Andrew de Villiers

I am blessed to have a family of travellers, with relatives in NZ, South Africa, UK and USA. Despite this, it was still a little surprising when my cousin, Charlotte, decided to have her wedding in Mexico instead of Massachusetts. At the time Kate & I were both just out of university and an unbudgeted junket to Mexico seemed like a bit of a stretch. Thankfully Dad took pity on his poverty-stricken offspring and gave us both a generous subsidy. This would be the first de Villiers family holiday in years, and the first extended family reunion in about a decade! It would also be a trip back in time through Aztec history and culture. We couldn't wait.

Things started on Christmas Eve with a trip back over the international dateline. This nifty feature allowed us to touch down in Mexico at about the same time, and on the same day, as we left Australia. Thanks to the peace-loving Conquistadors the Mexicans are now about 200% Catholic, although we later found out that some of them have still managed to put a bit of a traditional Aztec spin on things. As such, the city was completely decked out in lights and nativity scenes.

I'd downloaded a program to learn some Spanish, and I was keen to start practicing. My first victim was our cleaner who endured a badly pronounced string of about 6 words thrown together in the order that seemed to make sense in my head. I immediately realised that I'd accidentally referred to my sister as my wife, but the cleaner wouldn't know any better, so I proudly turned to Kate and proclaimed my mastery of Spanish by advising, "I whipped out a long one on her!". It took about an hour for Kate to compose herself and wipe the tears of laughter from her eyes. And it seems that our cleaner had indeed understood my badly mis-translated word for "wife" because she gave us all a very strange look the following night when Kate's boyfriend joined us and moved into Kate's room.

Our Paternal Financier had scored us a really nice hotel right on Reforma Avenue in the snazzy Gringo part of town, but all was not entirely well. Our first mission was to find some ice to cool our beer in, since our fridge wasn't working (oh, our first world problems!). HAHA.

Mexico City was the base for the first few days of the trip, and our first tour was to the National Museum of Anthropology. Guided by a local professor we were treated to a brief history of Mexico and its Aztec founders. Built in the middle of a high altitude lake by the Aztecs in 1325, it was remodelled by the Spanish in 1521 (ie razed to the ground). Since then the lake has been increasingly reclaimed to allow for the growing metropolis. As a result a good proportion of the city is sinking, and some of the older buildings stand at quite interesting angles.

Our next few adventures took us away from the city centre. When we visited, Mexico City itself had a population equivalent to Australia (about 20 million), and it felt like hours before we actually managed to leave the city limits. Our first stop was was the Great Pyramid of Cholula. This monstrosity was built in several layers starting from the 3rd Century BCE and dedicated to the deity, Quetzalcoatl. By the time the Spanish arrived the pyramid was about 450m x 450m x 65m. For stats nerds this is about 4.45 million cubic metres, making it the largest monument ever constructed (nearly twice as massive as the Great Pyramid of Giza)! It was so large that the invading Spanish did not even attempt to destroy it (as was their policy with most other monuments), and instead had to settle for building a small chapel on top to show the natives who's boss.

On our second last night in town we investigated a commotion occurring a few streets over from our hotel. Pleasantly we discovered that it wasn't a riot, and was in fact a carnival of some description. We soaked up the atmosphere and decided to join in the festivities where we saw fit: obviously this included the air pistol booth complete with ricocheting rounds that sprayed passers-by, and maturely creating a dino-orgy with motorized toys on a shop floor. We ended up celebrating our new-found freedom from the Aussie OH&S culture by acquiring a small arsenal of pellet guns, which would lead to many hilarious and near-eye-removing moments over the coming weeks.Read more