These notes are from Eileen Gregg. Eileen was one of the friends Kathy and her mom made on the Mexico tour and, fortunately, Eileen took great notes and gave her permission to post them. Kathy added web page formatting (e.g., changed text to headings, bolded people and place names, etc.). The headings are December 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, Observations, and Christmas.
Left Philadelphia Airport early morning and arrived in Mexico City mid-afternoon where I was met by a Caravan Tours escort and taken to a luxurious hotel, the Sheraton Centro Historico in the city's historical district and across from Alameda Park. My room had a window with a spectacular view of the city center.
In the evening we met our tour group, which consisted of 27 persons from the West Coast, southwestern US, Boston, Chicago and Australia, and myself from Pennsylvania. I soon learned that this was a well-traveled, well-educated and compatible group of travelers. Everyone was punctual, which is something I had never experienced on other tours.
We had a city tour that included the Plaza of the Three Cultures, which were Aztec, Spanish and contemporary Mexican. The site includes the remains of the Aztec city of Tlatelolco, site of the last battle of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, as well as the Church of Santiago surrounded by modern buildings.
We stopped at Mexico's holiest shrine, the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, said to have appeared to a peasant, San Juan Diego (who was actually a noble, a warrior and a Christian convert) on December 9, 1531, which was a Saturday. Today was the first day of a religious festival, culminating on December 12, the date of the final appearance of the Virgin to Juan Diego.
Our Mexico City guide, a jovial grandfather named Jacquin, who had taught himself English, told us that 5 million people visit this church each year. The cloak reputed to contain the Virgin's image is contained behind bullet-proof glass in a new large Basilica that can hold 20,000 people. The cloak can be viewed from the sanctuary, and also from below the sanctuary where there is a moving walkway to accommodate the crowds. This is the most important religious center in Mexico and Juan Diego is considered to be the patron saint of Mexico and of all the Americas. He was canonized in 2002.
From there our bus took us the see the ruins of Teotihuacan (pronounced teh-oh-tee-wa-khan), located 30 miles northeast of Mexico City. Teotihuacan is the greatest city of pre-Columbian cultures, begun in 100 B.C. and abandoned in 700 A.D. The site is an extensive complex of pyramids and palaces covers 12 sq. miles. We had lunch at a nearby inn during which we were entertained by an Aztec dance performance.
Returning to Mexico City, we went the to the National Museum of Anthropology which contains treasures representing 3,000 years of Mexican history. The building was designed by the same architect, Pedro Ramfrez Vazquez, as had designed the new Basilica of Guadeloupe.
We went to the National Palace, Mexico's center of government and presidential office, built in on the site of the 2nd palace of Montezuma and at one time the home of Hermin Cortex. The Palace complex covers 14 city blocks. The top floor, added in the late 1920's contains a series of stunning Diego Rivera murals depicting the history of Mexico. Around the corner from the National Palace is the Metropolitan Cathedral, 1573 -1799, combining several different architectural styles and constructed from the stones of destroyed Aztec temples.
In this same area is an archaeological excavation called Templo Mayor, an archaeological excavation of Aztec pyramids. There were actually several pyramids, one built over the other as was the custom, with the final one being the one seen by the Spaniards when they entered the city. The site includes a museum that showcases the splendor of the Aztec Empire as it existed in the center of what is now Mexico City. This pre-hispanic city, built on what was then a lake, was called Tenochtitlan (pronounced ten-osh-teet-lin).
After lunch, we were taken to a middle-class suburb of the city known as Coyoacan (place of Coyotes) and visited a park that had a festival in progress, with arts and crafts as well as musicians and dancers. From there we went to an upper-class suburb, San Jacinto (olive garden of the priests), with Spanish-style architecture and the oldest church in Mexico. We visited a park where artists were displaying their paintings.
That night I went with several others on our tour to a performance of the renowned Folkloric Ballet of Mexico - a stunning presentation of pre- and post Hispanic dancing - in the Palace of Fine Arts, just a few blocks away from our hotel. A feature of this theater is the glass curtain constructed in the Tiffany Studios of New York. It consists of nearly a million iridescent pieces of colored glass.
