Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Mexico City Part Tres--Mixquic

So the real place I wanted to go was Mixquic. Mixquic is an old town at the edge of Mexico City, and used to be Aztec grounds. they still do the Day of The Dead celebration every year there. So no one knows anything about this place, but I mentioned it to the Door man at my hotel, and he hooked me up with a spot in the Archaeological Museum tour. The tour was in Spanish, but whatever, i just really wanted to go and see the action. There were two people who were in charge of the tour. An old guy, the professor, and the younger guy, Rafael, who spoke English, and explained some stuff to me.
This is when we arrived in Mixquic. To get to the Church and cemetery you had to walk through the old cobble streets. People were setting up to sell stuff, and one of the big things was skull bread.

Bone puppet show from their balcony.

There was cotton candy flying all over the place. The other older guide, the professor, kept grabbing pieces and waving them in my face going "woooo, phantoma" I laughed the first time, but then he did this like 5 more times. I 'm like "Yea ok I got it, it's a ghost"



Best flower picture I saw


This was the church at the end of the town. There were some real creepy religious statues in there, but for some reason, they didn't come out on my camera. woooo phantoma!!




Look at how decorated everything is









There was some Aztec altar in the middle of the cemetery, (above) and they had a bunch of old bones on them. There was also some kind of offering table too, and the guide tried to explain it to me, but he didn't know how to say it in English. I'm like, "you mean this, right?", and made a slicing motion on my throat. He started laughing.






This lady was serious. She had all this stuff with her, and got to work cleaning and decorating.

Guadalupe watches over all.


??crazy unkempt grave in the wall



Close up of the inside of a decorated grave.



In the center of the church were some real Aztec ruins. This statue is about 900 years old.






There was some kind of town hall, where the townspeople built really elaborate altars. This one is for Frida, I like the one of her in the wheelchair.

This is actually a very tiny altar. That plate in the front with the spoon in it is about the size of a penny.

This is a big ass altar, it's about 25 feet high.



There was also a mini museum in the town, probably because there were Aztec ruins found there. I'm not sure if these skulls are real, but I think they are. I love the way they are skewered on sticks.




I took some pictures at night. They didn't come out that good, but I still wanted to have some with the candles lit up. I would have stayed but the Museum guide was leaving.

Mexico City Part Dos--The altars

There were a whole bunch of altars running up and down the Paseo de La Reforma. These were there the first night I got there, so I wandered out and took pictures of them.
I liked this one a lot.It was supposed to be the hanging gardens where you can get a boat to row you around, like in Venice. I went there the last time,and it was nice. You can buy food from other boats, and there are Mariachi bands that float around, and will play whatever you want.

Front view of the Xochimilco boat.
This altar was dedicated to dead celebrities.





Apparantly, there's a big thing to make pictures with the marigolds on the ground. Some people just splash the petals all over, but some, like this person, will make an elaborate picture with the flowers.




This whole things is made from flowers!


This is a very nice sugar skull. It was huge like the size of a human skull, and had fancy decorations.




Skeletons need to get liquored up too.


There was a string that you could pull to get this skeleton to rise up. I pulled it and it broke, WHOOPS. No one saw me. I didn't do it on purpose!


A wanna be Xochomilco boat. Not anywhere close as good as the other one.


More fun with flowers.





I love these paper cut outs. Some have funny things on them, like skeleton cats dancing.












Made from fowers. All that red is carnation petals.






This altar stretch was long, it went on for like 6 blocks.