Papirex
Dec 26, 2006, 12:20 PM
Post #9 of 10
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Re: [Gayla] What Was On Your Holiday Table?
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We passed Christmas with my wife’s cousin Mauricio and his family in Cholula; it’s almost a part of Puebla. Christmas is definitely a religious Holiday in my wife’s family. We ate Christmas dinner at the traditional hour of midnight, after going to pray The Rosary.
Her family usually eats any holiday meal at that traditional hour, Independence Day, etc. Not many families still observe that tradition now, I think. One thing I can guarantee you is that when you wait until midnight to eat dinner, you will have an appetite.
We had roast pork, and several side dishes, comotes, salads, etc. We had wanted to bring a roast turkey, but we were too late getting one. Turkey is not a traditional thing to serve at Christmas in Mexico anyway. No pumpkin pie with hand whipped cream on it either.
Typical toasts with non-alcoholic sidra, followed later by some very good, definitely alcoholic, aged Tequila.
I think Cholula should be known as “The city of unbroken sidewalks.” Puebla is already famous as “The city that is not too far from Cuernavaca.”
Cholula has the largest pyramid in the world. It is larger than the biggest pyramid in Egypt. I went through it twenty years ago. I don’t know what ever happened to the photos I took then. I hope to get some more on this trip.
The Spanish invaders had a bad habit of chopping off the top of a pyramid, and building a church on top of it. They then forced the enslaved native people to carry earth in baskets, and bury the pyramid. After a few centuries, when grass and trees had covered the hill, no one remembered that there was a pyramid under the church; they just thought it was a church on a hill. The church on the hill with the pyramid in it is just a couple of blocks above the house we are staying in here this trip. The pyramid here is known as "The pyramid of Cholula", and the hill it is on is called "The cerro de remedio."
Mauricio is presently working for the government, supervising some street rebuilding here. He told us that just a week or so ago, they discovered another pyramid under one of the streets in Cholula. The archeologists have not examined it yet, so it is not known at this time just how extensive it is.
Mauricio is a good guy to have for our guide when visiting the pyramid. He was in junior high school when it was re-discovered around 1960, when a mudslide revealed some of the stones of the pyramid.
He used to go to the site after school and explore it on his own after everybody had left the site for the day. He witnessed the army looting all the golden artifacts they could find before the site was turned over to archaeologists. After that, he caught one American archaeologist stealing a golden idol one day. There are some idols carved in the exterior stonework. Mauricio showed me the tubes inside the pyramid where the ancient priests used to speak into them. The tubes lead to the mouths of the idols outside the pyramid. The people then thought that one of their gods was speaking directly to them. It must have been a good deal for the priests.
Mauricio knows his way around the inside of the pyramid like the back of his hand. There are many passages that are blocked off to visitors now for safety reasons. Mauricio can tell us where they lead to, and what is there at the end of the passages. When I went through it twenty years ago, it was untended, electric lights had been installed in all the passages open to the public, and you could just walk into a passage and explore it on your own. The last time I went past the site, there was a ticket booth to pay to tour the site. I have no idea of what if any restrictions there may be today on our movements at the site.
When I was there the last time, there were still some human skeletons lying on an altar where the poor people had been murdered in a sacrificial ceremony.
Unlike all the other pyramids I have seen in Mexico, the pyramid in Cholula has very fine stonework. The stones look like they were made by a machine, very precisely shaped. I remember taking pictures of some of the corner stones that had compound angles to them, and discussing with my late brother-in-law how they probably did it. I remember explaining to him that the ancient people were very good mathematicians, and they doubtlessly used mathematical formulas to cut the correct angles, etc.
Mauricio has wireless Internet in his home here, so it is nice that I can go online with my laptop easily here. Yesterday, I got an Email message from Vonage telling me that I had a voicemail message. It was from my daughter in Napa, California.
Skype to the rescue. I plugged my little portable mic into my laptop and called her in California from Cholula. I don’t use a headset to make calls with my laptop, I use a mic and my speakers, and so it works like a speakerphone. Mauricio is using Morris WiFi Internet service here. The service is through Prodigy. So far, it looks like Telmex is not interfering with VOIp calls here.
OK, so I have wandered off the subject of food. Sue me.
Rex
"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved" - Victor Hugo
(This post was edited by RexC on Dec 27, 2006, 11:37 AM)
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