We left Mexico City with our regular tour guide, Pepe, and headed for the city of Pueblo, detouring for a side trip to Cholula which was a large city in pre-Columbian times. The Spanish razed the hundreds of temples that once stood there but the Great Pyramid, the largest pyramid in the New World, still remains, largely hidden by earth and vegetation. It looks like a hill, with a church perched on top. (Services are still held in this church, although undoubtedly very few townspeople would be willing or able to make the difficult climb to the church in order to attend.)
Archeologists had dug tunnels into the pyramid, which were open to tourists. We walked through some of these tunnels and saw the original steps that led to four levels of the pyramid.
We arrived mid-afternoon at Pueblo, known as the site of a battle, on May 5, 1862, in which the Mexicans defeated a much larger and better equipped French force that aimed to occupy Mexico. This is the battle that is commemorated in the festival of Cinco de Mayo, celebrated as much or more than it is in Mexico due to the fact that the general who led the Mexican forces, Ignacio Zaragoza, was a Texan.
My tour book said that few tourists visit Peublo, which is a shame because it is a charming city known for its Spanish architecture and colorful tiles that decorated the inside and outside of buildings. We had a tour of a family-owned pottery factory and saw how the pottery was made through all of its stages, which take up to 2 months from start to finish.
This was followed by a walking tour of the historic district of the city. We visited the cathedral, completed in 1649 and having the tallest bell towers in Mexico, and the Iglesia de Santo Domingo, completed in 1690 with a chapel, the Capilla del Rosario, that is a masterpiece of sculpture using molder plaster and covered in gold leaf. This chapel at one time was called "the Eighth Wonder of the World". My room in the hotel overlooked the bell tower of another old church.
Early morning, we left Pueblo and the highlands, crossing the edge of the Sierra Madre where we saw the highest peak (16,000 ft.) and in a short time we went from 6,000 ft. to 500 ft. elevation. Pine trees gave way to tropical vegetation - coconut trees, mango groves, fields of sugar cane and pineapples. There were colorful African "tulip" trees that had orange blossoms and elder trees with yellow flowers.
Today was the principal holiday in honor of the Virgin of Guadeloupe and at a rest stop, there was a large outdoor tableau reminiscent of a nativity scene, depicting Juan Diego at the time of his vision of the Virgin Mary. An ensemble of indigenous local musicians was singing songs, accompanied by guitar, in honor of the Virgin.
By mid-afternoon, we arrived at the port city of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico and stopped at a fort (later a prison) called San Juan de Ulua. This is where the first Spanish explorer landed and from where Spanish galleons, loaded with silver and gold, sailed for Spain. This is also where the final battle in Mexico's War of Independence was fought.
Our hotel, the Emporio, was across the street from a long promenade that fronted the harbor. My room had a large window and a balcony that overlooked the main harbor and was only a few blocks from the main square.
This was the principal day of the 4-day Virgin of Guadaloupe festival. I walked into the cathedral at one side of the main square (called zocalo in Spanish) where a priest was kept very busy accepting bouquets of flowers from families, and piling them in front of a statue of the Virgin.
Parents had dressed their children in colorful traditional costumes. Many children - girls as well as boys - were dressed to look like Juan Diago with mustaches painted on their faces. This was obviously a family day, with many parents proudly taking pictures of their children and permitting tourists to do the same.
In the main square, there was a performance of regional Mexican dances by students of local ballet schools. There was much swirling of skirts and many of the girls were wearing all-white gowns with bands of color. I recognized some of the dances as being the ones danced by the Folkloric Ballet of Mexico.
We left Veracruz and traveled eastward through state of Tabasco, named for the last Mayan emperor and from which the seasoning has gotten its name. This is the delta area of the Gulf of Mexico, which is largely marshland.
By mid-afternoon we had arrived at the Park Museum of La Vente in Villahermosa, in a rain forest setting. This site was established by an English poet who sought to preserve the Olmec heads, large sculptured heads of basalt that are up to 12 feet tall and weighing as much as 40 tons. These heads were carved by the Olmecs, a culture that began in 1100 B.C. and disappeared by 400 B.C., and is considered to be the mother culture of later Meso-American civilizations such as the Mayas and the Aztecs. Of the 17 Olmec heads that have been discovered, three are in this park, along with other prehistoric sculptures.
