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...!