pyramids Archives - Wandering North

Africa Sudan Sudan-South Sudan trip 2022

Meroë

Meroë was the main reason I decided to visit Sudan. Pictures of pyramids partly submerged in swirling and otherwise empty desert sands. Not another person in sight. It looked like a dream. And so, on my second day in Khartoum, I made the trip.

My original plan was to take the bus/hitchhike. You can catch a bus from Khartoum that will take you fairly close to the Meroë pyramids and there is a town (Shendi) not far away. You can see the pyramids from the highway on the right hand side and it would not be too far to walk to them if the bus drops you off by the roadside. (Take water!) And there are lots of cars that would likely give you a lift to the nearest town to catch a bus back to Khartoum. Easily do-able as a day trip. That was my plan…until the Sudanese consulate in Ottawa said I needed to have a tour booked to get a tourist visa (and that I could only do this through their one approved tour company) so I booked a driver to take me to Meroë and to get my visa. It wasn’t worth the expense, but it got me there and into the country (and hopefully put a few dollars in a Canadian consulate worker’s pocket) so I can’t complain. Much.

To leave Khartoum, you need special papers authorizing you to travel. This is on top of the visa and the multiple registrations that must be done with the police in Khartoum. My tour company arranged the paperwork, and I arranged the multiple copies of my passport and visa that I would be expected to present at the various roadblocks. On the drive there and back we were stopped multiple times by men in various uniforms (berets, epaulettes askew, medals, brooches, etc) who looked at my passport and paperwork and usually smiled at me. I was extra friendly because I was hoping they wouldn’t notice that the tour company had put the wrong date on the document. They didn’t.

When we got to Meroë I was basically on my own. There is a small fee to enter the site (which you should pay, notwithstanding various unscrupulous travelers noting that you can skip by entering from the back). From there was a walk across the desert to a cluster of pyramids in the dunes.

Sudan has more pyramids than any other country. They are smaller than the ones in Egypt or the Mayan and Aztec ones I have seen, but they are steep, pointy, and plentiful. They are also a bit younger; most being built by the Nubians only about 2500-2000 years ago.

The pyramids were used as burial sites for kings and queens. They have been long since plundered and nothing remains of their contents, but what does remain are excellent carvings – like the sort you would see in Egyptian pyramids.

The thing that is best about the Meroë pyramids though is that you have the place to yourself. I saw one guy on a camel who offered me rides and there were a couple guys at the entrance selling crafts, but at the actual site…it’s all yours. And the setting is spectacular. Rolling dunes of various hues set against a blue sky. The sand is slowly filling up the interior of the pyramids and sweeping up the sides. It’s not hard to imagine them being lost altogether. Conservation is important (which is why you shouldn’t skip out on paying the fee).

It was sometimes a little eerie entering the pyramids and having no one else around. Eerie in a wonderful way. I kept thinking of that old Sesame Street bit where Bert and Ernie are inside an Egyptian pyramid and a mummy comes to life and then does a little dance. I found that eerie too when I was small.

It’s not a large site, so I stayed an hour to two and that was it. We stopped at Shendi for some water and coffee.

There is a lovely looking tented camp nearby (the only proper place to stay the night) and I have no doubt that it is excellent, but it is also very expensive, and so I went back to Khartoum and spent my evening with friends from the Acropole Hotel – followed by a cigar of course.

It was an excellent day.

If I had it to do over, I would have booked a driver to take me on a day trip to Musawwarat es-Sufra and Naqa, which are not so accessible on one’s own, and I would have gotten myself to Meroë on my own. Instead, I did a second day trip to those sites with a driver on a different day. Day trips in Sudan are not cheap, but the sites are priceless, so it all balances out in the end.

The next day I would visit the camel market and the market in Omdurman.

Central America / Caribbean Guatemala North America

The Ruins at Tikal

I had gone to Guatemala for a week or so of work and was flying home on a Sunday, which meant I had one Saturday to do with as I pleased. There was no way I was leaving Guatemala without seeing the Mayan complex of Tikal. Guatemala has a wealth of beautiful sights to choose from and I knew I was only going to see Antigua and Tikal. The photos of Tikal have always looked so mystical: tall pyramids rising out of the jungle. I love that stuff (who doesn’t?) whether it is Machu Pichu or Abu Simbel, or Tikal, there is the allure of a lost civilization leaving exquisite remnants and just a bit of a feeling like you are Indiana Jones. It’s irresistible.

