greg in ohio: Puebla, Mexico

My Mother has just departed after a 3 week trip and I miss her already! We treated Mum to a trip down to Savannah, GA where we spent our honeymoon ad she had a blast, we took on her on a ghost tour, to the beach and even for some real Southern Home Cooking! Yum!

I also treated mum to quite an eventful bicycle ride back from the CLE winery (a favourite from her last trip) right here in Cleveland Heights. It started well when it turned out we had arrived at the winery just in time for closing so after a couple of quick gulps it was back to the bicycles for the fun to begin! I hopped on the bike and started to peddle - straight into a bush. I had thrown the Lock around the handlebars which had managed to position itself in such a way as to jam the steering hard to the right sending me straight into the shrubbery. At least it was a comfy bush and not a holly bush or a car I cycled into this time! With this incident fresh in the memory I was taking it easy and was stunned to see a deer rear up un front of me, nearly taking me down before ot ran off over the road! It was happily munching on some tasty flowers in someones garden when I rudely interrupted it, startling it and sending it flying across the road! Mum must have been wondering what would happen next..... Well Mum didn't have much time to wonder as just around the next corner I got some branches tangled up in mum's rucksack which I was kindly carrying for her, I kept going hoping to yank the branches free which is exactly what happened, sending them pinging back straight into poor mum's face!!!! Just like a catapult!!! Needless to say we didn't cycle anywhere else after that, although we did get to go back to the winery to collect mum's sunglasses which had slipped out of the rucksack when I took my tumble! Not bad for a 2 mile ride!

A deer in our garden, I wonder if it is the same deer that I managed to scare?

Well enough of my antics with mum, this blog is about Puebla, Mexico - One of my favourite!

Puebla is a wealthy provincial city with a huge historical quarter, the largest cathedral in the Americas, the finest food in all of Mexico and its famed colourful talavera pottery everywhere! Puebla is also full of old VW Beatles and Campers, literally every other car is a old VW, probably because Puebla is home to the worlds biggest VW car plant. It really adds to the charm of the place - Not the car plant but the old VWs!

VW Camper

VW Beatle and Puebla's pretty coloured streets.

We stayed at the Casa De La Palma, a fine colonial building constructed to house the Spaniards when they came over to Mexico but before they could find work, a little like a homeless shelter today I guess! It was a beautiful hotel with a little central courtyard, lots of flowers everywhere and really high ceilings in the rooms to keep it nice and cool. Not bad for 25 dollars a night!

Inside the Casa De Las Palmas

Puebla has a lot to offer the tourist and was a fantastic welcome to Mexico, you could spend days wondering the old cobbled streets, especially La Calle de los Dulces or 'the street of candies' for us English folk, It's wonderful, a whole road of nothing but sweet shops selling nothing but delicious homemade candies, my favourite was the fudge for sure! On the subject of food in Puebla you really cant go wrong. Puebla is the home of Mole Polblano, which is chicken served in a rich chili and chocolate sauce and is heavenly good!!

Mole Poblano!

Contrary to my preconceptions the food in Central Mexico was really not overly spicy, with most dishes giving you a tickle of spice, enough for you to taste but not overwhelming by any means. Before we left Amanda and I had been getting in the mood for our trip by consuming unhealthy amounts of Cholula hot sauce as Cholula was one of the places we were to visit and we wanted to get out stomachs used to the spice. What a waste of time, we didn't see a single bottle of Cholula hot sauce the whole time we were gone!

A Pretty Kitchen

On the subject of Cholula we took a day trip there from Puebla and I have to say it didn't get off to the best of starts. Puebla may be 'small' compared to Mexico City but it still has a population of almost 6 million inhabitants meaning it is twice the size of Chicago, in fact in the US only New York would be bigger. All these people made navigating the city a bit of a challenge, We opted to take the local bus to Cholula and explore the famous pyramid there on our own as it was the only option for us except a Spanish language tour. The journey started out well enough as we found and boarded the right bus and discovered a ticket was about 10 cents, it went a bit downhill after that however as we somehow managed to miss the stop for Central Cholula and ended up at the end of the line at a bus stop in a not so desirable part of town with nothing but stray dogs and tumbleweed for company, the bus then chucked us off and left us there all alone.

All Alone in Cholula Bus Station.

Dreadful thoughts of our impending doom were going through our minds when thank goodness another bus showed up heading back the way we had come. I have never been so happy to see a bus in all my life, even if the old thing made our school Metro-bus look like a Rolls Royce! Despite the fact the bus saved us from a grizzly fate I was still a bit grumpy that I had to pay another 10 cents for another ticket :(

Cholula is a suburb of Puebla that is home to the worlds largest pyramid, far larger than the pyramids in Giza. The pyramid in Cholula is just a huge mound of earth now, thanks to Cortez's wish to destroy anything Aztec, in fact after destroying the aztec pyramid he went ahead and built a Church on top of it! Some parts of the original pyramid have been excavated giving a sneak peak at what must have been an awe inspiring structure, Now you can walk up to the top of it where according to all the postcards you have a incredible view of the smoking Popocatapetyl volcano (remember from the Mexico City blog?) looming over you but what we saw was a lot of haze have with the volcano just barely visible in the distance!

Can you see 'El Popo'?

Spanish church atop the old Aztec Pyramid.

We were lucky that the next night our hotel receptionist pointed us in the direction of Arena Puebla, home of the Lucho Libre! It is Mexican masked wrestling and it is a lot of fun, they were quite a diverse group of wrestlers the night we went, we got to see Sauron from Lord of the Rings, A Policeman as well as a tiger and of course a jaguar all with costumes to match! They all wear fancy capes, skimpy shorts and masks to hide their faces, I really enjoyed it, there was a fun atmosphere in the arena with everyone howling with laughter as the policeman started spanking the jaguars ass before slamming him to the ground with such force the whole arena shook.

Nacho Libre!

Lucha Libre!

Of course no trip to a new city is complete without paying homage to the local football team. Amanda was really excited when we discovered that Lobos BUAP were drawn at home in the Copa MX against Juarez the weekend we just happened to be in Puebla. Puebla has two teams in the top tier of Mexican football with Puebla FC dominating the local and fan base and Lobos being by far the less prestigious of the two but with an incredible story to tell. Lobos are a small university team that last year came from nowhere to win promotion to the Primera division, taking everybody including themselves by surprise. It was so unexpected that the team had done no preparation for this possibility, had to bring in about 10 players on loan and were still searching for a tv deal when we watched them 7 games into the season. They started the season brilliantly and found themselves in 3rd place after a few games, they have tapered off a bit since but it is still a bit of a fairy tale story that we were delighted to witness.

Amanda enjoying a brew before the game.

In September 2017 the state of Puebla suffered a devastating earthquake, toppling buildings and killing scores of people. You can see the evidence of it all around, we got to visit Biblioteca Palafoxiana - The oldest library in the new world which had only just reopened after it had taken them 5 months to restore it after the earthquake. A lot of the old churches had also suffered as you can see from these pictures.