We spent most of the day today in the Anthropology Museum – it was fascinating, and we only scraped the surface. We joined a tour with about 10 people led by Latitia who was a wealth of knowledge, and she cherry picked significant artifacts to highlight. The stories of Mexican history were epic, with sweeping mythical narratives that were spellbinding. There were so many in fact, that it was almost too much to take in but it was worthwhile just listen to Latitia and her enthusiasm for the history of her country. We were only able to skip through two of the four main buildings in about four hours before we had a quick lunch break.
After the tragic 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, they were still standing (erect!) completely unharmed, surrounded by rubble.
After lunch, Latitia took us on a tour of El Castillo which is a lavish European castle high upon a lookout that had all the trappings of luxurious European high society transported to the new world. At this point late in the day, we were way oversaturated and it was hard to take it all in, but it was still well worth the visit.
Earlier in the day, while we were waiting for the tour to start, I noticed a young fellow on the tour with a cool NYC cycling t-shirt, so of course I struck up a conversation about cycling with him. He was travelling solo for a few months in Central America as a ‘digital nomad’ and was taking his time exploring. As a computer engineer, he has set up systems for the medical services company he worked for over the previous four years, and had made an arrangement to work remotely, so he hit the road. After travelling for several months he decided to quit work: his last day was just a few days earlier. While touring the museum and the castle, we hung out with Avram then walked all the way home from the museum while sharing stories. One of the great things about travelling is always the unexpected people encounters that pop up. Avram is a great guy (and just discovering cycling) and I suspect we’ll see him again someday.
