Mexico

In Mexico the cities of Monterrey, Guadalajara, Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel and Cancun have all received coverage. So far we’ve spotted the world famous Teotihuacan pyramid, complete with people on top (previously covered in 2005):

The world’s largest bullring, which we viewed from above earlier this year.

And one of Mexico’s greatest exports, character piñatas.

Hawaii

Until now Hawaii was the only US state to not have Streetview coverage – but Google has now remedied that by bringing us imagery of main island of Hawaii. Here, covered in a blue tarpaulin, we can see the nose cone of the plane that was used in the opening episode of Lost – which was filmed around here somewhere…

Netherlands

The Netherlands already had excellent coverage, which allowed us to see all sorts of exciting nudity, prostitution, and other Not Safe For Work antics. The latest update goes on to cover Utrecht, Den Haag¹, Eindhoven, Den Bosch, Tilburg, Leeuwarden, Apeldoorn, Deventer and Amersfoort!

All of this means we can now see the brilliant Kubuswoning from ground-level (previously covered in 2006):

The windmills at the popular tourist destination, Kinderdijk, were captured by the Google Trike (turn round for loads more):

Spain

Finally Spain, which already had good coverage, has received an almost total blanket of blue streets. The updates extend right out to the Canary Islands, now covering Mallorca, Gran Canaria and Tenerife.

Here’s the Guggenheim Bilbao, complete with another massive spider (they pop up everywhere on Streetview it seems), which we covered back in 2005:

For continuing Spanish-language coverage of all the new Streetview imagery, you should follow Google Sightseeing Español on Twitter.

Have you found something interesting? Leave a comment below!

Locations: Hawaii, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain / Categories: Site News, Street Views

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So it’s in Spain where we start with the world’s oldest surviving bullring: Las Virtudes in Santa Cruz de Mudela. It was built way back in 1641, when the bullrings were actually bullsquares – the round shape was adopted later on to prevent the action being confined to the corners.

The style of Spanish bullfighting has changed very little since 1726, when Francisco Romero got off of his horse to fight on foot with the famous red cape and sword.

This tradition was taken with the emigrants to the Americas, where the oldest remaining bullring can be dated back to 1766. By now firmly set on the round shape, Plaza de Acho in Lima, Peru accommodates 13,000 spectators.

Back in Spain, we find the second largest bullring in the world, Las Ventas in Madrid. With a capacity for 25,000 spectators, it has also been used for an AC/DC concert, and hosted a semi-final of 2008’s Davis Cup tennis tournament¹.

To find the largest bullring in the world, we visit what was once the most populated city on the planet: Mexico City. Here we find the gigantic La Plaza Monumental, built in 1946 with a capacity for 41,262 people.

For obvious reasons, bullfighting has drawn a lot of criticism throughout the world, and I’m surprised that these massive venues are still able to draw enough crowds to keep the tradition alive.

However, there are signs that bullfighting will not be around forever: it is no longer televised in Spain, and many opinion polls have shown the majority of the public are just not interested.

In Tijuana, Mexico we can use Google Earth’s historical imagery to see before and after shots of a recently demolished bullring that wasn’t pulling in enough business.

Earlier this year the city of Viana do Castelo in Portugal took the bold step of banning bullfights altogether. Their small ancient bullring will now be used as a “science and education centre”. Presumably bull dissections will not be part of the cirriculum.

This entry is based on an original article from the recently re-launched Google Sightseeing Español, where new author Luis Moreno is posting translated sights from here and original Spanish-langauge content.

Locations: Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Spain / Categories: Stadiums and Sport

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The municipality of Xico is part of the Mexico City metropolitan area, marking the very edge of the city’s southernmost reach. It is at this point that the city has begun to make a slight detour, around Cerro de Xico (Xico hill).

It should be obvious that this isn’t just a hill of course – it’s a beautifully round volcanic crater; one that is in the process of being swallowed up by the ever advancing urban sprawl.

Looking closer we can see the interior of the crater has been given over to agriculture, and the far side of the caldera looks to be the site of a local graveyard.

