telling I will be here no matter what you do, I have buried my tears inside, and I will live my curse which is to stand here as everybody else comes and goes. You traveler, go and don't look back!!!! You are not the first, and you won't be the last!!!! At least this was what I felt =)
Yess, hard days work with a lot of desire, tragedy, plays and uncertainties,, we definitely deserve some good food =). This place called kioskito is close to Chapultapec station, and for the first time, we decide to go to a guidebook place skipping our instincts for the first time.. The place is an awesome restaurant with amazing food. Especially try their specials, and don't forget the desert!! The desert I ate there is definitely among my top 5 ever, and it is called imposible (deserves its name). And it has the hottest server I have seen so far in Mexico. She was so cute and so nice that we decided that it would be a huge mistake to not to take picture with her... After me trying 15 minutes to explain the meaning of my name to her (damn how can you explain hope in spanish, or even with sign language!!!), I decided that life is cruel and unfair, and now I have much better excuse for learning spanish even more and better!!!! =)
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The next day we head for Museo De La Artes. But we see some demonstrations instead. It is very interesting, the arts museum is just in front of the senate, and people rebelling live in tents in front of the museum and start demonstrations regularly. They sometimes live in these tents for months when demonstrations are long. You can see the cops waiting for them on the picture in the right. Actually the tent area was really tough 35 minutes after I took that picture with people shouting loud and crowded in front of the museum with slogans. I know my ma will kill me even if I survive this trip myself =). To learn more about demonstrations reason please read my mexico page not individual city page.
Enough about demonstrations. This is the art museum, an interesting museum with just enough elite pieces. The pieces I like the most are recorded in my shared excel sheet linked from my home page if you are interested.
This is where Frida Kahlo lived throughout her childhood. The problem about this museum is that it is too fake, you really don't know what is real and what is not, as they filled it with some other exhibition stuff.
It was an interesting architecture, but beside, we didn't like it..
Mehmet looking cool while I am monkeying around in front of the mausoleum in front of Trotsky's house, also the place he died.
After enough visiting, it is time to fuel up... Today's meal is Pozole, which is mainly corns boiled in hot water with chicken. It is really delicious I am telling you, it is definitely no joke. And it is hot in both means!!! Don't believe it is tasty? Check me on the right=)
And the night!!!!!!!!!!! This was our best night in Mexico City, and the most dangerous one!!! We didn't take our cameras for this night, it is why you won't see pictures this time. We went to "luca libre" the mexican version for American Wrestling!!! It was in a pretty unsafe place, so we left everything valuable to hostel leaving 20$ for our potential muggers =).. We were late and they didn't take us in, we sneaked in through a side door for the last 10 minutes of the wrestling, it was one of the funniest I have seen in my life. Imagine seeing some 300$ muscle guys faking smashing each others balls and 500 mexicanos cheering like crazy!!!! so crazy that nobody even notices that two tourists are laughing their stomachs out while watching just near them. From there out we say the fish that sinks goes sides *Batti balik yan gider* =) and we go ahead to Plaza Garibaldi, in which we see an amazing mexicano festival to our luck, having 15 mariachis with a famous entertainer from mexican TVs, and a hot singer with a gorgeous voice. From there we go for our Pina Colada on the street and enjoying the fact that we are the only two ttourists in the middle of 1000 mexicans, and probably only two turks in mexico city of 25 Million =).... So bad that we didn't have our cameras!!!!
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Yeah long night, early wake up. I am really curious when my body will give up!!!
Anyways, I start the day with giving some suggestions to Mr. Diego Rivera the famous painter. He is so busy listening to me that he doesn't notice Mehmet hitting on his girl there. Ahh us Turkish =)
And some history. This is the exact studio in which Frida Kahlo caught Diego Rivera cheating on her with her sister. Even the view was exactly same as she also have caught them from the patio we are viewing. Just imagine a naked girl and some painter's ass on the view and you learn the history =)
This is the bridge between house of Diego and Frida, but we couldn't get in to Frida's house through the gate as it was locked. I guess it was locked since the cheating of Diego for him.. We call it "To lose the boulour at home while going to Bagdad for rice" in Turkish =)
Yeah Mehmet insists that we need to see some bones and skulls, so we head for the anthropology museum... On the way we see some statues and we decide to be tourists!!! =)
After that much of walking the water in the lake feel reaalll gooood trust me =)
This is the perfect fake of teotihuacans temple of the serpent. And our clothes even fit in... Soooo the main idea is us and the fake stones of a glorious aztec history, I guess as it is fake it deserves to be posed with us monkeys =)
Obviously some more monkey business =).. The one on the right is a toltec god for thunder if I remember correctly. The one on the left is purely aztec.
A small piece of culture. Toltecs are the civilization that built the giants of Tula, for a more detailed explanation of those civilizations timeline, visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_chronology
Me running with a native towards Mehmet!!
After all this long day the perfect end was with the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico. It was one of the top 10 shows I have seen. They were really good, it is the mexican equivalent of turkish Anadolu atesi. They had really interesting show with wide variety of costumes and scenarios, varying from deer hunting aztecs to duelling muchachos for a chica...
Here I especially recommend the second picture on top in which the delikanli is kissing the girl while also turning the rope around them!!!! I should learn how to do that =)
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Yeah,,, today mainly passed while trying to finish this site and it is 3 pm right now. The fun is just about to begin though. I will be going for a salsa class for 180 pesos for 3 hours with a teacher, and as the class is not crowded I guess it should be a pretty good deal for around 16$ =)
Soo this ends my mexico city trip... Hasta Luego en Zihuatanejo&Ixtapa or the Beach!!!! =)