Cuernavaca: Poolside .. Again!

Juan arrived from DF at around noon today, and although my heart longed to go straight back to the pool after his arrival (we picked him up from the bus station), it was wise that we go downtown first and make reservations at the Restaurante Hidalgo for dinner tomorrow night. I'm looking forward to it.

Here are three pictures we took today. The first one is of Juan, Ruben and me, in front of the Palacio de Cortés. The second picture is of Juan and me in the pool. The last picture is of Jennifer enjoying a glass of wine on the hamaca.

Cuernavaca: Poolside, Tortuga Cucufata!

The picture below summarizes my day quite nicely: relaxing, poolside, with a cool drink in my hands.

Tati and Jen seemed to have a similar approach to the day: reading a book, poolside:

As nice as it was, spending the day pool-side, I think that the highlight for me came when we went to (what I think is now my favourite restaurant in Cuernavaca) La Tortuga Cucufata. Man, the food there is so so good...

...from the different types of salsa...














...to the tacos de carne asada ... to the cebollitas ...




















...to Jen's Azteca soup ...














...it was all so tasty! The picture below is of Tati and Jennifer, entering the restaurant, and the last picture is of all of us as we're about to begin our meal.

After our wonderful meal we went to a shopping mall nearby to just browse (and work off our meal). I ended up buying some desert boots. The price wasn't as cheap as I expected, but the quality is very good, so I'm satisfied with my purchase.

Puebla > Cuernavaca

I was a bit sad this morning when I realized that our time in Puebla had come to an end. I've really enjoyed our stay here.

Jen and I had breakfast at the hotel, then we took a taxi to Tati's parents' home. They wanted to meet us, given our connection with Tati and Ruben in Vancouver over the past few years. Once there, we were offered yoghurt and some fruits as a snack, and then off we went to the bus station.

The bus to Cuernavaca left at about 10:15am, and we arrived on time, about 1pm. Ruben picked us up from the bus station, and took us straight to their home, where we spent the rest of the day. The weather in Cuernavaca's quite hot: I think today it got to about 32C. It was a great day, catching up with friends, slipping in and out of the pool, eating a nice home cooked meal, and watching a game of fútbol on the tele.

Tomorrow's Sunday: I don't think I'll veer too far from the pool. Nice...

Jen and Ed, poolside:














Dinner on the patio with Ruben and Tatiana:














Watching fútbol (it was nice and cool inside!):














View of pool and city in the background from my bedroom:

Puebla: A Day Trip to Popocatépetl

What a great day! Actually all the days have been perfect: sunny and hot, but not too hot. And today was no exception!

Thanks to the very helpful gentleman at the Ministry of Tourism (not the tourism centre downtown .. the employees there were rather clueless), Jennifer and I were able to locate a car rental yesterday and reserve a car for today. After an early breakfast (around 8am), we hired a taxi to bring us to the rental spot. Everything went well, and we walked out of there with a nice little Seat for the day.

We got ourselves on the highway, with a very ambitious itinerary for the day.

1- Back to Cholula, to see if we could find some good angles to take pictures of the Iglesia de los Remedios, with the Popocatéptl volcano in the background, just like the tourism books have it. I think we did a pretty good job (and it was not easy to get this shot: we took it from a pedestrian overpass right along the highway; it took an hour of stopping at various overpasses to find this angle!):

Upon taking this shot, we noticed that unlike yesterday, there were no clouds in the sky today and the Popocatépetl was clearly visible. So we decided to head back to the Iglesia de los Remedios, and take a few shots of us, with the volcano in the background:

This next shot shows the volcano in the background as well as the town of Cholula in the foreground:

2- After getting the shots we were looking for, we got back on the highway and headed for Huejotzingo. I wanted to pay a brief visit to the San Miguel Arcángel monastery there, founded in 1525, and one of the oldest on the American continent. This would turn out to be another highlight for me.

First, the church:

Then the convent. It was such a tranquil place, I couldn't help taking so many pictures:

3- Our final point on the itinerary was to get as close as we could to the Popocatépetl volcano. My original idea was to do some hiking - even if it was a short one, like 1 hour or something - somewhere near the volcano, but almost everyone we met discouraged us from doing so, mainly for safety reasons (which had much to do with our lack of both, familiarity with the area and time to familiarize ourselves with it). Hiking is just not as part of the culture here as it is at home in Vancouver.

