Palenque

When travelling some of the most memorable places are places that you weren't expecting to be so good; or didnt even know they existed until you get there.

Some of the great sights can even be a little underwhelming sometimes!! Perhaps because you already know them so well, it can be a little "Oh, ok then" and move on.

I knew nothing about Palenque until I read about it in Lonely Planet, and we decided to stop there on our trip across Mexico. Palenque is a ruined Mayan city, deep in the lush Mexican rainforest. There were not many people there, and it was scorching hot. It didnt take much imagination to imagine you were playing Tomb Raider or something.

Palenque is one of the most beautiful and exotic places I have ever visited! :)

Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan is the ruined capital city of the Aztecs; north of Mexico City. It is a ruined city, with numerous temples, public buildings, and palaces, and domocilles. http://archaeology.asu.edu/teo/

But it is dominated by two monster pyramids - the temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon. Both a staggering to see, and to climb!

Turns out Mexico City is at 3000 metres, making it very high indeed for a capital city. It is so high, that you actually need a bit of time to aclimatise to the altitude; so that tasks like climbing pyramids dont kill you!

Of course, we went to climb them on day 2, and didnt appriciate any of this. So, we just panted our way to the top, and couldnt realise why the climb seemed so bad! lol

The Aztecs worshipped the god Quezacotl, the feathered Snake or Boa. Thats a big snake god, and not a piece of clothing that my family may worry I might buy now! ;) So the Temples are carved with these fantastic stone heads of Quezacotl.

All in all, a fantastic place to visit! Just go a few days after youve aclimatised!

Earths first Spaceport?

Sooner or later, we gotta get of this planet. Me thinks sooner, judging reports about global warming and the on-coming War of the Cultures.

Over-population and the usage of our natural resources means that we must find some resources (and even somewhere else to live) before Earth has another Extinction Level Event (ELE). We know a giant rock is coming to change the order of things. It has happened 5 times we know of already. The dinosuar event, 65 million years ago in the Chixalub in Mexico is just the fifth ELE that they know of.


And of course I havent mentioned Super Volcanoes, Global Plagues, Ice Ages, and good old fashioned Thermal Nuclear Death.

sings "We gotta get out of this place". But how?

It is actually really fuel intensive to get of this planet. So much of a rockets fuel is just needed to break the Earths atmospere. You probably couldnt launch a vessel that was meant to go deep space and back again with conventional rocket fuel. It would probably weigh too much. Thats why they dont paint the fuel cells on the shuttle. The extra weight would mean extra fuel to cover it, and even more fuel to cover the extra weight of the extra fuel! phew!

So if you could launch from somewhere where you didnt have to break the Earths atmosphere, you could take so much extra fuel with you for your deepspace exploring or mining trip! Nice :)

And finally, what is the main componant of rocket fuel? Hydrogen, the H in H2O.

Which brings us to that magnificent photo from the Mars Exress showing a crater at the north pole of Mars full of water ice. It is about 10km across and about 200/400 meters thick. And its not the only crater at the pole. Concieivably, you could build a base at the poles of Mars, build a machine that converts water into Hydrogen fuel, and launch missions from there.

Many years in the future, I fear; but we have the technology now, not the political will.

Peace out.