Campeche

Friday, December 23. We started our day super early again, trying to avoid the famous Mexican traffic. We left Puebla, knowing we were coming back again to explore the city some more later on our trip. The morning was foggy and brisk, the highway traffic was fluid, and the scenery started to unfold as the sun rose to reveal a rugged landscape. I rolled down the car window to capture some of the grandeur of the mountains.

 These mountains reminded me of thick melted chocolate folds. I hadn't had breakfast, can you tell?

And sadly, the mark of man. We destroy so much.

 This mountain appeared in our view and we followed it through most of our route through Puebla before we entered the state of Veracruz. I was very curious about it and did a little research between taking photos.

 

 Here is the mountain a little closer up. I found out it's called Maltrata.  

 As we climbed up the highway into the mountain range, we saw this line of windmills. They look so small from far away, but these things are gigantic!

Entering the mountain range, it became very foggy and visibility was very low. Apparently this area has a lot of fog, and the road is very curvy and treacherous. It was fun going down. On the way back, we experienced the route from the other side of the mountains. Not as much fun, though.

I really like this picture of Maltrata. Wikipedia said it was the third highest mountain in Mexico.

We arrived in Villa Hermosa, in the state of Villa Hermosa early Friday afternoon. But unlike its hopeful name, the city of Villa Hermosa is not a beautiful village. W e didn't take any pictures there. We managed to find a little place to eat quesadillas, a market to buy bread, peanut butter and jelly, some bananas and other fruit to prepare our Sabbath meal, since the next day we were going to hit the road super early again and spend Christmas Eve and Day in Campeche.

We hit the road after spending a very eventful night at our hotel in Villa Hermosa. Apparently, it's a party town and we enjoyed some lively music for most of the night. We slept well, apparently the music was more soothing than annoying. Or maybe we were just too tired. As we headed into that day's route, the nature around started to change drastically from dry, rocky, cactus-y to plush, green, and almost tropical.

 Sugar cane!! A huge industry here. We passed trucks and trucks of harvested sugar cane headed to processing throughout most of our trip through this part of the country.

 All throughout the day, I kept feeling like I was in Puerto Rico. The landscape is so similar!

 And finally we enter the state of Campeche. We were headed to the historical city by the same name. 

Beautiful scenery everywhere. This kind of scenery I'm familiar with, it's in my tropical Puerto Rican blood. 

 We passed through a little stretch of a town, with colorful little houses. It was picturesque, but I will share pictures on another post when we passed through on the way back from our trip.

Look what I found! I knew it looked familiar!! You can get to Puerto Rico by land from the US. Only this is a little village in Mexico. Of course, I made Kevin go back so I could take a picture, as the restaurant's name was very appropriate! :)

We made it to Campeche and fell in love with the clean, colorful city. Ran into some rain and we were able to pull out our very cool fancy new umbrellas. Got a few looks from locals when they saw our umbrellas. Unfortunately, no picture of the umbrellas. 

 El Morro de San Juan, you ask? Nope, this is a fortress in Campeche. They might have used the same architect. 

 This is the malecon in Campeche, very clean and with a bike/running trail that I took advantage of on Christmas morning the next day. It gave us a beautiful backdrop for that day's sunset.

Old church in downtown Campeche. 

 Rainy, colorful street in Campeche.

Moi. Me. Yo. Ich.

Side door of another church.

 Inside one of the 8 bastions that link the protective wall that surrounds the city.

 

 The main church at the city center. Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion.

 View from a side street near the city square. You can see the two towers of the cathedral. 

 Inside the cathedral. 

 Around the city square there were areas where people walked around or sat in benches. 

Kevin playing with a statue. Apparently I wasn't paying that much attention to him.

The hubby and I after our Christmas Eve meal at a local restaurant. We enjoyed a laser show at the city square, depicting the town's history. There were lots of European tourists and the street vendors walked a constant path around the park trying to lure tourists to buy their wares. 

 After the exhilirating laser show, we went back to the hotel and enjoyed an intense game of dominoes. Anyone who knows me, knows how intense I get when I play dominoes. Lots of smack talk and the such. Again, it's in the Puerto Rican blood. Kevin beat me. I made Santa put coal in his
stocking that night.
  