So I had to leave the hiking idea aside and settle with getting as close as possible to the volcano. We ended up making it to a type of resort area about 30 minutes from the volcano. We had to stop there because it was getting late and we wouldn't have made it back to Puebla before dusk. Even so, it was a trip worth taking. We went from Huejotzingo to Popocatépetl, taking a break for a late lunch in a small town called San Nicolás de los Ranchos, where I ate the biggest taco I've ever eaten in my entire life. It was gigantuous (not to mention delicious!):












Jennifer was pretty happy with her lunch too:




















I also got myself a melon smoothie. The taste was so-so. But as the picture shows, I was just happy to get some liquid in me:












Here's the main church in town:












Me in front of a town mural. There are murals everywhere here.




















Here's some of the scenery along the way to San Angel:








































Finally, we got closer to the Popocatépetl. Here, the highway points right towards the volcano:

Cooling off my head! It was that hot. Uhmm .. I'm not trying to say that I'm a hothead!

We got as far as this resort, the name of which escapes me right now. It's situated a mere 30 minutes from the volcano. We had to drive on a horrible dirt road to get this far, but the reward was a nice, cool, quiet resting place in the woods:

That was our day trip. We made it back to the car rental place shortly after 8 in the evening. The owner of the shop drove us back to our hotel, which we thought was quite a nice gesture, but which apparently is quite common here.

All in all, a good day. I'm exhausted. Five days in Puebla, and we accomplished a lot:
* churches
* Tlaxcala
* 5 de mayo parade
* Cholula
* Huejotzingo
* Popocatépetl

Tomorrow around 10 in the morning we're going to Tati's parents' place. They want to meet us and then drive us to the bus station, where we will board a bus that will take us to Cuernavaca. This is the part of the trip that I really look forward to, because from here on in, the daily pace will get slower, much much slower. I'm thinking swimming pools and piña coladas...!

Puebla: 5 de Mayo, Cholula

This morning there was police and army presence, in preparation for the parade. I took these pictures in front of the zócalo (central square):

After some miscommunication (and a certain level annoyance in both of us) over breakfast, we began the day by going towards the Templo de San Francisco where the parade would pass by. In addition to the military and police, many other groups participated: schools, sport clubs, paramedics, firemen, search and rescue teams, and others. Our vantage point for the parade wasn't exactly noteworthy, so I didn't take any pictures with my camera and tried instead to keep cool in whatever shaded spot I could find, but Jen did take a few pictures:






































After the parade was done around noontime, we took a bus to Cholula, where we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening. Upon arrival in Cholula we went for lunch, and after that we went to visit the landmark which best exemplifies the town: the Iglesia de los Remedios. This is a noteworthy church for two reasons: 1- it's built on top of a hill; this in itself is probably no big deal, but recently it was discovered that underneath the hill is a pyramid! So, essentially, after the Spanish conquered the Aztecas, they built a church on top of the existing pyramid (let there be no doubt who conquered who). 2- the church provides a fantastic foreground for the Popocatéptl volcano in the background, as the pictures below show. In fact, the view is so picturesque that the tourism board of Puebla uses it often as a marketing tool to draw people to in. Anyways, here are some pictures.

Iglesia de los Remedios:




















































The day was actually super hot, and although we'd had food and drink previously for lunch, by mid-afternoon we were both dehydrated (and generally irritated), so when we saw the water fountain (and kids nearby running through it), we decided to be kids ourselves and run through the water fountain. Sheer delight!


































































After cooling off in the water fountain, we made our way down to the centre of town, where we ordered an iced coffee, and bought some freshly picked strawberries from a farmer. Then we went to the Ex-Convento de San Gabriel. It's actually a fortified convent, presumably the monks built it that way to protect themselves from invaders. At this convent, there was both, a church, and a (very large!) chapel, Capilla Real. Here are some pictures from both. I think of all the churches I've seen so far, this one's my favourite. It's not very ornate or beautiful, but maybe the combination of church, convent, and fort made a lasting impression on me. Note the rich dark blue sky. It looked like a thunderstorm was in the making, but alas, it didn't materialize.





























































































The clincher of our lovely day wss an evening with Tati's sister Gabi and her husband Diego. They live in Cholula, and they met up with us and took us for dinner to a lovely Italian restaurant.















Finally, after dinner Diego drove us back to Puebla, but not before driving by the VW factory in Puebla. What a massive undertaking VW has there. No wonder everyone in Puebla drives a VW...