The Best of Both Worlds

The last three days have been absolutely beautiful: blue sunny skies, and temperatures in the low 70s; it is on days like these that Mexico feels its most wonderful.  The days remind me of summer back home.  But in Mexico with all the colorful food stands, palm trees, and abundance of life in the streets, it is especially nice.  I had originally planned to head down to the beach this weekend, but after thinking it over a while I decided I didn’t really want to take a nine hour bus ride to be alone for the weekend.  Funny how things like that never used to bother me.  Now travel for the sake of travel doesn’t excite me quite as much.  I don’t know if that is due to Mexico not exciting me as much as it used to, or just me getting old.

Well with this free day at hand I went south of the city to the Anhuacalli museum dedicated to the pre-Hispanic art collection of Diego Rivera.  The building was designed by Rivera as a future studio.  It is made completely of stone and encompasses both Aztec and Mayan architectural features.  The most striking aspect of the building (and of the whole museum as well) is the sheer size of the place, and the morose dark interiors you are faced with upon entering.  It felt very much like a medieval castle, which caught me by surprise as I had been expecting to simply find a normal house.  It is hard to believe that anybody in the modern era would have wanted to live in a place like this; there were no comfortable living rooms or kitchens to make life pleasant, just thick stone walls, ceilings, and floors. But for a visitor it was great fun to explore.

The collection inside also surprised me by its breadth and quality.  There were a ton of aztec stone sculptures on the first floor.  The faces on all the scultures were all fascinating, like looking at a ghost trapped in time.  When you look at these pieces you really feel like you are looking at another world.  They were humans, but man, how different their world was from anything in Europe!  You feel a bit frightened seeing such looks of fear on all the faces.  Finally on the roof of the museum there is an open terrace where you can see the whole of Mexico city and the hills and mountains which envelop it.  Especially beautiful were the snow capped peaks of the mountains Ixtachiatl and Popocoatepetl.

After that I made a stop in Coyoacan on the way home and bought the DVD of Before Sunrise.  I had forgotten how a beautiful film can move you so much.