Sunday, October 26, 2008

Volcanos and Churches

When leaving teotihuacan, we met a children’s parade of the “Quinto Sol” kindergarden celebrating the United Nations Day. We’re slow and getting slower: it’s October 25th already, and we’ve traveled 100 miles from Teotihuacan to Cholula.
But first about this cheese: it’s what we thought, tasty white butter, essentially. It’s simply called “doble crema,” which is self-explanatory. Good as it may be, we can’t keep eating that stuff on a daily basis, given the lack of exercise.
Speaking of which, this morning we hiked up the Cholula pyramid, supposedly the highest around. We wanted to see the Popocatepetl volcano in some good light, and it was quite nice given the significant smog in these parts.
The “pyramid” is only a green hill now with a colonial church perched on top. The Spaniards sure did a number on this area and plastered their religion all over the place with overwhelming force: there are churches everywhere and a huge monastery, which looks like a major fortification. It’s all built from natural stones, perhaps the ones now missing from the pyramid?
In the campground, we met Anni and Wolfgang Zellinger from Austria and Jürgen Müller and Kerstin Drees from Germany. They’ve been traveling the world in their purpose-built vehicles for ten and two years respectively, and compared to them, we’re bloody amateurs with three weeks under our belt.
Two more bits of trivia: first, it hasn’t rained since we left Eugene, and second, today is the first time I’m actually cooking a hot meal.

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