More of El Tajin and the Voladores

The road into the Tajin Archealogical site is lined with booths of vendors peddling their wares.

Below is a small replica of the monument we saw in Papantla.

We saw the Papantla Voladores perform at the Tajin Archealogical Site 

and it is an incredible sight to see.

This flyer collected pesos from those watching before he climbed to his perch 

while one of the voladores played the flute.   

We checked out the museum before going to the ruins and we saw many things of interest.  A king named 13 Rabbit had many columns built to tell his own story.  This is one of them.  They didn't give an interpretation of the story.  The king was named 13 Rabbit because he was born on the 13th day of the month known as Rabbit.  

Another display showed how the people used to tie on their sandals.

 

Juan told us of a study that was done to measure the callouses of the feet of the Totonac people.  They walk barefoot and have done for centuries.  The callouses on the men's feet are about 1/2 inch thick and the callouses on the women's feet are 3/4 inches thick indicating that the women do more walking.  The men walk less but carry the heavy loads.  Juan said that anciently a bride was chosen by the amount of callouses on the bottom of her feet--indicating that she was a hard worker.  The callouses on the men's hands indicated they were hard workers.  Juan also said that the walls and barriers around Tajin keep out tourists but those from the local tribes just ignore them and go about their business.  

We chatted with this little lady and asked if we could take her photo.  She said the price of everything is going up including food.  So she had come to gather firework to save some pesos.   She ducked under the barriers to keep people out of the forest and began to chop at the branches with her machete.

On the way out of the Tajin ruins, this cute little girl and her mother were selling plastic bottles of vanilla for 35 pesos and vanilla pods to help make things smell nice.  We bought some vanilla and asked if we could take their photo and the mother said we could take her daughter's photo but not hers.

Then it was time to catch a taxi back to the hotel to get our luggage.  Then we caught a local bus to Poza Rica so we could again ride the 5 hour ADO bus back to Tampico.  Now we can say we have seen the ruins at El Tajin.