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Visiting Teotihuacan from Mexico City

Visiting Teotihuacan – a tour experience

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In what was a lesson in blindly taking recommendations and not asking enough questions, we had the hotel book us into a day trip out to Teotihuacan, one of the largest Pyramids outside of Egypt. We didn’t get to Teotihuacan until 1pm, had nothing to eat until 4pm – which was dreadful – and were dragged around to things we weren’t at all interested in doing.

On our way out to Teotihuacan we stopped off at Tlatelolco, Aztec ruins so close to the city they are surrounded by modern constructions. It is also the site of a mass grave located by archaeologists in 2009, believed to be from the Spanish conquest.

My big tip for Teotihuacan is get there early, like this! The sun rises over the Pyramids and it is far less crowded. When we got there the crowd was unlike anything I have ever seen with queues just to get to the climb itself. It took us well over an hour to get through the queue and climb the 243 odd steps and 65m to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun. When we got there we were unable to take a single photo without someone standing in the way! The middle of the day is the hottest part, and the area is completely exposed to the sun. It is less than pleasant to be waiting and climbing in the full strength of the sun.

Despite this, it was a pretty darn cool experience! The pyramid borders the remains of the Mesoamerican city Teotihuacan, long ago abandoned to the elements for reasons no one has ever discovered. From the Pyramid you can see the structure of the city stretching out below.

There are two pyramids, the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. The Pyramid of the Sun is the larger of the two and the one you are able to climb. Parts of the steps are dangerously steep and narrow. It wasn’t hard to imagine us all toppling down like dominoes should someone lose their balance and slip. I held onto the guiderope tightly in some parts going back down.

It was insanely crowded at the top of the Pyramid of the Sun, everyone jostled for the best position, arms thrust in the air seeking the perfect selfie. We found the next layer down was far less crowded and spent some pleasant time sitting on the edge, with enough space to take clear photos.

The Pyramid of the Moon from the Pyramid of the Sun

I’m not going to go into detail about the average meal while serenaded by Mariachi singers, nor the stinky workshop where we sampled liqueur made from cactus and Mexican rum. The rum was like rocket fuel but the liqueur actually wasn’t bad.

We also stopped by a silver factory to watch Rafael, who designed the jewellery for the movie Titanic. We each got a design carved in a small piece of silver. I wonder where mine is…

We did meet a lovely kiwi couple on their honeymoon who were great for some laughs. Unfortunately they flew to Cuba the following day or we would have caught up with them again.

Our final, reluctant stop was the Basilica of the Virgin Mary, which stands beside a newly built one. The original is the oldest church in Mexico. It was the strangest experience walking through it, as I felt I was walking lopsided. The Basilica has a distinct lean. Mexico City sinks a couple of centimetres each year, due to being built on an underground lake. It’s more obvious in some buildings than others but not easy to capture in photographs.

So it’s pretty evident that while I do recommend visiting Teotihuacan to anyone traveling to Mexico City, I wasn’t a massive fan of this particular tour. But let me provide you with some other options.

How to get to Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan is located around an hours drive from Mexico City, so this isn’t a journey you can undertake on foot. There are a number of options for getting there.

Bus to Teotihuacan

The bus from Mexico city to Teotihuacan leave approximately every 30 minutes from Terminal del Norte, or the Potrero Metro station. As at April 2019 a ticket will cost 50 pesos one way. There are reports of robberies on the buses however, so best to leave expensive gear at your hotel if you are choosing this route.

Uber to Teotihuacan

Uber tends to be a cheaper option than taxi’s in Mexico, and potentially safer given the presence of unauthorised taxi’s, but according to online forums a trip out to Teotihuacan will cost approximately 500 pesos each way depending on the demand at the time. Given this is around US$25, this might be a good option particularly if you are sharing the costs with others.

The advantage to making your own way is the freedom to spend as much time at the site as you want, rather than being limited by the tour itinerary. All that I had the time to do was climb the Pyramid of the sun and take some cactus photos! There is a whole city to explore as well as the museum.

Tour Teotihuacan

Now just because the tour I took didn’t turn out quite the way I expected doesn’t mean they are all bad. And there is the benefit that a tour will include the costs of entry to Teotihuacan as well as the transport.

I recommend getting to Teotihuacan early before the sun and the crowds, so a sunrise tour might be worth checking out. This also means you have some time to look through the museum and more of the site, instead of just climbing the pyramid.

You can also organise a Teotihuacan Private tour.

For a different experience you can also take a hot air balloon over Teotihuacan before your walk through the city.

Teotihuacan Entrance Fee

If you choose to make your own way for a self-guided tour, there is an entrance fee of 75 pesos, which includes entry to the museum.

Teotihuacan Hours of Operation

Teotihuacan is open every day of the year between the hours of 9am to 5pm.