The Park also includes a small zoo with native animals including coatis, pumas and ocelots, and a large walk-through bird sanctuary were we could photograph at close range many colorful tropical birds such as scarlet macaws, toucans and Amazon parrots.
We continued inland, entering the state of Chiapas, to the city of Palenque, arriving in the evening at our hotel, Mision Palenque, a rustic-style spa hotel in a tropical setting. All rooms opened up unto a two-floor verandah that overlooked the grounds filled with palm trees and other tropical trees and plants. The dining room had a section open on three sides and overlooked the pool area of the grounds. When nearly empty of diners, birds could be seen perching on chairs.
In the morning we boarded our bus for the famous Mayan ruins called Palenque. First occupied over 1500 years ago, Palenque was a prosperous Mayan city under King Pakal and his son in the 7th and 8th centuries. This is considered to be the loveliest of all the Maya sites, due largely to the use of white stucco to cover the walls.
Many of the pyramids have small temples on top and false (or "flying") facades. The Temple of the Inscriptions contains a royal burial chamber, built by King Pakal's son and not discovered until 1952. This significant find is the first burial chamber discovered in Mayan temples. The sarcophagus was covered with a slab that weighed 8 tons.
A large palace complex with many buildings was unique for its observation tower. It also had a system of running water and an indoor toilet.
We returned to our hotel with the afternoon free to swim in the outdoor pool or to walk to the square where artisans had set up their stalls. The square was situated on one side of the main shopping street of the city.
We left Palenque and headed northward, entering the state of Campeche. We followed the Gulf of Mexico for many miles, stopping for lunch at a seafood restaurant beside-- and partially built over-- the Gulf.
We shortly entered the capital city of Campeche, where the first contact between white and natives occurred in 1517, with the landing of Francisco de Cordoba. The city's history includes a century of piracy. The city has been restored to look as it did in colonial times, including re-cobbling the streets, and I would have liked to have spent a day here, but we continued on to the ruins of Uxmal.
Uxmal (prounounced "oosh-mal") is in the arid Puuc hill region in the state of Yucatan. (Puuc means "mountain ridge" in the Mayan language.) In our tour of the ruins, we saw the elements for which Uxmal is famous, particularly decoration on the buildings that include entwined serpents, geometric motifs, patterns imitating Mayan huts and masks of Chac, the god of rain. Most of the building was done between the 7th and 10th centuries A.D.
We continued on to Merida in the state of Yucatan, which is one of three states forming the Yucatan peninsula. Formerly a Mayan center named for Merida, Spain, by the Spanish Conquistadors, this is a beautiful colonial city with large homes in the colonial Spanish style. Our hotel, the Casa del Balam, was in elegant colonial style and, in fact, was once the house of a pioneer of Mexican tourism.
We were driven through sisal growing country (the sisal industry is currently undergoing a comeback due to the trend toward using natural fibers) and also passed fields of aguavi cactus used to make a beverage, mescale, which, in the region of Tequila came to be called "tequila".
We continued on to the ruins of Chichen Itza where we were taken on a vigorous 3-mile trek by a local guide. He explained that the Toltecs from the eastern coast of the Yucatan peninsula came to Chichen Itza (pronounced "chee-chen eet-sah" - not rhyming with "chicken pizza") and introduced the Toltec motifs of the feathered serpent, warriors, eagles and jaguars).
We saw the Grand Castle with a staircase of 91 steps on each of the four sides, for a total of 365 steps - the number of days in the solar year. At a certain time of day, the formation of shadows on these steps look like a serpent. Tourists are no longer allowed to climb these steps to the temple at the top.
We also saw the Group of the Thousand Columns that formerly supported wooden roofs. We saw a low altar, used for the display of sacrificial victims' heads, with hundreds of carved skulls on its base.
