Month: August 2011

On our way from Oaxaca to Mexico City we spent Friday night in a nice old hotel in the center of the town of Tehuacan. Tehuacan is famous for its mineral water. On Saturday we toured the underground springs at the Pinafiel plant that are the source of the mineral water. It was a fascinating tour.

This is our hotel in Tehuacan. You can see the door of our room on the right.

Our tour guide for the underground springs was very eager to practice her English and we were the only ones on the tour.

We arrived in Mexico City mid afternoon and checked into a great Sheraton Hotel next to the American Embassy. We walked down to the historic center of Mexico City, the Zocalo. Mexico City has an amazing energy, some beautiful wide avenues, and some car free narrower streets. The crowds on the way to the Zocalo on Saturday night were enormous.

Sunday morning when we left the hotel we discovered that all the roads were closed and the Mexico City Marathon was ready to start. We had great fun watching the runners and walking towards the Chapultepec Park where many of the museums are located. Because there were no cars we could walk down the middle of the road.

Our first stop was the Museo Nacional de Antropologia. What a wonderful museum. In my experience it is one of the best I have ever visited. We spent several hours there and didn't see everything. One of the highlights was the Sun stone which was found underneath Mexico City's Zocalo in 1790.

Our second stop was the Museo Nacional de Historia. it is a castle like building sitting on a hill overlooking the city. At one point it was the home of Mexico's president. The museum and building were great but perhaps the best part was the orchestra and choir putting on a concert on the top level.

Next We stopped at the Museum of Modern Art and then went back to the hotel for a rest. For dinner we went to a Mariachi restaurant and had a great time.

On Mondays the museums in Mexico City are closed so today we visited several markets,the Monumento a la Revolucion,the cathedral, a 137 year old candy store and the Departmentof Education which has 120 Diego Rivera Murals. For dinner we had steaks at an Argentinian Restaurant.

Our stay in Mexico City was great. It is a beautiful city. The parts that I saw were very clean. All the people were friendly and it had a real energy. I'd love to go back some day. .

 
We arrived in Oaxaca on Saturday night the 20th of August. We stayed in the new annex to the wonderful B&B The Bugambillas. The annex has four guest rooms, a very nice sitting area and kitchen, and a patio and roof top deck. The staff call it El Secreto.  think we were the first people to sleep in our room. It was one of the nicest places we have stayed on this trip.

On Sunday we explored Oaxaca and then on Monday morning we started taking Spanish lessons at a school called Oaxaca Spanish Magic. Monday through Friday we had  four hours of lessons each day. Duke was in a class with one other student and I had a teacher to myself. I couldn't believe how intense it was to speak and listen to Spanish exclusively for four hours a day. I even discovered that this kind of extreme brain exercise can actually give you a headache! Monday afternoon we moved out of the Bugambilla and into a home stay which was cheap but turned out to be a disappointment. Never the less the school and the Spanish lessons were wonderful. I had a great teacher and I think I made great progress on my Spanish.

Tuesday afternoon we went to two artisan towns south of Oaxaca. One of the towns specialised in black pottery and the other one specialised in colorful carved wooden creatures called alebrijes. It was fun to explore the countryside and we bought some souvenirs in both places.

Wednesday afternoon we visited the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca. It was a marvelously interesting museum with exhibits about the history of Oaxaca up to the present. The best part of the museum was the wonderful building in which it is located, a beautiful former monastery. later we had dinner in a restaurant over looking the Zocalo and had fun watching a band and dancers.

Thursday afternoon we invited two other women from our classes to join us when we explored a couple more towns north east of Oaxaca. one of the women was from France and the other one was from St Paul Minnesota. We all had a great time. We went to see a giant tree in front of a church in El Tule and a little bit farther out of town we visited Teotitlan del Valle. We stopped at one workshop and had lunch in their empty restaurant and then the owner showed us how they make the yarn and dye it. He showed us how all of the colors are made from natural products like bugs, indigo, bark, and other plants. Then he showed us how the yarn is spun and how the rugs are made. The whole process was fascinating. After getting back to Oaxaca we sat in the Zocalo and listened to the municipal band.

Oaxaca also has wonderful chocolate which I sampled a couple of times.

Friday after class we headed out of Oaxaca. It is a great town and I would love to visit it again.

 

  Friday night we spent the night in Tehucan.

