I’d woken up worse but certainly woken up better. Mezcal and tequila tend to agree with me, but perhaps not mixed in a cauldron of a belly already containing a cheesy herb shot and a beer. No time for hair washing or cat-like self-preening. I barely made it downstairs to breakfast, grabbing lids off the buffet and dishing up random foods before fully registering any of it. Slop! Was that beef stir fry? Heap! Pikelet? Slide! Plantain? I hastily applied the charm offensive towards an unoccupied gent with a name tag reading ‘capitan’, ordering my usual Americano (black coffee). We had ten minutes before hopping our cabs. I shovelled everything down my gob like you would imagine a cartoon steam shovel could cram its digger full of food down an animated mouth.
Then I saw eggs …
El Capitan helped me get the young girl who was apparently new to scramble some eggs and throw them on some tortillas to go. This was a bit of a revelation apparently. Eggs in a tortilla? Unheard of! She was taking aaaaaaages … Eggs aren’t hard … just crank the heat, woman! (You know I burn my pots, right?)
There is now a favourite phrase. It gets uttered three or so times a day in Dave’s Leeds accent. “Where’s Jo?” It’s because I am always last to the foyer, last to the cabs, lagging behind taking a picture, or trailing off because something has caught my attention. Basically, I am pushing time right to the limit to extract the maximum out of every possible situation or experience here. I wanted the eggs to make sure I had enough protein to prevent a blood sugar drop before lunch time. El Capitan handed them to me in a styrofoam container. I spun around; everybody was gone. I saw Dave and Tanya hopping into the last cab and I madly dashed across the street. Made it just in time again. When we got to the meeting point, this was the view greeting my friends. Dave was only too happy to capture the moment for posterity.
You enter the ruins of Cholula via some dark tunnels. Authentic post-modern period. Mid-century to be exact. 1950s. Mexican ranch style?? Seemed a bit of fun.
Cholula was a later MedoAmerican city, famous for two things. One of the biggest massacres by the Spaniards and their allies, all the local communities resentful of years of tributes forced on them by the Mexicas (Aztecs) on the March to Tenochtitlan. And the biggest pyramid in the Americas measured at the base. Unlike many of the other sites, no large structure survives to tell a tale of horror. As you can see from the photo, bits of the foundation and original floors survive. The guide stated that evidence of Teotihuacan stretched down to the area known as Puebla here too, as shown in the style of construction.
WordPress won’t let me load evidence but squirrel spotting fest 2020 continues unabated. I saw two more in the Cholula ruins. Evidence of shattered stelae indicates internal power struggles were present.
The volcano of Popocatepetl looms large in the distance. This has blown its stack a few times in recent years, but seems safe today. Closer, the yellow church of Our Lady of The Remedies sits atop a hill. A cruel, cruel hill. Now the weather begins to heat up! My low-grade headache starts to crank up. My shin splints begin to ark up as if I had worn put a mascot suit from the knees-up and a group of bored kids had kicked the crap out of my vulnerable, exposed front shins. Bloody Castillo Chapultepec!!! Nothing for it but to power up the hill.
The view over the community of San Pedro is quite stunning and we all stood there gawping for a while. Except Dave who was perving on our arses.
It was a stunning view of San Pedro on one side and San Andreas on the other. Never the twain shall meet apparently. Like Springfield and Shelbyville. After admiring the view, I discovered my own personal remedy in the tienda (shop) – coffee flavoured Coke No Sugar. My friends and I were hooked like mad caffeine addicted a few years back and then the product was pulled from the shelves, forcing us to go cold turkey. We went through the stages of loss, grief and deprivation like crackheads. Now, here it was on the top of this hill in a random shop when I had a low-grade headache. I couldn’t resist.
After admiring the view, the Zoolander photographic orgy commenced with Tanya pap snapping Brin and me in a few places.
As for the church itself? You couldn’t go in unless you wanted to attend a service but I could see that it golden with some saints. [Insert standard church description here.]
Upon descending the hill, the shin splints renewed their attack on me with steel-capped intensity. Dear god – and here was my familiar RSI from too much blogging – oh joy. I cracked open the Coke No Sugar. All I could taste were memories. As for the drink, it tasted flat. I have migraine drugs that render most soft drinks flat to me but I had to try for old times sake. My tears would have made all the baby Jesus’ cry. (Fun fact – there are shops in every town where you can buy a baby Jesus in whatever skin colour you want a buy his outfit, underwear, accessories etc. repair shops too.) The lady of the remedies had stiffed me. After lunch at a local vegetarian cafe, we Ubered back to town for a wander of Puebla’s highlights.
First, the Puebla basilica in the zocalo. Sure it looks big on the outside but I had not anticipated the level of bling on the inside. There was some serious cash splashed around here circa 17th century but no English captions meant no idea what was going on.
Behind the basilica is Latin America’s oldest library. Ali and I thought you had to pay to see it so the plan was to engage zoom lens, snap and move on but the sign was for something else and the library was free. So in we went.
Memories of my PhD study days cane flooding back. Sleeping on top of 500 year old books in the British Library and National Archives before joining the dark side as a coffee drinker to stop being strong armed outside by the security guards. Good times. The big circle thing is a wheel for spinning the big folios around. Overhead on the upper shelves, is a mannequin who I assume to be the original benefactor Mr Palafox (maybe). I worked in a library for 14 years so I can tell you first hand there are plenty of dummies in those buildings, but this is the first time I have ever seen a plastic one.
Next was a visit to the smaller church of Santo Domingo which had this beautiful gate and a ‘VIP let’s kick it’ exclusive section for services featuring a Mary with a huge skirt.
A few of us met up for a rooftop drink to watch the sunset. Free nuts came – thank God, because we were all starving by that point – but the sunset didn’t really. We snapped some nice shots as the light faded and headed off to dinner as recommended by Ali’s friend.
The restaurant had funky decor with corn wallpaper. Most of us ordered tacos and two vegetable platters to share, feeling quite deficient in the vegetable stakes (not steaks – although I guess you could have an eggplant steak??) of late. Remember – vegetable platter is what it said. How is this a platter????
Despite hunger levels rising to 40 Hour Famine levels and I was starting to feel my lack of sleep, this was pretty funny. However, the tacos were sensational. Mine were a delicious octopus. The others had chorizo and claimed it was the best tacos they had eaten yet. High praise and an excellent comeback!
Stay tuned, dear reader, for the departure to Oaxaca in which our fearless heroine shows no regard for her digestive system in risking a bus station chicken mole pastie for breakfast. (Did I survive at all?? Is this a ghost writer??)
HockTales: a Central American Adventure 