Mexico City Adventure II

Even though Maximilian's castle museum provided us with an all day study in the culture of military and political life of the French in the new world and some pre-Colombian history and artifacts, we were more focused in the archaeological histories of the Olmec (1400 - 400 BCE), Mayan (2000 BCE - 250 CE), and Aztec (1350 - 1525 CE) peoples as well as the Toltec (900 - 1200 CE), Mixtec (800 - 1500 CE), and Zapotec (500 BCE - 900 CE) peoples to name just a few we had studied in-depth in college. Therefore, we wanted to go down into the subways (the Metro) to take an investigative and adventuresome glance of the ruins of Tenochtitlan, the ancient Aztec city beneath modern day Mexico City which was originally built on landfill in Lake Texcoco. Also, we wanted to visit the Museo Nacional de Anthropologia (National Museum of Anthropology) in Mexico City. Now, I don't want this to be a boring and technical account, it's only meant to be a story of my own personal observations and experiences. But also to remind you that this was so much more than just a vacation - it was a passionate quest - to see with my own eyes; to touch with my own hands; to hike, set camp, and climb with my own arms and legs, and to merge my imagination with reality; and to listen to the voices of those who came before me, and to breathe-in all within my surroundings - living in the moment.

Tenochtitlan, the ancient city under the modern city, was difficult to see from the subway, so we got off at the next stop. Walking along the boarding platform towards the old city took quite awhile, but when we got there it was fenced-off to pedestrians. Regular tours wouldn't take you underground, even though it wasn't the right thing to do compromising our safety by disregarding the authorized restriction, our strong-willed determination led us to take advantage of this opportunity regardless. We crawled through the fence's narrow openings while looking around cautiously for any subway guards. We walked on until we found an opening in the subway wall. There were flood lights inside and you could see some of the ruins that were being reconstructed or repaired by archaeologists. The opening was barred so you couldn't climb inside, but we found one small area we could crawl through. We wandered around inside and took in everything we could see. After about an hour or two we decided it was time to go. So we walked back to the fenced area where we had entered, checked out the other side for guards, and crawled quietly back onto the platform. It crossed my mind what could have been the consequences if we, Americans, had been arrested by the subway guards or even the police and locked-up in a Mexican jail. We decided that from this time forward we would pursue our explorations by doing it the right way. But, what we saw was an ancient historical site few people will ever see.

Drawing of Tenochtitlan