So I was determined to make it work.

I don’t recommend going from Antigua or even Guatemala City to Tikal for the day. It is a long day and while I was happy with the time I spent at Tikal, it meant not getting to spend any time in the delightful looking town of Flores, which is the gateway to Tikal. But it IS possible to do it as a day trip if you have transportation at both ends of the flight to Tikal and don’t mind starting at about 2:30am. The logistics of handling the transportation on my own seemed daunting, so I just booked a day tour, which I felt was the best option.

I was picked up and driven to Guatemala City where we gathered the others, maybe 8 of us in total. We flew in a small twin propellor plane for about an hour to Flores where we were picked up by our guide and driven to the Tikal national park.

Tikal was built between about 200 and 900 AD by the Mayans (although the site of Tikal was settled about 1000 years prior) but it was not discovered, covered by jungle, until the 1840s. It seems impossible that it could go unnoticed for so long, but even now, some of the temples are still covered by vegetation and it was only when our guide pointed them out that we knew they were there. They just looked like green hills.

It was great, walking through the trees, monkeys overhead, and then seeing a pyramid peak peeking out above the trees, or entering a clearing with one just sitting there. It was lovely. And we got to climb up many of them, which I always like, even if sometimes that seems like a better idea going up than coming down.

I don’t feel like I learned a lot on this tour about the civilization itself, but I was very happy to have a guide take us around and the people on the tour were all nice and good company. That said, no one in the group had seen the very enjoyable horror movie “The Ruins”, which was so clearly on point; it was disappointing.

(“The Ruins” is good travel horror movie where a bunch of young backpackers visit a pyramid in the middle of the jungle in Central America, only to find that the vines covering the pyramid are sentient and sacrificing the humans that invade the pyramid. I mean, come on, it’s the same thing. They may as well be selling DVDs of it at the Tikal gift shop. [There is no Tikal gift shop.]) I feel like often obvious horror movie references go unappreciated in places around the world. Like the Paris catacombs and “As Above So Below”, or the Amazon and “Cannibal Holocaust”, or the Australian outback and “Wolf Creek”, or any hostel in Eastern Europe and…”Hostel”. I could go on, but won’t.) It’s almost like other adults don’t spend all their free time at home watching trash.

Horror movie digression aside, Tikal did not disappoint. It was incredible. I would say that it was a little less impressive than Machu Pichu or Abu Simbel. Better than Teohuacan. Maybe similar in enjoyment to Borobodour. But there is not requirement to rank these places. This isn’t that kind of blog. All these places are wonderful and worth seeing.

Tikal was great. I’m glad I went. It was the perfect way to end my time in Guatemala.

Mexico North America

Day Trip to Teotihuacan: Pyramids to Libraries

I awoke on day three in Mexico City early and with a plan. Although there was still so much in the city I wanted to see, I decided to take a day trip to Teotihuacan and the pyramids. My parents had visited there in the early ’70s and I remember seeing Polaroids of them standing on the avenue of the dead. It always looked so dusty and exotic. I had to go.

My hostel offered to arrange a tour, which was ok price-wise and would have arranged all transportation, which sounded kind of appealing, but it was also going to a bunch of other sites I wasn’t interested in, so I decided to go by public transportation. I’m glad I did. It was so easy and cheap and I was able to spend as much time as I wanted.

Here’s what I did:
I took the metro to Terminal Central del Norte aka Autobuses del Norte on the yellow line (as previously mentioned, the metro system is great). I crossed the street and went to the bus station. It is very big and you will see it right away. Going inside, I turned left and walked to the end of the hall, to gate 8, the 2nd to last service counter where Autobuses Teotihuacan was selling tickets. The lady at the counter spoke English and I bought a round trip ticket to “Los Pyramides”. It is very cheap – about $6.50 CDN round trip. From there, around the corner is the row where the buses pull up. It is not obvious which exactly which bus stall is which, but the lady had told me which number it was and so I knew it was one of two buses. I just asked people and made sure I was in the right queue and sat behind some local people who were also going to the pyramids so I could just get off when they did. The seats were not assigned. One weird thing was that both going there and coming back, the police got on the bus and took pictures of everyone on the bus. No one was able to tell me why.

The bus was comfortable and took about one hour. As we approached the pyramids the sky was dotted with hot air balloons. I bought a ticket at the gate and entered. It is enormous, spread out. I realized right away that I was glad to not be on a tour, which usually only stay for an hour. There was a lot of walking to be done.

