Teotihuacan Adventure V

Early dawn, just before sunrise, a mist still lingering over the City of the Gods we enter the Avenue of the Dead heading towards the ancient Aztecan Pyramidas del Sol (Sun Pyramid.) This ancient site just 30 miles north-east of Mexico City in San Juan, Mexico. Darkness lingers a while longer as you hear high in the distance the haunting melody of a wooden flute, the ethereal chords of an ancient stringed musical instrument, or the muted beats from a leather covered drum in the far distance. Shadows of a mysterious ancient civilization envelope you as you're dwarfed by the magnificence of twelve square miles of great structures surrounding you.

Teotihuacan, Avenida de Morir

As we walk down the avenue we pass by talud-tablero (inward sloping-platform) structures. This great city had reached its zenith between 100 - 500 CE, and to be mysteriously abandoned around 700 CE. It was my endeavor to climb to the top of the Sun Pyramid just before the sun rose. The Sun Pyramid is 158 feet high with 248 steps (with 12" rises and 7" treads) to reach the top. Paco stayed below while Mario and I tediously climbed to its peak just as the sun rose above the eastern horizon. With each step we were ascending in our present time with the ghosts of those ancient ones a thousand years before as if there wasn't any time barrier between us and them. We were out of breath and a little fatigued by the time we reach the top because the steps were obviously made for someone used to making high strides up each narrow step. We practically climbed step-by-step on our toes. Above all, it was an Aztecan epiphany, to say the least, imitating an ancient ritual of ascension in the greatest city of Mexican antiquity and reaching its summit.

We spent the entire day exploring the temples and pyramids of Tlaloc (Rain god), Quetzocoatl (Feathered Serpent), and Xipe Totec (Our Lord the Flayed One) a god of renewed vegetation, Sun god and Moon goddess, the old Fire god incense burners, and a goddess called by archaeologists as
Spider Woman, to name a few.

Pyramid of the Sun

Map of Teotihuacan

Quetzalcoatl, The Feathered Serpent Relief