You climb. Huff and puff and pause, up steep stone steps ancient when the Caesars ruled halfway round the world.
The air is clear, crisp, cool, thin at 7,200 feet, and middle-age climbers gasp from step to step, tier to tier.
Pyramid climbing: 217 steps above the dry plains north of Mexico City, an hour and a mystery beyond the municipal smog and congestion.
The Pyramid of the Sun rises, gray and hulking, from the valley plain, a rubbled monument to an archeological and anthropological enigma.
Stand there on the flat top and look upon the Street of the Dead, lined with stone temples. A street one-quarter of a mile long, perhaps 2,000 or more years old, leading to the smaller Pyramid of the Moon.
This is Teotihuacan, once a city of 250,000 people. They built the pyramids, the temples, the plazas, the palaces and established one of the first truly urban societies in the Western Hemisphere.
And then they-the people-disappeared, simply vanished from this high valley of Mexico, leaving behind the vast empty city and its legacy of blood and human sacrifices.
Teotihuacan, as are the pyramids of Egypt outside Cairo, is a modern suburban curiosity.
Mexico City, one of the world`s most populated and densely concentrated cities, sprawls outward from its place on the valley plain, vast, cosmopolitan and sophisticated, a mass of concrete and steel, a muscular titan of a town.
Perhaps 20 million people live in and around the city now, but it still can be a place of small things, small pleasures, such as:
Chapultepec Park on Sunday morning, with artists and craftsmen and strolling families, a fine zoo, museums and wandering musicians. The Alameda, a gardenlike promenade several blocks long in the city`s center, a sanctuary for resting on benches, reading the newspaper, having a shoeshine, watching the passing parade of people.
The Plaza de la Constitucion-Mexico City`s principal plaza-at night amid soft lights. Markets, all hotbeds for haggling over foodstuffs and souvenirs. The canals of the floating gardens of Xochimilco. Startling murals on many public buildings, the endless array of museums, shops, restaurants, theaters. Beyond the city
And outside. There are more things worth leaving Mexico City to see on day trips.
Drive west on Highway 15, a winding scenic road leading into the mountains and the town of Toluca, one of the prettiest and cleanest small cities of Mexico.
Tuluca is higher and cooler than Mexico City with flowering plazas, a four-square-block municipal market especially colorful each Friday when rural Indians bring their handicrafts to sell. Pottery from the village of Metapec is a good buy.
Calixlahuaca is a ruin with a small pyramid and a few temples.
Ixtapan de la Sal is south from Tuluca, through the mountains beyond the extinct volcano, Nevada de Toluca, snowcapped and stately at 15,036 feet. At the volcano`s base is the village of Tenancingo where, it is claimed, the best shawls-rebozos-in all Mexico are woven and sold.
Again south, to the bottom of a circular drive from Mexico City, is Taxco, Mexico`s silver-mining center and a wonderful little city for walking around.
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All of Taxco is a national monument and remains much as it was in colonial times. There are narrow streets and cobblestones, flowers and gardens, red-tiled roofs. Shopping for silver jewelry is the pastime in Taxco, and dozens and dozens of shops, many with in-house artisans, sell every bauble and bangle imaginable.
Turning north again, toward Mexico City via Highway 95, there is Cacahuamilpa Caverns with its 21 lighted chambers. And Xochicalco, another mysterious ruin where the remains of many early civilizations are strewn over six square miles. There are temples and homes and ball courts-all in ruins.
An hour south of Mexico City, Cuernavaca is Mexico`s premier mountain resort town, and has been since the days of earliest Spanish exploration. Its climate is perfect. Flowers grow everywhere. Many wealthy Americans and Mexicans have retired there.
East from Mexico City, Puebla is 90 miles over the mountains past Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, a pair of sleeping volcanoes. Once it was a fancy colonial conclave during the Spanish occupation, and the residue of those days can be seen around the main plaza. One part of the colonial facade is a church built in the 1600s. The remainder of the square is taken up with shops and outdoor cafes.
Nearby, the town of Cholula features the largest pyramid in the world, now little more than a high mound of earth with the Church of Our Lady of the Remedies built on top.
Mexico City`s pyramids-that desert city of Teotihuacan-are fully unearthed and restored and remain about the only out-of-city sights most first-time visitors see.
Basically the story of Teotihuacan is a mystery. Once larger than old Athens and Rome, its first settlers arrived sometime before 300 B.C. to establish a vast city around the pyramids and temples along the Street of the Dead.
Teotihuacan was red-”brilliantly colored red, shining red, like blood,” said an archeologist.
Ruled by priests, the city`s structures were painted with layers of volcanic lime powder and natural iron oxide, then polished. It must have gleamed brightly in the high mountain sun.
Human sacrifices
Perhaps the color was sacred, because the citizens practiced human sacrifice, perhaps even were cannibals.
Sometime after 300 B.C., the pyramids were built, probably to measure the movements of the sun and moon, and doubtlessly were used as ceremonial platforms for human sacrifices.
And then the city was abandoned by those unknown people, and even today no one knows who they were, what language they spoke or where they went.
Toltecs eventually moved into the abandoned city, and those peoples are easier to track. For one thing, the Toltecs are responsible for one of the better legends of Mexico-the tale of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent god.
Legend says Quetzalcoatl was light-skinned, blue-eyed and bearded. He came ”from across the waters.” A rival god eventually drove him from Mexico, but he promised to return.
The legend of Quetzalcoatl is believed to have determined the ease with which Cortes conquered Mexico. Many Toltecs and Aztecs believed Cortes was Quetzalcoatl returning to the land of his birth.
A cobblestone road surrounds the ancient city today. There is a museum with artifacts from Teohihuacan and a couple of decent restaurants (one of which is in a cave), souvenir stands and little children everywhere selling genuine prehistoric statues made yesterday in someone`s garage.
Standing above the city, atop the Pyramid of the Sun, you can see for miles into the flat surrounding plains. A people with no known past built this city and then disappeared somewhere, in some direction, at some time in history, for some reason we`ll never know.