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.