Another day trip before the wedding was to Our Lady of Guadalupe and Teotihuacan, the great pyramids north of mexico city. But to start the trip, we visited some ruins in the city first. this place was called the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, or place of three cultures. this was because there were the ancient temples, the newer churches, and then the modern building around it.
as you can tell, the church looks just like the pyramid brick wise. thats because when the spanish came, they tore down all the pyramids they could, and used the stones to build their own buildings. what stands now of the ruins are re-constructions using stones that were littered all about.
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inside the church
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from there we went to the church of our lady of guadalupe. this is probably the most sacred site to many modern mexicans. the original church that housed the original depiction, was closed for many years due to the cities subsidence. due to this a more modern basilica was built, which can house 50,000 people at once. in order to see the painting of mary, you take these moving walkways that take you past in order to see.
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the whole group that day
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and then we were off
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these are the original aztec hairless dogs
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then we got a demonstration of how tequila is made. this is the heart of an agave and thats a super syrup they use to distill the alcohol from.
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and then we were at the pyramids
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it was a super steep climb
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noa and I climbing
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did a photo shoot with the ladies on the way down
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thanks chente for the picture of us!
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and then, as it happens, some rain that had been threatening to come visit us all day hit us just as we were getting down off the pyramid. and it hit us hard! and of course we ended up having to walk about a kilometer in the rain.
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of course it let up as we got to the cars. from there we retreated to some food to warm up, and as we were leaving i captured the last image of the day
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it was an amazing experience to see these old temples. to think that they made these all over mexico, and kept making them larger and larger.