Wandering Mexico City, and the black market

Day 2: Mexico City

I think I was asleep almost as soon as I turned out the light and I awoke full of beans and ready to explore Mexico City. Given local time was 11pm at night though it didn’t seem like the wisest idea. The king bed we’re sharing is amazingly comfortable and staying in bed isn’t a bad alternative.

Outside the sanctuary of our room the morning proved to be colder than expected. The chill air from the front door washed by me in the courtyard as I ate breakfast. It drove me to seek warmer clothes and reminded me that despite the warmer days, it is winter here.

Breakfast in the courtyard of Hotel Historico Centrales

A chatty NZ tourist had mentioned to us last night that Mexico City didn’t really get moving until after 10am and when we ventured forth this proved to be the case. The street looked like an average street.

By the time we emerged from the Temple of St Francis of Asissi the street resembled the busyness we had encountered before. It was worse than a Sydney peak hour – all day. We had no real plans for the day other than to explore the city and wandered the garden of sculptures by Salvador Dali next door to the temple before we rejoined the crowd.

There are police at every major intersection, despite the existence of perfectly clear traffic signals. Their whistles overlap the strange trilling of the flashing green pedestrian crossing man. At the first hint of either the crowds surge forward like a singularly focused hive-mind leaving you no option but to move with the flow. You barely have space to put your heel in front of the other toe and it takes swift manoeuvres to extract yourself from the stream.

We took a walk around the Fine Arts Palace, currently showing a traditional Mexican folk ballet for which we’re hoping to get tickets and strolled through the markets behind it. Some unique gifts tempted me, until I moved to the next stall and found the same merchandise repeatedly appeared, indicating its true mass produced origins.

At the metro station we scratched our heads and pondered how the fares worked, a puzzle for another day, before meandering through Alameda Central Park, a green oasis in the middle of Mexico City’s bustle.

In search of the Cathedral of the Assumption, written to have exceptional views of the city, we walked to the other side of the Historic district. Unfortunately both bell towers were closed to the public for renovations and we had to be satisfied with wandering the spacious interior instead.

A man on the street attempted to sell me a Spanish newspaper. I shook my head and said ‘no Espanol’ with a smile, which he returned and said brightly ‘welcome to Mexico!’ The streets are full of voices calling out in Spanish. People thrust cards and pamphlets as you go past trying to lure you into their restaurants or stores. I politely decline most, but one made me double-take as I realised he was selling freshly squeezed orange juice. He responded fifteen pesos to my ‘Cuanto questas?’ I nodded ‘Si’ and was handed a large cup of fresh juice for less than $1 US.

The efforts I made to learn some basic Spanish are coming in useful. I have uttered ‘Cuanto questas’ often today. Though being a gringo with limited Spanish has the advantage of being genuinely blank when bombarded by people selling something! It is unfortunate the lack of English translations on the labels in many of the museums limited my experience.

I am again reminded of Manila, which occurs to me makes sense as both were Spanish colonies. Much of the architecture reminds me of a roman influence also, perhaps it is the prevalence of the catholic cathedrals. The number of street performers, especially at night, is also reminiscent of my time in the Philippines.

On the other side of the Cathedral of the Assumption, we find a stretch something like a stormwater drain with beautifully painted walls and stalls lining the sides of the street. While we seem to be walking away from the main hub of the city there are still plenty of people around, but we turned back because we wanted to get to the tower in the other direction. When I describe this spot to locals Ruth and I met a few days later they told us with wide eyes we had been in the black market – where anything you could imagine is sold and quite a dangerous part of town. Whoops!

We thought this part of town was so pretty with the painted walls, we found out a couple of days later it was the black market!

They seem to have a museum for everything here; Cultures, Photography, Caricatures, Economics, Art, and Remembrance and Tolerance to name a few. We ventured into a number of them. A young girl with impeccable English interviewed us for her school project at the old palace of the Archbishop. Her father beamed with pride while filming her, not understanding most of what we said. Then our aching feet sent us in search of the Latin America Tower for its 360 degree views of the city.

Mexico City is immense, which you realise when you’re looking down from the birds eye view. As far as my eye could see in all directions there was the city. Parts of it were clouded with what I assumed was smog, but I later learned was actually fine volcanic ash.

We searched for somewhere different for dinner, looking for the key indicators of local presence to measure standards. I ordered a cheese empanada and nachos. The nachos barely resembled those served up in western society. A salty goodness of crunchy chips topped with a couple of liquid sauces, diced fresh tomato and onion and jalapenos. The empanada was out of this world! We also had a couple of cocktails each – best Pina Colada I ever had – all for less than 300pesos each! All up I’ve gone through a smidge over half of the 2000 pesos I withdrew yesterday. Half went on the taxi, tower entry, deposit on the power adapter from the hotel and a new pair of sunglasses after mine broke this morning!

