Mexico City- National Museum of Anthropology

The Mueso Nacional de Antropologia  (MNA) in Ciudad de Mexico is the National Museum of Mexico. It houses 1000's of significant artifacts from Mexico's pre-Columbian heritage and has been voted as one of the most interesting and prestigious museums in the world. It is a huge complex located on the Paseo de la Reforma and Calle Mahatma Ghandi right in the middle of the city. It encompasses 857,890 square feet and is a definite must for anyone traveling to Ciudad de Mexico. The museum is laid out in a U shape with a central courtyard and the exhibition rooms around the perimeter. The museum grounds have many outdoor exhibits that, as you'll see later on in this post, are incredible. OK lets go........

 When you first walk in to the courtyard, you encounter this gigantic carved column fountain....

Sorry about the clarity of some of these photos, there were places in the museum where cameras were not allowed and I was forced to take pictures with my phone.....this is probably the most recognized antiquity from this period....it is incorrectly referred to as The Aztec Calendar....an entire industry has been built around this stone which is about 22 feet in diameter. It is not a calendar at all. It was a platform for gladiatorial combat. When first discovered, archaeologists noticed references carved into the stone that indicated dates and months and incorrectly jumped to the conclusion that it was a calendar.

This is the San Lorenzo Colossal Head 2. It is about 9 feet high x 6 feet wide x 3.5 feet thick and weighs about 20 tons. It is one of 17 known colossal Olmec Heads..

The smallest weighs 6 tons and the largest is estimated to weigh 

50 tons. They range in height from about 5 to 11 feet and have been dated from 1500 BC to 400 BC. 

The Olmecs lived in the southern Gulf Coast region of Mexico around Veracruz and Tobasco.

No one really knows what purpose these heads served in the Olmec culture.

This bad boy looks like a logo for the villain in a James Bond movie. Pretty cool though....it would make a great piece of garden art in your front yard....might freak out the neighbors though!

 Here we have an example of a Goddess....don't have a clue as to what the statue is though.....

 If I remember right...this is some kind of fertility god..?

I think another fertility statute???

Can't remember why this guy is sticking out his tongue...?

I think this was the goddess of pets....? not sure though..!

If I remember correctly this was the god for the tax collector..

notice the multiple fangs for sucking you dry...and all the little children that belonged to people who couldn't pay. He carried them away in the bag around his waist...

If my memory serves me right...this is the goddess of jigsaw puzzles...I might have my facts wrong though..!

I believe that this is the god of jack-in-the-boxes but again I might have my facts confused...pretty cool though..

This is totally cool...these guys are performing the 

Danza de los Voladores, Dance of the Flyers. It is a Mesoamerica ceremony/ritual that was created to ask the god Xipe Totec to end a drought.

It goes like this...5 guys climb to the top of a 30 meter pole...that's 100 feet guys....4 of the guys launch themselves off the top of the pole with a rope tied to one leg....they revolve around the pole until they get to the ground....the 5th guy sits on the top of the pole playing a drum and flute while the others descend.

Round and round they go for about 30 minutes while the music plays .....

I guess you shouldn't eat any pizza or raw oysters before work..

You know what? It started raining a little while later...

would I lie to you????

This was the god of big hats if my memory serves me right!!

One of the outside exhibits....awesome!!

You expect KONG to come out the door....he didn't though..but he could of!!

This looked like it might have been a stage of some sort for speeches or performances or maybe sacrifices....

This was a very plain structure compared to all the others...it was set off from the other buildings. all by itself..inside, there were three rooms all the same in every way....there was nothing in the rooms except what looked to be a huge Mesoamerican king size bed...its perplexing..can't figure out what this might have been ??

Hmmm!

By now the day was mostly gone and time for lunch....

Gotta get our vitamin C.....

Take care my friends...seeya soon...until then

peace to you all.......

Mexico City- Xochimilco

Hello friends. Happy New Year to you all. 
In this  installment of our recent trip to Mexico City we are gonna take a boat trip through the ancient canals of the Aztecs located in the "Barrio Magico" borough of Xochimilco. This is the third largest borough in Mexico City. It has been continually inhabited since the Aztec and pre-Hispanic era. Its famous system of waterways have been the main transport arteries in this part of the city from the pre-Hispanic period until the 20th century.
These remaining canals and floating gardens were declared a World Heritage Site in 1987.  Sadly, today this wonderful ecosystem is in danger of a total demise. The underground springs that feed the canals are being depleted by the water needs of the 20 million people who live in and around Ciudad de Mexico and of course we all know the ravages of urban pollution. On the bright side, there are many groups in Mexico who are tirelessly working to preserve the magic of Xochimilco....... I'm certain that they will prevail!
Lets look around.....

   This is our boat. We had it all to ourselves. The Feast of The Virgen de Guadalupe was in this same week so most of the local crowds were involved with the festivities for that day which by the way is the single most important religious feast day in Catholic Mexico....

The boats are very colorful and are hand propelled with a sculling oar...no engines allowed...

Notice the long tables down the center of the boats. You can have food and drinks and whatever brought aboard and party while traversing the waterways. 

All lined up waiting for customers.... 

Leaving the dock...

 Pretty cool....wouldn't you say? Especially knowing that ancient peoples travels these same waters....

 There are houses built along some of the canals..

Those roots belong to a type of Juniper tree call an Ahuejote... they are critical to this ecosystem because the roots combat erosion and provide safe nursery sanctuary for many aquatic species found in the canals. The trees themselves provide a windbreak.

