I LOVE TACOS!

Did I mention that I love tacos? Ok. The best tacos in all of Puebla are found at Tacos Parados, a amazing little taco stand in the middle of somewhere. I don't know exactly how to get there, but Christian (with his amazing Puebla knowledge) knows of it and always takes us there for Suizos--aka flour tortilla with meat, onion, cilantro... topped with lots of salsa, guacamole and of course... lime! I never get tired of eating tacos!

Bus entertainment...

Olivia arrived on Saturday night to stay for Spring quarter. For her first night in Puebla, Christian, Kristina, Daniel, Kendel and I took her to a bar called Bambukos in Cholula. Then afterward we went to Tacos Parados to eat the best tacos in all of Puebla. Then on Sunday afternoon Olivia, Kristina and I went to the centro for Kristina's last venture and Olivia's first view of the zocolo. In Los Sapos market I bought some really cool earrings made from old mexican pesos. On our way back from the centro we caught the first bus we could find that would take us back home. On our first stop two guys got on the bus with a guitar and a bongo drum and started to play for us. The guitarist was singing too. They were really good and made our bus ride pretty enjoyable. They had to brace themselves pretty well so that they wouldn't fall as the bus jolted along. They stayed on the bus for a few stops and then left to find another bus of people to entertain. Only in Mexico, haha.
ps. I took a video of them playing and I really wanted to upload it for everyone to watch, but my internet isn't fast enough (nor reliable enough) in order to upload video clips :(

Puerto Escondido

Winter quarter is over and now we get to celebrate! For our week off we decided to go to Puerto Escondido on the Pacific Coast. We stayed in Puebla for the weekend to stay for the Puebla soccer game on Sunday. Sunday morning was beautiful and sunny. Kristina went to mass in the cathedral in the centro, and I explored Analco market. Then in the afternoon we went to the stadium for the game. We met up with Ellie, Rochelle and Yessenia and a few of their friends who have a private box in the stadium. Everyone was in blue and white Puebla jerseys. I should probably get one so I can show some Puebla spirit. The game was pretty fun, and Puebla won! The final score was 2-0! The fans get pretty into the action. One part of the stadium was a solid mass of shirtless screaming fans with waving blue and white flags. After the game we got our bags and headed straight to the bus station. We had a bit of time to wait until our 8 pm bus so we grabbed some snacks and then met up with Brittany and Kim. We got on our bus and prepared ourselves for the long journey. We met another intercambio student from Puebla who was sitting behind us. He had just finished his quarter at the UDLA and coincidentally had already met a few of the other girls from our group sometime in a club in Puebla. I tried to sleep most of the 14-hour bus trip, but the curves and jolts made it hard. We arrived the next morning at about 10:30 feeling a bit groggy, but greeted by humid coastal weather. Hopped in a taxi and headed to our hostel.
Our hostel is really tropical with a pool in the center courtyard surrounded by little palapa roof bungalows. The front lobby area has a pool table and couches with lots of retro American posters on the orange painted walls. The pool is shaped kind of like a bowling pin with a little bridge over the bottle neck portion which connects the front lobby area to the inside courtyard and back area patio and rooms. Our room wasn’t quite ready yet so we left our stuff in another room, put on our bathing suits and decided to walk out and find a beach. The hostel is located about a 20 min walk from the beach, but it was totally worth the walk. The nearest beach is the Cove. You have to walk down a steep set of stairs to get to the beach at the bottom of the overhanging cliff. The second we reached the beach we were accosted by tour guides who offer excursions to see whales, sea turtles, dolphins and more. As well as surf lessons available. They were not easily warded off, and came back multiple times throughout the afternoon to make sure we had not changed our minds. The beach was pretty crowded with little restaurants and umbrellas, not at all the sort of seclusion and deserted beach expanses that I am used to in Cabo Pulmo. The water felt glorious after the 20 min walk in the sweltering sun. A few of us ordered some tacos and guacamole while we passed the afternoon on the beach. Afterwards we walked back to the hostel. On the way I stopped at a mini super and bought some avocados, tomatoes and onions and to make some guacamole back in the hostel. Back in the hostel Kristina and I checked into our room, which turned out to be a massive two-bed suite. We only booked for a single bed to share, but I guess they overbooked. So we got an enormous room with a California king bed and a twin bed as well as a private bathroom and patio. We spent the rest of the evening hanging out until about 8 when we decided to go down to the main beach avenue to find some dinner. Got some tacos and then went to a little tiki bar/club later to dance. Then headed back to the hostel to crash after a long day (which began with a long bus journey).
Slept in really late the next day and then went down to the corner store to buy some milk and cereal for breakfast. We decided to check out Zicatela beach for the day so we took a cab back to the general area where we had eaten dinner. The beach was more like a stereotypical boardwalk beach with white sand and beach umbrellas everywhere. The waves crash too big for swimming and it has strong rip tides so swimming was prohibited. We just hung out under the umbrellas for most of the time trying to escape the ruthless sun. The waves were big and daunting, not great for swimming at all. Went pack to the hostel in the evening and hung out at the tiki bar for most of the night chatting with other people staying there. Met some people from Australia and talked to them for a while.
Day three we decided to go back to the beach we visited the first day. We all lay out in the sun a bit too long and received a range of minor to severe sunburns. Luckily I decided to walk back earlier than the rest and only got a bit of burn on my shoulder blades as opposed to the full-body burns the others suffered. At about 5 pm we met up with the hostel owner to take us to a beach where they release baby sea turtles. We crammed into the back of the “bus,” which was just a blue tarp-covered pick-up truck. We walked down to Playa Delphin to find the reserve. Unfortunately they were not releasing turtles that day, however the beach was breathtaking. We got there just as the sun was setting behind the lightly cloud-covered sky. It was worth it just to see the beautiful deserted beach and the sunset. We walked back in the dark to the main road and caught cabs back to the hostel.
On our last day we took a beautiful walk along a stairway that climbed between two beaches. The stairs wound around next to the water with lots of little bridges and small balcony points along the way. It was a really fun walk with lots of photo opportunities. The sunshine was abrasive even though we started our walk around 10 in the morning. We spent the afternoon hanging out in the hostel before catching our bus at 6 pm for the 15-hour bus ride back. I didn’t sleep as well this trip as there were two little children sitting in the seat behind me who kept pulling my hair and crying for a good portion of the journey. We got in at 10:30 the next day feeling a bit disoriented and very exhausted. All in all it was a great trip!

