Saturday - Have you ever had a basically perfect day (15)?
Well today was another excursion day and, although I was a little hesitant about it at first (not know exactly what we were going to be doing) the thought of swimming was really appealing. I forget that I really like to do it. I think I just feel really selfconscious about myself when I am in a bathing suit. I just need to stop caring in the moment and work on getting thinner, which swimming would help with. I need to go to the aquatic center with the kids this year.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Mindy was lazy getting up as usual today. I don't believe that her day is really complete without a two minute breakfast while the rest of us are packing out to the car. The house was really quite when I went downstairs alone for breakfast and found mama going about her daily tasks of cooking and cleaning for 15 people. We talked for a few minutes, although I don't remember about what, when we got on the topic of lateness. She said that her brother was always the one who was late in her family and I replied that it was obviously Melinda in ours. It was funny.
Finally Dee came down and we finished breakfast and stowed away our bagged comida for later. We are both hoping for PB&J, yum! We got to the school a little early it seemed and so there were only a couple of people there waiting for the bus driver to unlock and let us in. When the UNINTER guy showed up with a checklist and asked where we were going, I was shocked to discover that our first stop was Xochicalco. A ruined city!! Whoohoo! I was very, very happy to find out that we were going there. On of our housemates, Peter I think, said that we must have been to every ruin in Mexico, and I promptly replied not yet but I would love too.
So that just made my morning. I had heard of Xochicalco, but I couldn't remember what it was famous for, but fortunately there was a paper guide with a picture of it and then I knew it. It has a very famous carving of the Feathered Serpent on the wall of the temple to Quetzalcoatl. It also has an observatory that looked very interesting too.
Our guide this time was a fellow who only spoke Spanish, but he did so with such a flourish, talking with his hands and using cognates, that it was fairly simple to get the meaning of what he was saying even without Val translating (which she graciously did for Melinda the whole time). One thing that I noticed on the paper guide that bothered me a bit was that Xochicalco was a city that was created by five cultures, including the Maya, Olmecs, and Aztecs. I was thinking to myself that this wasn't possible and was glad to hear that our guide say that the paper was crazy too. I knew that he knew his stuff and wasn't afraid to tell it to us after that. I think that the problem is that everything here tends to be viewed from the Aztec point of view, even though they really were only a significant power for two centuries before the Spanish arrived in Mexico. Our teacher from Teotihuacan had also commented on this saying that people really glorify the Aztecs and look at every other culture of Mexico with that idea in mind. It is very interesting to me.
Bus rides make me sleepy it seems (that or waking up at 6-7AM everyday) and I happily listened to my iPod for most of the way. I must have dozed off because when we got to Xochicalco, it was up in the mountains. We piled out of the bus and, after a quick bathroom break, took off for the ruins, which were really quite impressive. The city is quite spectacular although not as big as Teotihuacan. After an interesting introduction, our guide led us to the other side of the city to a massive looking wall/temple complex. I had noticed several doors and windows in the pyramids here, which I thought was cool, and I was just bouncy when we got to go inside of the one that led to the observatory.
It was so incredibly cool in there! The cave like place was supported by three massive columns and there were even a few bats flapping around inside. (The guy who was guarding the place said to watch out for vampires! ^_^) Our guide led us deep into the place and it was a while before my eyes adjusted enough for me to see what was around us. There were a couple of passages that seemed to lead off into different parts of the pyramid, but they were blocked off. We were led to a place where a small constructed opening in the ceiling let in a circular pool of light. This place was the observatory.
It was here, our guide told us, that the mathmeticians and astronomers of this Mayan state developed their abilities in these areas, which resulted in their being one of only two cultures (the Arabs being the other) to develop the concept of zero and to create a calendar system that is more accurate than our own in today! He also said that they would observe the stars at night, and from 11-1 or so during the day, the light could function as a primitive xray creator. He demonstrated how this worked for us, but I kind of just think that it was a neat trick of the light. After this, we needed to leave quickly because it was actually not permitted for groups to come into the observatory and we paid the guard off as we left.
While we were walking to the observatory, we went right through one of the ballcourts of the city and I just couldn't resist the photo opportunities that this presented. One our way back, however, our guide stopped to talk about the purpose of the ballgame in preColumbian Mexican cultures. Some of us had been talking among ourselves about this for quite some time, and almost everyone had asked if it was the winners of the game that were sacrificed or the losers. I had told them that it depended on which scholar you asked, because no one had ever given a really good rationale for one side or the other.
