Back at our happy place

We spent much of the last two days driving, and have now returned to Valle de Bravo, the place where we set out from on January 2nd, almost four months ago.

But while we did a lot of driving the last two days, we still managed to do some sightseeing. We stopped in at the Tula archeological site to have a look around.

Curvy roads up in the mountains of Hidalgo.

There are a lot of these little roadside shrines.

We found a spot to pull over a take a photo of the view.

The view.

This butterfly came along for the ride on Igor's hood!

Looking down on the town of Jacala.

Driving through the town of Jacala.

Scenery along the way.

We arrived at the small city of Tula at about 4:30pm. I had read that you could park outside the gates of the Tula Archeological site, and there was a guard there who said it was okay. The site opens at 9:00am the next day, so we figured we would go and see it while we were there.

Tuesday morning, we paid the 100 pesos ($7 CAD, $5 USD) entrance fee each and went to see what there was to see.

They have a small museum on site...

Ruth and the mural.

Old stone statue.

Me, with a big joshua tree.

A lot of the cacti are flowering.

Pretty color.

The ruins are located quite far from the entranceway.

Lizard catching some sun.

The ancient city of Tula was occupied by the Toltecs for about five hundred years between approximately 650 to 1150 AD.

The ball court.

The main pyramid has big statues on it.

Nasty ants!

Ruth and the ball court.

There are a lot of stone carvings that are still in good shape.

Another lizard.

More carvings.

A big dragonfly!

Some pillars are round.

And some are square.

You can see on the left what this pyramid would have looked like prior to excavation.

The 4 meter (13' ) high statues on the top of the main pyramid.

On the reverse of each statue.

Looking down on the pillars.

The main plaza.

Old city and new city.

Zoomed in on the Tula cathedral.

Some kind of oil refinery (?) in the distance.

Ruth coming back down the steep stairs.

Lower relief carvings are original with some color still showing.

I was pretty tired of all the driving through the mountains with the curvy roads and topes (speed bumps). It was a beautiful drive though. 

I decided that Igor and I should relax a bit and take the toll roads from Tula to Valle de Bravo. It was a bit pricey, at a total of 430 pesos ($30 CAD, $21.50 USD), but I was tired of driving and just wanted to get there.

Overall, the toll roads were in pretty good shape.

A lot of construction on the one between Toluca and Valle de Bravo.

Arrived back at Valle de Bravo!

The lake level is always really low at this time of year, but rainy season usually begins in mid May and it will fill up a lot over the next few months. It will be interesting to see how much it rises between now, and when we return in early October.

This is where Igor will stay for the next few months!

Here is our drive the last two days...

We did 471 kms (292 miles) but if you use the zoom buttons on the map to zoom in on the section through the mountains on the northern part of the route, you can see how curvy the road is! Much of the drive was done at under 50 km/h (30 mph) and I figure we did about ten hours of driving between those two days.

Anyhow, we are happy to be here. We have to be in Mexico City by Sunday afternoon for our flight to Spain Monday morning.

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