A young biker couple I had met in Chile had highly recommended Edward James' Gardens "Las Pozas" to me, a park landscape near the village of Xilitla in the middle of the Sierra Madre north of Mexico City. They had been so enthusiastic about these gardens that I took the 600 extra km - and did not regret it. It turned out to be something like Dali's surrealistic paintings made reality.The gardens are situated in a beautiful steep green jungle landscape in the middle of nowhere. There are a couple of completely useless but utterly beautiful structures with steps leading in circles to nowhere, balconies, towers, little waterfalls, basins etc. Hopefully I took some nice pics with my old non-digital Nikon

The landscape around is also quite impressive. I had left the very busy highway 57 in San Juan del Rio, heading northwards. After passing some busy and dusty towns, I entered a landscape of arid hills, growing larger and larger, while the highway gradually became a twisted roller-coaster like ride up and down and along mountain ridges with the abyss at both sides. The highway climbed more and more until the grey desert-like landscape suddenly flipped into a cool and pleasant alpine scenery of intense green, steep, wood-covered peaks with some marvellous views.

In Xilitla I stayed in a pleasant (and cheap!) hotel with a great view of the forest-covered valley and the surrounding dark green hills. Leaving Xilitla and heading for the famous Pyramids of Teotihuacán (I always have to look up the name in the guidebook), the landscape was equally spectacular, although I had to cope with some denser traffic and virtually millions of speed bumps.

Teotihuacán posesses probably the most impressive pyramid of Mexico, being the second biggest in Mexico and third biggest in the world (Cheops is bigger). But what makes the site even more remarkable, is the combination of the two huge pyramids (the Sun and the Moon pyramid) and the entire complex of avenues, temples and dwelling areas. The city's supposed administrative complex, the so-called citadel (Zitadelle/ciudadela), a large square area, lined with pyramids, reminded me of the Reichsparteitag complex in Nuremberg - maybe Teotihuacán is just a cheap copy... ;-)