Please note that if you’ve been trying to contact me at my usual address (the leopadron.com one) I have permanently turned it off and you can’t reach me there. Apologies, but as an address that I’ve had for over 10 years, it’s finally gotten to the point where my constant war against email spam was being lost, despite every firewall, blacklist, greylist, and security measure I threw against it. Inotherwords, F$*@ spam.

I have turned over my email matters to the competent people at Google, and am using a gmail account. You can find out how to contact me by clicking on the ‘email’ link in the right, which will reveal my new email address.
Hope to hear from you!   — Leo

I have a ton of photos to upload, and rest assured, that will happen soon.

In the meantime, I have been experimenting with autostitch panoramas + zoomify with good results. One photo that I took in particular was the Diego Rivera mural in the Palacio Nacional in the Centro Historico. Also, I have an amazing panorama of Teotihuacan!
Let me know what you think!

Teotihuacan is definitely one of the most impressive sites one can visit in a lifetime. The problem with Teotihuacan is that it’s a complete mystery. It’s such a mystery that it has frequently been fodder for UFO conspiracy theorists such as Erik Von Daniken (whom I admit reading as a kid and thinking he was on to something) suggesting that alien visitors built the place.

It is otherwordly, but undoubtledy human, and built in the first century, just about the same time Octavian was busy converting Rome from a republic to a dictatorship. The Aztecs, who moved to the neighborhood over a millenium later drew great inspiration from it, and did their own archeological studies — concluding that among other things, the sun was created here, and that Gods lived in those there houses, before being destroyed.

What stymies me about this site so much is that I want to know everything about it, and there’s so little to go on. Experts disagree utterly on which civilization even created it. What is known about the place is that it was burned to the ground in roughly the 7th century, a time where the lights were going out all over mesoamerica. Why the 7th century is such a critical time for the deaths of so many great civilizations is another mystery, but a sudden climate shift is pointed to as a major culprit. Central mexico, a region with a reputation for being dry and dusty, once had great swaths of coniferous forest, much like the pacific northwest of the United States. And when Teotihuacan was a living city, it’s principal building material was pine. All that remains is what didn’t burn on some mysterious day 1300 years ago. Agriculture surely collapsed as the water supply dried out, and trade with it. And when civilizations can no longer trade resources, they frequently fight over control for them.

Teotihuacan is an hour drive from Mexico City through some amazingly vast unincorporated and unplanned slums — some that rival the size of San Francisco. I took a tour bus there operated by a competing hotel. Since I already speak Spanish, I opted for the spanish tour, but there were a few other Americans who hitched a ride, so the tour was bilingual. I mention this only because an interesting situation arised once we were on the site. Which was that our tour guide (an extremely nice guy) took only us spanish speakers aside, and in hushed conspiratorial tones, gave us the super sekrit down-low:

Listen to me. The jewelery sellers on site will give you glass instead of the real obsidian, and the silver isn’t that pure. If you want the real stuff, there’s a place in Taxco that will give you a good deal. But don’t tell the tour operators or they’ll kill me.

Here’s hoping the tour operators don’t read this blog.

Among other highlights of the tour were, I drank some amazing shots of tequila distilled on site, a bit of pulque (a mescal beer), and was pleasantly hammered by the time I finally got near the pyramids.

Among my American companions (the ones blissfully unaware that the on-site jewelery might be slightly fugazi) was a plucky senior with a walker who was accompanying her daughter who was in town for a conference. Although it was clear that she was not going to climb any pyramids, she proudly informed me that she had last been on the site 40 years ago, and climbed at the early dawn and sat on the top watching the sunrise before tourists arrived. It’s for this reason I climbed the Pyramid of the Sun twice. Just in case the next time I get back here, I too am in a walker. The second time, I jogged up the steps to see how far I could go before getting exhausted — the answer: halfway up. After nearly puking, I took a few deep breaths and meekly walked up the rest, completing the journey in just under 4 minutes.