We spent Thursday night in Palenque in a very nice hotel, The Hotel Chablis. After a beer on our patio overlooking the jungle we had dinner in an open air restaurant next door and had the best meal so far. I had soup and a garlic rubbed grilled fish and Duke had a mixed grill. I can't remember the Spanish name for it but it included some wonderful steak and plantains. After dinner we went for a walk. Duke thought about climbing these vines.

The ruins at Panenque are just a few miles south of the town  where the mountains start to rise from the plains of the Yucatan peninsula. The mountain jungle setting made them very different from all the other ruins that we have seen. We were there fairly early which was good because it was already hot. We climbed around and enjoyed ourselves. I was especially impressed with the magnitude of Palenque.

The museum at Palenque had things found at the site. I liked this timeless Mom.

Driving south from Palenque into the mountains the roads became very windy. There was no way we could be in a hurry. We stopped first at the Misol-Ha Waterfall. It was very high and beautiful. We hiked up behind it

Next we stopped at the Aqua Azul waterfall. it is very different. Duke was here many years ago and there were only a couple of people and no vendors. When we were at the falls there were a lot of people and many many vendors.

 

We also stopped to buy some shirts from a road side vendor. The children were fascinated.

We spent Friday night in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. It is a big town. We walked around the square, had a good dinner and got on the road early to drive to Oaxaca. The drive to Oaxaca was long. Some of it was on very good toll roads and some of it was on very windy mountain roads. We did stop and buy some Mezcal along the way.

From Tulum we drove down the eastern side of the Yucatan Peninsula and then across the base of the peninsula. But before we headed south from Tulum we went inland to see the ruins at Coba. Coba was very different than the other ruins we have seen because it is all in jungle. We had to walk quite a distance between the various ruins at the site.The paths are old Mayan stone highways.

The town that is now the ruin at Coba had around 40,000 people living in it at its peak between 800 and 1100 AD.

We saw the ball court.

And we saw several other impressive structures. But the most awe inspiring was the pyramid. It is 42 meters high and is the second highest pyramid in the Yucatan peninsula. We climbed it. The view from the top was of endless jungle.

On the road back to Tulum from Coba we stopped at a road side stand and bought a cold coconut. The vendor opened it. We drank the coconut juice and then the meat. We added salt, chili powder and lime to the meat. It was really good.

We spent Wednesday night at Laguna Bacular on the second biggest lake in Mexico. We ate dinner in a little restaurant on the square and walked around the fort that the Spanish built for protection from British pirates. We were only a few miles from Belize.

From Laguna Bacalar we drove to Palenque almost 300 miles on some not very good roads. Palenque is right at the edge of the mountains.It also has  big Mayan ruin. it is amazing how many ruins there are. we only scratched the surface. And we visited five. I'll talk about our visit to the Palenque ruins in my next post.

 

While we were in Cancun staying at our friend's house we did laundry and got food from the grocery store for our meals. It was a nice break in our travels.

I didn't realize that Cancun is a recently created city. In the 1970s Mexico decided to create the resort of Cancun. Pretty much everything we saw in Cancun, all the roads, restaurants and over the top resorts, is no more than 40 years old.

We drove through the hotel zone which is a 10 or so mile long strip of land with very impressive resort hotels. We parked near the Ritz Carleton and walked through it down to the beach. Later we went swimming near there. The beaches are sparkling white and the water is a stunning azure blue. This picture was taken a little farther down the road at an overlook point by the public beach..

While we were in Cancun we also spent and hour checking out the gambling at the Dubai Palace. They had an electronic black jack table with no cards but with a dealer. It is the first one like it I have ever seen. We lost a bit but it was still interesting and fun to play someplace new.

We left Cancun Tuesday morning. Tuesday night we stayed in Tulum about 80 miles south of Cancun on the Mexican Riviera. On the drive from Cancun we saw lots and lots of very fancy resorts. We stayed at a hotel called Green Tulum. We had a second floor cabana room that felt like we were in a tree house.

 In the afternoon we explored the ruins at Tulum. It was a walled city that was thriving when the Spaniards first sailed along this cost. The ruins overlooking the white sand beach and sparkling blue water are stunningly beautiful.

After a dinner of fish tacos in an outside restaurant we watched the moon rise over the Caribbean.

From Tulum we head south almost to Belize.