22 August 2022 - THE LARGEST CAVE SHAFT IN THE WORLD - MEXICO

 

THE LARGEST CAVE

 SHAFT IN THE WORLD 

- MEXICO -

G'day folks,

The largest cave shaft in the world is home to thousands of birds and popular with BASE jumpers. 

Simply staring down into the Cave of Swallows is a test of one’s fortitude.

Known as a pit cave, it is a vertical shaft, essentially a 160- to 205-foot gaping hole in the forest floor which drops straight down 1,220 feet – 1,904 from the higher edge – before reaching the cave floor. It is deep enough to fit the Statue of Liberty standing on her own shoulders, the Eiffel tower, or the Chrysler building. 

Called Sótano de las Golondrinas in Spanish and the Cave of Swallows in English, it is the largest known cave shaft in the world and the second deepest pit in Mexico. The cave gets its name from the green parakeets and white-collared swifts that live along its walls. Each day the birds fly in concentric circles up the cave shaft before the flocks come spilling out of the of the hole into the jungle. 

 

The cave has more recently become the home to a number of newer aerial species, namely vertical cavers and base-jumpers. A popular destination with the extreme sports enthusiasts, it is tall enough for the BASE jumpers (BASE stands for Buildings, Antennas, Spans, and Earth, all things they enjoy flinging themselves off of) to leap off the edge and free-fall for a couple of seconds before deploying their parachutes. While it takes about ten seconds to reach the bottom, the ascent back up is slower taking between 40 minutes and 2 hours. 

While the cave has long been known to the local Huastec people, it was first explored by outsiders in 1966 by T. R. Evans, Charles Borland and Randy Sterns. The cave is so deep that when rappelling, which can easily take an hour, the friction can cause the rope and equipment to heat up to dangerous levels, so spray water bottles are used to cool the equipment as one descends. 

8 July 2022 - LA MONA - GIANT NUDE WOMAN OF TIJUANA

 

LA MONA 

- GIANT NUDE 

WOMAN OF TIJUANA -

G'day folks,

This giant nude woman of Tijuana is also the artist's home. 

‘Give me enough rebar and an oxyacetylene torch and I’ll line the border with giant nude Amazons.’ - Armando Muñoz Garcia

In 1987 a scruffy part-time art student approached Tijuana city officials with a simple plan: He wanted to build a humongous naked woman in the middle of the city to mark the 1989 Tijuana centennial. Unsurprisingly, they declined the offer.

 

The refusal did little to dissuade artist Armando Garcia. Armando simply relocated the work to his neighborhood, an overlooked ghetto of Tijuana, and began building. Though discouraged by his professors and with little support from his classmates, the art student kept building and in 1991 he had completed his vision. Standing more than five stories tall, rising from hovels and a trash dump, stands 18 tons of fully nude woman, her arm upraised with a pinky pointing to the sky. A sly gesture noting location of Tijuana on a map of Mexico.

The huge woman, officially named “Tijuana III Millennium” by Garcia but known locally as “La Mona” or “the doll,” is a perky nude, based on one of Garcia’s ex-girlfriends. In recent years as the sculpture has begun to age and Garcia’s ex-girlfriend has started coming around demanding a make-over.

For Garcia the giant nude is more than just his claim to fame. It was, for a long time, his home. Garcia lived inside the woman with his wife. Their bedroom is in the woman’s breasts, the study is in her head, the kitchen in her stomach, and the bathrooms are anatomically appropriately located in her behind.

 

Garcia has since moved to a new house, this one also in the shape of a giant woman but only from the waist up. He currently still uses La Mona as a work space.

 

17 December 2021 - THE LARGEST CAVE SHAFT IN THE WORLD

 

THE LARGEST CAVE

 SHAFT IN THE WORLD

G'day folks,

The largest cave shaft in the world is home to thousands of birds and popular with BASE jumpers. 

Simply staring down into the Cave of Swallows is a test of one’s fortitude. Known as a pit cave, it is a vertical shaft, essentially a 160- to 205-foot gaping hole in the forest floor which drops straight down 1,220 feet – 1,904 from the higher edge – before reaching the cave floor. It is deep enough to fit the Statue of Liberty standing on her own shoulders, the Eiffel tower, or the Chrysler building. 

