Teotihuacán.

Located in the valley of the same name 30 miles north of Mexico City lie the remains of a great ancient city of Mesoamerica, Teotihuacán.

Although Teotihuacán used to be a thriving city and ceremonial center that predated the Aztecs by several centuries,  little is known about its ancient builders, including their name, precise religious beliefs, or language.

At its zenith around 500 AD, Teotihuacán's magnificent pyramids and palaces covered  31 square kilometers (12 square miles) and the city was larger in size and population than Rome. Through trade and other contact, Teotihuacán's influence was felt as far south as the Yucatán and Guatemala.  Teotihuacán began declining sharply around 650 AD, and was almost completely abandoned around 750 AD. No one knows exactly why though scholars believe the decline was probably caused by overpopulation and depletion of natural resources.

Calendar.

Photo: gripso banana prune/Flickr

Tthe The Aztec calendar stone, Mexican sun stone, or Stone of the Sun (Piedra del Sol), is a large monolithic sculpture that was excavated in the Zócalo, Mexico City's main square, on December 17, 1790 by workers doing repairs in the square, underneath the Cathedral.

What the workers uncovered was a disc-shaped stone that measured 3.63 meters (12 feet) in diameter and was 3 feet thick. It was covered with pagan symbols. The Spaniards had contemptuously buried it underneath the Zócalo shortly after they toppled the Aztec empire in 1521.

Originally the calendar stone was placed atop the main temple in Tenochtitlan ("tay-nohch-TEE-tlahn"), the capital of the Aztec empire. The Aztec calendar faced south in a vertical position and was painted a vibrant red, blue, yellow and white.

When the Spaniards came along, they down main temple and, at the opposite end of the plaza, built a large cathedral to worship their own deity.

Soon after its 1790 discovery, the 25-ton stone was again ritually subjugated to the new religion, this time by embedding it in the wall of the cathedral’s western tower.

Fruit.

One thing I'm really looking forward to on this trip is the fruit. For me it will be such a nice change of pace to eat sun ripened tropical fruit instead of apples that have been warehoused since last fall's harvest.

I figured that in Mexico there would be a good of variety fruit and maybe a few I had never seen or heard of before. But as I did my research on the fruits of Mexico, I was stunned by just how many different fruits there are!  I decided to document a few of them just so I would even know what their names are and what they look like.  I don't know what fruits will be in season in July but no matter what is available, I know my brother, aka the "Fruit Obsessed One" is going to have a field day in this country. He was in his element at the central market in Antigua, Guatemala, stocking up on all sorts of different fruits, pretty much on a daily basis. I think I will bring along a couple of my recyclable shopping bags so we can haul  his purchases back to the hotel. I can already see that every day's breakfast will begin with fresh fruit that he's bought from the market. :-)

Chocolate.

Mmmmm....I love chocolate, especially über dark chocolate. I love that bite of sweet chocolate with bitter undertones. So, so addictive for me.

Chocolate and Mexico go hand in hand not only because the cacao tree is native to this part of the world but because the Aztecs and the Maya had started processing the pods into chocolate long before the Spaniards set foot on their land.  The first people clearly known to have discovered the secret of cacao were the Mayans of the Classic Period (250-900 AD).