The Temple of the Jaguars had bas-reliefs of warriors, one looking very much like an Indian chief of North America. We walked through the largest ball court in Meso-America, used for a ceremonial game in which the captain of the winning team (some say the losing team - this is open to debate) was sacrificed to the gods.
We also saw the Sacred Cenote (sink hole) in which children (as well as adults, according to some books) were thrown into the water to honor the rain god Chac. Much jewelry and pottery has been recovered from this Cenote.
After lunch in a nearby villa built around a courtyard, we returned to Merida, where several walked to the main square that was only 2 blocks from our hotel for some last-minute shopping.
On one side of the square was a palatial building, guarded by three policemen, that contained large-scale paintings done in the 1970's by a local painter, Castro Pacheco, depicting the history of Mexico. Each picture contained a complete explanation in English and Spanish. In the courtyard of the building was a large nativity scene that gave the Holy Family a Mexican appearance.
After our "farewell dinner" at the hotel concluding with the breaking of a pinata, many of us walked to another square where a fiesta was in progress with musicians, vendors of food and crafts and Christmas decorations with spectacular lighting effects, some resembling fireworks.
We boarded the bus for a 3-hr. drive to the Cancun airport. As we approached Cancun, we saw evidence in broken, bent and leafless trees of the fury of the hurricane Katrina that swept through here a year ago.
My flight left at 4:00 p.m., with a change in Miami, arriving in Philadelphia about 10:30 p.m. I stayed at the Quality Inn near the airport and returned to Lancaster by train the next morning.
The weather was ideal, coolest in Mexico City (because of the altitude) and warmest in Cancun. Usually Chichen Itza is an uncomfortable 95 degrees with high humidity at this time of the year, but the day we were there, the temperature was in the mid-80's. As this was the dry season, we had no rain except late Friday night in Merida and en route to Chichen Itza. At that time our guide joked that we were fortunate to have experienced all the different kinds of weather in Mexico. He said that there is only a 10-degree difference in average temperatures between the summer and winter. As to the food, we had the opportunity to experience Mexican cooking at its finest.
In addition to receiving a crash course in Mexican history from 1000 BC to the present, including the inauguration of a new president on December 1, I learned much from our tour guide about the social services provided by the Mexican government, the educational system, the tax system, and the celebration of religious festivals including Christmas.
My perception of the country of Mexico, and particularly Mexico City, is now quite different from what I had expected. I had expected the city to be dirty and polluted but instead I found clean streets, numerous parks, beautiful buildings in many different styles from colonial to modern, and air remarkably free of pollution (partly due to the time of year I was visiting.)
There is a "squatters' village" on the hillsides surrounding Mexico City, but, according to Pepe, much is being done to by the government to help the poor. There are health benefits for low income families and everyone, whether employed or not, is entitled to Social Security benefits. Education is compulsory through high school and university education is available at little or no cost to all who maintain grade levels. Private colleges charge tuition, but the most expensive of these is no more than $14,000 a year.
Even though in the early 19th century, Mexico lost more than half of their territory to the United States, and we are currently building a wall to keep out illegal immigrants from Mexico, I did not feel any resentment toward this country and its policies (although several young entertainers on the waterfront of Veracruz sang a song in which I caught the words "US" and "Congress".) Pepe quoted figures from the most recent census of 2000, as reported in the World Almanac, that showed that there are 28 million Mexicans living in the U.S., of which only 4½ per cent are here illegally. For the wages these immigrants earn, 20 billion is sent back to Mexico (largely to relatives) and 180 billion stays in the United States, thus contributing to our economy. The World Almanac also shows that there are 2.5 million illegal Americans in Mexico.
My conclusion is that we need to be better informed about our neighbors to the south and to institute policies that are mutually beneficial. After all, we are neighbors.
Pepe said that in Mexico it is celebrated the 6th of January. The nativity scene is put up the 15th of December, but the Christ child is not put into the manger until December 25. Between December 15 to 25 the "inn" days are celebrated, in which a family symbolically goes from house to house in search of a place to stay.
Since I am writing this on Christmas Day, may I wish any reader, who had the perseverance to continue to the end of this long journal, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!