Cholula-Home to the Biggest Pyramid in the World

Cholula Pictures

An example of a blending of church and original religious site is Cholula. The names means ‘place of those who fled’ or ‘ Water that falls in the place of flight’. Either way, these people had run from something!

When you first see Cholula, all you see is a hill with a church on top of it. After walking around it and reading, you realize that it’s nota hill. It’s an ancient, uncovered pyramid. The biggest in the world. Not as tall as the one is Giza but larger in ground coverage.

Even more fun is that it is catacomb with tunnels. For 35 pesos, you can walk through them. I read somewhere that there are 5 miles of tunnel—not a shocker when one considers the size of the structure. Much to my disappointment, most are gated off. I can imagine that most people would get lost quite quickly. Then after a while they’d get claustrophobic.

I imagine at some point, they’d just start screaming and running around like a crazy person.

Even with the limited tunnel access, it’s an impressive site. After you so the ‘tunnel thing’ you can walk around the recently excavated areas and what you’ll notice is that the original people were really into alters. There is a set of three that are just south of the great pyramid. One faces North and the other two face east and west. Another uncovered one was used when sacrificing children during dry seasons. It was believed they were the messengers of Tlaloc an would ask for rain.

So I guess there is an alter for lots of contingencies.

Finally, another fun and interesting things to do in Cholula is buying road snacks AKA fried grasshoppers coated with chili powder. I know it sounds gross, but they were good as long as you didn’t’ look too close. A word on eating friend grasshoppers--get the small ones. The legs on the bigs ones are a little on the creepy side.

Wonder if they have an alter for those...Alter of the Sacrificial Grasshoppers...