Easter

This is a picture inside the church in Mitla.  Everything is shrouded in mourning for the Savior's death (taken on Good Friday).

Palm Frond decorations were everywhere.  This one was in front of the Cathedral in Puebla.  This picture was taken Saturday evening when we took our visitors downtown.  Grampie bought little light-up toys in the Zocolo, and the kids had a blast playing with them.

Easter eggs and the Easter bunny are not part of Mexico's Easter celebrations.  Chiara is happy on Easter monring, because the Easter bunny still came to the Watts household - thanks to help from Grammie and Grampie who brought plastic eggs and egg dye from the U.S.

We even had an Easter egg hunt in the park, and the following pictures are of the hunt.  Elena helped hide the eggs, so she was taking the pictures.

We invited some boys who were playing at the park to join the hunt.  I think they thought we were a little weird.

And our friend Paulina came out to see what we were doing.

Stephen shows us his eggs.  Grammie brought a cool tye-dye egg dye kit.  The kids had a great time dying these eggs.  And eating them as egg salad later.

Watching the kids from a shady spot.

This is fun!

And so is this!

 

 

The whole gang poses for a picture!  (Grampie is taking it).

Later in the afternoon we drove out to see this church which is covered in traditional Talavera tiles.

There was a wedding going on, and this mariachi band waited outside the church to play for the bride and groom as the exited.

We liked this flower in the churchyard.

We also drove by Karl's school to show his parents where he works.

In front of the entrance to the school.

We really enjoyed spending Easter with Karl's parents and older brother, Greg.  We were able to watch conference online and really enjoyed that as well.  It was nice to have a somewhat relaxing weekend after our trip to Oaxaca.

Arbol del Tule and Mitla

Our next day in Oaxaca (April 2nd), we visited the famous Arbol del Tule (which is supposed to be the largest tree in the world), and the ruins of Mitla.

Elena and Grammie are ready to go.

We began by going to breakfast at a restaurant near the Arbol del Tule.

They don't have a special breakfast food here.  They're more likely to eat cereal or sweet bread in the evening than the morning.  Mealtimes are different here, too.  Breakfast is around 10am, then the main meal is eaten between 2pm and 5pm, and their evening meal is eaten around 9pm.

I tried a Tlayuda - it was delicious!

You can see the Tule tree on the right side of this picture.  It dwarfs the church next to it.  It is supposed to be the largest tree in the world.  We're not sure if this is by volume or trunk circumference or what.  It's a pretty big tree, though.

Here's a close-up of the trunk.  It looks like several trees might have fused together, but I guess they've done DNA tests to determine that this really is one individual tree.

Greg, Karl, and his Mom

We look pretty small when you try to get the whole tree in the picture!

After visiting the Arbol del Tule, we headed to Mitla to see more ruins.

Chiara didn't want to wear her hat anymore, so Joseph put it on!

 

Mitla was still a functioning city when the Spaniards arrived in 1520 AD, and it had been inhabited since around 750 AD.  It's know for all the elaborate designs on the walls of the buildings, as seen in this picture. 

Listening to a guide.

We could walk through buildings.

And go down into a couple of tombs.

Chiara liked going down these stairs.

Inside one of the tombs.

Eating ice cream afterwards.

After Mitla, we headed back to Puebla.  It was a long day.

Monte Albán

On our second day in Oaxaca we headed to Monte Albán.  These pre-Columbian ruins are located on a flattened ridge in a mountain range just outside of the city of Oaxaca.  The city was inhabited from about 500 BC to around 750 AD.  It was pretty impressive.

Inside the little museum at Monte Albán

A ball court

A veiw of the surrounding landscape

Stephen next to some carvings of "the dancers" . . .

There were a lot of these carvings found in one area of Monte Albán.  They were originally thought to be dancers, and the lined the walls of one of the buildings.

Later, archaeologists decided that they were carvings of captured enemies who had been castrated!

Funny story with this picture - we asked one of the security guards at the site to take it - an older fellow - and he held the camera upside down!  We don't think he'd ever taken a picture before.

Shade!  It was really hot!

We enjoyed swimming in the pool when we got back to our hotel.