Tomorrow we venture to Teotihuacan – one of the largest pyramids outside of Egypt – recommended as must see by my boss. I anticipate a pretty good sleep given today’s seven odd hours of walking!

You can check out other amazing things to do in Mexico City in 12 reasons to visit Mexico City.

When in Mexico, order from a menu you can’t read

Day 1: Off to Mexico City!

4.30am isn’t pretty, regardless of the reason why you’re meeting it. Except perhaps if it’s still being up from the night before. In which case it’s probably a precursor to a splitting headache at some point in the forseeable future.

Dad picked me up at 6am to catch the train into Sydney. Getting up at 4.30 gave me enough time to get ready, have a sit down breakfast and coffee (plunger since my espresso machine decided to die three days ago – the second one that’s died right before a trip) clean up and put the dishwasher and washing machine on. However, it didn’t allow me time to undertake my habitual checks that I had everything. I am instead reassuring myself that I laid out everything requiring packing, checked it and packed everything laid out. If I have forgotten anything its well beyond too late now!

In an annoying hiccup the switching of my Telstra SIM to my Covermore global SIM seems to have erased the ability of the google play music app to read my music. After some examination I did locate all my music, but can only play it track by track, which will get annoying really fast. Still, after the internet and computer dramas that had me hurling choice words at my service provider yesterday, if that’s all that goes wrong I’ll cop it.

It is now 3.15am back home in Oz, but I’m still counting it as day one as I’m still in transit and it’s 8.16am on the same date as I left.

The flight over was uneventful, I watched four movies with intermittent and fruitless attempts at sleep between. I’ve never been able to sleep on a plane, and I’ve been flying for as long as I can remember. I can’t drown out the constant drone of the engines. So in an hour I’ll have been awake for twenty-four straight, and I’m feeling it. If LAX had a flat couch for me to lie I suspect I would be out for the count!

Our 6am landing in LA meant the airport was virtually empty when we arrived, and our experience was nothing like the grilling I had been bracing for. Of course the downside is the amount of time we now have to kill before flying to Mexico City!

And then there was the flight to Mexico. I did manage to grab a smidge of sleep I think, probably due more to my brains lack of ability to stay awake than a conscious effort on my part. The flight was full and incredibly cramped for space and I was more than eager to disembark and stretch out my locked knees.

To our surprise our journey through the airport was smooth, and I was quite chuffed when I was directed to an aisle and understood the Spanish number I had been given. The guy at the counter spoke to me in Spanish but switched to English effortlessly when I asked if he spoke it.’Tu Hablas Englis?’ is going to come in very useful.

My boss had given me the heads up to purchase the taxi fare before leaving Mexico City airport to ensure we were on an authorised taxi instead of a scam. It seemed strange walking up to an airport counter and asking for the taxi fare to our hotel, but the cashier nodded and gave us a ticket. At the set rate it cost us 225 pesos. That’s a little over ten USD for what was about a twenty minute ride. Our driver spoke no English. We each made some attempts at conversation but soon gave up with friendly giggles when his Spanish was way beyond my limited capabilities.

The service at the Historico Central hotel was an impeccable standard and it is quaint and comfortable, and centrally located in the historic district of Mexico City. Surprisingly I had hit my second, or maybe fourth wind by the time we reached the hotel and I was keen to venture out for some exploration. Mexico City reminds me very much of Manila, it has a similar look and feel, with a splash of the street entertainers that are commonplace in Boracay. There is plenty more to see yet!

Keen to try the local experience we walked into a busy taco place and pondered a menu written in Spanish upon which we were lucky if we could recognise a few words. And the waiter spoke no English. In the end we just pointed to two items and hoped for the best.

Doesn’t that green dish look tasty! It wasn’t!

The experience was totally different to what you would expect back home, where you would generally be handed a hard shell full of whatever you’ve asked for. We were instead presented with five soft tortilla’s each, slightly floury in texture, and the two plates full of our chosen fillings.

An assortment of trimmings and sauces were placed on the table between us to be added as we chose. A couple of the sauces were eye-wateringly spicy. This resulted in large gulps of the delicious but no doubt filled with sugar Sangria soft drink we’d ordered. I’d recognised it on the menu and believed it to be actual Sangria. We still had no idea what one of our fillings was, but it tasted strange and we weren’t overly keen on it. The other however, was a chorizo filling and was exceptionally tasty, and we enthusiastically loaded up our tortilla’s and added the sauces we’d confirmed as safe for our non-Mexican palates. We both had our fill plus a drink for the grand total of 186 pesos plus tip!

But for now its nearly 8pm and I’ve not properly slept in about thirty-six hours so time for a shower and bed!

You can check out other things to explore in Mexico City with 3 days in Mexico City.

Tag: Historico Central