We left Teotihuacan and the jewelery hawkers for the last stop of the tour: A visit to the Cathedral of the Virgin of Guadalupe. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Virgin of Guadalupe, she is the most Mexican thing about Mexico, and the only miracle within the Americas recognized by the Vatican. You may never have learned a thing about Mexico besides Salsa dip, but in your lifetime you’ve no doubt seen this broad — on the tinted rear window of the late model Toyota Tercel that cut you off in the highway, or on the muscled arm of a tough guy bouncer in front of the club. More than just an icon, the Virgin of Guadalupe is practically a brand. The biggest brand you’ve never heard of, and the one responsible for making Mexico a Catholic nation, and well, Mexico.

Cuauhtlatoatzin saw Cortes destroy his native Mexico City when he was already a 47 year old grandfather. His wife died several years later due to illness. Both of them had been converted to Catholicism in their 50s, his taking the name Juan Diego. He was despondent over his wife’s death, over the devastation of his homeland, and would console himself with long silent walks around town, clearly a broken man.

During one of these walks, a mysterious nahuatl-speaking apparition of a lady suddenly came and implored Juan Diego to ask the Bishop of Mexico to build a cathedral for her. Who this mysterious lady was is — well a mystery — but some say Juan Diego actually saw Tonantzin, none other than the Aztec moon goddess — now homeless and frightened — returning to her people after the wholesale destruction of their temples, their gods, and their cities to beg for help in restoring her worship by building her a new place to live.

The Bishop of Mexico was naturally a tough sell, and told Juan Diego he needed a sign. Juan Diego promptly forgot the matter and went to tend to his dying uncle. On the way to his uncle’s house, this rather pushy apparation stopped him again, and assured him his uncle would not die if he could only convince the Bishop. She told him to go to a certain “hill” (actually a ruined Aztec temple) and collect some flowers and place them in his shawl as a bindle, but ONLY to unravel it to the Bishop.

These flowers were noneother than cardinal red roses, something unheard of and unknown in the new world at that time. Juan Diego unfurled his shawl to the Bishop, revealing these roses, and a bonus: a miracle apparation of the Virgin in the very cloth. The Bishop was so taken, that he fell to his knees and ordered the construction of the cathedral two weeks later. The lady also kept her word, and Juan Diego’s uncle was cured. The worship of Tonantzin would return again, this time reborn as the Lady of Guadalupe, patron saint to the downtrodden indigenous people everywhere. For the dispossessed Aztecs looking to cling to anything to believe, the virgin of Guadalupe was a powerful symbol, and in a seven year period conversion to Catholicism happened en-masse, largely around worship of Guadalupe.

The actual shawl (made out of maguey cactus fiber) is in the very Cathedral which the Bishop of Mexico ordered to be constructed upon witnessing the “miracle”. I have taken a photo of it so you can see here:

And the cathedral here:

Like many old buildings in Mexico city this one has a foundation problem and you can see it listing northward.

As you can see, today’s entry was mostly about yesterday. As for today — today was a day for me to rest, amble around town (I revisted the Zona Rosa and Centro Historico and took more photos) and buy some trinkets and eat tons of street food — delicious tamales for one thing.

Tomorrow is my flight back. I am ready to go back after a hectic week here, and loving the time I spent here. What I’ve come to love so much about Mexico City are the layers. This is not a place that could be willed into existence with a single theory. Mexico City is just a complex place built upon an awful past, made beautiful by improvisation and the slapdash fixing of things constantly being rebroken, and by pockets of high culture that grow like moss between the cracks. It’s sometimes a medley, sometimes a dirge, of different influences, circumstances, happenstances, people, economics, hellishness, highmindedness, fantastic art, cheap thrills, carny barking, tubas and killer traffic circles with monuments on top of them. And living among all this are 19.2 million souls who keep the place humming and keep mending breaks with the epoxy of hope. Can’t tell you how much this place has made me think.

Wallet-wise, I couldn’t have asked for a cheaper trip too. I think I have just discovered a new second home city. Next time, however, I’ll go in the winter months when it’s -17 outside in Minnesota and not gorgeous as it is now.

In penance for yesterday’s verbal diarrhea, this will be a relatively short entry. Suffice to say, I went to Teotihuacan today and climbed some pyramids and it was great. In fact, I climbed the pyramid of the sun twice, the second time timing it to be just under four minutes. I went twice because I have no idea if and when I’ll ever come back to this spot, and if I’ll be able to climb these pyramids at all by then.

