Feliz Navidad

Well its nearly Christmas now and there are lots of tinsel and people dressed as Santa Claus around in Mexico. However it is quite hard to believe that it can really be Christmas time because it is hot and sunny and not dark all the time.

We spent a couple of days in Mexico City which was a lot more fun this time around.

One of the best things was the Museo Nacional de la Antropologia, which is a really nice modern building in a park in Mexico City. It has a bewildering British Museum sized collection of exhibitions on the peoples of Mexico and Central America before the arrival of the Spanish. There were lots of amazing artifacts to look at but particularly the Aztecs, who used to live in Mexico City, didn't seem particularly appealing. I think this is mainly down to their enthusiasm for human sacrifice. They used to constantly sacrifice slaves and prisoners to their gods, sometimes as many as 20,000 at a time.

We also went to Teotihuacan, a pre Aztec city about an hour's drive from Mexico City. There are two enormous pyramids there the Sun Pyramid and the Moon Pyramid. The only two pyramids in the world to be larger than the Sun Pyramid are the Cheops Pyramid in Egypt and Cholula also in Mexico, which is in disrepair and apparently looks more like a hill.

The whole site was concieved on a huge scale and took ages to walk around. The strangest thing for me was that the Teotihuacan's built the Pyramids first and housing and other public buildings came later. That made me think, what made a group of people, living presumably in wooden huts, decide to build what were at the time two of the largest buildings in the world! Also how did they know how to do it? Maybe time for someone to come up with another alien theory....

After Mexico City we went to Taxco which is a pretty little town on a hill, unfortunately blighted by a serious traffic problem. We stayed in a beautiful former monastery. The local taxis were Beetles which Steve cleverly managed to pack my Dad, me, him, two big rucksacks, three little rucksacks and a big suitcase into.

We are now in Puebla, a beautiful colonial city, where we are relaxing for a couple of days. We are heading off to Oaxaca tomorrow, to spend Christmas there.

Just remains to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.