15 minute blog

Hi Colette, great to hear from you!

We are using the computers at the hostel and there is a 15 minute limit if people are waiting. Of course everyone goes out all day then uses the internet in the evening, so there is a queue, and I will just give a few comments. Now the high altitude has kicked in and I have a headache. The hostel scene is good for us. Mainly the people are young, single, world travellers. A whole array of young single adventurous women are here and Charles is managing quite well. They all have great and terrible travel stories.

Today we drove for ages along a freeway, though about 20 kms of non-stop slums to the pyramids. We climbed two of them including the second highest pyramid in the world. The view was spectacular, the pollution was even more spectacular. These people had foresight, they built the pyramids over centuries, they engineered an architectual marvel, they also practised human sacrifice at special alters and sometimes rolled the decapitated bodies down the stairs. We stood on the top of the pyramid and watched people raise their arms to the sky in worship.

I too have found something to worship. At last something that religion has to offer me, something that I can realte to. In the biggest cathedral of the Spanish (built from the ruins of the Aztec temple that they knocked down) they have a series of chapels. One of these chapels is devoted entirely to the worship of chocolate. I too worship chocolate and suggest it to you all as a most fulfilling (or filling at least) devotion.

Apparently 85% of Mexicans are Catholic and 95% are Guadalupans. I knew nothing about the story of the virgin of Guadalpe, but she is the hot ticket in meso-America. We are both staggered at the religious passion, everything revolves around this. The tour took us to the Cathedral of Guadalupe, outside was a street market and at least half the bus was more interested in cruising the market than in the cathedral. It was still interesting though, we watched crippled people gingerly toughing a photograph of the image of the virgin, praying to be cured, the cathedral was packed an apparently almost always is and in the enourmous courtyard outside a Spanish version of Simon and Garfunkles Bridge over Troubled Waters was being playéd.