Day 9 Spirituality in Cholula ... and Lucha Libre!
Monday.
We'd booked on a tour of Cholula with a spiritual theme. We were originally going to visit all the places on the tour ourselves but figured it might be easier to get from place to place with a driver. Our guide was a German called Patrick who had lived some years some years in Cholula, and his wife was from here, so he was very knowledgeable on his subject.
Our first stop was the museum at the base of the pyramid, where we were given an overview on the history of the “oldest town in the Americas”, about the cholulan tribe and the gods they worshipped.
replica of a wall painting that still exists on one of the inner walls of the pyramid, showing people drinking pulque
He then took us to the tunnels excavated under the pyramid, which were undertaken in the 1930’s and reveal the Russian doll structure of the pyramid; how it started with one small pyramid and every cycle (52 years), a newer, bigger pyramid would be built right over the old one. The long, slightly claustrophobic tunnels cut straight through row after row of familiar stepped structures, taking us into the heart of this man-made mountain; I wouldn't have fancied doing this alone! And mountain it was, as this, the biggest pyramid in volume (Giza in Egypt is taller but not as wide) is mostly buried under soil with a church built on top.
part of one of the walls of the next pyramid layer
steps of one of the inner pyramid layers
We were then taken around what could be seen of the structure above ground and uphill to the beautiful church at it's summit, with panoramic views for miles around. Difficult to believe we were standing on top of a pyramid!
ground squirrel!
a reconstructed section of the pyramid
heading up to the summit
On the way down we were fortunate to catch the Voladores as they descended down a pole in the car park
I also have a video of it here on YouTube and if you keep the volume on, you can hear Patrick explain about the significance of the dance.
Back downhill into town, via lots of cute but destructive ground squirrels, Patrick took us to a little bar/Cafe that did homemade pulque. It was delicious, so much nicer than what I had the day before, with freshly pulped fruit mixed into the beverage. This was supplemented by some lovely veggie quesadillas. I would never be able to find this bar again should we ever return to Cholula but it was a rather special place.
Patrick took us through Cholula center to see the massive ex-convento de San Gabriel Archangel wiith it's many domes, and Zocalo. I loved Cholula and regretted not staying here instead of Puebla, which I was not too enamoured with.
the interior was reminiscent of the Moorish-built churches in Spain, such as Cordoba, with the rows of small domes and columns. Simple but beautiful
San Pedro Cholula zocalo (Cholula is actually made up of two towns - San Andres, where the pyramid is, and San Pedro with its large zocalo)
We didn't get time to explore a great deal as we needed to get back to the car and head to our next destination in San Luis Tehuiloyocan, a suburb of Cholula, for the Casa del Diablo (house of the devil).
The route to San Luis was interesting, working its way through the suburbs, with quirky buildings, so much colour, cute churches, shops, snack bars, marigold fields and radish farms.
Casa del Diablo is now the local town library and the unassuming entrance doesn’t prepare you for the bizarre sight of the building itself. It was decorated in the 1760’s, using lots of little stones inserted into the plaster, to create images depicting religious symbols, local buildings (specifically churches) and a few weird and wonderful animals. Most distinctively, at each side of the entrance are two grinning monkeys with erect penises; these monkeys combined with the religious symbols around them are believed by some researchers to signify that some form of devil worshipping happened in this building. This view is enhanced by the inscriptions on the ceiling beams inside the building, which write out a latin prayer backwards. On the other hand, in such a fiercely religious country, would such a blatant building really have been allowed to remain if it was used for some satanic worship? It may well just be the work of some eccentric landowner. Either way, it was a fascinating place to visit and the mystery of its circumstance just adds to the interest.
We then strolled over to the nearby church which features in these illustrations. We couldn’t go inside but it was lovely to see from the outside, with its streamers of papel picado rattling away in the breeze - pretty much the image of Mexican churches that I’d seen online before coming here.
Back in the car, we continued towards our final two church stops of the day, passing a local cemetery, which Patrick suggested we make a short stop to stroll around. Lovely to see another example of how cemeteries are dressed for Dia de los Muertos. This cemetery was again very colourful but with grander mausoleums than those we’d seen around Oaxaca.
Next stop was Santa Maria Tonantzintla. Outside, it was your typical cute Mexican church, with bright red and yellow tiles decorating the exterior. Inside - just mind blowing. Every surface was covered with a sprawling mass of hand carved plasterwork depicting angels, animals, plants and fruits. This was Mexican vernacular baroque at its most extreme. Patrick suggested that the local people of the time may have been inspired by the Rosary Chapel in Puebla and created their own version here, using local craftsmen and tools, resulting in this distinctly indigenous style. Sadly no photos were allowed inside and the postcards on sale were of terrible quality so I was left with no permanent image of this incredible experience other than what I could find online.
Our final stop was San Francisco Acatepec. Sadly this church was closed due to ongoing repairs from last year's earthquake but it was the exterior which was the attraction in this case anyway. Clad entirely in talavera porcelain tiles, the building looked like some grotesque yellow porcelain wedding cake!
and we could see the volcano Popocatapetl from here!
Patrick dropped us off back at our hotel in the early evening and we decided to spend that night experiencing Lucha Libre! We’d asked both Patrick and our hotel doorman for advice on getting tickets and what the area around the arena was like and they both confirmed we should be able to get tickets on the door, and it would be safe enough with the usual precautions (no valuables etc). We dressed down as much as possible and took only a small amount of cash, my phone and some ID and decided to go for it.
Turned out we had nothing to worry about.
Puebla Arena was 5 minutes walk from our hotel and it was a fun family atmosphere outside. We were helpfully guided to the correct place to get our tickets and decided to buy the top level ring-side tickets so that we had allocated seats - at the grand cost of around £9 each! This left us with enough time to grab some food before going in and the street was lined with stalls selling Cemitas. A cemita is a bread roll the size of your face, filled with a breaded pork escalope, fried potatoes, cheese, salad, more cheese, chilli and anything else to hand! They were very messy to eat but absolutely delicious.
Inside the venue, where we were seated 3 rows from the front, to the side of the ring (just about safe from having wrestlers land on us, unlike the front rows!), there were vendors going round selling all manner of food and drink. You’d buy something and something better would pass by a few seconds later! The venue filled up and the atmosphere was crazy.
The lucha libre battles started at 9pm on the dot and it was two non-stop hours of insane entertainment. OTT costumes, theatrics, on-stage posturing, massive men being thrown out of the ring, fireworks, screaming audience and all the while the vendors going round selling all the foods. Whilst I grew up watching wrestling, Rob was initially not so enthusiastic about this but we both agreed we had the best of time, such a wonderfully fun and truly Mexican experience.
The full gallery of Cholula and Lucha Libre photos is here