Diaz Sees Mexico From The Inside: November 7, 1519

On the morning of November 7, Bernal Diaz says, they at last came to the great City of Motecuhzoma's capital. It was in fact, a group of many cities (like Iztapalapa), some built on the water and some on land. Giant causeways connected the various parts of the sprawling urban clusters, on which that morning, many people had already gathered to go about their work as well as come to see the newcomers. But there were just as many it seemed on the water, in canoes going every which way. Carrying flowers and feathers in great multitudes, alongside brightly painted buildings or massive white limestone constructions, that looked to be growing on top of each other, covered by vines and flowers, swarming with birds, stretching up into the sky. Like a dream, he says, they moved through a wondrous world that none of them had expected or could have foreseen.

"The next morning we arrived at a broad causeway, and we headed for Iztapalapa. When we saw so many cities and towns built in the water, and other great towns on dry land, and that causeway so straight and level as it went to Mexcio, we were amazed. We said it looked like the enchanted things they tell of in the book of Amadis because of the great towers and cus and buildings that are in the water, all built of stonemasonry. Some of our soldiers even asked if what we saw was not a dream, and it is not to be wondered at that I write here in this way, because there is so much to ponder that I do not know how to describe it: seeing things never heard of nor even dreamed of as we were seeing ... when we entered that town of Iztapalapa, seeing the palace where we were lodged, how large and well built it was, of very fine stonework, and the wood from cedar and other fine-smelling trees, with great courtyards and rooms, things wonderful to see, covered with decorated cotton awnings. After having looked carefully at all that, we went to the orchard and garden, which was such a wonderful thing to see and to pass through that I never grew tired of experiencing the variety of trees and the scent each one had, the terraces full of roses and flowers, the many fruit trees and native rose gardens, a pond of fresh water, and ... through an opening they had made, large canoes could enter the garden from the lake without landing, everything very whitened and bright with all kinds of stone and pictures on it that gave much to ponder, and birds of many kinds and species that came into the pond. I say again that I was there looking at it, and I believed that never in the world had lands like these been discovered.... Now all this is fallen down, ruined; there is nothing." [pp. 189-90]

And as an old man, Diaz remembered what was lost.

The book of Amadis was a popular book in the day. Camilla Townsend says [ch. 1, note 24, p. 235] in her book Malintzin's Choices that "... the tale of Amadis was a thirteenth-century story, but Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo had published an edition of the work in 1508 in Zaragoza...". This book was known by some of the companions of Diaz to the New World. Here's a blog about that.
The next day, they went up the causeway and Cortes met the great and powerful Motecuhzoma. By now it should be clear that what they had there was a failure to communicate. But it doesn't at all seem the fault of the translator Malintzin, but that of the two leaders, entrenched in their roles.
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quotes and pagination, unless otherwise noted, from ch lxxxvii,  Bernal Díaz de Castillo: The True History of the Conquest of New Spain translated with an introduction and notes by Janet Burke and Ted Humphrey, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co, Inc. 2012