Teotihuacan

During my first full day in Mexico, we had the opportunity to visit the Teotihuacan ruins about an hour outside of Mexico City. The ruins are pretty amazing - especially considering only about 30 to 40 percent of the ruins have been excavated.

While the Aztecs were responsible for the ruins in and around present day Mexico City, these were built by the Teotihacans, and they had long abandoned these three temples when the Aztecs discovered them. They called the road that connects the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon in the north to the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at the south calzada de los Muertos, or avenue of the Dead, because the area was deserted when the Aztecs arrived.

The Temple of Quetzalcoatl is easily dwarfed by the two larger temples to the north, but it is just as steep.

Since these ruins are only partially uncovered, there are some areas that show signs of restoration, others that bear the stamp of time and still some portions are incredibly intact as they were left centuries ago.

This section of one of the temple walls has been restored. The small stones in the grout that fill the gaps between the larger stones are evidence that this section has been repaired.

Originally, none of the stones were visible. A layer of stucco used to mask the stones and create a smooth finish.
Most of the steps on the temples looked something like this. Definitely a far cry from the ´easy risers´ in the Winchester Mystery House.
This is the Temple of the Sun, a view from the bottom before we climbed to the top. Only slightly taller than the nearby Temple of the Moon, a decidedly more daunting trek than Quetzalcoatl.

The shot below is from about halfway up, looking down on the ´avenue of the Dead,´ visible near the top of the image just beyond the square at the base of the Temple.






This is me, reaching the very top of the Temple of the Sun, the Temple of the Moon is in the background. And yes, I was careless enough to climb in sandals. Thankfully I made it up and down without any problems.