Pretty nice house in the background....little hottie in the foreground..

All type of vendors are out on the canals selling their stuff...this guy was selling souvenirs others out there had floating bars and restaurants ....

 These guys are floating musicians...call them over and they will hook up to your boat and will perform for you....they charged 

35 pesos or about $2.00 US per song....they were good too..

We had some ice cold cervazas on the boat, beautiful day, Mexican music in the background, and floating down the waterways of a  World Heritage site.. a good day!!!

Its getting kinda creepy now..... this is the floating garden of 

Isla de las Munecas, Island of the Dolls.  The island belonged to a hermit who found the drowned body of a little girl in the canal in front of his shack. Later he found a doll floating in the same waters. He thought that the doll might be the little drowned girls so out of a sense of reverence for the little girl, he hung it from one of his trees.

From this reverent act the hermit began a slow descent into madness. He stated that he could hear screams and wails from the nearby woods and that he constantly heard footsteps and whispers in his hut motivated by terror and fear, he spent the next 50 years collecting old dolls and body parts from dolls and hanging them in the trees surrounding his hut in a desperate attempt to appease what he believed to be the drowned girl's spirit. The hermit was found dead in 2001....drowned in the same waters where he found the little girl decades earlier. Today there are thousands of dolls hanging from the trees on the island which is only accessible by boat. 

   A professional photographer visited the island on assignment and described it as "the creepiest place that she has ever visited!"

On a whimsical note....

On our trip home, this little water nymph beckoned us to return...

We will....on our next trip back....

Until next time peace, happiness, and prosperity to you and yours in the New Year....

Seeya soon...

    

  

Whats the deal with Cluster Maps?????????

Don't know whats going on with Cluster Maps.....a few months ago there were a few thousand people from all over the world that checked out Zoshas Wake and now I see one person????

What happened??? they can't take their views back..can they??

Take care my friends.....

Mexico City-Paseo de la Reforma

Did you ever have a story the magnitude of which was so enormous, so colossal that you didn't know what to include in it or where to start it or how to present it, or how to end it ?

This is how I feel about this blog entry and how I'm going to tell you guys the story of our 10 day trip to Mexico City or as its officially know Mexico, D.F. (distrito federal), the capital city of the country of Mexico. The locals simply call it Mexico.

Mexico is one of the Grand Dame Cities of the world. For beauty, architecture, culture, cleanliness, safety, green space, public parks, public transport, etc. it rivals, and in many instances surpasses the same municipal attributes found in Paris, Rome, London, New York, Vienna, or San Francisco.

What!! you say?  cleanliness! beauty! parks! safety!!! This guys nuttz you are probably thinking....we know all about the trashy streets, and criminal gangs running the boulevards robbing and raping and kidnapping. We know all about the un-breathable air. We know about all those millions of people who live there scurrying around like rats. Why Mexico City is a dangerous, uninhabitable hell hole. Our US Department of State and my neighbors next door told me so.

Forget your neighbors and definitely forget what the US Department of State has to say.....stick around and let me show you a little bit of what the real, modern day Mexico City is like.

Founded in 1325 Mexico is the oldest capital city in the Americas. The experts are not quite certain as to the actual population of Greater Mexico City but most agree that its around 20 million!!!

If you want any more facts and historical reference, go to Wikipedia. They have a very impressive write up. I wanna get to the fun stuff!

We are going to start this story in the heart of Mexico City on the 

Paseo de la Reforma which is a very beautiful avenue the runs diagonally across the heart of the City. 

In the 1860's Reforma was designed by Ferdinand von Rozenzweig to rival the great boulevards of Europe such as the Champs-Elysees in Paris or the Ringstresse in Vienna. Tana and I walked its entire length 3 or 4 times during our stay.....if you ever get to Mexico, you might want to put this on you list of must things to do....its that memorable....oh, you can leave your can of spray mace in the room.. you'll be safe.

The Angel of Independence constructed in 1910 to honor the heroes of the Mexican War of Independence.

Winged Victory....aka "The Angel of Independence"

Nice shot of Tana on the Paseo de la Reforma...notice all the trees. We are in the middle of the of the commercial and financial epicenter of the Latin World. 

As a stand alone country, Mexico D.F. would be the 5th largest economy in Latin America. Five times larger than Costa Rica.

Diana the Huntress fountain a couple blocks down the street from the Angel....

A few more blocks down Reforma to the monument honoring Benito Juarez the first indigenous Mexican president.

I'm enamoured with Mexican architecture....old and new. I think that Mexico has and always has had the most creative, brilliant, 

out of the box thinking architects. Mexico D.F. is replete with example after example of their work. 

I think these are condos on the upper levels with commercial on the ground level...

Mexico City is prone to earthquakes. I think this is an office building.....

Wouldn't it be totally cool to live in that 2 story extension hanging off that building?

Middle of town....lookat the trees....awesome building wouldn't you say??

This is one of the 3 haunted hotels in Mexico City. Old building. Great design. We were thinking of staying here on our next trip. The Hotel we stayed at on this trip was one of the haunted three....and I'm a believer now after staying there 10 days.... but that's another story!

I think this is a hotel.....

Traffic can move in Mexico City....

This shot is from our favorite table in an Argentine outdoor cafe. We'd stop here to people watch, rest, grab a couple of brews, and have a few empanadas... The building across the street is the Mexican Social Security Headquarters.

OK guys that's all for this visit...don't know yet where we will be going next time...but it should be fun.

Until then...take care and ..Happy New Year!