Everything started when I took a bus from Mexico City to Veracruz the other day. I remember sitting on the bus, enjoying the scenery when I realized that we were approaching a mountain that looked to me like a volcano. I did not know where we were so I curiously checked Google maps to see if I could find anything. There was no information so I wrote down the name Cantona Archaeological Site that I saw on an exit sign at the highway.
When I researched the name later on, it lead me to the archaeological site that you see on the picture, and the mountain turned out to be a volcano. The volcano goes by the name of Volcán de Pizzaro and Cantona used to be on of the biggest cities in ancient Mexico and a center for the obsidian trade.
A couple of weeks later, I rented a car to explore the volcanoes around Puebla and the first thing I did was to go to Cantona Archaeological Site, to visit the site and marvel at the volcano again. What I found surpassed everything I had hoped for. When I parked my car in the parking lot, I realized that it was empty and that I had the site to myself. From this moment on, I felt like being in a dream: a vast ancient city, overlooking an extinct volcano, embedded in a deserted landscape. As Adolf Huxley said: it really is too much of a good thing… even if he meant a different place.
The solitude of the Cerro de Pizzaro in the empty landscape and the magnitude of the ancient city, not to mention all the other volcanoes in the background, made this experience one of the greatest I had so far!
