Wrestling and Ruins in Mexico City

On Sunday we didn’t get up to much, we were recovering from a late night out with Antonio. We were going to go on a walking tour from our lonely planet guide but we did a bit, stopped for lunch and couldn’t be bothered to continue. So we headed back to the hostel to have a bit of a chill out. At 4 pm we headed over to Arena Mexico as we had heard there was Lucha Libre on.

Lucha Libre is a type of freestyle wrestling in Mexico, but watching it it feels more like a cross between wrestling and pantomime. Wrestlers wear masks and there is little effort to disguise the fake punches and kicks, there is an obvious split of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys that you don’t need to speak the language to spot and the crowds go wild cheering and booing on queue. Even though it’s all faker than the ring girls boobs, it’s still a lot of fun! Yes the jumps of the ring and opponent throws are fake, but you still have to admire the gymnastics that go into them! They’re leaping onto each other and being thrown across the ring, they play in teams of three so there’s so much happening, it’s very exciting and at times comical to watch! Although it’s obvious they’re not really fighting, for me that makes it more enjoyable as no-one is getting hurt, well except one guy who had to be taken off in a stretcher after he fell awkwardly. Even then we were unsure if it was part of the show as the medical team were all ridiculously overdressed in lab coats. Apart from the injury we really enjoyed the evening, we even got a bit to into it and bought a mask!

The wrestling finished at about 7 pm and on our walk home we saw lots of people in the park and went to investigate. The park was full of people dancing – on Sunday afternoons people take music to the park to dance and people join them. There were groups of people dancing to salsa, waltz and pop music, the groups were a mix of ages from 16 to 80, old and young dancing together and teaching each other moves, it was so nice to see! We even had a join in of a few.

On Monday we met up with Antonio again and went to visit the pyramids at Teotihuacan, you’re probably sick of hearing about how we climbed another set of ruins, but it seemed only fitting for our last day in Mexico to visit the largest ones here. Boy was it big! People looked like ants on the ground and I felt like I should have legs like Arnold Schwarzenegger after climbing not one but two of them! As always the view from the top was incredible and you got a real sense of how huge the city must have been in its prime, even if half of it still hasn’t been excavated yet!

On our way around the pyramids we were chatting to Antonio about all the traditional food we had tried, tacos, mole, tamales, tortas, etc. and he mentioned barbacoa, a lamb dish where the lamb is cooked underground for 8 hours in cactus leaves. The region we were currently was apparently known for its barbacoa, so we headed out in search of it for lunch. The slow cooked lamb was served with a delicious lamb soup made from the juices, rice, cactus leaves and some thick corn tortillas. It was a big meal but I wasn’t a huge fan of cactus, it tastes a bit like a huge watery gherkin and I was sick of tacos so I just made my way through the lamb, rice and soup.

In the evening we met up with another friend, Anatolio, a Spanish doctor we had met in Bacalar who worked in Mexico city. We went for a wander about the city and a few drinks before heading home to bed and setting an early alarm for our flight to Columbia!

We’re excited for country number four of the trip, hopefully it will be fun, we’ve heard great things.

As always I’ll keep you updated,

Lots of love,

Alice x

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