I am happy to say that the breathing situation is improving along with my overall comfort level with getting around in this fair city. I had booked this trip a while back considering moderate levels of danger for an average tourist, but was worked into a near panic by well-meaning friends and relatives tales of abductions, muggings, and so on. It remains true that the green and white VW bug taxis are to simply be avoided. It’s near universal agreement that hailing one is a game of russian roulette, and you’re bound to be set up, driven somewhere secluded and then robbed down to your skivvies, so wear a smart pair at least. If you avoid these cabs, your personal safety outlook becomes much brighter.

Having said all this, I think Mexico City is fairly safe. I lived in NYC for about six years, and I think the perception of overall safety is comparable. Presently I live in Minneapolis, a small midwestern city with a high standard of living and education that is nonetheless plagued by gun homicides just north of the downtown. There are places in Minneapolis I simply will not go to, and I expect the same for this city. Bottom line, it’s just worth it to have eyes in the back of your head wherever you go in this world and avoid drawing attention to yourself: This goes to you, Mr. Señor Frog t-shirt toting baseball cap wearing white socks and white reeboks guy. Not hating, just issuing a heads up: long pants and conservative attire. Cover your knees and anything with a Nikon logo on it.

I visited Chapultepec this morning, which is the “Central Park” of Mexico City, with fragrant groves, winding paths with street vendors, and some of the finest museums in the world. I spent most of my time there in the Anthropological Museum, focusing upon Aztec and Toltec artifacts. I can go into much here, but the very best examples are in this museum, including the restored terracotta idols of their gods, pottery, gold handiwork (the same that surely enticed the Spaniards), jade pieces, and on a more grim note, the tools of the trade used for ritual murder. There were also large installments of actual temple facades that were excavated, and these were really fascinating to look at. Afterwards, I took a long peaceful walk around the greens and set upon my next destination:

Coyoacan!

Coyoacan is a residential town south of Mexico City that is known for having pristine colonial architecture. This is true. It’s also upper middle class, which means lots of relaxing bars and cafes, and an overall congenial atmosphere. It’s jam packed with people, visitors and locals alike, around two very well manicured gardens. I absolutely recommend a visit here if you’re the type that is just looking to sit at an outdoor cafe in the evening and pavaler with fellow travelers or just people watch.

It’s worth noting that when Mexico was still a giant lake, Coyoacan was a shoreline, and this is where Cortes set up camp for the retaking of Mexico City. After the conquest, this is where he also resided with Malina (his native wife).

Malina is an enigmatic character in Mexican history and worth a bit of digression here. Contemporary Mexican attitudes hold Malina in high contempt as a traitor to her people. Reality however, is always a little more complicated:

It’s worth noting that Malina was not Aztec. She was from a tribe the Aztecs had conquered and was a slave when Cortes found her. It was a lucky discovery as she was a polyglot who not only spoke Nahuatl (the Aztec language) but several other languages and was also an amazing quick study of Spanish. Moreover, she was politically astute, and very likely a gifted intellect who had previously faced living out the rest of her life in bondage. Cortes may have represented for her her freedom and her meal ticket, but for whatever the reason, they became lovers, and this coupling is probably one of the most historically important occurances within the history of the Americas. Because through Malina, Cortes learned everything he needed to know about Mexican politics: Including the important fact that most neighboring tribes absolutely despised the Aztecs, and which ones would be most likely to align with the Spaniards. Cortes, with Malina as an interpreter, made alliances with virtually all of Mexico’s enemies and this was instrumental in the ultimate invasion, which was achieved with the help of indigenous armies opposed to the Aztecs.

For whatever reason though, “Malina” is shorthand for a Mexican woman who betrayed her own people, and it’s because of this, the word malinchista exists in contemporary Mexican parlance: Any mexican woman who goes for foreign guys and puts down Mexico.

I mention Malina because her house is in Coyocan, and it’s a very nice house. And one would think a very old, nice house that belonged to Mexico’s most famous traitoress would be noted, but it’s not. A plaque was entirely absent, I had to ask locals where it was.

