The Place of the Noisy Birds

We descend out of the clouds and cold of Xalapa and swoop into friendly, small Papantla – portal to the ancient city of El Tajin and home to voladores, vanilla and noisy birds. As with many of the mountain pueblas we are seeing on this trek, Papantla itself boasts few must-see attractions, but we don’t mind a bit. The hum of a small village just rumbling and honking through a typical workday suits us just fine. Besides, it’s warm!

Our no-frills, but comfy, hotel, the El Tajin, perches on a high hill that overlooks the bustling zocalo and the main church – everything seems in order. Unlike the rather cockeyed layout of Xalapa, we ‘get’ this place right away. We know where to go for ice cream, coffee, food, and people watching.

Because we have had to spend much time and energy rearranging our itinerary due to uncooperative bus schedules and a certain amount of backtracking on our part, we don’t feel compelled to spring into action. We decide to kick back; sleep in late and just let the city wake us up when it damn well pleases. It works. After a long night and a lazy morning, we begin to research how and when to get to El Tajin. On the advice of a cab driver, we decide to say manana and take the rest of the day parking ourselves here and there around the zocalo, Lynn with camera and Eric with ice cream cone. Writers have it much easier than paparazzi.

The city swirls around us as we take a walk through some of the neighborhoods. Apart from the occasional glance at Eric’s tallness and/or Lynn’s un-Mexican wardrobe (stylish wide brimmed hat complemented by hiking boots) no one seems to pay us much mind. On one corner, a gang of ninos is laughing and playing with balloon toys. Across the street from them, a hog is offloaded in front of a butcher shop and quickly figures out where he is bound. He desperately tries to climb back into the pickup squealing horrendously. It is brutal, but its unvarnished life not presented in cellophane and styrofoam ala Fred Meyer.

A little later we find a great restaurant that overlooks the zocalo. There is a parade of music, people, honking cars, and dogs. On a hill above it all, yet another troupe of voladores – one of whom is a cab driver we spoke to earlier –spin around and around in the sky to flute music and drums. What visions they must have!

Original National Geographic illustration of the city

The next morning, we hop a cab and make our way out to the El Tajin archeological zone, yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s early enough that we find ourselves almost alone. A guide at the gate asks us in Spanish if we would like a tour. Preferring to wander on our own, and thinking that we might have to struggle with Spanish language explanations, we beg off. As we discover later, this was a mistake.

As we walked into the first main plaza of the old city, we are struck by its utter uniqueness. It is so unlike anything we have seen up to this point.  What’s more, no one seems to know who actually began construction of the city around 100 AD. Although the Olmecs were nearby, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that they were present in sufficient numbers to have built it. Other Gulf Coast peoples, the Totonacs, and Xapanecs were present, but based on what we could learn, it seems like the neighboring Huastecs were the primary builders and occupants throughout the thousand years or so that the city flourished. Its construction is basically rock covered with painted cement. A few examples of the walls remain with smudges of primary colors. The city must have been stunning in its heyday. Most intriguing is the strange niche designs that cover the buildings, believed to have been related to a kind of calendar. In fact, the main “attraction” of the site is the so-called Pyramid of Niches, a spectacular work of art that has exactly 365 niches carved into its walls. There is nothing else like it throughout Mexico.

Eric's pano - note the regularity of the hills suggesting buried structures

At first glance, the site seems small when compared to Uxmal, Palenque or Calakmul. There are no comparably sized pyramids here, although there are something like 20 ball courts throughout the city – more than have been found at any other site - where the ceremonial game known all through Mesoamerica was played. It’s an easier site to get around. The few places where you can climb the structures are gradual stone stairways. The walkways are wide and level, though cobbled, and the layout of the city center feels compact. But this is an illusion. The city once contained hundreds of thousands of mixed ethnicity people. It wielded enormous power throughout the area that is now Veracruz state and beyond. It’s hard to believe unless you take a long second look through professional eyes at all of the surrounding environment. Enter the guide, Juan, whom we had turned down earlier at the gate.

Inverted cornices & niches unique to El Tajin

We were taking a quick water break perched on a bench near the main part of the city when he approached us and asked Eric, in Spanish, where he learned to speak Spanish. Eric replied. Then, Juan began to talk to us in letter-perfect English! It felt like a small, friendly joke, so we began to chat with him. Clearly he was waiting for the tour buses to arrive and had some time to kill. As the conversation continued, we expressed our fascination with the site and the curious regularity of the hills around us. He immediately responded with a stunningly detailed explanation of how enormous the city had actually been, how the rotational farming developed by the inhabitants made it possible to sustain huge populations, when the city flourished and fell, and on and on. He knew all of this, not merely from academic study or from attending guide school, but because he was one of the people who actually helped excavate the place, building by building.

Central plaza with ball court & original walkways

Within 30 minutes, we were gazing around us with new eyes. Look at the fossils in the walkways, yes they were deliberately set there, look at the detail of the construction, notice they used river rock, a sacred material, to build the inner walls, see these fragments of paint here…it was almost too much to absorb. If only we had taken the time earlier to talk to him a little more instead of plunging headfirst into the city, we might have come away with an even deeper sense of awe than we already felt.  He walked us back to the entrance as the tour buses rolled up. He wasn’t sure whether he would be hired. It was a day-to-day thing. Although he didn’t ask for it, we paid him about what a full-guided tour would have cost. It was well worth it. If any of our blog readers ever go to El Tajin, please seek out Juan. You can’t miss him. Smiling, friendly and genuinely passionate about the work done there, he will give you the special lens to see what is hidden in the stones.

We return to Papantla, again greeted by city bustle and by the flocks of noisy birds, which seem to occupy every inch of telephone wire, tree branch, and rooftop eve in town.  We watch and listen.