Not sure if I’m going to stay here tomorrow or not. My legs are a little sore from all the climbing today. I also need to find someone to fix the zipper on my new shorts. Remind me never to buy clothes in Belize again.

There were a large number of tourists but the site is fairly large so it didn’t feel crowded. I lucked out and had perfect weather and no mosquitoes, which I’ve heard can be pretty bad.

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Busy day with siteseeing. The road from Chapultepec to here had some of the most amazing scenery I’ve seen so far in Mexico. The Sea of Cortes was pretty cool but when you start throwing massive snow-capped volcanoes at me there’s not much of a comparison. I’ll have to find out the name of the range I was riding by because it has to be huge. I’d guess the highest peak was at least 16,000 feet. Update: the volcano is called Popocatépetl and it’s 17,800 feet. It’s the 2nd highest peak in Mexico.

First stop of the day was the ruins at Xochitecatl. This area, on top of an ancient volcano called Cerro de Xochitecatl, was a ceremonial center and necropolis. The climb to get to the top was fun. I left my bike at the guard shack and went off exploring. The highest structure is the Pyramid of the Flowers. It’s about nine stories tall. The site had another smaller pyramid which was kind of neat because there were no stairs (there are now)–you would have had to walk the around the pyramid as the terraced steps wind up to the top.

Cacaxtla, another set of ruins close by, is supposed to have some nice murals but didn’t feel like climbing another massive hill so I skipped it.

Cholula, my home for the night, is a city right next to the much bigger city of Puebla. The first thing I did was ride over to the main square to see what was causing explosions so loud that they were setting off car alarms. Not sure what everyone was celebrating but there were all these guys dressed up in costumes firing off guns. It looked like they were re-enacting a battle. The noise was from the gunpowder that I watched them cramming into the muzzle. When those guns went off the smoke practically obscured the person shooting it and scared everyone even though you knew what was coming.

Once settled in a motel I walked over to see the real reason I came here: the largest (in volume) pyramid in the world. The Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl hasn’t been excavated so it just looks like a massive hill. It dates back to the 1st century B.C. Up at the top sits the Templo de Nuestra Senora de los Remedios which was built in 1594. The view was pretty impressive. Back at the bottom I walked around the base to see if I could get a tour of the tunnels beneath the pyramid. Nearly three and half miles of tunnels have been excavated. Crazy. The public can only go in about 1000 feet though. I found the place to get tickets to go in but it was closed.

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After checking out many of the crowded, narrow streets, almost all of which were filled with vendors, I headed over to the cathedral and the National Palace. Wow. Both buildings were quite a sight. The Metropolitan Cathedral, the largest and oldest cathedral in the Americas, was just immense. It’s hard to imagine how a building dating back to 1573 could have been designed so perfectly. Recent history is putting the design of many of the older buildings to the test however. Neglect and damage resulting from the magnitude 8.1 earthquake that hit in 1985 resulted in damage to many of the buildings. According to some people, some of the older buildings are even in danger of collapse. The government has been dumping a lot of money into restoring the area so hopefully the changes will help.

A quick plate of tacos and I was off to my next destination–Teotihuacan, home of the 3rd largest pyramid in the world, the Pyramid of the Sun. I just found out tonight that the 2nd largest in the world, the Great Pyramid of Cholula, is close to my route so I’ll have to stop and visit that one too.

The 30 mile ride to get here was nuts. Mex-85 is an absolutely chaotic road. The problem are the buses, taxis and vans that compete for passengers standing at the side of the road. There are 4 travel lanes and no breakdown lane so the side of the road turns into a circus. In some spots there’ll be a dozen passenger vehicles jockeying for position. Riding in and out of this mess is a good test of ones riding ability. At one point I did get to ride on a toll road and fortunately the operator that literally came running toward me as I approached the toll booth just wanted to show me where to walk my bike past it.

The town closest to the ruins, Teotihuacan will be my home for 2 nights. I’ll take a taxi over in the morning and check it out.

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