Taxco

Another weekend trip! This weekend Kristina, Erika, Andrew and I decided to visit Taxco, which is famous as the first location in Mexico to mine and produce silver for jewelry and other trinkets. Getting to Taxco turned out to be a lot harder than we had assumed as the only buses that left for Taxco directly from Puebla leave on Saturdays or Sundays, but we wanted to leave Friday morning. We decided to take a bus to Cuernavaca and then catch a bus from there to Taxco. It seemed like a pretty good plan, but we ended up arriving in Cuernavaca too late to catch the early bus and had to wait 2 hours in the station to get the next bus at 5 pm. So we arrived in Taxco at about 7 on Friday evening. The bus ride into Taxco was magnificent. The beautiful little city of Taxco is located at the bottom of a steep sloped valley. The buildings are all crammed together in tight rows with narrow cobblestone streets. It was hard to believe we had arrived in a city in Mexico, I felt like I had arrived in Spain or the coast of Greece (minus the water). The streets were so narrow that our bus had to wait at the sharp curves for the oncoming traffic to pass before proceeding. Once off the bus we walked to our Hotel, which was only about 10 min away on Ave Platero (silver). Hotel las Palomas (doves) was one of tons of quaint little hotels and hostels clustered along the main avenue. We checked in and were given our keys. Kristina and I got a room on the first level and the others on the upper deck. From the top patio you could see up the hill to see the cathedral in the zócolo and the endless clusters of houses that lined the valley to our right. Following the recommendation of some friends who visited Taxco some weeks before, we took a taxi to a restaurant. All the taxis in Taxco are white Volkswagen bugs. They don’t have front passenger seats but the four of us fit nice and comfy in our cab. The streets are extremely narrow and frightenly steep. They seemed steeper than the poor little bugs could handle, but somehow they seem to climb them without problems. We had dinner at el Adobe en a cute little square with a fountain in the center. We sat next to a open window looking out over the house tops. The food was delicious and about half way through our meal a man began to play the guitar and sing. We went back to the hotel and spent the rest of the evening sitting outside on the patio rooftop talking and listening to music.
The next morning was magnificent and sunny. We got a late start and headed to the zócolo to have breakfast. We went to a small family owned café that looked out over the centro facing the cathedral. I had huevos a la mexicana (scrambled eggs with onion, tomatoes and green chilies) with fresh tortillas and beans. It was so delicious. For the rest of the afternoon we explored the centro, the inside of the cathedral, and the endless streets lined with silver shops. I was not too impressed with the silver, but drawn instead into the bead shops. BEADS! They are so much cheaper here in Mexico. A strand of turquoise cost less than 8 dollars. While the silver was impressive, the impeccable shine and tacky shapes weren’t really appealing to me. We went to the silver market down on Ave de Platero and walked between hundreds of silver vendors selling millions of different designs. Nothing really caught my eye (or rather everything caught my eye because it was just so shiny), and I didn’t buy anything. Later in the evening we went back to the little square where we had dinner the night before and went to a restaurant called La Hamburguesa to eat…. Hamburgers! How more American could be get, right? Well anyway, they were really tasty. We also had peaches with rompope (sweet liqueur made in Puebla) for desert. Walked back to the hotel and hung out a bit before heading back to the centro to hang out on the rooftop of a restaurant in the centro that looked right over the lighted Cathedral.
Sunday morning was just as sunny as the day before and we walked back up the steep hill to the centro and had breakfast in the same little café (because it was just so great the day before!). After breakfast we decided to take a taxi up to the top of the hill to see the Critso Monument (similar to the one in Brazil). The taxi ride was bumpy and extremely steep. I was a little anxious at times. From the statue monument the entire city of Taxco was visible. It looked like a little doll town, with the huge Cathedral steeples towering over everything. Back in the centro I bought some beads (however the bead store which I had seen the day before and had the best prices was closed). However comparably the prices of beads were very cheap to American shops. The others bought a few things for gifts and such. But we all bought a lot less than we had expected we might have. Our bus was scheduled to leave at four, so we made one last stop in a café to have cold drinks and a few snacks before walking back to our hotel to collect our things and get to the bus station on time. The bus ride back was so beautiful, with the valleys and mountain ranges backlit by the setting sun and puffy white clouds, I took tons of pictures out my window to capture the various stages of the sky as it changed from blue and yellow to shades of hot pink and orange. I’m writing this on the bus as we trundle along in the dark towards our bright-lit city of Puebla. Home again…at least until next weeks travels.

