We wandered around for a bit chatting which was nice but must have been hilarious and confusing for anyone around us as we kept switching from English to Spanish sometimes even in the same sentence. That's code-switching for anyone feeling up to learning some great linguistic vocab :P We went to a pretty little bar-restaurant to eat and sat outside next to a tree with fairylights around it :) I had queso fundido which is literally a bowl of melted cheese, but not just any cheese, a stringy, salty, love child of mozzarella and halloumi - Queso de Oaxaca. The cheese of all cheeses. Except for maybe stilton... It came with tortillas and salsa and so so good but so much and so salty that no matter how hard I tried, I physically could not finish it. We then went to meet his cousin and his cousin's new girlfriend for a drink in some bar which was nice. The bar actually played Spice Girls in a non ironic way. It made me laugh as Wil had just admitted it was the first tape he ever bought haha. They were apparently big in Mexico! Stayed at Wil's that night and he kindly took me to the metro station the following morning at 8am so that I could meet the others and go to see the ginormous pyramids!!
So at about 9am I met Hannah in the bus station and she introduced me to atole. This is a warm drink typical of Mexico which is probably best described as rice pudding without the milk. I had a coconut flavoured one but couldn't really tell it was coconut, it just tasted of the rice pudding juice. It was amazing. From there we caught the bus to Teotihuacán (the others were running about an hour late). Ended up paying the 52 pesos entry fee, which I later found out, to my dismay, was not necessary seeing as we have residency cards... Anyway it was totally worth it. We managed to tag along with a free tour guide who was doing some sort of community service because a nice English lady overheard me and Hannah speaking English. I really appreciated it because otherwise, when wandering around various ruins I'd've been like hmm great. Ruins. But it was cool with him because he explained it all and we saw the market area and the storage area and he explained that the entire city was rebuilt upon itself at the end of every spiritual age:
The most exciting bits though by a long way were the two massive pyramids; the 3rd largest in the world - The Pyramid of the Sun and the smaller one - The Pyramid of the Moon. Seriously, they are HUGE. Looking up at all the people struggling up and down the ridiculously steep steps, some of which so really thin you have to go sideways, you realise the immensity of the structure and HOW LONG IT MUST HAVE TAKEN!! So glad it was a cloudy, fairly cold day because I would have probably fainted if it had been hot cos it was such hard work climbing all the horrendously steep steps. I don't know how they did it cos the tour guide told us the women were mostly 1m50 and the men not much taller than that, so I really don't know why they made it so difficult for themselves!! When we finally reached the top of the Sun pyramid, loads of people were crowding round trying to touch something, which, after hovvering around for a while I found out was a tiny piece of metal which aparently draws energy from the skies or the gods or something and you 'charge yourself' by touching it. Had to wait SO long to get charged as people don't understand the notion of queuing or of being polite really here so every time I went for it someone else barged in front to seize the spot. Eventually I got a go. Bit of an anticlimax. Didn't really feel charged... lol. But then we meditated/sat soaking in the atmosphere/feeling happy with the wind blowing in our faces. It was a good moment. Wil told me (though I don't know how much of this is true) that on the top of these pyramids the priest would take the human sacrifice and cut the heart out, then would kick the body down the side of the pyramid for the others to eat when it reached the bottom. It was a bit weird thinking about this whilst I was there, surrounded by hundreds of other tourists and souvenir stalls...
I bought a nice blanket from one of the stalls as a good Mexico souvenir. It's really bright and colourful and has a pretty pattern on it :) managed to haggle it down by 40 pesos though I reckon I could have maybe got more if I'd tried really hard. Everyone, seeing us as obvious tourists, was shouting out deals to us: "nearly free" and "good price" were the most common of phrases, though I did get asked if I wanted to buy a turtle for my boyfriend... does turtle = love in Mexico? I'm not so sure.
Following the pyramids, we went to eat at some overly Mexican, definitely built for tourists restaurant. There was a buffet which was of decent value but for a vegetarian, really not, so I had enchiladas. Really good. Then had a great photo taken. It started off simply posing with the giant bottle of tequila that was wearing a 'Mexico' sombrero, but then the waiter taking the photo for us kept adding props and it ended up like this:
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