What’s really interesting here is the juxtaposition of the urban and rural worlds, protected from one another by the crater wall.

I wonder if the little island of agriculture will stay protected in the future, as Mexico City inevitably expands around it?

Thanks to Virtual Globe Trotting.

Locations: Mexico / Categories: Buildings, Volcanoes

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On February 20, 1943, a local farmer by the name of Dionisio Pulido witnessed a fissure appearing in his cornfield, which immediately began to spew forth ash and stones. Astonishingly within just one year the fissure had grown into a 336 m tall volcano!

Over the course of the next 8 years the volcano grew to a final height of 424 m and simultaneously buried 25 km² of the surrounding land, including two entire villages! The top of a nearby church is still visible above the long solidified magma.

(Wikipedia, ground-level pic)

Thanks to Maite Elguero.

Locations: Mexico / Categories: Buildings, Volcanoes

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At the spring and autumn equinox, the rising and setting sun hits the corner of the pyramid to form a shadow resembling a serpent. Climbing such pyramids is not for the faint-hearted, and El Castillo has been closed to tourists since 2006 when somebody fell to their death.

Between approximately AD 600 and AD 1000 Chichen Itza dominated social, political and economic aspects of life in this area of the Mayan civilization. Its population is estimated to have been between 40,000 and 50,000.

Archaeologists continue to discover new structures buried in the forest. Significant locations currently visible (map) include the great ball court used for a game vaguely similar to volleyball and the cenotes or wells of sacrifice.

Imagery of other Mayan sites such as Tikal in Guatemala is not so impressive. Let us know if you find other Mayan sites with good resolution.

Thanks to Paul Wilson.

Locations: Mexico / Categories: Structures

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The 320 m long bridge is officially known as the Gateway to the Americas International Bridge (Wikipedia) and, as we can see from this satellite shot, the sheer volume of cars waiting to get into the states really help it to live up to its name – nearly a million cars cross this bridge each year, albeit slowly.

There’s a webcam on the American side that shows a typical American street scene, while the webcam on the Mexican side seems to always show a scene very similar to what we can see in the satellite shot.

In the webcams you might also spot one of the 4 million pedestrians who cross the bridge on foot each year.

Laredo International Bridge 2, or officially the Juárez-Lincoln International Bridge (Wikipedia), was built in 1976 to alleviate traffic on the first bridge, and is only open to buses and non-commercial traffic.

Slightly shorter at 307 m it has six lanes, four or which head north into the US. All four northbound lanes appear to be continually gridlocked, which is hardly surprising when you hear that over 4 million non-commercial vehicles cross here every year.

Google’s Street View car never got close enough to see the bridge itself, but we can see the front of the border control building from a distance.

Next up is the Laredo International Bridge 3, or Colombia-Solidarity International Bridge (Wikipedia), which has eight lanes this time and of all the bridges so far carries the most commercial traffic – around 270,000 vehicles each year.

Our final road bridge is the Laredo International Bridge 4, or World Trade International Bridge (Wikipedia), which despite also having eight lanes, is only open to commercial vehicles – a LOT of them. In the past year this bridge has been crossed by nearly 1.2 million commercial vehicles.

It’s not only road bridges that connect the two countries here either – there’s also the Laredo International Railway Bridge, or Texas-Mexican Railway International Bridge (Wikipedia) which connects the Texas Mexican Railway in the US with Mexico’s Kansas City Railway.

Ironically, unlike the road bridges, the Google Street View car got close enough to the railway bridge for a photo opportunity.

As if that wasn’t enough bridges, plans are already underway for the construction of yet another road bridge and two more railway bridges.

For the full breakdown of statistical data about these bridges, see this traffic distribution chart at cityoflaredo.com.

Congratulations to Fraser, who finally got a suggestion published.

Locations: Mexico, Texas / Categories: Bridges, Other Vehicles, Street Views

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Measuring a phenomenal 6.5 kilometers (4 miles), this is the world’s longest pier.

