I find myself in a most disconcerting but beautiful place in this dream.
I am on elevated land, probably 50 feet above the waterline, but it is definitely a small peninsula of some sort, with crystal blue water on both sides. I am on a sidewalk, and the sidewalks are nicely made of concrete with pebblestone tops. I estimate that this peninsula is a good 3/8-mile wide, and the top ground is like a park, with these great sidewalks that circle around the place. There is green grass all along the sidewalks on top, but to the right, there is a gentle, sandy slope leading to a beach that is crowded with people.
To the left, the land falls off sharply, at approximately a 45 degree angle, and the left side of the peninsula is covered with rocks, much like the jetties of Port Aransas. It is nearly impossible to get to the water's edge from the left side because of the steepness of the rocks. And, the sea is crashing sufficiently to make it a bad day if you try to go down there, anyway!
The majority of the people are down towards the beach on the right side of the peninsula, which seems to be the leeward side. Up top, where I am, there are many people milling around, most walking, a few skating on rollerblades, and people sitting around enjoying themselves in this park-like setting. The people are beautifully dark-skinned: Mexican and some South Americans.
The sun is so exquisitely bright, and the setting of the park so beautiful, with the crystal blue water on both sides. It is an amazing sight to behold! It is one of those dreams where if you wake up, you just say "Dammit! I want a few more blissful moments to go back to this place!"
Now, back to the dream. I see this temple or altar (or whatever you would call it) right on the outskirts of this park. This is at the beginning of my crazy dream. As I walk down the sidewalk, I encounter a man who I deem to be a policeman or a park ranger, at least some type of authority figure. I can recall it just like I woke up two minutes ago. He is dressed in a khaki shirt with epaulets, and he has a badge of some sort pinned to the right side of his shirt. He is wearing black trousers with red stripes down the side, and he doesn’t appear to be armed. He is quite friendly, and I ask him where I am. He replies in a language that I do not understand, so I ask him again, "Where am I?"
The next time he replies in English, "This is Veracruz."
I feel a distinct sense of amazement, even though I am only dreaming, and I continue to walk down those beautiful sidewalks, stunned at the beauty of the place.
Suddenly, I wake up, and that is the end of my “Veracruz vacation”!
If only in my mind, my simple dreaming mind, I think I am in a place where I have never before been. It is a beautiful experience, a brief dream that I want to relive over and over again.
After I awoke (for real), this dream was still so fresh and beautiful in my mind that I very quickly went to the Internet to look up "Veracruz". Now, this dream occurred a few years ago, back in the days of Windows 95 when Yahoo!, Google and the like had just started as search engines. I googled "Veracruz", and this travel site came up. As I looked closer, chills shot up my spine:
I'll be damned if they didn't have a photo of the identical altar from my dream!
It was so astonishingly similar to that in my dream that it freaked me out! I am almost certain it was the same place.
At the time, I had no idea what an Aztec altar looked like; this photo just appeared, and the resemblance was uncanny. The altar was much smaller than the pyramids you generally see online. That's why I refer to it as an altar. From what I have subsequently learned of the Aztecs, it was not something that was built for any good purpose from the viewpoint of modern man!
I believe it was a sacrificial altar. I even wrote a dude concerning this subject. He said that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, but he couldn't guarantee that it was used for that purpose. I read something in conjunction with the web page that the altar stands just on the outskirts of Veracruz. The cat told me that there were others like it as you travel the interior of Mexico, to the west from Veracruz.
Now, here’s an even stranger twist. Yesterday, several years after this dream first haunted me, I tried to find that very altar. I have searched the endless depths of the Internet for the photo of that pyramid I saw in both my dream and online. I have plowed and combed the timeless graveyards of ancient Aztec civilization, I have dug as deep as I can go, but my research has thus far been fruitless.
The altar is gone!
At one time, I had the photo of the very pyramid - the sacrificial temple - that was as disturbing for me to look at as the coincidence of it being in my dream.
Sometimes dreams are just so real and so bizarre. I have never physically been to Veracruz, but I feel like I would know how to get around the place if I ever find myself there – either in a future dream or on an actual vacation!
Mike's Musings...
Dreaming of a Veracruz Vacation