Coyocan was a pain in the butt to get to. But it also introduced me to the necessity of taking a bus. I had hopped on the Metro Subway hoping to hop off and be smack dab in the town center. Instead, I emerged next to a Mall by the edge of town. A nice mall, with nice people in it, but all the stores were international boutique stores the same as can be gotten in any upscale mall in the world and therefore of little interest to me. I went to Starbucks and bought my espresso and gloomily considered my options, given that it was getting late in the day.

I had to take the bus. Not just any bus, but the little rickety green guys with an occasional virgin of Guadalupe decal in the rear window.

This was going to be fun!

Surely, I muscled my way on a crowded bus and paid the two peso fare (about 18 cents) and I was on my way. That little 15 minute bus ride completely melted away my travel fears, as I realized, this was as dicey and things were going to get — and it really wasn’t all that bad. The bus was filled with regular bored people of all walks just looking to get from point A to point B. Even if I was a mark, I would have been a hard one to pickpocket, as I keep my wallet in my front pocket always.

It also led me to the observance that how one travels can be equally as instructive as the destination itself — in some instances even more so. For instance, I am traveling alone on this trip. I have taken my last three vacations while in different relationships, and traveling with your significant other is almost always more about the two of you than it is about the trip.

But traveling alone is a different animal: It’s about the practice of travel. It’s about overcoming the obstacle of first being alone, and then being alone in a strange place, and then making the strange place uniquely yours, as well as engaging the people who live there in a very direct way that is impossible when traveling with a partner or with a group.

Getting on this little bus brought me the closest to the ordinary, and as I was bounding over the cobblestone streets jam-packed with other people, I decided I had just gotten about as close to Mexico City as I was going to get, and I had just earned a piece of the place that was uniquely mine. Admittedly, one very inconsequential piece but the underlying principle is the same: the value of exploration stems from overcoming fear of the unfamiliar and becoming familiar. Do this and you will have in the truest sense arrived at your destination.

Finally, I have a few impressions about Mexico City that I’ve formed within my three days here so far. I may revise these after my trip, but here goes:

The stereotype of Mexico as a superstitious patriarchal society is declasse and outmoded — at least within the capital. The year is 2007. Everybody is on the internet, 24 hour news cycles are everywhere, and most people have cable. The adaptation of common global social mores in most urbanized places is worth some serious study, but Mexico City is capital C cosmopolitan, whether it has been so since the days of Porfirio Diaz or if this is recent I don’t know. The people here look good, walk smart, and are (mostly) free of judgment. Gay couples hold hands in the street and couples of all stripes kiss in public. Political activism is visible, the cuisine and art scenes are fantastic, and specialty bookstores are everywhere.

The strangest observance I must report is sitting a table away from a young teenaged mexican male freshly bandaged explaining why he had a nosejob and his rhinoplasty procedure at length to his two friends. I don’t hold cosmetic surgery as a positive thing, but the fact that some guy could be open to a frank discussion of vanity with two male friends says that Mexican machismo is by far more elastic than than the stereotype would have it.

Second, Mexico City is surprisingly an accommodating place for middle class people. I was born in Caracas Venezuela, which used to have a thriving middle class, but in recent times had been slowly drifting towards the bifurcation of the extreme rich versus the extreme poor. It’s worth noting that yes, Mexico does have extremely rich people, people who can buy my piddling existence 150 times over — and in pesos no less. And there are poor people, though I did not see a homeless problem worse than I had seen while living in NYC. But what’s important to note is the throng of people of decent means, who drive the same make/model car that I do, wear smart attire to work every day, and down tiny cups of coffee with friends in inviting cafes. It’s interesting and refreshing to note that far from being the crime-ridden hellscape the D.F. is frequently depicted as, this is an inviting and livable city. The only real sour points of life here are (1) the awful awful awful quality of breathable air and (2) the traffic. I’ve extended my Frogger metaphor to now include virtually any street or byway in the city, not just the Paseo de la Reforma.

Well, I’ve written more than my share for today, and will now rest up. Tomorrow I may visit Teotihuacan. I’ve been putting it off for some reason, but I know I have to do it before I leave here. I believe it’s some kind of crime of tourism to leave it off the list. More on that later!

