La Ciudad de México

This was the Squirrel Monkey in a pet store in Mexico City that I got to hold! Apparently it's legal to sell them here...

I'm not sure what this is called, but it's a cool building.

This is another view of the Zócalo and a large image of the Mexican flag formed from hanging cords.

A little history:
It is said that an Aztec god told the Aztecs that they were to settle where they saw an eagle land on a cactus while eating a snake, and so they did. The place was on an island in a lake called Lake Texcoco in the year 1325. This development eventually grew and became (with the "help" of the Spaniards) what we now know as Mexico city. The image on the Mexican flag is of an eagle eating a snake while perched on a cactus.

I went to Mexico City! This is the Zócalo, which is a big square in the center of town and from my experience usually has a church. Sometimes events are held in the Zócalo such as protests, native ceremonies and the sea of nude people which appeared in the National Geographic magazine a little while back.

Michoacán: Tzaráracua, Paricutín y Pátzcuaro

This is in the plaza in Pátzcuaro. It appears to be some kind of native old man dance.

On Sunday we went to Pátzcuaro, this is the main plaza.

There is a near by lake where the people fish with butterfly nets (they look like butterflies). Also during a certain time of the year there is an area near the town that gets flooded with monarch butterflies.

This is the base of the volcano where we parked our horses and started hiking. The volcano doesn't look very big in the picture, but if you look at the person in the middle, and then the light blue spot at the top, which is also a person, you can see that it really was kind of big. As for climbing it, it was just volcanic dust the whole way up, so I would take a step and then my foot would slide like 1/3 of the step back down. We got down by taking that path that runs down the center... it was REALLY steep. You basically took a step and then continued sliding like another foot.

This was my horse. He carried me for about 6 hours total, I was really sore the next day, I don't know how he felt about the whole thing.

On Saturday we drove up a long dirt road into a native village where we were given horses, with wood saddles (ouch), and rode, first down to the little white spot on the right side of the picture, which is a church. Then we rode to the volcano Paricutín, which is the flat mountain on the left.

This last weekend our group went to the state of Michoacán. On Friday we went to an area or park called Tzaráracua.

We parked and hiked down to two waterfalls, as you can see it was really pretty.

I've heard Michoacán referred to as the Washington of Mexico.

Cristo Rey

This is the view from the top of Cubilete.

Cristo Rey: In 1923 the liberal Mexican government wanted to diminish the power of the church. The Christians, in an attempt to preserve the religion and Christ, built a huge metal statue of Jesus called Cristo Rey. It is in the geographic center of the country and stands on the top of a hill called Cubilete just outside of the city of Guanajuato. The base of the statue is a church.