The next morning we went on a Christmas morning walk/run at the Malecon. It was really great. 

A wonderful city that maybe one day we can come back and enjoy for a little longer than the 18 hours we spent there. 

Puebla

Serendipity, a gift that comes through at the most opportune times. That's how I consider our stay in Puebla, bookends to our journey. We began our adventure with an overnight stay in Puebla, according to Google Maps, 6 hours away from our home base in San Luis Potosí. Our hotel was right in the center of town, "El Centro". We were welcomed by lots of traffic, but little did we know that the traffic was due to the special treat we were going to receive that evening. The city organizes an annual Christmas cantata, with choirs, dance, and a live orchestra. I wasn't feeling the Christmas spirit, it's kind of hard to get into that mood when you're away from home and family. But as we stepped out of our hotel room that evening into the brisk air and joined the crowd that was walking towards el centro, little did we suspect the special treat we were about to enjoy. The musical was excellent, we positioned ourselves under a huge tree and were surrounded by beautiful voices and heartfelt narration for about an hour. I will forever remember this evening as one of my favorite Christmas moments. It filled my heart with thanks for the miracle of Jesus coming to our world to save you and me from sin.

December 22, 2016. Entering Puebla for the first time. We left SLP at 6:00 am to avoid the morning traffic out of the city. Good thing too, because we got caught in traffic in Querétaro and what should have been a six hour drive turned into a plus-seven hour journey. 

La Zanahoria, a vegetarian restaurant in downtown Puebla. It was pretty good, we were so hungry after being on the road for over seven hours. The place was packed with people, surprisingly.

Here's the view from our hotel room at sunset. I love the warm colors of the Mexican sky. Sunsets and sunrises here never disappoint.

 

Let me introduce you to the adventurous Kevin and Joy, ready for the biggest roadtrip we've ever undertaken.

The audience at the Christmas cantata. There was seating but you had to get there early to get a seat. The tree under which I positioned myself was just fine, thank you!

The singing Christmas tree, there were over a hundred voices between all the choirs. The sound was full and very melodious. 

The entire Centro was beautifully decorated with Christmas lights.

Beautiful BMW blue. :-)

The city planners did an amazing job lighting the old buildings and churches. We enjoyed walking the city center at night.

A selfie with my chauffeur who did an amazing job driving over 5,000 kilometers on this roadtrip. I drove a whopping 100 km. :)

January 3 , 2017. On our return trip back home, we also stopped in Puebla for a couple of extra days. We didn't get to really explore the city when we started our journey and we wanted to rest before heading back to the drudgery of work, so we scheduled two days in Puebla at the end of our trip. We even stayed in the same hotel. This was my dinner that night, we discovered an amazing restaurant called "Maiz Prieto", black corn, the food was absolutely wonderful, with great vegetarian options. I had the esquites (corn with chiles), a salad with lentil sprouts and a zesty foam for dressing for appetizer. Definitely coming back here if we're ever in Puebla again. 

The last day we were in Puebla round 2, we visited the famous Piramide Tepanapa ruins in Cholula, the widest pyramid in the world. A unique visit compared to the other pyramid ruins visits in that we were able to go inside the pyramid. I like to call this photo "Pyramid Innards". :) The Spaniards defiantly built a church on top of the pyramid. I think it ruined the effect. Ha ha, get it? Ruined it? Yeah, I won't quit my day job anytime soon for comedy.

View of the famous active volcano Popocatepetl from the top of the ruins. Next to Popo is Iztaccihuatl, also a volcano. The legend says that Izta was the woman who died of grief for Popo. And when Popo came back from war and found out she died, he has been explosively angry ever since.

The ever explosive Popo. 

Kevin representing Popo and me as Izta, on the right. 

The great Piramide Tepanapa, a religious center for about 600 years. It is mostly excavated, with several pyramids built over each other over the centuries. The whole area resembles more of a hill than a pyramid.

 

Climbing to the top of the pyramid-hill, where the Santuario de Nuestra Senora de los Remedios was built.

We enjoyed a small dinner back in Puebla centro that evening, the last night of our great roadtrip. We savored the moment, even though the food was uneventful. We always have a hard time explaining what vegetarian means to local restaurants.