P.S. Many of you have emailed me, feel free to leave comments on the blog as well. I love comments, because they — well, attract more comments from other people.

Last night before bed I was doing some stretching exercises and got hit with a terrible headache. Literally it felt like a cascade of sharp pains and I immediately had to stop and lie down on the floor, and stumble around for a bottle of ibuprofin. The pain subsided in 20 minutes.

I believe this is altitude-related, and I am not too concerned because I felt much better on the second day. But it reminds me just how out of whack my body is to the altitude, and how I have to take it easy until I am better acclimated. Today was MUCH better by comparison, and my breathing feels normal again. What I can do physically is somewhat limited, and I notice myself still taking breaks to sit down and catch my breath.

I awoke this morning bright and early at 7am (why can’t I do this at home?) and scarfed down a quick breakfast of eggs, bacon, green rice (yes!), and something that certainly tasted like an enchilada, but it was in lasagna form. Even though the descriptions sound dubious, it was all delicious, and certainly hit the spot.

I ventured into the Zona Rosa, which in english translates to “tourist trap”. This is actually a very walkable and somewhat pleasant area south of the impassible Paseo de La Reforma, where I snapped the photo of the Angel of Independence in my previous entry. A word about this avenue: There are times where earlier experiences prepare you for later challenges in life. In this instance, it was this thing:

This is all you need to know about Paseo de La Reforma, and consider this your training. The fiats, vee-dubs, and renaults are the logs, and snakes. You are the frog. And if you THINK that roundabout is a one-way, guess again. It changes after five minutes in the opposite direction. Frogger is a curious game inasmuch as you don’t win anything other than your continued existence as a little frog in peril of being squashed at any moment.

On the other side of that thing is the Zona Rosa, which is a small collection of streets roped off by opposing avenues. Inside, there is a small set of cobblestone streets, restaurants, bars, cafes, clubs, and STARBUCKS.

There is a Starbucks next to where I work, so I hardly needed to see one in Mexico City, but I am a creature of habit. I walked inside to get my doble espresso (a daily ritual for me) and noticed that they say the same exact dumb Starbucks things in Spanish as they do in English. “Quieres un ‘venti’ latte?” And true to Starbuck form, it costs muchos pesos.

But back to the Rosa. This is your basic bar/restaurant/club/cafe commercial district, which at 10 in the morning, was not of too much interest, so I headed to the Insurgentes metro station, and took my first subway ride in Mexico city. It was not unlike what I was doing 10 months ago, which was taking the subway every day in NYC but this time with marble-clad flooring. Everybody knows a REAL subway has grimy concrete made smooth by a million trampled wads of bubble gum. Also, it should be 100 degrees with 100% humidity all the time, even at night. Marble flooring and good ventilation is for the weak! Thank goodness at least the subway cars were themselves rickety, other wise I would have been completely put off.

Now, Mexico City is blissfully CHEAP. I am talking you can buy tons of things for less than a dollar cheap. I believe I’ve taken out 182 dollars in pesos, and I’ve only spent about a quarter of that in two days. It costs literally 20 cents to ride the subway (Versus $2.50 in NYC!)

I took the subway metro all the way to the Zocalo (Centro Historico) and climbed back into civilization.

*COUGH*

Did I mention Mexico City is polluted? Well, the Zocalo is the official exhaust pipe of the city, and I had just gotten a major toke. The air here was just one color: Brown. The buildings here were the same color: Brown, with a bit of maroon for variety. The plaza itself was an even more cheerless shade of brown. Everything here is caked in soot and akimbo from the sublimation of poor soil. As if this place was a birthday cake that had collapsed from being taken out of the oven too soon.

In fact, the Plaza is impressive. As I mentioned earlier, it’s the second largest urban plaza in the world, and the site of the original Aztec grand temple, where unspeakable acts of mass violence were carried out by Aztec priests and Conquistadors alike. This strikes me as a place that nobody dares to love, even to this day. There are urban spaces that spring from brotherhood and urban spaces that spring from fear. Zocalo is very much a place that was born and nurtured out of an eduring fear. First, of the gods, then of the catholic church, and today, the sheer weight of history and government. And even though there are three UNESCO world heritage sites on this very location — you just can’t exactly bring yourself to warm to this place. It’s simply there to be looked at, which is exactly what I proceeded to do.