Now our guide took up this question. He said that this game was a sacred thing meant for the gods to witness alone. Therefore, it was the captain of the winning team that was sacrificed because anything less would be an insult to the gods. But, he continued, there was another game played on the ballcourts. This was not necessarily different in rules or style of play, but rather in its purpose. This game was used to settle fueds between different families in the city. Say one person had a problem with someone else and this excalated to the point that the whole family was involved, the conflict had grown violent, and there was no resolution that could be reached between the two parties. Then the families would organize a team composed of members of the clan and captained by the two principle protagonists in the drama. This game was not meant for the gods, but the gods oversaw the contest and decided who the winner and loser was. In this case, the winner was clearly the person who was in the right because the gods chose to grant victory to them. Then the losing captain was killed, not as a sacrifice, but just as a form of dispensing justice because everyone involved, including both families, would agree that gods had spoken through the results of the match. Fantastic explanation. It makes sense to me on so many levels and is supported by documentation. The reason for the confusion, our guide said, was because there was only one surviving codex from the period that described the ballgame, but I think he said it was more like rules than the reason for the game itself. One other interesting detail that he mentioned was that only the people in Mexico that did not play the ballgame was the Teotihuacanos, which explains why we saw no ballcourt when we visited. Very neat!
Then it was time to head up on top of the structures to have a look at the temple of Quetzalcoatl, which was very cool. The carvings on the side of the pyramid are really very cool and include Mayan hieroglyphs. Our guide explained something here about the different Mayan states, their various calendars, and how they were all united with one or something. This part was a little more difficult for me to follow. For most of this time, I had been listening to the guide alone, rather than to Valerie's translations. Val does a great job, but it was just too hard to listen to the translation and to her. I just would get lost so I focused on the Spanish, which worked really well for me during most of the tour. After this stop we had a little more time to get pictures, then it was off to Las Estacas for some swimming, the perfect complement to a day spent getting sweaty wandering around Mayan pyramids.
We dozed again on the way to Las Estacas and it was definitely getting hotter the farther we went. That reminds me of what mama and I talked about at breakfast. She said that the north of the state of Morelos, where Cuernavaca is, is colder but in the south were Las Estacas is is much warmer so even if it was a cold rainy day where we are living it will be nice and hot down in the south. And she was right. We got to the water park and were only too happy to get in the water.
Describing this place is difficult. You just kind of have to see it. It is a natural water park created at a place where a river erupts from an underground stream and has very clear, cold water. It is a very tropical looking place with palm and mango trees. We all quickly headed for the changing rooms and got into our swimming suits (I need a new one I have decided). Our guide kindly said that he would babysit all of our bags so that we could just enjoy swimming in the river. We also took his advice and walked up along the edge of the river to the place where the water comes out of the ground. There is a place that you can jump in and then swim down the river. This sounded great so off we went.
It really is a beautiful spot where the water comes out although there were many people nervous about jumping in when we saw it. It is higher than you might think. I was excited to do it though and told Dee that she had to also. It wasn't until I was standing on the platform after Dee jumped that I realized how high it was and got a little scared. But fear of looking silly will prompt me to do a lot of things so in I went with Dee taking pictures. (Valerie, who it turns out is a bit afraid of water and won't swim without a lifevest, took video with my camera of us jumping. It is quite funny.) We all survived the jump and began to swim down the river. Although Dee and I were easily outdistanced by the more athletic members of our group, fat does help you float so it really wasn't a difficult swim all the way back to the place where we had left our stuff. You just have to keep from drifting into guys as you are carried along by the current (I swear I did not mean to although they seemed to think it was because I though they were cute or something) or nearly drowning when we started laughing about something (Dee had a real problem with this).
Then we decided to eat our lunch (I think we ate most of it earlier and just had our apples left. Can't remember if it was PB&J though) then it was off to the rope swing. Again it looked fun and terrifying at the same time, and Dee and I had to dare each other to do it. We again have video proving that we didn't chicken out. After that we decided to rent a rubber raft and paddle around, and we figured out that Dee and I can't paddle (canoes are much easier to keep control of!) We set out to met those who had decided to go jump again but didn't get very far. Then Val (complete with lifevest) and athletic April decided they wanted to go for a boat ride too and we followed the river until it left the park. We only had a few minutes to get the boat back (you have to pay extra if it is late) and we just were not making much progress against the current. To keep control of the boat, we had taken to having one person in the water guiding it from the front, but we just were not moving fast enough this way. Then one of the lifeguards on the shore (who had helped us with the ropeswings) told us that we were doing it all wrong and that everyone needed to be in the boat so that our combined weight would help us move faster. Well it turned out that this was true, but we still had to get out of the water and walk the boat back to get it in on time.
By then it was time for us to get changed and head back to Cuernavaca. I think all of us were ready to come right back here because it was so nice, but unfortunately there isn't enough time for that. I somehow managed to break my sandal on the way back to Cuernavaca and Dee and I decided to do some shopping in the Xocolo area for a replacement and some other stuff. We ended up buying a bunch of cute sandals and I was happy to be able to discard the broken ones. We then ate at happy meal at McDonald's along with a Shrek III shake. Dee does like to get icecream.
After that we flagged down a taxi to take us back to the house but found that Javo was playing our host tonight. Apparently mama and papa went out to a birthday party and we weren't sure when they would be coming back. Lindsay and Brittany were also there so we had a nice chat among the five of us. We really didn't have much else to do so we finished watching F4 and went to bed. Exciting, no?
Lader Vader!