toros

This guy got hit by the bull a couple times, it was pretty sweet, he was getting really close and acting the most macho.

We went to the bull fight, corrida de las toros and it was.. something else. The matadores were obviously wearing their sequinsed outfits, marching around the bulls all macho, yelling at the bulls like ¨come on bull, what are you gonna do?¡¨ The show of it was fun and interesting, but my stomach turned when they killed the bulls. For the first bull he didn´t do it cleanly, so it was lurcing around with blood spilling out of its mouth like a river.

The vibe of going to the corrida was like going to a baseball game. As our Mexican friends tell us, it´s something mostly the yuppies go to, which was obvious. We had a really good time, as the experience goes. We got sombreros and smoked a Cuban cigar (almost everyone was smoking a cigar), and yelled ole! when he tricked the bull good or burro! when a couple of the guys couldn´t kill the bull fast enough (they call him a brute because it makes the bull suffer longer if the sword doesn´t pierce the heart instantly). the last bull wouldn´t die even after he was stabbed twice, so everyone in the crowd threw their seat cushons into the ring a booed the matador.

We visited the ruins of Tlaltelolco near the centro histórico, they call it the Plaza de Tres Culturas because there are the ruins, then a church was build right next to them in the mid 16th century or something, and then next to that is a modern government building of somekind. You can see them in the pictures above. The fountain doesn´t belong to any of those periods.

We hung out in the centro with Sergio, and were cleansed in the Aztec tradition. It consited of some kind of a liquid cleanser on our hands and body, we held the basil and it was rubbed on our face and the back of our neck with pressure, and being covered in the pleasant smoke of whatever was burning in the stone thing. Smelt real nice afterwards.

And, the ruins of Technoctitlan are literally right downtown in the middle of everything. I remember learning about these in middle school, the history says that this was the lakebed where the Mexicas saw the eagle catching the snake on the cactus (like on the flag) that the god Quetzalcoatl told them they would see, and that´s where they should found their city. So the entire downtown Mexico city is built around this spot, and some buildings are tilting and sinking because the earth underneath is soft.

Now we´ve made it out of D.F. and to Xalapa, Veracruz. The weather here is  cloudy foggy and cool - like fall ought to be! It reminds of of San Francisco a lot,  I like it. Luckily it hasn´t rained yet. Besides the weather, I really like Xalapa. It´s more of a low key state capital than Morelia, with it´s own vibe. Now that we´re in Veracruz, from here out we´re in coffee country and it´s deeeeeeeeeeeeliscious!

Today we visiting the Anthropology Museum here, the second most important in the country. The Gulf Coast is where the Olmecs are from, of the giant Olmec heads! So there were a whole bunch of those in the museum, pretty sweet. We´re couchsurfing still, and it´s treating us well!