Called Sótano de las Golondrinas in Spanish and the Cave of Swallows in English, it is the largest known cave shaft in the world and the second deepest pit in Mexico. The cave gets its name from the green parakeets and white-collared swifts that live along its walls. Each day the birds fly in concentric circles up the cave shaft before the flocks come spilling out of the of the hole into the jungle. 

 The cave has more recently become the home to a number of newer aerial species, namely vertical cavers and base-jumpers. A popular destination with the extreme sports enthusiasts, it is tall enough for the BASE jumpers (BASE stands for Buildings, Antennas, Spans, and Earth, all things they enjoy flinging themselves off of) to leap off the edge and free-fall for a couple of seconds before deploying their parachutes. While it takes about ten seconds to reach the bottom, the ascent back up is slower taking between 40 minutes and 2 hours. 

While the cave has long been known to the local Huastec people, it was first explored by outsiders in 1966 by T. R. Evans, Charles Borland and Randy Sterns. The cave is so deep that when rappelling, which can easily take an hour, the friction can cause the rope and equipment to heat up to dangerous levels, so spray water bottles are used to cool the equipment as one descends. 

Clancy's comment: Although keen to visit, I'm not so sure about rappelling into this cavern.

I'm ...

 

 

 

 

20 March 2021 - THE INVENTION OF RUBBER BALLS

 

THE INVENTION

 OF RUBBER BALLS

G'day folks,

Ever wondered who invented rubber balls?

The Olmec, the earliest known major civilization in Mexico, were the first people to produce and play with rubber balls. The name Olmec means "rubber people" in Nahuatl, the Aztec language. The Olmec, whose culture thrived from 1700 B.C. to 400 B.C., manufactured different objects fashioned from rubber, including balls.

 

A rubber ball dating back to 1000 B.C. has been found in the Olmec site of La Venta, located in the present-day Mexican state of Tabasco. Historians believe that these rubber balls were light and bounced quite high. The word "Olmec" also refers to the rubber balls that were used for an ancient ball game that the Olmec created.

 

Apart from the Olmecs, the Mayans and Aztecs also made solid rubber balls that were used for playing team sports on huge ball courts. The Codex Mendoza, an Aztec book of accounts, has even listed over 16,000 rubber balls being paid by the coastal provinces to the Aztec emperor.

Clancy's comment: Interesting. So often we take things for granted.

I'm ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 February 2020 - THE DISK OF DEATH IN MEXICO

THE DISK OF 

DEATH IN MEXICO

G'day folks,

As you walk through the galleries of the Teotihuacan exhibit in Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology, your eyes may be instantly drawn in the direction of a manifestly morbid sculpture.   

In front of you stands a slate disk depicting a huge grinning skull, its sightless eyes glaring malevolently while a long protruding red tongue lolls from its maw. But perhaps most strangely of all, it is surrounded by what appears at first glance to be an elaborate halo, oddly reminiscent of a Catholic saint. 

Although we can never know for sure what this enigmatic sculpture meant to the lost civilization of Teotihuacan, the location of its discovery was made might offer some clues as to its symbolic meaning.

 In 1964, during an extensive archeological excavation of Teotihuacan, the disk was dug from the area directly in front of the famous Pyramid of the Sun, (the third-largest pyramid in the world) by a team of astonished archeologists. The discovery soon made international news and the sculpture was moved to the newly inaugurated National Museum of Anthropology, which had opened that year, to be displayed to the public.  

Archeologists believe the sculpture’s “halo” may allude to the setting and rising of the Sun, as the change from day into night was perceived by many Mesoamerican civilizations to be a cycle of the death and rebirth of the solar system. The symbolic meaning of the skull imagery itself is more difficult to identify, but it is thought that it may allude to the ritual practice of human sacrifice or be a representation of the Teotihuacan god of death, Mictlantecuhtli.

 It also may be that this “disk of death” was somehow connected to human sacrifices made around the construction of the Pyramid of the Sun. Based on the presence and location of burial sites, it seems that the sacrifice of humans and animals was practiced during the construction of buildings. This occurred perhaps as offerings to appease the gods to secure both material prosperity and safety from the region’s frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. 

Clancy's comment: Mm ... They just keep on finding interesting stuff, eh?

I'm ...