About 70 kilometers southeast of mexico City you will find Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl?

Question

About 70 kilometers southeast of Mexico City you will fine Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl. The former smokes sometimes; the latter doesn't. Who or what are "Popo" and "Izta"?

Answer 1

They are two volcanoes.

Answer 2

They are Mexico's two most famous volcanoes. they figure greatly in Mexican history, folklore and symbolism.

The names of the volcanoes are in the Nahuatl language that was spoken by the Aztecs and is still spoken by quiet a few people in Mexico.

Popocatepetl is a combination of the Nahuatl popoca (smoking) + tepetl ( mountain)

Ixtacihuatl, also call Iztacihuatl and Iztaccihuatl is known as "the sleeping woman." It is  in fact the only mountain I have ever seen that supposedly looks like a person and really does look like a woman lying on her back.  In spite of what many people will tell you Ixtacihuatl does not mean sleeping woman.

Cihuatl does mean woman in Nahuatl, but Ixta means white. So Ixtacihuatl means "white woman." The volcano was called that by the ancient inhabitants of central Mexico  becuase it looks like a woman lying down and with the permanant snow cover (pre-global warming) it was white.

One popular legend is that Popo is a warrior who is watching over Ixtacihuatl while she sleeps.

Popocatepetl (Smoking Mountain) is an active volcano. Ixtacihuatl is extinct.