公元1325年，阿兹特克人建立墨西哥城。两个世纪后，由传奇人物埃尔南·科尔特斯领导的西班牙征服者占领了墨西哥城。事实上，古老的印度传统与欧洲青年野心的结合正是墨西哥现代首都的独特之处。

墨西哥城的景点让这座首都成为北美最受欢迎的旅游目的地之一。如果将墨西哥城的所有一切都放在一起，那会形成鲜明的对比：高犯罪率与当地居民的热情好客，超现代的摩天大楼与阿兹特克金字塔，贫民窟与宏伟的宫殿，丘陵与平原——一切都为这座城市增添了一种令人难忘的特殊氛围。

三文化广场周围环绕着特拉特洛尔科的阿兹特克金字塔、圣地亚哥殖民大教堂，以及外交部的现代建筑，这就是过去与现在和谐共存的最好说明。

圣母玛利亚升天大教堂坐落在宪法广场北侧的山顶上，是美洲殖民地最大、最古老（公元1573年）的大教堂之一。它的中殿长110米，宽55米，共有51个拱顶，由74扇拱门和40根柱子支撑。大教堂与法衣室和国家宫共同构成一座结合了文艺复兴、巴洛克和新古典主义风格的宏伟建筑群。

在城市的北部，您可以看到著名的瓜达卢佩圣母大教堂——整座大陆上最重要的教堂之一。大教堂里存放着胡安·迭戈的原始斗篷，斗篷后面挂有瓜达卢佩圣母的画像，这正是异教徒阿兹特克人大规模——而且是自愿——皈依基督教的主要原因。公元1531年，第一座教堂在这里建成。但一段时间后，它便无法容纳所有人。1987年，一座可以容纳2万人的新大教堂在老教堂旁边建成。顺便告诉您，大教堂是天主教最为重要的朝圣地之一，每年有1,400万人参观，是世界上朝圣人数最多的地方。

查普尔特佩克公园是北美洲最大的城市公园，也是世界上最大的公园之一。公园围绕墨西哥城内2,325米高的查普尔特佩克山而建，占地超过686公顷，与巴黎的布洛涅森林、东京的皇居东御苑以及纽约的中央公园并列。它不仅是墨西哥城的“肺”，而且也是众多文化品的聚集地，如国立人类学博物馆。一进入博物馆，一件古老的文物就会站在门口迎接游客，这是一块七米高的巨石，以喷泉的形式描绘了雨神特拉洛克。

山顶上矗立着一座同名的查普尔特佩克城堡，由西班牙人伯纳德·加尔维斯于公元1785年建立。这里曾是墨西哥总督、皇帝和总统的住所，现在是国家历史博物馆的主展览厅。

墨西哥城的现代地标和它们的古代地标一样雄心勃勃，令人印象深刻。独立纪念碑是墨西哥城的象征，为纪念始于1810年的墨西哥独立战争100周年而建造。纪念碑是一根36米高的柱子，上面有一座带翅膀的胜利女神雕像，高6.7米。胜利女神伸出的右手上拿着一个月桂花环，左手拿着断裂的锁链。雕塑由青铜铸造，表面镀有24克拉纯金。

墨西哥城最著名的摩天大楼是市长大楼和拉丁美洲塔。55层的市长大楼建于2003年，高230米，是墨西哥城最高的建筑。183米高的拉丁美洲塔建于1956年，与年轻一代的建筑相比，它的规模较小，但在成功抵御了1957年和1985年的地震后名声大振。当时，7.9和8.1级的地震摧毁了墨西哥城的许多建筑，包括电视塔。而拉丁美洲塔却幸存下来，成为墨西哥城的安全象征。

我们可以无休止地谈论墨西哥城：文化、优雅、宏伟的相结合为这座城市的每一座建筑创造了独特的故事。但正如他们所说，一张照片胜过千言万语——请通过我们拍摄的全景图来欣赏墨西哥城的壮丽美景吧

And now let me turn the floor over to Stanislav Sedov, who will share some of his impressions about the trip.

