Teopanzolco Archaeological Site (Morelos), 22.10.06

Map Navigation: This dynamic Trackmap shows the GPS track (red line) and some geo-referenced photos (red dots) of the cycling tour. Drag the map with your mouse. To see the photos, click your mouse over the little red dots. Click on the photos to go to the picture page.

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GPS Track: GPX (MapSource, et al), or KMZ (Google Earth)

GPS Cycling Data:







Distance: 90 Km, Ascent: 938 m, Time: 3:41 hr, Avg. Speed: 24.1 Km/hr, Max. Speed: 59.6 Km/hr.

Travel Report:

Against all author's wishes, this cycling tour started again late (around 12:30). Due to this late hour, it was decided to rode to the Archaeological site of Teopanzolco, in the city of Cuernavaca. We took Tlalpan all the way south, in order to get out of the city. But before reaching the Aztec Stadium, there was a traffic cut on Tlalpan. The reason for this traffic cut was a religious festival in the urban town of Santa Ursula, inside Mexico City. We could observe a beautiful flower carpet in front of the Church of Santa Ursula, and also the Chinelos, some disguised dancers, whose origins and identity can be traced back to Morelos ! What is interesting to me is how a tradition of the neighbour state of Morelos is firmly rooted in a urban town inside Mexico City. Well, after passing this festival, we continue our tour to the south to the free highway to Cuernavaca, reaching the town of San Pedro Martir, and at a height of 2,700 m, we reached the Restaurant El Mirador, where there is a sightseeing point that covers all the Mexico City Valley. We continue our ascent to the town of Parres (3,000 m), last town in the Federal District, just a stone throw of the border with the southern state of Morelos.

We reached the summit, named La Cima (for a meteo station, Km 44) at 3,050 m after 2 hours of riding. Here we could observe (and photograph) a curious guy, who lied down in this spot, observing with a broad smile all the traffic between the cities of Cuernavaca and Mexico. Great way to amuse yourself in this high spot ! Descending now, we arrived at the town of Tres Marias (2800 m), a touristic attraction famed by its cuisine. We continue our descent to Cuernavaca, arriving at the Zapata, an equestrian statue in the entrance of Cuernavaca of this famed revolutionary of the past century. After this point, we took the paid highway to Acapulco, in order to avoid the burden of riding across the city. When we arrived at a big commercial house (Liverpool), we took to the right in order to arrive at the Archaeological Site of Teopanzolco, no without loosing our way for some minutes (regretfully, descending more than was required).

At the site, we could observe the twin temples of Tláloc (rain god) and Huizilopochtli (war god), also with a group of minor temples. There was also a pyramid at the back of the twin temples. We took some photographs of this temples, and would like to pass more time in this place, but the rain had decided otherwise. We waited for the end of the rain until the closure time of the site (17:30) and we took our way to the center of Cuernavaca.

Happily, there was the Cervantine Festival ongoing in the main square of the city. This Festival is a cultural one that shows for free a lot of cultural expressions, including but not limiting to music, dance, theater, etc. This Cervantine festival of Cuernavaca runs for all this week and this edition is dedicated to Japan ! I roamed through this Festival, went to visist the Cuauhnahuac Museum, the Cathedral and the Borda Garden, where there was starting a free Theater function called: "A really lively Death", in reference to the coming Deaths Day in México. It was really a pleasure having been able to assist to this free theater function, because it was very enjoyable. After that, I took the return bus to Mexico City and later the subway back home. Another line to the tiger ;-)

Thank you for reading. Till the next journey !