I first looked at the Metropolitan Cathedral, a curvy baroque structure improbably made out of the same stones from the sparsely lined Aztec temples destroyed by the conquest. It is airy and gorgeous, and also completely out of plumb. The interior nave is comparable in quality to some of the nicer cathedrals in Madrid, but incable of forming any vertical lines, leaving a surreal effect on the observer.

I then looked at the destroyed Aztec grand temple, slightly north of it. I was fascinated to learn that the temple has been rebuilt and enlarged MANY times. All of the layers have now been exposed, like the nesting russian dolls — so you can gaze upon the successive renovations all at once, with a little temple on the inside, and a great temple exterior five or six “shells” later.

I also saw more than one stone altar, and felt a bit sick knowing this is where every day a victim would be placed and then sliced open in exchange for another day of human existence. Nearby there is also a stone idol of a god in repose holding a little bowl. That bowl was where human hearts were then placed as an offering. And not to much further was the skull rack, which was where the victims sculls would be arranged in neat rows. Somehow, a civilization accepted these things, and then set upon this practice for centuries, which makes one stop and think what other preposterous conceits infect our contemporary sensibilities while totally escaping a collective sense of outrage.

After leaving the grand temple, I checked out the Palacio National where I saw my first Diego Rivera murals and did my best to commit them to digital camera, even though countless reproductions exist already.

It was 3pm by now, and even though the light of day was still strong, I was dog tired, and made my way back to the hotel. I spent the rest of the day walking around the neighborhoods north of the Angel of Independence, and stopping to eat a late lunch.

I find parts of Mexico City (the parts away from the Centro Historico at least) to be inviting, and pleasant, if not a bit sooty. This is a monster of a city. It’s a real monster, HUGE. You can take several world class cities and mash them together to make this place and the effect would be the same. Yet despite it’s size, it seems liveable and human-sized in many parts. You can think you’re in a quiet neighborhood and the effect is only broken when you have to cross an avenue, and then you’re reminded of just how jam packed with humanity this place is.

More to write on this stuff, but I’m afraid of filibustering. I’ll post a new update tommorow, where either I will visit Coyoacan, or the Anthropoligical museum or both. Until then!

As I write this, I am taking generous gulps of air, as the atmosphere here is unbelievably thin given the altitude. This is in fact, the second highest city in the Americas, and the thinness of the atmosphere is matched only by the strength of the sunhine, which one might find both cheerful and relentless. The oxygen thing does suck though, and sometimes I feel like no matter how deep I breathe I’m being given the cheap stuff instead of real O2.

Already I am struck by the massiveness of this city, as well as the vibrancy and chaos. From the air, my first impression was “OK, clearly this is LA”. But then there were pieces of the city that were New York. And Houston. And Madrid, and Caracas. And more LA. On the ground, the similaries and differences were only magnified, and I found myself being driven 20km to my hotel while conversing with the driver about the relative safety of different areas and watching the different buildings zip by in a riot of color. There simply isn´t a shade of paint this place has never liked.

Given that most of the day was spent arriving, I haven´t done much yet other than spend some time walking around the hotel area (I am north of the Plaza de Independencia, which I photographed here) and conversing with the shopkeepers and locals, and fellow tourists such as myself.

I also had the most delicious ham and cheese sandwich I´ve had in years. This was with aged jamon serrano (the kind of stuff you usually only get in Spain) and unpasturized gruyere. Both the ham and cheese were complex and flavorful and I can’t tell you how a simple thing like a ham sandwich can be a thousand times more delicious with the right ingredients. I wish I could get this stuff in the States.

So aside from my sandwich eating, air gulping, photo snapping ways, I haven´t done much. Tommorow I will visit the Zocalo (the blood-soaked plaza I mentioned in my previous post) and the museum of anthropology. Hopefully I´ll have more interesting stories to tell, and more insight into this gargantuan noisy place I’ve inserted myself into. Until then!

I bought a “manbag” from Target to house my new Nikon D40 camera purchased for this trip. While it’s not the most inconspicuous thing one can have when in a dodgy area within Mexico city, it is several orders better than a Tamran Camera bag that screams “please beat me up and rob me”. Then again, manbags might also elicit this reaction from people.

