02/20 What a difference 2000 feet makes. The wind was still howling today but once I dropped down to 7100 feet it stopped being quite so frigid. I was still pushed around a little but I had a wide shoulder when it was the strongest so it was fine.

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.

GPX Track

This morning I jumped in a taxi for the short ride over to Teotihuacan. The ruins there are amazing. I entered in at gate 2 which is right next to the Pyramid of the Sun. Everything is laid out along the Avenue of the Dead so I don’t think I missed anything. I even climbed up the very steep steps to the top of both giant pyramids. It was still a little hazy but the views were incredible.