Throwback Thursday

This was originally posted on 12th May 2008 on dtracorp.com. For lack of regular new content, I’m going back and grabbing some stuff that has gone missing since the demise of dtracorp.com to repost here. I don’t think that I will follow any pattern, most likely will just be looking for some cool stuff and post it chronologically each Thursday. I’ll only post stuff that I can still find the pictures for, which means my original trip to NZ did not make the cut (unless I can find them again). I’ll also be re-formatting slightly and fixing up any grammatical errors or (mostly lower case everything text) to suit the new theme.

Veracruz

El Tajin

We left Mexico City on Thursday morning to go up (north west) to Papantla in Veracruz state, from where we would pay a visit to the El Tajin ruins, and then onto Xalapa to visit the anthropological museum there. we arrived in the afternoon and immediately found it warmer than Mexico City (more tropical), wandered around and finally settled on a hotel, that was worse than we expected (more later). the plan was to visit el tajin on the Friday, leave for Xalapa Friday afternoon, and do the museum on saturday.

That was the plan, and that was how it turned out, although Alf and Ozzy had some issues in Xalapa. Papantla was quite a nice town, smallish but with a nice vibe. Cars (some of which were pretty cool) were driving the circuit after dark, and lots of people wandering around the square. It’s a hilly town, seemingly higher in the south than the north.

El Tajin

After an amusing bus ride to the El Tajin site arriving about 10am, we wandered around the site for a couple hours. There were some very impressive ruins there, it wasn’t on my itinerary initially, but Ozzy wanted to go, so i think I took a day out of Mexico City or something, I certainly wasn’t upset, it was a cool site. It was more popular than Teotihuacan, but that could’ve been because there were lots of school groups there. After the ruins, we wandered out to see the flying Totonac voladores, traditional to the area. These guys seemed to charge before performing, we each handed over twenty pesos.

After that, we weren’t sure what to do regarding the bus back to Papantla, we waited at the ruins entrance for a while, before walking out to the highway, eventually a bus came, it went down to the ruins before coming back to the highway. on the way, a bunch of school kids got on, and started hassling Alf and Ozzy, in broken English, and Spanish, they loved it.

Volador

Next was an afternoon bus to Xalapa, it arrived around 8-9pm, in a very busy city (the capital of Veracruz state). Ozzy was to get sick, and Alf was soon to follow, we didn’t get up to much (Friday night!!), but had a big dorm room all to ourselves.

The next day we went to the impressive (and fortunately not so big) anthropological museum, with a load of giant Olmec heads, and other relics from the region, it was a pretty cool place (although it pretty much drained me of my museum visiting interest for the rest of the trip) despite not having anything (?) in English.

Giant Olmec head three is the near one, i’m not sure what the other one is, but Alf is standing there for a bit of perspective, there were definitely bigger ones, I think there were seven total, plus one in Mexico City.

Colossal Olmec Head 3

Ozzy was really feeling crappy at this point, and after the museum, we had a bit of a wander looking for a view of the city, but gave up cos we didn’t have enough time before the bus to Puebla. so a kind of rushed time in Veracruz state, and Xalapa especially, but I guess that’s what happens when you add something to the plan later on, and also when people are sick.

Voladores

A picture of the voladores sitting on top of their pole, ready to jump off and swing about upside down (tied with ropes) till they get to the bottom, the guy standing up plays a flute-like instrument while the others swing. Note: I changed the picture here so the line preceding this doesn’t make sense 😉