I was SO stoked to visit Cholula. Yessss, I thought to myself, I can plan a spe­cial tour for me and the Diplo­Man to visit the hot sauce-making plant. I can buy a case to get air­mailed to our address in China. Maybe they’ll even have some spe­cial pep­pers for me to taste if I write to them ahead of time.

Before my hot sauce-saturated imag­i­na­tion ran off with end­less pep­per pos­si­bil­i­ties, I decided to Google the town to see exactly what the deal was. Part of me was not sur­prised at all to find that the small town of Cholula, about an hour out­side of Mex­ico City, had no rela­tion what­so­ever to the famous hot sauce that I love and miss so dearly. Of course, the other part of me was com­pletely devastated.

The Cholula that I had not expected to visit is a small town most famous for its yet-to-be-fully exca­vated pyra­mid. If you’re like me and think that all pyra­mids come in geo­met­ri­cally per­fect tri­an­gles or sphin­xes, you might be as dis­ap­pointed as I was to encounter an utterly mas­sive hill with a series of wide stone steps to the top.

On the other hand, after climb­ing to the top, and real­iz­ing that you’re sit­ting on a por­tion of a 400 kilo­me­ter x 400 kilo­me­ter man­made struc­ture with the top razed by con­querors to house their church, you would start to real­ize (as I had) the mag­nif­i­cence and his­tory beneath your feet.

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