Ruins- PV to Guadalajara, Mexico: Day Numero Ocho

So on this day we headed to Guadalajara to see this 2nd largest city in Mexico (Mexico City is largest) and to go to the temple. This looked to be a distance of about 1 1/2 hours (same distance on the map for us to go to the temple at home). Well, since we knew we were in Mexico we decided to double the time we expected to drive up to 3 hours. And since it was in a jungleous mountaineous region where they are also doing lots of construction, it took us 5 hours, one way. Yeah.

These are some cool black rocks we saw along our drive.
We found some ruins!! Our guide book only showed them further south and east of where we were so when I saw the sign to a pyramid archaeological sight, we knew we had to stop. It only cost us $3.50 to go on an official archaeological site called Ixtlan or Los Toriles by the locals.Connor heading up some steps.
Sadly, not much but the foundations remain. Much of this site was destroyed during the Spanish Invasion and was heavily looted thereafter.

Still, we were able to see over a dozen ruins of buildings. Most of them were rectangular and arranged in courtyards.

We did find one round structure, which was identified as a Temple to Quetzacotal! For those of you that know anything about this figure in history, you know that Quetzacotal was the "flying feathery serpent" or "the bearded white god" often believed to represent Jesus Christ. Pretty cool.

Entering the temple stand.
The boys poking their heads out of the cross structures.

On top of the exterior round wall of the temple.

Doing my Sound of Music pose. "The hills are alive with the sound of music."

Connor came over to join me. We're doing some funky teapot/Egyptian stance.

Still on the temple structure.

Heading down the temple stairs. You can see how big they were.

Connor in one of the window areas on the exterior of the temple wall.

Me overlooking the ruins. These are really nestled in a beautiful setting. Green rolling hills everywhere.

We finally arrived in Guadalajara with just enough time to tour the downtown square. Here is a lovely Church, grandstand and fountain setting.

Shot of us on the grandstand.

Connor laughing and pointing at the naked boy statues behind him.

Still by those nudes.

Neat courtyard. This is where the painting is that you'll see below.

You can't see it very clearly but behind us is a bronze eagle statue with a snake wrapped around it.

This was a random painting we saw. It was a composite of several pictures. Does anyone recognize the upper left-hand corner pictures? They are LDS pictures- one of the angels at the Second Coming (by Del Parsons?) and the other of Christ pulling up a child (a Greg Olsen?). Pretty shocking to see this here.

A really beautiful arch and fountain.

One tired little boy. Not even the fountain could capture his attention.

If you look all the way through the arch, you can see the Church at the end. Cool

Finally at the Guadalajara temple. I did a session- all in Spanish! Thankfully the temple president and matron were American and helped me out.

Ammon and Connor waited outside for me. Ammon commented to another patron as they were leaving that he was waiting for his wife to which the person said that I sat 3 seats down from them. Ammon asked how they knew it was his wife and they said "oh come on!" Yeah, I was the only non-Mexican in the session.

We left at 8pm right after the session. We took as many toll roads as we had changed money for (about $20 worth) which we thought would be plenty but that only took us about 100 miles. So, sadly we had to take the windy free roads the rest of the way in the dark getting back to our hotel at 1am.