The original pier was completed in 1942, and despite being little more than a two-lane highway, is actually quite nice looking seen from the beach. In this satellite shot you can clearly see where the original construction ends, and the more recent one begins.¹

Cruise ships dock here for a day or two to allow the tourists to visit some of the nearby archaeological sites, and we can see there’s one berthed here at the moment. Tourists need to take a bus to shore, which takes nearly 10 minutes!

The pier also plays a major part in the local container industry – we can see loads of them stacked on the pier – and there’s also a tanker here just now too.

For more long piers, see our previous posts on England’s 2.1 km Southend Pier (the world’s longest pleasure pier) and Australia’s 1.8 km Busselton Jetty².

Thanks to cboone and Michael.

Locations: Mexico / Categories: Bridges, Other Vehicles, Structures, Watercraft

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As they’re roughly 100 feet in length, the giant plane bodies could be for Boeing 737s – but what would they be doing here? 737 fuselages are usually made in Wichita, Kansas, so it’s a bit of a mystery why they would be in convoy through Mexico.

Discussions on the Google Earth community suggest the fuselages could actually be for McDonnell Douglas DC9/10s – which went out of production decades ago – so maybe they’re being scrapped somewhere round here?

If they are scrap, hopefully they won’t be abandoned on the road as happened to one Boeing 737 making its way through Mumbai traffic last year…

Thanks to carmedic.

Locations: Mexico / Categories: Aircraft

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Floating off the coast of Conzumel, Mexico is MS Freedom of the Seas, the largest passenger ship in the world which weighs in at 154,407 tons and is capable of carrying 4370 passengers! Guests are entertained by 3 huge pools, shops, pubs and even a climbing wall. If you think your car has poor fuel efficiency, take heart in the fact that this behemoth uses 12.8 tonnes of fuel… per hour!

Freedom of the Seas was built in the Aker yards in Turku, Finland, between 2004 and 2005, and in 2007 her sister ship, MS Liberty of the Seas, was also completed there to exactly the same specification. Microsoft Live Maps’ birds-eye feature has caught the construction in action, and it’s extraordinary to see the work that goes into a ship of this size. Check out the helipad on the bow!

(Warning: Live Maps are still not compatible with Safari I’m afraid!)

Until Freedom and Liberty became the largest passenger ships in the world, the title was held by Cunard’s famous RMS Queen Mary 2¹. At 148,528 gross tons she’s only slightly lighter, but takes the distinction of being the longest at 345 metres, as well as the highest and also the widest! Here she is docked in New York City.

Moored in Florida is one of Disney’s own fleet of two ships, Magic and Wonder. The two ships are almost identical, but I have it on good authority that this is Wonder. At 964 feet these are no record breakers, but I thought they were worthy of a mention!

The ships generally cruise the Caribbean, where one of their main stops is one of Disney’s own private islands, ‘Castaway Cay‘.

On board the ships there are some rather unique features for the 2400 passengers to enjoy, such as computer simulators to let you imagine you are guiding the ship, spas, and a whopping 24×14 foot LCD TV attached to the front funnel of the ship. However, what wins it for me is the main swimming pool, which of course is shaped like Mickey Mouse!

Read more about Freedom of the Seas, Queen Mary 2 and the Disney Cruise Line at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Joao Almeida, Rob B, Jolo Quina, Tim, Chris, adam wanderman, greg and orchjoe.

Locations: Mexico / Categories: Islands, Theme Parks, Watercraft

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In most cases however, our ever-attentive readers have presented compelling evidence that these submissions couldn’t actually be whales.

So when Rick Edwards directed us just west of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico to see two separate pods of three whales, you could imagine we would be a little sceptical. However, the apparent visibility of tailfins on the larger ‘whales’ piqued our interest somewhat…

We pressed a little further, checking possible species, sizes, breeding patterns and migratory behaviour, and… well, we wouldn’t have posted it if we didn’t think there was a strong possibility this could be the only definite sighting of whales out at sea¹ on the whole of Google Earth.

Locations: Mexico / Categories: Animals

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