The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

It’s Christmas and that obviously means pinatas!

At least that’s what Matt learned while on a tour. The 7 points represent the seven deadly sins and you overcome them by obviously bashing them over and over until candy comes out.

Speaking of candy, there are a lot of different options to try. The coconut/pineapple disks were particularly tasty.

Being tall meant a lot of ducking through the market.

Another common snack you can find are cooked grasshoppers. These ones in particular were seasoned with lime and chili. The texture isn’t too bad, just crunchy and chewy at the same time.

Among all the piles of chilies you can also find these stalls that carry mole powders and pastes. They take so long to make that most people just buy these pre-made forms and then add stock to the desired consistency.

Mole will have to wait until later in the trip, but we did make some salsa which means cooking all the ingredients before crushing them together.

Here’s the in-progress photo.

And the final product in the molcajete.

We served the salsa on top of the tortilla with nopal (cactus), and onion. It was delicious and can’t wait to continue the food journey through Mexico.

Mexico City had a lot of cacti for a city built on a lake.

Some were flowering

But most of them weren’t.

A lot of the buildings aren’t standing quite straight because they’re built on a lake.

There were protests so all of the tourist attractions were surrounded by these metal walls and we had to squeeze through.

There are skulls around the cross in front of the Cathedral

They look a lot like these ones at Templo Mayor

Which was torn down to build the Cathedral

The Cathedral has a market in front of it

There were Christmas decorations in the street.

They have a weird library.

Templo Mayor was an Aztec pyramid.

There aren’t many Aztec pyramids around.

The Aztecs weren’t around that long and they did a lot more conquering than building.

And then they were conquered

So most of the stones from the pyramid are currently in that church in the background.

They had really good drainage because they built the city on a lake

They sacrificed people with really cute knives

Which were kept in funky cases

The dead people got cute eyes too

The archeologists say these held fire during ceremonies, but they’re obviously for umbrella drinks

They had colourful murals

And curly haired gods.

This is the pyramid of the sun at Teotihuacan

It has stairs that don’t seem to go anywhere

There’s not much left of the houses where the people lived

But it’s been abandoned for over 1200 years so that makes sense

Cougars were more sausage-shaped back then

And they really liked pyramids

Which are quite pretty

Is it still a pyramid if it’s flat at the top?

These are really just frustums.

They carved some cool birds

And painted other animals

I’m not sure the big kitty should be drinking that.