Patabugen

Posted from Mexico City, Mexico.

The trouble with eating fresh Mexican fruit in the glorious Mexican sun is that it just doesn’t last long enough. I’m not talking about the Sun, of course. He’s been there since Nanahuatzin jumped.

I mean the food. It only lasts so many minutes, and if I were to enjoy eating in the sun as long as I’d like, I’d be as big as Templo Mayor. Which I visited yesterday, by the way. It was built over by the Spanish, but in the past 100 years has been excavated and is smack bang in the middle of Mexico City. Very convenient for tourists, not so much for those who want to excavate the rest of it.

To save some confusion, what we know as the Aztecs were actually called the Mexica (pronounced Mexi-sha) and were one of several groups of people who made up the Aztecs. They had the biggest empire when the Spanish arrived, hence the name of the country today.

I saw the place of Human Sacrafice, the museum even has a nice (if slow) animated display showing the 5 types of human sacrifice:

• Heart removal
• Skinning
• Death by arrow
• Burning
• Decapitation

Depending on to which god you are being offered. Even outside of sacrifice, the method by which you died determined to which god you were delivered and so which afterlife (or rebirth) you earned. Drowning suddenly sounds quite appealing.

After several astoundingly interesting hours at Templo Mayor – which means Major Temple, presumably named as it was the not only the center of the Mexica empire but also the literal center of their universe – we (Gloria and I) visited the humongous cathedral build by the Spanish to replace the silly old Mexica stuff with awesome Jesus things! (Their thoughts, not so much mine).

Oh, and I spent a full 20 minutes watching the huge flag in Zocalo (The heart of Mexico City and one of the largest city squares in the world). Partially because it’s mean to be lowered by the army at 6pm. However it wasn’t, due to a huge march through the city talking about a revolution.

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