Monday, May 16, 2011

(Not) Lost Treasures, Part II

Last time [1], I shared a list of photographs that I took while in Monterrey, México, serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[2] That part of the list has been lost, but for the second half I still have the photographs. So I scanned a few of the more interesting ones and uploaded them for your enjoyment. Here is the second list, again with notes:

1–2. La Campana from Casa Cadena 03/00
  • Monterrey had two fútbol (soccer) teams: Los Tigres ("The Tigers") and Los Rayados ("The Striped Ones"). Most of the people in Colonia Altamira preferred Los Rayados. Most of the people on Cerro de la Campana preferred Los Tigres. When the two teams played each other (an event, termed El Clásico Regiomontano ("The Monterrey Classic"), which essentially shut down the city) we could tell which team had scored a goal based on which hill the most noise was coming from.

3. Monterrey, Catholic Cathedral, from Altamira 03/00
  • Just one of the many shots I took of the city of Monterrey. There was a Catholic Church (also one of many) slightly in the foreground. The photo wasn't interesting enough to be worth uploading.
4–7. Mirador, Campestre from Altamira 03/00
  • Mirador and Campestre were two colonias ("neighborhoods") in the valley on the other side of Altamira and Cerro de la Campana.
8. The TEC, cross towers, from bridge, Mont. 03/00
  • My area, which was named after Colonia Roma ("Rome"), included El Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey ("The Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Learning"), colloquially known as "El TEC".[3] It  is the top-ranked university in México and the second largest, after UNAM, with campuses in 31 cities.[4] These towers, which are icons of the Monterrey campus, are known as the CETEC building.

9. The TEC, mirror tower, from bridge, Mont. 03/00
  • This building is known as the CEDES. The photo I took wasn't interesting enough to merit scanning it and uploading it.
10–25. hike to La Silla (Redd, Bravo, Perez, Perez, Zapata, Woofley, Dickerson, Raber, Gutierrez, De La Rosa, Campuzano, Plaisted, Reyes, Noorda)
  • Fortunately for us, the ban on "high adventure" activities hadn't been instated, yet. This truly was high-adventure. Our zone hiked to the top of El Cerro de la Silla ("Saddle Hill"), the mountain that gave Monterrey ("Mountain King") its name. We had to do some treacherous climbing in a few spots.[5] And on the way back down one of the zone leaders (Noorda) twisted his ankle. But he had the presence of mind not to complain about it to the mission president. We just did a two-man carry to get himthe rest of the way to the bottom.
  • Redd, Bravo, Perez, etc. were the other missionaries in my zone who also went on the hike/climb. Elder Bravo was my senior companion. Elder Redd and Elder Perez (one of the two) shared an apartment with us. Their area included Cerro de la Campana.

The part of the city shown here wasn't part of our mission (it was part of the México Monterrey Norte mission), but I like this picture because of the placement of the palm leaves in the lower right corner.


This is Monterrey seen from the base of El Cerro de la Silla. The mountain in the background is called El Cerro de las Mitras ("Miter Hill").[6] The house-covered hill on the left is Loma Linda; Colonia Altamira is partly cut off by the edge of the picture. You can also see the Tecnológico in the city if you look closely.


This is the second-highest point of El Cerro de la Silla, as seen from the top. On the smaller peak to the left there is a Catholic Cross. It's barely visible in the original, but in this scaled-down scan you can't see it.


A couple of cloud-and-cliff-and-cactus shots.


Notes:

[1] For part I of this series, see here.

[2] For those who are unsure why Latter-day Saints (Mormons) go on missions, I recommend you visit here and here, where you can learn more about LDS beliefs concerning sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you have more questions, ask and maybe I'll do a full post on the topic.

[3] For more info (in Spanish) see http://www.itesm.edu/wps/portal?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=.

[4] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education.

[5] On the way up we saw an army jeep that had fallen off the edge and was abandoned where it lay.

[6] This name might make more sense if you saw it from the side, like here (some of the peaks look like the miters of Catholic bishops).

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