We would like to tell you a short story about our trip to Mexico while the memories are still fresh in our minds. Maybe some of you'll learn something useful.

As soon as we'd finished shooting Tikal in Guatemala, Dima and I decided to go to Mexico.

We started off our journey on the wrong foot. The bus that was supposed to take us to Chetumal in Mexico arrived two hours later at 8am. And it seemed that Dima's perfect trip plan started falling apart.

It all went downhill from there. In order to reach Chetumal from Guatemala you have to pass a small country — Belize. There is nothing special about it, just another former British colony. Probably because of this reason it's one of the few countries in Central America where Russians need to get visa to cross the border. And only British Embassy grants this visa in Moscow.

Dima found some travel website that stated that if you have a U.S. visa, then there'll be no problem getting Belize visa on the border in 20 minutes.

A couple of hours later we reached the border. There were no incidents when we left Guatemala. We filled out necessary forms and handed them over to Belize border guards. After that we sat waiting under the shed with a proud name "Immigration point". Of all the people on the bus the only one getting visa, beside us, was a Korean girl. All other white people crossed the border without any problems.

An hour and a half (!) later an officer came out and said that everything was alright, and that we would get our visas in 5 minutes, as soon as they get a response from the capital.

40 minutes later the Korean girl got her visa. We were told to wait because they couldn't get through to the office, because of holidays and other unknown reasons.

Half an hour later our bus driver came up to us and said that he couldn't wait for us any longer. We couldn't blame him, because temperature outside was about 40 degrees Celsius, and passengers were almost ready to kill both him and us. So the bus left and we continued waiting while haveing fun in a warm and friendly environment. We saw the border guard running past us and telling us that they were able to get through to the office, and that our visas would be ready in 5 minutes, etc. Yeah, right.

Then one and half hour later (by that time we spent 4.5 hours on the border) we were approached by a man, who introduced himself as a police officer and took Dima with him to talk about why the hell we decided to go to Belize in the first place.

Dima was gone for 5 minutes and then came back with a pale face: he said there was a problem. He took our Mexico shooting permit, and disappeared for 40 minutes. I was about to call the Embassy (my wife texted me the phone number), but then I saw Dima approaching me with a nervous smile on his face. He said they mistook us for drug traffickers: we had too many stamps in our passports, we traveled a lot, and looked very suspicious. It turned out that it was police, not the border guards, that were running background check on us. And it took so much time, because they were waiting for resoponse from Interpol.

By the way, the police officer finally believed in our story only when I showed him the picture on my phone, the one that Dima took of me and our helicopter in front of the Tikal pyramid.

Only then he apologized and said that he thought we were Russian mafia.

After that we got our visas in 20 minutes. When we reached customs (the next cordon after the border guards) and told customs officers how we waited for our visas for 5 hours, and that our bus left us behind, they gave us a sympathetic look and said, "Go ahead, we're not going to check your bags." And we finally entered Belize.

After that it was easier: we took a taxi. It took us 4 hours and costed $250 to drive through the country from one border to another. The second border was way more simple than the first one. The only problem was that we had to walk from Belize post to Mexico (and it was quite a distance), but we were lucky enough to be picked up by the bus headed in the same direction.

On a personal note, we would also like to say a few words about local hospitality. Out trip to Mexico wouldn't happen without help of Ricardo Gomez Garrido, a pilot and a photographer from Mexico City, and his friend Diego Ruelas Tiscareno from www.fotoaereamexico.com team. First of all, Ricardo helped us with obtaining photo permits for all Mexican historical monuments and pyramids. As we learned down the road, there would be no photo shoots without those permits. And secondly, the friends arranged a warm welcome for us in the capital, helped us with the transportation, and found us a helicopter for our photo shoots. Checking in to the downtown hotel, we were pleasantly surprised to see aerial photographs of Mexico City taken by Ricardo and Diego exhibited in the hotel lobby.

由 Stanislav Sedov 和 Dmitry Moiseenko 拍摄

2013 年8月5日