Briefly, Teotihuacan was a city created about 100BC by some unknown people. The names given to the site came from the Aztecs, who came later. The city lasted until about the 7th or 8th century, but it seems that a lot of it was destroyed around 550AD. There are lots of theories about who built it and why it was abandoned, but you’ll have to look elsewhere for that. What I am here to tell you is that it is old and it is awesome.

I met a girl from Manilla and we walked together to the first small pyramid. You couldn’t climb up this particular one, but there were still lots of stairs to get close to it, which was worthwhile to see the well-preserved carvings. From there we walked down the Avenue of the Dead where I attempted to recreate my parents’ Polaroid.

From there, we walked to the Pyramid of the Sun. This is the big one. The third largest in the world. Climbing it seems mandatory. I wasn’t thrilled about this. It is a lot of stairs. Steep ones. But it was actually fine and I stopped for a rest half way up and chatted with a couple from Toronto. I lost my companion from Manila early on, as she needed to keep a slower pace. At the top, I had a sense of satisfaction and great views of the site and the Pyramid of the Moon. Totally worth the climb.

I walked to the Pyramid of the Moon. It was getting hotter and I was pretty tired from the initial climbs, but I didn’t come all this way to NOT climb the Pyramid of the Moon, so up I went. The Moon Pyramid is smaller, but was a harder climb because it was the second one. The views from there are also great.

After descending, I wandered around a bit more, but I was basically done. It was 11am. I was hot, sweaty, and slightly annoyed that there was nary an ice cream vendor in sight. I walked out of the nearest gate (the one closest to the Pyramid of the Moon) and crossed the street and within 5 minutes a bus pulled up, headed back to Mexico City. Apparently they come very frequently. Easy. I slept on the way back.

Because my trip to the Pyramids was just a morning affair, upon arriving back in the City I decided to explore some new areas. I took the metro to Chilpancingo and walked to Parque Mexico, which is a beautiful oasis. Green and flowery with people biking, running, and strolling. There are fountains and popcorn vendors. Just a lovely escape on a hot day.

From there I wandered the Condesa area and then up to the Zona Rosa area. These are really lovely areas with tree lined streets, fancier houses, and lots of inviting pubs and restaurants. I stopped for a bite to eat and then stumbled upon a crafts market, where I walked the aisles before walking to the Roma area. Everywhere I went, I kept finding arts and crafts markets. Not traditional Mexican souvenirs, but more like the sort of stuff you would see at a crafts market in Vancouver or Portland but with more tacos and tequila. There were bands playing and more charming parks with public art.

It was a great area and I could have spent more time, but the day was wearing on and I had a cigar lounge to find. I walked back towards the Parq Mexico and right by there is a building of fancy food stalls, but on the third floor is the most inviting cigar lounge, Cigar Point.

I settled in there for about an hour and half, enjoying a couple of cubans from their humidor, after which I was energized for the walk and train back to the historic centre. I spent the evening trying to stay awake. I went out for a walk to get something to eat and decided to have a couple of bean tacos that a man was selling from a bucket on the street. It was about 40 cents for two of them. Not great, but not bad. I think it was these tacos that led to what was about 12 hours of intense food poisoning. Who would have thought tacos from a bucket would be a bad idea?

This kind of killed off my plans for the next day. I wasn’t feeling great, between my stomach troubles and my legs, which had seized up following all of my pyramid climbing the previous day. I had to leave for the airport at noon, but I took a brief trip by the metro to Biblioteca Vasconcelos, this massive library built in 2006. It has this interesting, open concept that makes the books look like they are floating. It is quite stunning and has interesting features like a whale skeleton art installation and outdoor patio reading rooms. It is gorgeous. I did get in trouble though for taking pictures. Weirdly, photos taken on a phone are fine, but camera photos are not. I explained that I did not have a phone, only my super cheap Sony Cybershot (so it’s not like I’m taking professional pictures), but the guard said no and proceeded to keep an eye on me.

The library is in kind of a lousy area but is totally worth a visit. It is a few steps from the Buena Vista metro stop on the grey line.

After that I had just enough time to pack up my stuff and take the metro to the airport. A little less than four days in Mexico City was amazing. I was able to see so much, but I am definitely going back. There is more to see, but I’ll skip the bucket tacos next time.

Tag: pyramids