Day 4 14.07.15
Puebla. What an amazing little town. The town built in the Spanish colonial style is made up of very symmetric blocks all with their own charm. In the centre there is a lovely church or better said a little cathedral that is surrounded by a bustling plaza.
This morning the girls met up to go for a little breakfast and churros crawl (no, pub crawl would have been a bit to early for us :) ). So we went to sit in a so called Churrería where they specialise in producing patisserie that is batter pressed into boiling oil and then cut into small pieces. They are eaten with sugar, or cinnamon or dunked into chocolate. A real treat at this churrería but as we later on learned, even better when they come straight from the container with the hot grease and are still warm when you bite into them. A pure delight!
We continued our churro soul searching down the block, like I said before, a true churro crawl. Hopping from one churrería to the next.
We made a short stop however, at an amazing library. This library, that can be found in the Casa de Cultura de Puebla, is Latin Americas first public library. It dates back to a long, long time ago. (I am sorry, I forgot how long) It is mainly made up of a collection of a very generous donor to the library, offering them up to 5000 books ranging from 1450 to the 1800s. One of the students from Pueblas university (funnily with no history degree but studying the English language) showed us around the library. There was so much to see and the tour really worthwhile! The library contains a first edition of Don Quixote, a majority of theological books and a good range of science books, for example for medicine, mathematics, philosophy, and a small range of “forbidden” books, that were not officially exhibited back in the days. These books include several stories that are either not approved by the church, contain profanities or other words that might have influenced non church-goers to not believe in God, or that would be criticising the system. Not only is it the first public library of Latin America, but also it is beautiful to look at. The architecture, the wooden ornaments all add to the wonderful picture.
In order to not only eat our day away on Churros, we decided it would be best to pack in a little lunch of “Semitas”. Semitas were the right thing to eat at that point.
They look like burgers but are actually thick pieces of bread, spread with avocado, then she added some lettuce, some tomatoes, a thin breaded piece of pork, some hot sauce and loads and loads of cheese, then another layer of avocado and bread. To die for and very cheep too! We paid about 50 pesos for 2 whole semitas. The woman making these semitas was a sweetheart too. A real Mexican mamita!
As we had some time to kill before leaving on our day trip, we decided to cross something off my bucket list; trying on a quinceanera dress. The quinceanera is something very special in Mexican culture. It is equivalent to a sweet sixteen however, here the girl turns 15 and is introduced into society and gets to socially become a woman like by wearing make up, getting to go out with boys and not to be considered as the daughter of her father or mother but as her own person. This is done through a splendid celebration called a quinceanera where everyone is invited to and the parents spend a horrendous amount of money on the celebration, the dress, the food – everything. This celebration is only topped by the girl’s marriage and like I said is a vital part in the girl’s life.
We had loads of fun trying on this dress and I suppose the vendors did too as they hoped to show off one of their dresses on a live model to sell to soon to be quinceaneras… It “just” consists of an underskirt with hoops, an additional skirt to cover up the hoops, the actual skirt of the dress with loads of ruffles and then the corset, which you are tied into. With the dress comes additional jewellery, a cushion with special embroidery, a corsage and a shorter version of the dresses bottom half of the dress to be able to dance in during the party time of their celebration.
We then moved on to our day trip. First we headed out to a church that was situated on top of an indigenous pyramid called the Cholula pyramid. This pyramid is special as based on its size alone it is larger than the sun pyramid of Teotihuacan. (Wikipedia says that based on its volume it is the largest pyramid of the world). Even though it is so large, it will never receive the according touristic flow to is, as the excavation would be so cost intensive that in a region where money is lacking in all places, investors would never through money at a pyramid if they could help the population in a different way. The Cholula pyramid is also another evidence of the Spanish showing off their power, as they built their own church on the top of this pyramid. At the top there is a spectacular view, however I felt that the church itself was quite cheesy. Again a lot of gold, but also many plastic statues staring down at you. Not quite my cup of tea.
