A long drive today (five hours) from Mexico City to Oaxaca with a few stops on the way. The first stop was to view the two volcanoes to the east of the city: Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl. Popocatépetl had its largest eruption for 500 years in December 2000 when the crater lid blew sky high throwing incandescent rocks for a radius of up to 2km with smoke and ash rising to a height of more than 10km. Today it was just belching out smoke while Iztaccihuatl stood benign with snow on its peak.
The next stop was Puebla – a truly beautiful colonial city, the deep blue sky and brilliant sunshine made it even more lovely. Puebla de los Angeles (‘City of the Angels’) to give the city its full name was founded in 1531 by Fray Julian Garcés who saw angels in a dream indicating where the city should be built, hence its name. It is also one explanation why Puebla wasn’t built over pre-Hispanic ruins like many other colonial cities. It is a charming, friendly city with a different church for every day of the year – and most of them of the gold-dripping Baroque style! The cathedral has onyx and marble statuary and gold-leaf decoration but the stunningly kitsch Capilla del Rosario wins hands down for Baroque excess. The chapel is a riot of gold leaf, although there is also some stunning Talavera tile decoration. It is hard to understand how, in a country where so much poverty exists, that there is not an outcry against the Roman Catholic church and its obscene excesses. Outside of the churches the city has some lively markets selling handicrafts and clothes but it is the beautiful colonial architecture that makes the city so attractive, many of the houses and shops being decorated with the Talavera tiles which are still made in Puebla. The city also has the house of Don Aquiles Serdan one of the forerunners of the Mexican Revolution; the sign outside says (in English) “This house was damaged by the thugs of the dictatorship and even still shows bullet prints in its facade.”
The drive continued along winding roads through wooded mountains at altitudes of between 1500m and 1800m, emerging at last into the warm red-earthed Oaxaca valley. We also had a couple of unscheduled stops for Peter – the first victim in our group of Moctezuma’s revenge!
We arrived in Oaxaca just as the sun was setting which was followed by a brilliant red sky in the east and a full moon rising in the west. A brief walk around the city in the warm evening air revealed it to be a very attractive place and also very friendly. At one point we sat to consult our guide book to see where we might find a good restaurant and immediately we were approached by a very helpful man offering assistance with our search or any translation that was needed. However Gregg is still a figure of amazement to many of the children – it is as though they have never seen anyone so tall, so white-skinned or so grey-haired. We found a wonderful vegetarian restaurant and sat in a courtyard with a fountain and had an excellent meal – but just because its vegetarian doesn’t mean they go easy on the chillies!
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