This particular manbag (or murse as some call it) has a screenprint of a hapsburg double eagle. I have ZERO idea why the Mossimo folks went for the holy roman empire angle on this one, but it looks badass enough. Somewhat like a hostile Big Bird with two heads. My hope is this will scare off — or at least terminally confuse — any would-be muggers, perhaps into thinking I’m some art student with nothing but a pad full of excreble life sketches instead of turista with amazing camera. We’ll see if this works or not.

Strangely, the Hapsburg eagle also happened to have been the personal logo of Emperor Carlos V (sure enough a hapsburg) who was Hernan Cortes’s financial backer.

Cortes’ conquest of Tenochlitlan (modern day Mexico city) and the tragedy surrounding it is partly the reason I’m visiting. Every now and then I pick up a history book and read things, and those things compel me to visit the places where history happened.

For instance, the plaza in Mexico, the Zócalo — incidentally, the second largest urban plaza in the world — is the same exact plaza lain by the Aztecs in the 12th century. And just north of it was the grand temple (pieces still standing) where in one day, 80,400 captors to the Aztecs were sacrificed by a team of priests in a four day period by the cruel glass knife.

That was roughly 200 sacrifices every 15 minutes.

Mexico City began as a serene island in the middle of a lake with several fantastically engineered causeways and an urbanization within larger than London in its day. And while relations were peaceful between the Spanish and Mexica for six months or so, that piece was broken by a paranoid attack on the Aztec nobility on part of the Spanish, during an important celebration. After that, it was bloody war. And Cortes’s forces fled over the lake as the Aztecs started ripping up sections of the causeways to keep them out.The Spanish would then build large boats in giant sections over a period of several months, and haul those sections over many miles to the lakeshore to reassemble in order to retake the city by a naval assault. And in the end, the Spanish did take the city, literally flattening every building by cannon.

After the destruction, the city was immediately rebuilt (in colonial style) and the lake was drained by the colonists until the city slowly became an urban sprawl chained in by mountains not unlike Los Angeles. Because much of the city sits on a former lakebed, the buildings still sink to this day. Famously, the more historical buildings are now an entire story below street level.

Nearly 400 years have passed since this tragedy, and there are by far more cheerful aspects of Mexico City to focus on, in spite of its blood-soaked past. For instance, there is a fantastic art and culinary scene. There are the dramatic murals of Diego Rivera, complimented by the more inward looking works of his partner-in-crime, Frida Kahlo. Striking examples of colonial architecture abound, as well as more modern interpretations. There’s the mysterious grand pyramids of Teotihuacan, another civilization that had it’s zenith around the same time as Rome. Finally, there is the largest anthropological museum in the world, with a collection of precolumbian artifacts that simply have no peer.

All of these things I am going to attempt to squeeze within a five day period, then hopefully fly home, rested and inspired after a week of sensory overload.

I will be traveling to Mexico City from June 12 to June 17th and posting updates here. Please click back on the site periodically for the latest.

You can contact me via the email provided on the right hand column of the website. (As an anti-spam measure you need to click on the link to see it).

Cheers for now!

Leo

It’s difficult to distill into simple concrete terms what dark matter is, and why it’s important, other than to say that dark matter is six times the size of the known universe, exists everywhere, and keeps the universe from flying apart. Nobody knows what it’s composition is, and until now, nobody has been able to see it. It’s presence can be directly inferred by its gravitational effect on nearby light and matter, much like black holes.

It’s the latter phenomenon that has allowed astronomers to exploit a loophole in the universe, as it were, and for the first time bring light to a dark subject. Taking advantage of the effect of gravitational lensing, A team of 70 astronomers from Europe, America and Japan used the Hubble space telescope to create a map of dark matter within a region of space that dates back to nearly 7 billion years.

The picture that emerges is much like seeing the skeleton of a human body, or the fishing line that keeps aloft a mobile. In essence, every floating, etherial object in space is connected to something else via dark matter. The same may be said of every particle in our existence. Dark matter is an invisible scaffold which holds the entire universe in place.

Great article about it in the UK Independent here.