Teotihuacan, El Tajin (pt 2 of our 2007 trip)

  

Our next stop, northeast of Mexico City, was the massive pre-Aztec ruin site Teotihuacan.  The pyramids there are some of largest in the world.  They could easily be mistaken for mountains at a distance.  If you go here bring plenty of water and a lunch.   It's a huge site and takes all day and lots of walking to see.  We ate breakfast that morning that a fantastic restaurant that was facing the Pyramid of the Moon and dinner that night in a restaurant inside an enourmous nearby cave, where I tried the huitlacoche, the black corn fungus.

After leaving Teotihuacan, we headed East to Papantla, which is the vanilla growing capital of Mexico and is also nearby the ruin El Tajin.

 I got a bag of 10 vanilla beans in the Papantla market for $2 and also learned that the vanilla bean is the seed pod of an orchid. From there we spent nights at Xalapa, Veracruz, and Acayucan. Continuing further south we arrived at Villa Hermosa only to find that all of the roads leading into the Yucatan were closed due to flooding. We ended up retracing our path north while waiting for the floodwaters to subside. It was frustrating, but we got to see something we would have otherwise missed- and what ended up being one of my favorite places on the trip, Las Pozas and Xilitla.