At the bottom of the period / church hill, we went to a little bar to rehydrate and for the rest of the group to try out some crazy beer mixtures. I opted for a “sangria” which deserves to be in brackets, seeing as it tasted like a weird alcopop and was being charged like a drink in a fancy club in Mexico City. No, 100 pesos wasn’t worth spending on this drink, however we still had a blast and it was nice relaxing a bit before heading on.
We arrived at a gorgeous place! We went to see how pottery was made around the region of Puebla. The process was similar as to everywhere else, mixing up the clay, washing it, letting it dry, using the dried mass to form the pieces of pottery, burning it in the oven, taking it out and going over any irregularities, dipping it into a special mineral mix to seal it and give it some base colour, adding the specific paintings and colour patterns you want on the pottery, and then burning it again and with that sealing it off so well that it is ready for selling. The colours there were impressive! Everywhere you turned there were coloured walls, small pieces of tiles everywhere, wonderful pieces of artwork, and a small and peaceful little garden with a fountain. What a lovely place to work! I didn’t buy any pottery because first of all I don’t trust myself carrying around pottery in a big backpack for either the rest of the trip or sending it back home and having it face the same fate possibly ending in shambles, and second of all I think I can buy some similar pottery back in Mallorca. Therefore my photos will be my souvenirs of this little adventure.
Our last stop of the day trip was a visit to the fort. The fort is the stage where on the 5th of May 1862 the battle of Puebla took place. It is not actually the Mexican Independence Day, but is a national celebration of the Mexicans winning over an enormous French army. The 5th of May or better said, 5 de Mayo is used a lot for street names all over Mexico, as it was such an important date for the Mexicans. It was a battle between independence and having a normal state run by their own leaders and the Mexican aristocrats wanting to have a Mexican emperor through the Austrian archduke Ferdinand Maximilian who was appointed by Napoleon himself, as that was really fashionable. The battle supported the great resistance movement and strengthened the Mexican government in its battles against the French. It was here where the Mexican invented or perhaps used the technique of ants first to win the battle. The fort is like a cheese, covered in tunnels and little escape routes, enabling the Mexicans back in 1862 to keep their supply of fresh soldiers coming confusing the French as to where these people were coming from. On this fort there are several memorials. One is a large Mexican flag that has the names of the brave generals inscribed that fought on this day. Another is a large statue on the top of the hill that depicts the victory. In front of this statue there is a small array of fountains, making it a great place for kids to play around. Not only kids as it turns out as two of our group members decided to run through it as well. This place seemed like the perfect playground as kids would run to take off their school uniforms and starting playing football, running through the fountains or rolling down the adjacent hill. Parents were sitting around it and either running through the fountains with their children or just enjoying the small breeze in the sun.
When we came back we were all perished and enjoyed a great Mexican meal. (Definitely better than the meal in Mexico City!!) Here we tried the typical Pueblan food – the Pueblan Mole. The mole be of different colours and flavours, but the main ones are the red, the green and the black mole. The red one has more chilli and tomato input, the green one is based mainly on green chilli and green tomatoes and herbs, the black one is made up of chilli, tomatoes, and chocolate. At the restaurant we were staying at we got to taste all three of these flavours and therefore moments later I had three enchiladas (tacos filled with cheese) with the three different moles and some refried beans on my plate. Just plainly some really good food. I am also noticing that the whole deal with eating spicy is getting more and more easy and I can enjoy different levels of spicy. On the big table we also had “Chiles a Nogada”, a stuffed chilli with dried fruit, minces beef, some nuts in a walnut, cheese and crème sauce, topped with pomegranate seeds to resemble the Mexican flag (green chilli, white sauce and red pomegranate seeds.) This is definitely a flavour that I have never had before and those kinds of experiences are what I feel what make travelling so special.
After our dinner the night was still young and so we decided to head out and go for a drink in Puebla. We had a blast and the Mojitos in every size imaginable kept coming. It was a really nice night listening to new music, especially “the original version of Murder she wrote” – el taxi by Pitbull. We also really enjoyed a certain “Leo” who was the waiter of our choice who was unfortunately for him the girls desire of the whole night. Girls just wanna have fun – and we sure did. This all ended up in the hotel – without Leo – and us being asked to be more quite by the receptionist, twice, while playing 30 seconds on the iphone.