Oaxaca

Last weekend we went to Oaxaca with 5 others from class. We left on Thursday afternoon on the bus. The ride was about 5 hours long, and I slept most of the time. We arrived at our hostel at about 8:30 and promptly left in search of food. We walked to the centro and ate at a cafe located in the zocalo. We ordered some wine between the 7 of us, and the waiter brought out different size glasses, larger ones for the boys and small ones for the ladies. Talk about machismo. Haha.
The next day we got up to have our free breakfast in the Hostel. We had omelets with quesillo (the famous cheese of Oaxaca) cilantro and ham with black beans and bread. Pretty good deal for a hostel that only cost about 10 dollars a night. After breakfast we hailed taxis to visit Monte Alban, the pyramids located on the hills above Oaxaca. From the top of Monte Alban you can see the entire Oaxaca valley. The pyramids were incredible, and we couldn’t have picked a nicer sunny day to be out walking around. I took tons of photos of the pyramids because every angle provided another amazing picture. After the pyramids we went out to lunch and I had tostadas with quesillo, yum. We went back to our hostel to rest for a little bit before heading to the centro to walk around and explore. Later that night I went we went out salsa dancing which was a lot of fun!
Saturday morning we got up and had yummy omelets again and then headed out to see the oldest tree in the world! About 15 minutes outside of the center of Oaxaca is Tule, the largest tree by circumference and disputably the oldest tree in the world. Although not very impressive for its height, the trunk of Tule is amazing. The whole tree was alive with birds chirping and flying in and out of its massive branches. It was a bit comical to see because it is literally located in the center of a little town, right in front of the church. Its not out in the middle of a forest like one might expect. It is located right in the middle of everything. We walked around the little town and through the artisan markets. We tasted samples of Mezcal (famous alcoholic beverage made in Oaxaca similar to Tequila) in an array of interesting flavors. It has a very powerful flavor and it doesn't take much to feel its affects. Afterward we caught a bus to take us to a buffet restaurant that someone had recommended to us. It took a few stops for directions and a long walk along a dirt road that appeared to be heading nowhere in particular, but we finally found it. It turned out to be well worth the walk. It was the most amazing buffet I have ever had in my life (not that I have really been to a lot of buffets). Every type of traditional Mexican food imaginable was available. They had at least 5 types of mole, an array of rice dishes and salsas as well as at least 10 types of fresh salads. It was all so delicious it was hard to decide what to eat. They gave us samples of Mezcal mixed with grapefruit and pomegranate juice with chili powder around the rim. Then as if there wasn't enough food already they had a table with at least 30 different desert choices including rice pudding and a amazing array of various pastries and cakes. I ate entirely too much, but it was just so delicious I couldn't help it. After about 2 hours of stuffing our faces we packed all 7 of us into a taxi to get back to our hostel. We decided to walk around some more so we headed down to the centro to walk off the monstrous meal we had just consumed. We went to the marketplace and weaved in and out of the stalls selling fresh vegetables, dried chilies, Mezcal and quesillo. We bought some very cheap wine and spent the rest of the evening back in our hostel hanging out with some other of the guests that we met from various parts of the world.
The next morning we got up early to catch a 9 am bus back to Puebla. I slept most of the time on the way back, but I was awake just long enough to see the beautiful cactus covered hills on either side of the winding road leading out of Oaxaca.